Travis Smith - Microsoft specialist - notes of presentation

Notes from presentation with Travis Smith - microsoft specialist -education - held morning of 7th May 2015 at CPIT.

Mark Marshall CPIT ICT manager and Ann Taylor from Microsoft introduced Travis.

Mixed audience of schools and tertiary educators, administrators and IT.

A focus on using technology to achieve good learning outcomes for learners.

Went through 'high impact gradualism' - why education moves so slowly in the adoption of technology and things to prioritise to maximise impact of TEL.

Issuing hardware has not changed pedagogy - still content focused rather than learning focused. Deploying technology should lead to 'better' learning not replicate learning activities already common.

Need to have evidenced informed strategy, shift to collaboration platform, choice of device is actually critical, be deliberate in developing skills you think you are developing in students ( 21st collaborative learning design - 21CLD) and used data (learning analytics) better (see new line school use of customer relationship management CRM).

Need for institutions to align innovation to strategy and prioritise TEL that works (as per research informed) in the context. What are we trying to improve by using technology??

Need to establish pedagogical framework - and innovative teaching and learning is more likely to occur when there is a shared understanding of what it looks like ....

BYOD is NOT an approach to learning or pedagogy ... it's just how kids get device. Difficulty for pedagogy to be fully utilised if devices are to varied. Learning so often messy, multimodal and subject specific.

Used notetaking as an example - Mueller, P.A. & Oppenheimer D.M. (2014) the pen is mightier than the keyboard: advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological Science.

Choice of notetaking method and device, has impact on learning factual or conceptual facets.

Used OneNote as an example of annotating diagram to take notes. including embedding audio notes. and tracking of 'making thinking visible' through maths problem. Also uses onenote as his presentation tool. - see possibilities of onenote

Mangen, 2008, Mangen & Velaym 2010, Oviatt, 2006 - annotation on digital texts leads to depth of processing, reflection on meaning, ability to integrate and critique knowledge.

version one learning implies the cogitative process and version 2 is the 'final version' encapsulating concepts.   2 is high fidelity, version 1 is low fidelity. Onenote provides capability to bring both together.

The design of educational interfaces - Sharon Oviatt - thinking tools require stylus.

Paper is not going away, just getting smarter - how do we use to help learning?? embed animation? making concepts visual assist with supporting abstract thinking. = using fluid math app

Provided example of Adobe's latest application to make editing of images intuitive and 'instant'. see creative cloud

Monash University intervention by asking lecturers to include 40%  ppt slide which require annotation. Use ctrl P to bring pen into ppt. Add / sketch in - on the fly, allowing for better narrative of how thinking occurs. Provide the version 1 not just the version 2 as a completed ppt slide.

Need to remember, digital collaborative problem solving is a specialised skill. Collaborative problem-solving over distance using real world tools a developing field. Use white board feature on Lync.

Future possibilities being build with surface table, allowing sharing of artefacts across distance or augmented reality through hololens.

Preparation for working in a digital environment requiring collaboration at a distance now a 'must have' skill. Demonstrated real time authoring / collaboration on word online.

Discussed capabilities of office 365 for education. Provides access to 5 iterations of the software for students. Provided example of how to set up onenote to share folder with students. office 365 has a onenote class notebook creator. Demonstrated how to set up a 'course' onenote folder, allowing teacher to see all students' work. Teacher can provide feedback and students will see latest version of their work - with feedback.  opens possibility of using onenote as a form of LMS.

Finished with demo of office mix. (see my first attempt - from learning a trade project)

two other presentations from Travis - on collaboration and onenote for schools.

Surface Pro tablet - first impressions

Finally got my hands on a Surface Pro last week and have had the weekend to work with it. The tablet comes with a scribe and we also purchased the keyboard cover for one of the surface pro tablets.

The kick stand is handy but typing on the tablet is not comfortable with the tablet sitting up with the kick stand. When the keyboard cover is on, and everything is lying on a flat surface, typing is comfortable. However, the keyboard cover is not really designed for laptop typing. The table with kick stand open is top heavy and does not sit well on ones lap. So far, using the keyboard cover makes it difficult to enter my password (sigh) and I have found typing on the cover to be slower than typing on the on screen keyboard. So in general, unless I will be doing lots of typing, I will not recommend purchasing the keyboard cover.

Battery life seems to be less than for my ipad. A couple of hours of looking through the app market, downloading apps and updating the tablet, saw 40% of the battery used. The tablet also gets quite warm. Ok at the moment in wintry Christchurch but less welcome in the summer. The battery icon is also not visible on the start screen, you need to go to eh desktop screen where the battery icon will then be on the bottom of the screen or to settings.

Have just about got used to the Windows 8 interface and installed a trial version of office to work with Word and Excel. The scribe sits into the port that also takes the recharge connection. The scribe provides the option of writing on the tablet and I down loaded the app ‘ handwriting’ and found writing on the tablet to be a quick way to input text. The app also allows for painless and relatively fast conversion of handwriting to text. So a recommended app. One note also has similar capability and Word has writing to text ‘input’ option. The ability to handwrite and convert to text is another reason not to have to invest in the keyboard cover.

Transfer of files across my office PC to tablet is also straightforward with a Microsoft account and Skydrive. Or you could also transfer via the USB port.

Videos run well as per Ted talks. Overal,l not many relevant apps for vocational education but seamlessness of access to standard PC files via skydrive or memory stick means various learning resources can be easily ported across. Will test the tablet with various datashows and touch TV screens this week.