Pedagogy Review at PHS

Over the last six months, I have been privileged to work with the Papakura Pedagogy Lead Team (PPLT) at Papakura High School on a project that aimed to ensure that the insights gained from our Covid experiences are incorporated into the 'new normal' of teaching and learning. Through the process of reviewing the existing pedagogy framework, I have gained a better understanding of this school's unique context, including what has happened in the last five years, future aspirations from a staff and community perspective, and some of the obstacles that stand in the way. 

Through fortnightly meetings, we have addressed each of the existing pedagogy focus areas, which are: Planning, Assessment for Learning, Culturally responsive teaching, High expectations, Adaptive expertise (differentiation) and Literacy. In response to the periods of learning from home necessitated by Auckland's lockdown, we also needed to incorporate 'Digital Pedagogy'. Although each of these dimensions are important to effective teaching, feedback from teachers indicated that the six existing pou were not well embedded and adding a 7th would create more confusion. I had also been struggling to gain traction with implementing the Manaiakalani Programme at PHS beyond the digital fluency level and hoped that this would be an opportunity to plant the seeds that might yield digitally transformed pedagogy.

By examining the existing strands, we have been able to synthesise the essence of effective teaching in the Papakura High School context. I have identified links to the Manaiakalani pedagogy and kaupapa throughout this process, so that the reworked Papakura Pedagogy is a framework of effective teaching that reflects the evidence-based principles of TMPO but has been grown from within PHS rather than imposed from beyond.

The final four pou have been introduced to staff and refined in response to their feedback. The PPLT will now shift our focus to leading professional learning and implementation so that the framework comes to life and is visible and embedded in every teaching and learning space of the school. The learning cycle at this stage comprises whole-staff meetings, critical friends hui and self-reflection. In time, we hope to include a cycle of observations and co-construction.

Finding the silver lining

In Auckland, we find ourselves once again in the learning & working from home situation. Although this is disappointing after returning to relative freedom, I know we are hugely fortunate compared to many places in the world, and we can continue our lives using the power of digital technologies. I also believe that every cloud has a silver lining, and there have to some awesome things to come from lockdown 2.0!

At the beginning of this term, I started working with two classes who are new to Chromebooks at Edmund Hillary School. Their teachers were really keen to support learners to share the learning they have been doing at home, but we knew these students were not yet ready to be introduced to their own blogs. I knew that we could use email to post to the class blog, but I also wanted to support students with the process of writing a blog post by using 'cues' for each section. Working closely with one of these teachers, I created a form that students could complete when they were ready to share their learning. The questions in the form are designed to guide learners through the thinking process ofcrafting a blog post. 

Behind the scenes, I created a template for the blog post, which I connected to the form responses using the Autocrat add on. The merge job is set up so that each time a new response to the form is submitted, an email is sent to the class blog so that it appears as if student work is published straight away. On their learning sites, teachers will embed a rewindable demo to show students how to complete the form, and a link that students can use as frequently as they need.

Click on the image above to see the learning Kylie's students are sharing to their class blog

Throughout this process, I asked myself whether my work would be empowering for learners or whether I was doing the heavy lifting and therefore disempowering them. On reflection, I believe that this type of support is empowering, as it is scaffolding students towards ever increasing ownership of their learning. I think of it a bit like the way we introduce children to sports; initially we want them to achieve success so we keep the goals close and anticipate any major hurdles. As skills and knowledge are developed, we make the goals higher, the court larger, and we introduce 'twists' such as the stepping and contact rules that teach our young people to be more responsible for being in the right place at the right time. 

Normally when I work in classes where students don't yet have their own blogs, I ask the teacher to share a few examples of student work to the class blog. I'm wondering if in future, I might set up this type of system to enable sharing right from the start. What do you think?

If you would like my support to use any of the resources that I have talked about, or if you can see other ways this might be helpful, please let me know in the comments!

Pushed and Stretched

Learning is the thing that drives me, so I love working in a role where there are constant challenges and opportunities to improve. I approached the planning for my Cybersmart lessons at the beginning of the year with the intention of offering differentiated tasks and outcomes for students, depending on their previous experience. Last year I had noticed that the relatively high rate of teacher turnover in our cluster meant that some students were in their second or third year of having a teacher who was new to the cluster, so they had already 'done' many of the lessons previously and told me they found Cybersmart boring. Ouch! At the same time, new students enrolling through the year may have had little experience using devices for their learning, let alone creating, sharing and following the Kawa of Care.

I had noticed when Kelsey from the Uru Manuka cluster shared her planning that she had lessons for those new to Chromebooks and those who had used them before, great idea! During term 1 I used that strategy to develop my planning, which seemed to work really well, especially in a year 3/4 class where most of the year 4s were seeing me for the second year in a row. I wanted new teachers to have clear instructions for what was expected of them, and for teachers who had previously received in-class support to feel confident flying solo. Everything was ticking along fairly well and then COVID.

The challenge of taking in-class support to a remote model created the opportunity to zero in on what exactly we are trying to achieve in our role as facilitators. We want to support teachers effectively in developing their skillset and their mindset as they make the transition to teaching in a 1:1 environment and enacting the Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy. We also have responsibility for supporting the young people in our schools to understand and demonstrate what it means to be a smart learner. In addition to this we want to incorporate the fruits of knowledge that have been borne through Manaiakalani's partnership with the Woolf Fisher Research Centre; affordances and efficiencies of  digitally managed learning, t-shaped literacy and high leverage teaching practices.  Doing all of these things justice is no mean feat.

I made some changes to my planning for term 2 based on the knowledge that 'in-class support' would be happening remotely. Taking inspiration from the quality blog post rubric, I pitched lessons at 'beginner', 'stepping up' and 'confident' levels. Each lesson included rewindable content, step by step instructions and an introductory video. Mark and Sharon from Te Ara Tuhura cluster built on what I had started by incorporating UDL principles to make the lessons more accessible for all learners. I was a little confronted at first that I was being pushed to consider further elements that hadn't been included in my planning. At the same time I was excited to be bouncing ideas around with team members who had a shared purpose and brought diverse experience and perspectives.

 

Te Rito | Stepping up Lesson 1 Task board

When it came time to plan our programmes for term 3, it felt like we had organically shifted from a form of retrospective collaboration to a more proactive approach. Working together, we have created a set of five lessons each at beginner, stepping up and confident level. The expectation is that teachers who we have been working with from the start of the year will tag team by planning and leading every second lesson. Follow up lessons can reinforce or extend the previous week's learning or revisit something from earlier in the year. When planning these lessons, we tried to think about the development of our students from kākano (the seed), through te rito (the shoot) to puāwai (the blossom). By providing supports such as task boards, video and audio we hope that our young people will be empowered and engaged whatever their year level at school or experience level with the Cybersmart curriculum. Putting our planning into action this week, I was thrilled with the way students responded. It was great to see cooperation and collaboration happening, to hear discussion and negotiation and to feel the buzz of classes engaged in their learning.

Students from Room 11 at Edmund Hillary School collaborate on their Cybersmart learning.

By working together I really believe we have achieved far greater depth and quality than any of us could have achieved individually. I am certain that we have improved the learning experience for our young people, but I am also mindful of the impact on the teachers we are guiding. The amount of work that went into planning these lessons is considerable, and I worry that some teachers may be overwhelmed to think that this is the expectation for them. Can we plan less but do it better? In doing so, might we clear the way for students to take greater ownership of their learning, creating and sharing?

As always, I'm already thinking about next steps. Each of us gauges the quality and impact of our lessons when we are in the classroom, which is more difficult if the lessons we plan are in classrooms across the country at the same time. I would love to be able to 'debrief' weekly as facilitators to highlight the aspects of the lessons that have worked well and what could be improved. It would also be great to gather feedback from teachers who have taught the lessons in their own classes independently of the facilitator. I would love to hear any suggestions for how we can keep the conversation flowing, and how we can continue to enrich the learning of our teachers and students through the power of collaboration. Being pushed and stretched might feel uncomfortable in the moment but the depth and reach we gain from working together surely make it all worthwhile. 

"That's the beauty of collaboration. You get pushed and stretched to go where you'd never go otherwise."

- Licia Perea

Reflecting on the Magic

The end of a school term can be a difficult time, often characterised by a giddiness borne of fatigue, deadlines, caffeine and the anticipation of the coming break. It is also one of my favourite times, as it is a wonderful piece of punctuation at the end of a chapter, a very long chapter in this case! The end of term offers us an opportunity to reflect on what we have accomplished, where we might improve, and to make sense of all those daily snapshots as they come into focus as a larger picture. Members of the Manaiakalani innovation team, were given the following prompt to spur our reflective thinking before coming together to share our experiences of what has been a truly extraordinary time:

I really wrestled with this for some reason but it took me a while to figure out why. I had seen so many magical moments as our pedagogy and kaupapa came to life and took on new dimensions and that was AWESOME but calling it magic bothered me. 

During a recent literacy workshop, Aaron Wilson was talking about the importance of bringing strategies out into the open to dispel the illusion that some people are just 'good at reading' and empower those who are less skilled to acquire tools incrementally that will make them better at reading. To call something magic is to ascribe some supernatural element that is beyond explanation and out of reach for 'normal' people who don't have magical power. It's the equivalent of the 'good reader' illusion but it's the 'good teacher' illusion. What I saw within the Kootuitui ki Papakura cluster, and in the wider Manaiakalani community was that a consistent approach of visibility, connectedness, empowerment and ubiquitous learning over years of professional learning and development meant that we were well prepared to embrace the challenges and opportunities of learning from home. Far from being magic, this is a journey that any school can commit to and expect similar results. 

Because our schools have put in the work to grow their skills and shift their practice, they were well-prepared for the Covid curveball. The beauty of this was that there was less anxiety about the transition to online learning, and taking away a lot of the everyday 'noise' of a busy school environment created a new perspective from which to view the process of teaching and learning, and our role within it. In some schools this has had a profound effect, none more so than Papakura High School where principal John Rohs is leading a review and redevelopment of the Papakura Pedagogy to ensure that A4 learning (anyone, anywhere anytime at any pace) is available for every student.

Looking back at the end of term 2, at the end of a 12 week term, which in reality for many was 20+ weeks, I feel immensely proud of the schools, teachers, leaders and learners I work with. As fortunate as we were to be well-prepared, this was by no means an easy ride. The effort that everyone put in to ensure that learning continued for our tamariki was phenomenal, and I think when we look back a year from now there will be a lasting impact on the way we do school.

Sharing work through the class site

One of the things we do often in class is to have students look at each other's work to share ideas and gain depth of understanding. This may be a little more difficult to do in a remote learning model, but I thought I would share an idea that could work. I have used this as an in-class model before, and it was really helpful to see at a glance who had submitted their work without having to go into my drive. 

The process I used was to create a simple Google Form with one question, using the 'upload file' question type. This type of form will automatically generate a new folder in your drive, in the same folder as the form. Each question that requires a file upload will create a new subfolder within this folder. The subfolder will have the same name as the question you use, e.g. 'Submit your work here'.

In the first video, I show you how to create the form and embed the folder into your teaching site. Remember that you will need to ensure that the sharing settings on the folder are 'Anyone with the link can view' so that the work is visible on the site. I created my form in a folder that already had those settings, so I didn't need to do it again.

In the second video you will see how to add a button on your site that links to the form, and what it looks like when a document is submitted.

As with any learning environment, the teacher has a responsibility to ensure that when we are viewing each other's work that we do so in a way that is respectful and constructive. You will need to make your expectations explicit for your learners, just as you would in the classroom.

I hope that this is helpful for your practice, I would love to know if you have any other ways of sharing work in a remote model, or if there are any other ways I can support you in your transition to remote teaching and learning.

Learn Create Share as a framework for distance learning

Officially, it is school holidays at the moment, but I know that many of us are currently occupied with the task of transitioning our practice to suit the 'new normal' of lockdown. There has been a flurry of activity and discussion online about this transition, much of it focused on issues of access and gadgetry. Questions of access centre around the infrastructure - who has devices? Who has internet? How can we provide for those who are missing out? The gadgetry includes all manner of sites, apps, services and tools that are being made available to 'support' schools to lead learning remotely. The lolly scramble of resources and advice can be quite overwhelming, especially as we all want to make sure that we are keeping up, creating equity and 'doing it right'.

A wise woman once told me that 'any teacher who can be replaced by a computer should be'. When we centre our discussions on the device, on the app, on the site, we forget the most valuable resource for learning is the teacher. I would like to see our discussions focus more on the teaching, and how to support teachers to amplify their expertise in a remote learning model. Those of us who are part of the Manaiakalani Programme are incredibly fortunate to have been well-prepared for the situation we are currently experiencing, through the Learn, Create, Share pedagogy and the kaupapa of Visible, Empowered, Connected and Ubiquitous learning.

So how do we ensure that when we take away the physical and social structures of the school day that our model for teaching and learning holds up? Now we are thinking beyond issues of access, and looking at what is going to make an impact. Let's look at each element of our pedagogy in turn to see how Learn, Create, Share can act as a vehicle for effective remote teaching practice.

Ako | Learn

Teachers each have their class site as the central hub for teaching and learning, this remains the same whether our students are in the classroom with us or learning remotely. We know that managing learning through the site allows teachers to focus on high leverage teaching practices, and empowers learners to take greater ownership of their learning. By adding in rewindable learning resources such as video explanations and demonstrations, we can achieve A4 learning, ie anyone, anywhere, anytime at any pace. These elements are things we have already recognised as components of effective teaching practice. To maintain connection with our learners, we can schedule face to face time using Google Hangouts Meet. A hangout may be a 1:1 conference between teacher and student, a small group, or a whole class. These meetings should be recorded, which allows them to become a rewindable resource as well as safeguarding teachers and students. 

Hanga | Create

When we build in opportunities to create, we push our learners to engage deeply with their learning in order to make something new to show their understanding of skills and concepts. Create is not about busy work, it is an opportunity for learners to think, discuss, apply, synthesise and justify. Teachers can support the focus on higher order thinking through creativity by providing/co-constructing success criteria that connect the quality of thinking to the level of achievement. Visual presentation and digital fluency skills may also be developed through the creation of DLOs, but we need to be careful to keep the learning focus (whatever skill or concept we are teaching) squarely in our sights. Our feedback in blog comments should also focus on these success criteria.

While are students are learning remotely, there are all sorts of creative ways that they can demonstrate their understanding. This blog post shows how students have created sets of objects from around their home to demonstrate an understanding of fractions. We can see that this student has had to think about how to represent fractions using physical objects, and shows some understanding, although this could be developed further. Non-digital artefacts can be captured through photos, video and audio recordings.

Tohatoha | Share

Sharing adds depth to learning by inviting others' perspectives and feedback, and through the reflective thinking required to write a quality blog post. Sharing is also a crucial part of staying connected with each other while we are all in our respective bubbles. Students who have individual blogs can share their learning regularly and independently. Teachers can amplify students' blog posts by reposting them on the class blog, drawing attention to them during daily hangouts or greeting videos and writing quality comments. If learners do not yet have their own blog, the class blog can be set up to receive posts via email. Here is a great example of parents supporting their children to share by photographing and emailing student created artefacts to the class blog.

Commenting on blog posts allows us to engage learners in sharing ideas through discussion, a high leverage teaching practice. Although this discussion may be asynchronous, which is different to in-person discussions, the time lag allows all participants to spend time thinking about their responses and contributions. Teachers can support discussion by asking thought provoking, open-ended questions and explicitly teaching learners how to monitor and respond to comments on their blogs. Class blogs can also be used to post provocations that require students to respond to the teacher and each other, using evidence to justify their position. 

There is little that is certain as we look ahead to the coming term, the remainder of the school year and beyond. What I feel sure of though, is that we have an excellent framework for leading learning in uncertain times, through Learn, Create, Share. The confidence that I have is definitely helping to ignore the bombardment of 'gadgetry' offers in my inbox, and I would encourage any teacher or school leader who is concerned about the move to remote learning to remember effective practice and stick to what we know. 

Resources to support LCS 

Learn Create Share diagram with links
Recording of Kelsey's Screencastify toolkit
Using Google Hangouts Meet

Create: Exploring Create in the Manaiakalani Programme

Sharing with our stakeholders

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.

Using Google Forms as a writing frame - Take 2

Following on from my previous post about using Google Forms to help compile profiles for new bloggers, I have a few updates to share.

I wasn't satisfied with using an add on that only had a limited trial period, and thanks to my mate Vicki, I have another tool called Autocrat that does the job for free. Yay! To get Autocrat, you need to use the add ons menu in Google Sheets. Helpful tip if you're going to use this add on is to make sure your spreadsheet settings are accurate: File > Spreadsheet Settings > General.

Fiona also suggested that it might be helpful to record a demonstration of the merging process, so I have done that too. Please let me know how you get on with this, if you use it. I would also be interested to know of any other classroom uses you can think of for this kind of 'form + template + merge = save admin time' idea.

Using Google Forms as a writing frame.

Our schools seem to be growing rapidly, which sometimes involves a few creative rooming solutions. This has meant that a few of the classes I facilitate in are now year 2, 3, 4 classes where some students need a lot of scaffolding to use and write on their chromebooks. With this in mind, I knew that I needed to do something to make creating a blog profile accessible to all learners. I was thinking about the literacy strategy of writing frames, that help students with the structure of writing. I wanted to try using a google form to collect personal information that students wanted to share in their profile, and then using mail merge to complete the profile. I put together this form, that asked students some questions and allows them to upload a profile photo. I then wrote up this simple writing frame, and used an add on called smartsheet merge to complete the mail merge, as this is something that is not available in docs (yet). 

   

Overall, I was pretty happy with the result as every student was able to share information about themselves and it was quick and easy for me/their teacher to transfer the information to individual student blogs. There are a few things that could be problematic however, as smartsheet is available for free on a trial basis, but then it's a paid subscription. Another thing is that the quality of pictures that students take with the camera on their chromebooks is pretty average, so they might need a redo. 

Any suggestions for other programs or add ons that could do something similar for free?

Reflecting on 9 weeks of DFI

When something is unfamiliar, there is a scale effect - things seem bigger, harder, scarier when we have never done them before. So it was for this course, the first journey to Manaiakalani HQ felt like a looooong way to go on a Friday morning. Now that the roads, faces and format are familiar the scale seems normal, the journey seems shorter and the course has passed very quickly.

In our WWW this morning, I said that the name, 'Digital Fluency Intensive' is an undersell of what this course involves. It is far more. We are all familiar with the time poverty experienced by teachers; one of the effects of this is that 'new' resources, ideas and practices are not able to be capitalised on or are understood at a superficial level. Dorothy reiterated her stance that the devices are not JUST a tool. I would add to that, Kootuitui, as a Manaiakalani outreach, is not JUST devices. The quality of teaching is crucial to our learners' success and the learning needs to be at the centre of decision making. Yes, we can increase engagement with digital devices, yes we can increase engagement with creative 'doing' but if this engagement isn't leveraged for learning, we are not making the difference our learners deserve.

Most of the day was dedicated to future thinking, facilitated with fantastic skill by Zoe and Vivian from OMG Tech. My thinking was really challenged, and there is a lot of good stuff percolating in my brain that I will make sense of over the weekend. Sometimes big ideas need to float around for a while before they become clear. More to follow...

The bigger picture of an exam

Today was exam day, the culmination of our learning over the last few months of DFI. Murphy's law would have it that this is the week that I'm stuck at home with a cold and had to miss the exam... except that I didn't. I made my own little DFI at home and did the exam here. Note the extension cord and multi-box for authenticity 😉.

My virtual DFI set up

I had been feeling a bit apprehensive about doing the exam, thinking it would be much more demanding than the level 1 exam, but in truth it wasn't a huge step up. Some of the tasks were more involved, but I think the practice opportunities that we have had through the deep dives and sandpit time were really good preparation. Those who have done the level 1 exam today should definitely challenge themselves to take this next step and consolidate the learning we have done together. Go on, be brave!

The thing that was demonstrated for me today wasn't necessarily showing off my techy skills, but putting the Manaiakalani kaupapa into action. I was able to participate, even when things didn't go according to plan. Even though I was sitting by myself in my kitchen, I knew that there was a roomful of other people who were sharing the same experience (Thanks Dorothy for the Viber photos!)

Yay, the exam is finished!

Congratulations to all of my colleagues who have taken the time and the risk to improve their digital fluency. Your students are lucky to have people like you, who believe they are worth it. Looking forward to catching up with everyone for shared lunch and OMG tech next week.

Digging into Devices

I love the feeling of being introduced to something that I can immediately see will have a positive impact for me learners. That 'something' for me today is the Manaiakalani blog app. I have been feeling a little apprehensive about introducing students to blogging where there is a huge desire to share their learning with the world, but the technical skills and understanding are still at their early stages of development. This app features a much simpler user interface and gives students immediate access to the drive in order to share their DLOs.

One of the things I have been pondering, as I have been planning for facilitation, is how to differentiate my instruction and support learners to take greater autonomy in their learning. This is a great scaffold to ensure that the learning will be shared with the world while it is fresh and the enthusiasm is high. As students gain digital fluency, they can step up to the full blogger app. I plan to use this in the coming week - results & reflections to follow!

Connected Learners Share

This morning's session looked at 'Connected' from the Manaiakalani kaupapa. The power of connectedness is something that we probably take for granted in this day and age, until we find ourselves out of range or in a power cut. Thinking beyond the wifi zone though, connectedness is hugely important for our wellbeing as individuals, communities, and society.

Listening to Dorothy this morning, I was reminded of the idea of social capital, a concept that spans the fields of economics and sociology. By fostering connections for our young people, we increase their social networks and broaden their fields of opportunity. My hope is that the digital connections gained in class lead to human connections through life. 

Looking at other class sites, what's working, what's not. My wondering is - are we too quick to abandon text? I know that I am privileged to be a competent user and producer of text, but the idea of minimising the amount of text on our sites to make it 'more engaging' kind of pains me! I understand age appropriateness, but perhaps rather than avoiding text, we need to be developing digital texts, i.e. sites that follow similar conventions to those we teach our students to read, and then explicitly teaching those conventions through the sites. 

Another thought that occurred to me as we were evaluating class sites was the lack of student generated content on the sites. I understand that this is often found in the class and individual blog, but if I was a parent, that would be what I would want to see first. I thought it was neat that some of the sites had a specific page for whānau who were visiting the site to explain how it worked and convey the information specific to them.

Manaiakalani Kaupapa - Visible

Visible learning - can you see it? Visibility allows family, near and far to be involved in their children's learning. It also means that the students doesn't have to play the game of 'guess what's in the teacher's head'. One of the key ways we can make our learning visible is through our use of sites. The 'new' Google sites is much more user friendly, and can be a great way of creating multimodal learning experiences that learners can navigate in their own time, in their own way.

We were shown some great examples of multimodal learning and then challenged to create our own. The idea of myself as the default in planning was something I hadn't explicitly considered before - it was quite interesting. I had a play with using an image I created in Google Drawings as the base of the learning menu, with various aspects of the image containing hyperlinks to learning experiences. Obviously today was about thinking about the presentation of the learning 'window dressing' rather than the actual content of the activities - you may notice a mismatch between the age level the image is pitched at and the content of the links!

I added a feedback function at the bottom of the page to make the site a bit more interactive. As the new sites doesn't have a comment function, this is a bit of a workaround, but I think could be quite useful and reasonable simple. Click on the image below to visit the 'sandpit site' I was playing with today.

I was reasonably confident using sites coming into today, but it was nice to have some time to play, and to think about the way we design learning to cater for a range of needs, preferences and skill levels. My next step is to play more with coding script, as I really would quite like to push what I can do in that area.

Digging into data with blogger & sheets

Today's theme has been dealing with data. Blogger and sheets are great tools to investigate what might be happening with our students. Blogger collects data about the number and frequency of posts, the number and origin of views and comments, even the type of device a post was viewed from and the browser that directed the traffic. If students are using labels effectively, these can also be useful to dig into. 

I have learned how to use sheets through a process of trial and error, googling, frustration and eventual progress. If I have seen someone else do something with sheets that I want to do, I generally find out a way to do it. The cool thing about coming to something link the DFI is that I find out the things that I didn't know that I didn't know about. I made this chart using the 'Explore' tool in Google Sheets. It is amazing to me how much spreadsheet software has improved over time, it really has become way more intuitive. What I like about the 'Explore' tool is that it places the emphasis back on the 'so what' of the data by allowing users to ask questions, picking out correlations in data and automatically generating charts that might be useful. 

I wanted to have a look at the blog data for those students who had been top bloggers in the SLJ 2017-18, to see if their strong summer blogging had been maintained throughout the following year. What I saw was that the students who were the most frequent posters over the SLJ also posted regularly throughout the year. Some of the students who participated in SLJ look to have left their Kootuitui school, or stopped blogging early in the year. Something that I have taken from this exercise is the importance of teachers incorporating blogging as an everyday activity in the classroom.

As I was working on this, there were all sorts of other questions coming into my mind, and possible applications for blog data. How could would it be to have a blogathon? Is there a way that we could get people to sponsor us for the number of posts we make, or the words we write? It could be great for competition between classes, clusters etc.

Tōku pepeha

Creating a digital pepeha was quite a fun activity, but it brought into focus the importance of language and culture in shaping our world view. The way a pepeha is constructed demonstrated the idea that we are all connected to our physical environment, and that wherever we go, our tūpuna are with us. As a first generation New Zealander, this has been difficult for me to connect with, at times, as my experience of growing up in many different places, with only my parents and my siblings as family, has not aligned with this. I think the 'western' perspective is also more individualistic and focused on the present day (even the future) with our attitude to the world around us often being one of ownership, development and wealth creation, rather than one of kaitiakitanga.

Connecting with others is probably one of the most rewarding aspects of a career in education, and engaging in an activity that allows someone to see the world from another perspective is so valuable in forming authentic connections. 

Live streaming to YouTube

Kent came in this morning to share his knowledge and experience with live streaming. Although much of it went over my head, I can see how this would be an incredible tool for community engagement, with community being defined in its broadest sense.

This also built on the thoughts I had during our WWW session this morning, about how Hangouts could be great for connecting with Whānau to share in collaborative goal setting, celebrating successes etc. 

Capturing our thinking by recording a hangout

This afternoon we did some real growth mindset learning, as we practised using quicktime and google hangouts to capture our discussion about a piece of work. In our group of 3, one person was the screen recorder (Janish), one person was the conversation MC (Susan) and one was the technical troubleshooter (moi).

On the surface level, the activity was to discuss a student's blog post from the 2017-18 Summer Learning Journey, to tease out the teaching and learning that were visible. We had a rich conversation about what we thought was the learning intention, how the student's post demonstrated the learning and how the comments had supported and extended the learner. We thought we had captured this rich discussion with this screen recording:

As you will quickly realise, we caught nothing with out first screen recording. We were upset that our conversation had been lost, but keen to figure out what gone wrong. We then went back through the process so that we would be able to do a better job next time. Our second recording captures sound and the blog we were looking at. Unfortunately our first conversation is not rewindable though!

Reflecting on this experience, I can see how the technology will enrich and enhance the learning. My worry is that when the focus was on learning, but we were experimenting with the technology, we were unsuccessful with using the technology. When we were focused on the technology, we were less focused on the learning task. This reinforces to me the need to build experience loops into learning programmes, and the importance of teachers practising the skills that were taught during facilitation so that students are focused on deep learning.

Preserving Sanity with Google Keep

This morning's 'deep dive' was a Google Keep session. I have used Evernote for years, but have only just started using Keep. Some of the highlights for me are:

• accessibility from all devices
• ability to jump between two accounts on mobile (work & home)
• taking pictures then converting to text
• voice memos
• collaboration on notes
• notifications on notes
• integration with Gmail

What would be ideal is notification if collaborators have added to notes, hopefully this will come in the future.

Google docs as a creation tool

Our challenge this afternoon was to create a poster/infographic using docs. 

I failed

Miserably!

Although I could see the thinking behind showing off some of the untapped potential of docs, I got super frustrated with the limitations of not being able to layer content, and started trying to 'cheat' by doing work in google drawings that I could input... which I guess kind of defeats the purpose...

So I gave up. 

It's the end of day 1 of the DFI, I have a lot of ideas to percolate between now and next Friday, and I'm looking forward to reading through everyone else's posts to get the different perspectives.