9th Annual 21st Century Learning Conference

With the rapid development of information technology in the 21st century, students need to be cultivated to be a generation with good Communication,Collaboration, Critical Thinking and Creativity skills, in order to lay the foundation for their independent thinking and lifelong learning. In the traditional language class, students are often in a condition of absorbing the knowledge passively, lacking of active thinking.

The presentation aims to break from the traditional teacher-centred model to create more active student-centred model, leveraging technology and project-based learning to cultivate more engaged and active learning, as well as applying connected learning and visible thinking to amplify the inquiry learning.

In this workshop, Mel Varga and Ross Parker will present the story of their experiences with the Gibbon school platform, an open source system designed to make schools better. Starting in September 2015, Mel has worked to lead The International School Macau's effort to move from a proprietary school system to Gibbon, with the result that TIS now boasts a free, flexible, community driven and highly usable suit of software for staff, student and parent use.

By leveraging skills already existing within their school, TIS are now working to give back to the Gibbon community.  Faced with a similar decision matrix at International College Hong Kong in 2010, Ross found reliable, flexible and mature open source solutions for schools to be lacking, and so set out on the journey of creating Gibbon. Building on prior experience of building and deploying school platforms, Ross was able to offer the essentials that most schools seek, as well as some innovative functionality, but quickly encountered setbacks in driving adoption of open source systems in school. This workshop tracks the development of Gibbon from conception, through development, to adoption.

This session is aimed at educators who are keen to get more out of their school's systems and data, regardless of their job title or experience in such areas. Attendees are invited to consider what offers a better fit for education: corporate software driven by profits, or a community of practitioners building free software to meet their own needs and push forward their own practice.

Technology can provide one of the most effective ways of aiding students self assessment and reflection. When used with assessment for learning techniques staff can use data to frame conversations for learning, planning learning and having great overviews of classes and whole cohorts.

We will be looking at how to set up an electronic learning checklist system or electronic test review system that is bespoke to your course and allows students to reflect thoroughly on their work, understand where they need to improve and know how to do so. Having a good grasp of what is in your course, where you are in it is and being able to track and access that is a huge advantage to students and parents.

I am a Maths specialist that has used Google Sheets and Google Classroom but it is not a prerequisite that you use Google nor is the technique applicable only to Maths.

This session will cover Google's digital research tools like Google Docs for writing and collaborative writing, Scholar, Google Books, and  and some non-Google tools that interface with Google Apps like Zotero. Participants will learn how to use these tools with students for research writing in the digital age.

Then the session will cover improving the digital writing with Google Docs and a range of third-party browser-based apps that work with Google Apps to refine academic writing. These include LexTutor, Analyse My Writing, StoryToolz and a few other such useful writing apps. Taken collectively this session will equip participants with a full digital age research and writing eco system that can easily be passed on to students for efficient and easy academic writing.

Looking for digital formative assessment that gives you immediate group data as well as results for individual students without even leaving Office 365?  Microsoft Forms can take formative assessment to a new level.  Insert pictures, videos. Full-blown math equation editor. The features are all there. Share your formative quiz with a colleague, or better yet, edit it together at the same time. All is possible, and if your students are logged in to Office 365, the results are authenticated. No confusion or prank names. Works for PD too, and as a great free alternative to SurveyMonkey for a school, all at no charge. Bring a laptop or tablet and we will go hands on and check out the very latest updates to Forms. It was just updated again March 3rd, so come get your hands on the latest and greatest.

Forms instantly visualizes the big picture for each class with graphs and charts, plus drills down to learn which specific students had trouble, by name. There's branching logic, to customize the quiz for kids having trouble or who have mastered the content. Microsoft Forms was designed specifically for education. Individualize learning based on data rather than hunches! All seamlessly built into your school's Office 365. 

Slides from session: http://tinyurl.com/21CLForms

Simulations... and Engagement... and Bears... Oh My!

Demonstrating how a custom made digital simulation can be linked to classroom content.

• How video and board games were used to inspire a year-long custom-made simulation using Google Docs and Sheets
• How a simulation can be directly linked with the learning standards
• How a simulation can encourage independent as well as peer to peer learning
• How a simulation can significantly increase student engagement and help them to apply their learning
• How to create smaller and large scale simulations for any subject and how to link them together to create a single larger learning experience

See the presentation website for details, images and videos of the simulation in action - https://dodeslis.wixsite.com/21clchk-preview

Focus Question: What common criteria do successful early financial literacy programs exhibit and how can we ensure that these are emulated in our primary schools?

Details from my study - “Starting Young!” An international study of successful primary school Financial Literacy programs.

Examine the latest research in preparing students for a successful financial future.

Practical ideas to implement in the 21st classrooms including adding financial considerations into STEAM.

Classrooms are digitally empowering students. The tools we use to give students a voice in the classroom are changing. This is creating opportunities for teachers, as they try to extend the student voice in their learning spaces. Participants will be challenged to digitally reimagine their own lessons to facilitate empowerment within their students.

At the end of the presentation participants will:

• Understand how digital tasks can be created with a structured or open inquiry

• Have an understanding of how to empower students through Email, Hyperdocs and New Google Sites (if time allows)

• Understand that digital citizenship is the foundation of digital student empowerment

Understanding one's brain, one's emotions, how each part of the brain plays a role in how and when we process and don't process information. I will mainly speak about learning how to understand our functioning and why we function that way. And spend some time dispelling some myths around Mindfulness and how it is not what we assume it to be.

How do seemingly smart people behave so un-intelligently online? What is it about the online world that makes us suspend our disbelief in reality, increase our faculty of denial and put us in situations we would not normally find ourselves in the "offline world". Are we putting too much faith in the people on the other side of the screen, and how do we get the message across to students that things aren't always the way they appear?

This presentation will look at a recent case in Singapore involving an online dating scam and how two people were arrested, three hearts were broken, and one person became so much wiser into what is really going on online.