[Yes, I know schools never closed etc. etc., but "The Back-to-Face-to-Face-Teaching Update" wasn't as catchy]
During lockdown, I blogged about using my graphics tablet and my visualiser to teach (you can read that here, if you want). I ended by saying that when we return to onsite teaching, I thought I'd be back with my visualiser. Well, we're back. Here's how its going:
First day back I forgot my visualiser at home, so I had to borrow a colleague's. Lesson went as first lessons back usually do - kids are too tired to push their luck, but not so tired that they struggle to stay on task - it was fine, felt confident. But then I had to upload my lessons for those students who missed my lesson. During the partial closure, this hadn't been an issue - students who couldn't attend the live lesson also wouldn't be able to access a recording, so we didn't have to upload anything. Now, that's not the case and we need to provide a version of the lesson for those students shielding or isolating. [Personally, I'd see more value in directing them to something like Oak National, that is designed for asynchronous, distance learning, but that's a different conversation, and one I've been told is above my paygrade]. And so I was in a position where I had several sheets of paper that I needed to scan and upload. My longest day is six periods, so that's potentially a lot of bits of paper floating around in my bag waiting to be scanned - there's a big area for error.
The next day I brought my graphics tablet in from home, the idea being that I can just share the Jamboard with the students as I did during the partial closure and they can work through it in their own time. And this is what I did for a couple of lessons. But then I wondered if there was a way to put the printed tasks on the screen to annotate them in the same way that I would under the visualiser. With Jamboard you can upload a picture so, historically, I was screenshotting what I wanted and doing it that way, which worked fine, but I wasn't content with it. So I tried out OneNote. Now, I'm not 100% sold on it, yet. There are some issues that I haven't found a way around but some of those are partly down to the tech we're running at my current school.
Tablet over Visualiser:
- As mentioned above, saving and sharing my lesson is much easier using my tablet than using my visualiser. I can just share the file, rather than keeping loads of sheets everywhere. More on issues with sharing files later.
- I don't have to sit up to the front desk. When writing under the visualiser, I need somewhere to put the visualiser, somewhere to put my paper, occasionally an additional light source, or a shade depending on the light intensity in the room. With my tablet, as long as I'm within a 1.5m circle of my laptop, I can be anywhere. Now, I recognise that isn't a lot of space, but it can be the difference between being unable to see like four students, and being able to see the whole class.
- Before, with my visualiser, I was stuck, usually in the middle of the front desk. I would lose the two sets of students either side of the front row. My head was also often in the way of the board and students would struggle to see what I was writing. There was a lot of bobbing and weaving from both myself and my students as we tried to see what we were looking at. With my tablet, I can scooch back and sit to the side of the board. I can see pretty much all of the class, and (perhaps more importantly) they can see what's on the board. [Yes, I realise I've drawn myself looking like a sperm - that's the cable for my graphics tablet, duh.]
- With both Jamboard and OneNote, if I decided I want to move something I've written, perhaps because I need a little more space to write the next part, I can select the segment and drag it to its new location. With my visualiser, once it's down, it's down and it's not going anywhere, which can be irritating, especially when drawing things like the carbon cycle - sometimes you need a little more space than anticipated.
- My tablet is significantly more portable than my visualiser ever was. I teach in nine classrooms across three blocks and have my tutor group in a tenth room [I think I annoyed whoever did the rooming]. My tablet fits neatly into a little pouch that slides into my backpack, taking up about as much space as a diary. My visualiser broke down into three parts that just sat in the bottom of my bag, getting tangled up with everything. It was also really heavy.
Visualiser over Tablet:
- I'll still use my visualiser for demos. It allows students a clearer view than they get when they're all huddled round the front.
- Students are currently a little distracted by the novelty of the tablet. Most of them have never seen one before and are awestruck by the idea that I can write on a little rectangle in my lap and it appears on the screen behind me. One child referred to it as "electronic paper" which made me feel like a time traveller. This will wear off as they learn to expect it in my lessons.
OneNote over Jamboard:
- OneNote has the option to add lines (or squares, or dots) as the default background for a new page. Jamboard, you can add the lines as the background, but when you open a new Board, they aren't necessarily there. The lines on OneNote are also "real", in that when you type, it types on the lines. On Jamboard they're more of a decorative background. One of the reasons I was drawn back to my visualiser was that it allowed me to lay out my work in the same way that I wanted the students to lay theirs out. With Jamboard that's not directly possible, but with OneNote, I can get a very close approximation of their books.
- With some of my classes, I colour-code my instructions - if it's red, I want you to write it (usually equations/formulae, sometimes diagrams), if it's blue, I want you to do it (tasks, etc). It's something I've found useful with slightly more needy classes who feel reliant on confirmation that they're doing the right thing - they can see right off what I want them to do. I think I've seen some teachers using an icon of a pencil or a thought bubble or whatever; it's the same concept, I just have a thing about unclear icons so I tend to avoid them where possible. With Jamboard (and with my visualiser) I would need to make sure I was using the correct colour before I started. With OneNote, if I decided, halfway through an explanation, that this is something I think they need in their books, I can select what I've written and change the colour of the ink. Before, I'd have to put it in a box, not that there's anything wrong with that, but if I've got half the class sat at home, perhaps accessing the lesson asynchronously, without the benefit of my telling them what the box is for, then that student might not get that information in their book, and then when I refer to it later on, they don't have it and might miss out.
Jamboard over OneNote:
- Syncing is less smooth with OneNote. As a school, we haven't paid into whatever package is needed to sync across devices, so I can't share the lessons as easily. I also can't plan from anywhere the way I could with GSuite. It is fairly straight forward to export the bit of the lesson series that I want and post it to Google Classroom as a pdf, but it's still more faff than sharing a link. Whether this issue vanishes if you're a Microsoft Teams school, I can't comment. I would assume so because it seems silly otherwise.
- This is probably a problem I'm having because I'm new to the programme, but I can't seem to predict where my files are going to go when I insert them into OneNote. 90% of the time they seem to go right at the top, but then sometimes they're under another bit of writing, sometimes they're where I want them, it's annoying. I imagine there's a way to make it do what you want, but I've not worked it out yet. I am finding things out as I go along! It would also be solved if I planned, for example a whole topic in one go because there'd be nothing else on the page at that point, but I don't have the time in my week to do that unfortunately.
There you have it. I was wrong. I thought I'd go back to my visualiser, but that was not to be.