Yesterday was the annual Kootuitui stakeholders event, an opportunity to bring together our fantastic sponsors and partners and show off what has been happening in our three strands of Education, Health and Homes (Whaanau). I had the privilege of working with a group of year 6 learners from Papakura Central School to put together a presentation of how they use their chromebooks to Learn, Create and Share.
Each of the students had their own idea about what they wanted to talk about, and how they would share their knowledge. Through a bit of planning and conversation, we managed to refine everyone's ideas so they could achieve maximum impact in minimum time. We had a tight window of less than a week to be organised, and no more than 15 minutes total time. At our first meeting, we made a shared slide deck, where each person could take one slide to plan and develop their contribution. Because I was working in different schools, and the students had busy timetables, we used the comments function to communicate and keep track of progress. We spent an hour on Tuesday afternoon bringing everything together and making sure all of the bits joined up to make a coherent presentation.
In the slide deck below, you can see what the students came up with. Arpit shared a screencast of accessing learning through his class site and the other apps and sites he uses, he chose to speak to the audience while the video was playing. Tara used a google form to ask her classmates how they use their chromebooks to learn, create and share and presented their responses as word clouds. Sam shared a blog post about a piece of work she had done, giving a commentary about how she had made it. Emily created an animation about how to write a quality blog comment, and we used screencastify to make it into a video (small Mrs Cameron cameo, listen out for it). I think I will include this in my cybersmart facilitation.
The students got a hugely positive response from the audience, with lots of people making the effort to come and speak to them afterwards. They were rewarded handsomely for their efforts with second, third and fourth helpings from the refreshments table. For me, it was a fantastic experience to work with learners who were confident and creative users of their chromebooks, as much of my work to date has been with students who are starting out on their cybersmart journey. Thanks to Keith and the team at Papakura Central School for hosting us, and for developing these awesome rangatahi.
