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