Online Student Led Toolkits

Each year Ako Hiko (our Manaiakalani school cluster) hosts  Student Led Toolkits. These are an opportunity for students to share digital technology with other schools. The students lead the presentations (3 toolkits from each school) and 24 other students from each school opt in to toolkits to learn from these presenters. Usually this is done at a school (Last year it was hosted by Hay Park) but due to Lockdown it was looking less likely to be able to go ahead, so the PLG leaders decided to go ahead with the first Online Toolkits through Google Meet.
Link to AkoHiko Student Tollkits
I would love to say it went smoothly but there was always going to be hiccups with som many students (400) online at once. Initially we gathered in the hall (my 33 students) and tuned in to the teacher meet where Phil Margetts would give us the programme for the day and outline the rules for online etiquette. My laptop froze so we only heard the first half, but as we had used Google meet throughout Lockdown we were pretty confident that our students would know what to do.

 


The initial presentation was a little chaotic. My presenters were doing Audiobooks and we had students with mics on and using chat to say hi. One other toolkit had around 500 chats so we decided to have another teacher meet and remind students of the Meet etiquette.

It calmed down quite a bit, the second meet went really well (Google Earth Tour Builder) with not as much chat or silly behaviour from their audience. The third presentation (Tinkercad) need students to have signed up, I had made a class account for 55 students but had another 25 show up wanting to join. This was a little frustrating as they used chat to ask to join continuously as I was trying to sign them up. But overall it was much better that the start of the day.

 

My 29 students who were attending other school toolkits had a fantastic day, they all learnt something and were buzzing with talk of new tools/apps they had discovered. Some weren't as successful as others but what an experience for them all.