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Some notes, part of a ragged collection on lockdown learning.

Teaching via blogs, teams and meets it a bit like throwing mud at the wall and seeing what sticks. I am not getting the same bunch turning up everyday. This makes planning a series of lessons difficult. Or continuing something.

My team meetings consist of some of the following:
– A bit of chat, perhaps “round the room” sharing news although if that happens every day most folk dry up after 2 or 3
– A few maths questions, pupIls note down answers and then we review and discuss.
– “Number talks”
– Tables bingo
– Every week we take a poem: read it on the first day; discuss words the next; Poetic techniques the next and do a bit of writing the next two. 10 minutes a day.
– A general knowledge quiz
– Discussions of some of the tasks on the weekly blog post.

I try to keep it moving along, light and happy.

We tried 5 minutes drawing with soft music one day this week, it seemed to go down well. I’ve done the same with writing. On paper then pasted into the chat. Again using poetry keeping it short.

Of course this is interrupted by pupils dropping out, trying to get back in! Mics not working, audio dropping etc.

I also run a Minecraft Education Server for an hour or so everyday. I mostly step back. Stick on the text to speech and try and get some prep done. Not particularly successfully. Every so often I wander about amazed at what is being done. It is a pretty open ended task, a Virtual Banton. It seems to develop in fits and starts. It drops away then an idea picks up. Fascinating to watch. I’ve never had more than 7 pupils in at once.

Today I was completely surprised, two of the class wanted to ‘give’ me the school uniform. It seems in Minecraft there are ways to pass on these thing. Some instructions in chat followed, but they were to complicated for me. One pupil then decided to make a video. And drop it in teams. 2 minutes later job done. I’ve got my uniform on.

Text of a pupil  blog post today, “I know I’m like two weeks late with this work but here it is.”

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screenshot Farrago, Loopback, Teams

Notes to self as I try and teach myself to teach remotely. 

 

Powerpoint note, how annoying is Design Ideas. To turn it off you need to turn off all MS services in the privacy tab of the prefs. And relaunch app. And it didn’t seem to work for me. Back to Keynote – Export for me.

Teams

I am putting Announcements in 2 channels, then the next day removing them from the main channel and taking away the right to reply.

Got loopback working today. Dropping the Pass-Thru might have done the trick. This means I can mix in audio, Farrago in the meet today, with my mic.

screenshot Farrago, Loopback, Teams
Click for Big!

The Hands Up option turned up in Teams meeting for most of my class today. Good news was it seems to be in iOS as well as PC & mac.

Had a few more slides with photos today. These proved to be ‘laggy’ for some of the class. The children found that opening the chat and closing it seems to force a screen refresh and of the the slide shows up.

Tried having 5 minutes silent drawing in the meeting. I had my phone camera on my paper and some music in the background (loopback). It seemed to go down well.

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Replied to Athole on Twitter (Twitter)
“@johnjohnston Why do you do a daily Teams meeting? Are they all class Teams? Do you do 1:1s too? I do a daily video message , 2 whole class video meets and two 1:1s a week. As well as all the video feedback. I’m just curious and comparing.”

Hi Athole,
Good question. I am not sure. It is the pattern I’ve fallen into. I put a weekly post of learning ideas up on our blog. The pupils respond on their e-Portfolios, occasional e-mails and in our Class Team.

I put the audio of the weekly post up.

I’ve a class of 24 p4-7, so 8 to 11 year olds.

We only have one team, we had not used Teams much before this. Just an an example of a chat app really. We used e-Portfolios a fair bit (WordPress, Glow Blogs).

I am trying to get some interaction with the class, give them some fun and encourage them to keep engaged. I’ve heard from some parents that it is motivating.

I’ve only had a maximum of 15 pupils in a meeting. I think some get bored and drop out. The environment for them all is different both physically and digitally.

During the meeting I work through a few different areas, usually look at a poem, have a quiz, do some ‘number talks’. Based on a powerpoint. It takes a lot of prep.

Our teams lacks pupil video. Which might be a good thing.

No 1-2-1s I’d not thought of that, nor heard of anyone doing them here?

I’ve not seen any local or national guidance here, so just trying things out and seeing how they go.

I’d be keen to talk about this more and obviously need to think more too.

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A few useful links for mixing audio and sending to Teams from a Mac.

How to share System Audio in Microsoft Teams | Bastian Kroggel

This is not about the pros and cons of Teams. This is not about whether it is better than Slack, Zoom, Google Meet, Rocket.Chat or Jitsi. It is about a single feature that is so widely used in Zoom that I did not even think a serious competitor can lack the function – sharing your system audio with your colleagues and audience while presenting something on your screen.

The use case for that is pretty easily outlined: Prerecorded videos, reruns of an earlier session, or just some basic background music – all of that exceeds the basic capabilities of Microsoft Teams in its current iteration.

Rogue Amoeba | Using Loopback to add audio to voice chat (VoIP)

Loopback enables you to combine the audio from multiple sources, including microphones and applications, then provide that combined audio to voice chat applications to be heard by all participants.

And

You won’t use the Pass-Thru source which is included by default, so remove it by clicking to highlight it, then pressing the Delete button.

I wonder if removing Pass-Thru makes much difference.

How to Send Computer Audio Over Skype or Zoom | Music Learning Hub

Audio Recording Setup | Preston Lamb Consulting, LLC

GitHub – ExistentialAudio/BlackHole: BlackHole is a modern macOS virtual audio driver that allows applications to pass audio to other applications with zero additional latency.

BlackHole is a modern macOS virtual audio driver that allows applications to pass audio to other applications with zero additional latency.

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Replied to Andrew Bailey on Twitter (Twitter)
“@johnjohnston @IanStuart66 @breadalbanebus How do you do this John? For the uninitiated.”

Markdown is a simple way to create html. I’ve found it useful it Teams. You can type it into a post editor and it is rendered as you go. Unfortunately from my pov posts in teams breaks if you paste in Markdown. But in the praise box you can paste in markdown and it renders on the published post.

For example **bold** *italics* [twitter](https://twitter.com)

is rendered:
bold italics twitter

I’ve got a wee script on my mac that will grab links to all my open tabs and make markdown from it so I can open all the pupils posts, copy all the links and paste into a praise thing.

Daring Fireball: Markdown