Teacher Symposium 2021 - Te Hiku Cluster & Kaikohekohe Education Network

To kick off the 2021 school year we travelled to Waitangi Treaty Grounds for the Teacher Symposium which was run by the Kaikohekohe Education Network. Here is the link to the agenda: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EW0-IIqBfQmVXh_TxJq-qXCNUf3Sw0wpKh4xoMyfjsc/view

My colleagues and I attended four different workshops. The workshops I attended were:

1) Integrating Digital Technology learning into your local curriculum

2) Te Rau Aroha Museum visit 

3) Blake Organisation: Conservation through virtual reality

4) Engage Young Learners with Robotics/BeeBots

I thoroughly enjoyed each of these workshops and I really hope we can purchase the resources for the "BeeBots" for our junior syndicate! Below are some photographs of my colleagues and I practising using this resource. Below that is a photo of the virtual reality glasses we wore at the Blake Organisation presentation. 

Digital Fluency Intensive 2020 - Day Nine - Revision

Today is the final day of DFI...Yay, I survived! We began by breaking into our digital bubble groups for the last time to discuss our WWW. I was feeling the best I'd felt in the whole 9 weeks...calm and confident that I'd done all I could to revise for this exam.

Dorothy began speaking about today's Manaiakalani pedagogy, ubiquitous learning; learning that can take place anytime, anywhere at any pace from anyone. In essence, what this means is that learning can take place outside of the school day - digital technology turbo charges the learn, create, share.

The next part of today's agenda was sitting the Google Certified Educator Level 1 exam. I have to say that this experience was one of the more stressful experiences of my life! I was so thankful to have the support of my colleagues Michelle Neki and Venessa Davan in the same room with me to keep me calm. I'm very happy to say that I passed my level 1 exam.

At the beginning of DFI I came with very little experience in the "Google world". I had dabbled in Google Drive, Gmail, Meet, Forms and YouTube at my current Manaiakalani school, but I had not even started posting on my professional blog. The Covid-19 lockdown experience forced me to upskill VERY quickly as my knowledge of using a class site was also limited. After feedback from my DFI colleagues I set myself quite a significant number of goals to improve our class learning site (which is a collaborative one) and over time it has been improved both visually and with ease of use. I am now moving towards sharing my long term planning with my learners; so far I have included my timetable and weekly plans in reading, writing and maths. I was also fortunate enough to have Manaiakalani facilitator, Donna Yates in my class once a week to teach me and my learners how to use the "Explain Everything" app which I am now using in my reading programme. These are all things that I am very proud of. My only regret is that I hadn't done this earlier so that I was more prepared for what happened when we went into level 4 lockdown. I am now feeling so excited that I am able to take all this new learning into my digital classroom so that I can deliver the digital technologies curriculum to my learners effectively.

Digital Fluency Intensive 2020 Day Eight - Computational Thinking

Computational Thinking was the theme of today's agenda and my eighth session of DFI. We began by breaking off into our digital bubble groups to discuss our WWW and take our group photos. We had fun taking ours! I've really enjoyed our DFI digital bubble group discussions, connecting with these lovely ladies and I feel fortunate that we've had a brilliant facilitator in Makaore.  

Dorothy led the first session of the day which was about the Manaiakalani kaupapa of being empowered learners and teachers. Digital technology is a tool that removes barriers to learning for our students. When choosing the 4 kaupapa of Manaiakalani the word agency was considered, but because people only thought of agencies as being government departments (such as Oranga Tamaraki or the NZ Police), it was replaced with the word empowered. Empowerment is about the advancing of rangatiratanga; which translates to the idea of "giving control over your lives". Most children in low decile schools are coming to school half a lifetime behind (working at around a 3 year old level). Research has shown these children have heard around 3 million words less. This is disempowering so these children have a lot of catching-up to do.

Kerry then led the chalk 'n talk session about computational thinking and the new digital technologies curriculum. She talked about the difference between digital fluency and digital technologies. Being digitally fluent is when you learn, create, share you decide when and why you use different digital technology. To use digital technologies students need to be able to do these skills: be cybersmart, collaborate, validate and be contributors. The Manaiakalani Outreach programme (DFI) is designed to support teachers to become digitally fluent so that they can deliver the digital technologies curriculum to their students effectively.

  
From there we looked at a range of sites around the themes of coding, design and developing digital outcomes that we could use in our classrooms. I decided to look further into Scratch which is an app where you can program your own interactive stories, games and animations (through simple coding) and then share with others. I have since discovered that Scratch Jnr is loaded on our class iPads when I saw one of my students producing an animation similar to mine during the "can do" part of my reading session. So I can definitely see us using this app. I had so much fun producing this animation:




And finally, Maria finished day 8 by taking us through Kerry's blogging tips.

Digital Fluency Intensive 2020 Day Seven - Devices

Fiona led our seventh session of DFI, speaking about the pedagogy and kaupapa of being Cybersmart. Her slides listed all of the Cybersmart categories and the three most re-visited which are Smart Learners (the LEARN term), Smart Footprint (the CREATE term) and Smart Relationships (the SHARE term). Being cybersmart empowers learners to connect when their learning is visible and accessible, anytime, any place and at any pace. Cybersmart young people learn to make smart decisions in digital learning environments and understand that every time they connect, collaborate and share online, it combines to create their digital footprint. We use the class blogging platform Tuhi Mai, Tuhi Atu which empowers our students to learn to be Cybersmart through leaving quality blog comments and engaging in online behaviour and thinking that elevates positive actions. On Friday mornings in our class we look at our class blog and the blog of "Kotuku" from Wigram Primary School in Christchurch. This is an example of how we are making a positive digital presence and increasing learning opportunities. 

We then explored what it is like to use a chromebook and for me this was a first! We had a go at the Digital Dig. Here's my Digital DFI Dig: 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1KE-pBbqkQ1jTrVpJdEvMpRi6jdHExpcRwyGbzB7EEFw/edit?usp=sharing

Next we explored the "Explain Everything" app using an iPad. I've already been using this in my class so it was fun to get more time to explore this app. I find this app really useful during my guided reading sessions. Some of the ways my students use it are: word work, recording themselves telling stories for animations, "lassoing" illustrations in books, etc. Here's a link to my video that I made using the EE app:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EJBmIhRgsmro0O9o8Rdk9I-HHWkkwFwK/view?usp=sharing

The last part of this session was about using the Screencastify extension. During lockdown I had a go at recording myself a few times using Screencastify and I found it was relatively easy to use. Examples of this on our class site are recordings of teachers reading stories and brief messages to students. Here's an example of a Screencastify recording from our class site:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OqZoJzc8skXYOVh8nrt7X1AzE2PY0xvx/view?usp=sharing

Digital Fluency Intensive 2020 Day Six - Enabling Sites

The Manaiakalani kaupapa for today was all about teachers and students being connected in the digital world. Dorothy spoke about how we can find out where our students are in their learning (and this has been particularly important during lockdown where we have been able to support the well-being of our students). Digital technology also enables us to reach out and connect to a powerful network of teachers within our wider community through clusters, Manaiakalani outreach programmes, toolkits online, mailouts, Blogger, Twitter, Google + community, etc. Connected learners SHARE through blogging in positive, thoughtful and helpful ways. We are being empowered by being connected; when exchanging ideas we are being effective teachers which accelerates learning for our students. And one of the final slides that I really liked was the jigsaw puzzle that showed us that by implementing this kaupapa it requires all four elements of being connected, empowered, ubiquitous and visible. Maximum effectiveness is achieved when all four goals are genuinely occurring.

So today our main goal was to evaluate sites created by other teachers. Gerhard led us through a chalk 'n talk session and referred us to the slide about the "purpose of a learning site". Kerry then took us on a deep dive where we had the opportunity to critique learning sites at a variety of levels. The most important features of a learning site are visual appeal and user experience (functionality/ease of access in 2-3 clicks). After looking at these I was able to jot down lots of ideas that I wanted to implement in our class site. I set myself quite a few goals:
1) to add round buttons as I thought this was more "kid friendly"
2) to add a colourful timetable so parents can see what we do in our daily programme
3) to add the groups for reading, writing and maths
4) to have less writing as this would make our learning site more "kid friendly"
5) to add our long term planning
6) to add the learning progressions for reading (the reading rocket), writing and maths so parents can see what their child's goals are
7) to add our email addresses under our teacher photographs
8) to rename and re-order the tabs at the top of our class site to "tidy things up"

As one teacher in my digital bubble group said "that's quite a lot to do in one day, Michelle!" So I'm looking at this as more of a long term plan! I was a bit nervous about sharing my screen because our learning site is a collaborative one that I didn't actually have any part in creating because I've only been at my current school for a year. However, I felt we got some good feedback which helped me to know what to prioritise on my big list of goals! For me I only really started looking and using our class site during the lockdown so I had to learn pretty quickly how to add, edit and delete material. This is where DFI has been timed perfectly. I really enjoyed getting the time to make things "pretty". So today (and over the next few days) I have made a start adding our school logo on every page, adding a photo to the banner on each page, changing fonts, making some new buttons and I have added an Eye Dropper extension so I could take the colour from our school logo and add this to our learning site.

I'd love to have some feedback on our class learning site please!
https://sites.google.com/paparore.school.nz/tewharekiwisite2020/home

Digital Fluency Intensive 2020 Day Five - Collaborate - Sites

The Manaiakalani Kaupapa for today was visible teaching and learning, which was led by Gerhard. The big question for us as teachers is "Can we see our teaching and learning?" This has come about because in the past our learning hasn't been visible and accessible. (The analogy was made that it was kind of like going through a maze.) There needs to be a clear insight into the whole learning journey and the young person needs to be at the centre. Online learning is accessible, available and in advance so we reduce the surprises. Digital technology makes our learning visible. The Hapara teacher dashboard, parent portals, Manaiakalani Google Class OnAir and Blogger are all solutions to making teaching and learning visible for our learners, whanau and colleagues.

Kerry then introduced us to the term multi modal learning which is how we receive communication in different ways (graphics, videos, texts, audio, etc). Teachers have to "sell the love of learning" by engaging the learner through a "hook" which will deepen the learner's understanding and accelerate progress. We looked at examples of multi modal learning sites at primary and secondary levels. With all this in mind, Venessa then took us through a deep dive into Google Sites and creating one from scratch!! We then broke into smaller groups to collaborate and share ideas and resources to create a multi modal site for our learners. Our group's theme was "Seeds" and I've created my own Google Site to use with my learners:

https://sites.google.com/paparore.school.nz/multimodalsite/home

The last session for the day was presented by Makaore who gave us some really good tips on how we can use blog share features such as personalising the reaction buttons, making use of labels and emailing a blog post to a friend outside of our cohort.

Today's learning about Google Sites has improved my capability as a professional and I look forward to creating new class sites to "keep my learning fresh and relevant year after year."

Digital Fluency Intensive 2020 Day Four - Dealing with data

Dorothy began by speaking about the share/tohatoha pedagogy of Manaiakalani. Since time began we have been sharing, but this has been constrained by time, place and people. Around 2005 we were introduced to sharing videos digitally via YouTube and other social media platforms like Facebook, Bebo and Twitter. Sharing in the digital age allows us to expand our audience beyond one another, the class, school and local community to a global audience. Dorothy reminded us of how often it was that students didn't actually finish tasks. One of the key messages was that finishing a task and then sharing/posting on a blog with an authentic audience was far more valuable rather than putting work in a marking box only to get some red pen written on it. Posting on a blog is a way for people to interact in a positive, helpful and thoughtful way and it peaks your curiosity so you go off to new learning. It's a linear process - you can learn, create, share or you can share to learn.

Gerhard then gave us a few quick tips when using the Hapara teacher dashboard. 

The next session Venessa took us through a Chalk 'n Talk on Google Forms. I could potentially use Google Forms with the parents of my students e.g. when gathering data about organising transportation for class trips or when requesting parent help for the school gala. In my digital bubble group I created my own Google Form which I have shared below. 

Today's deep dive was by Maria about using Google My Maps. This would be fun to use with my learners at the beginning of the year when learning about each other. I could use Google My Maps to show where the students in my class were born or to show how far my students travel to school. Other ways it could be used is when studying a famous expedition or journey or highlighting important places in your local community. I couldn't get over how easy it was to import data from a spreadsheet into My Maps. In our digital bubble groups we made our own My Map. I have embedded my own map below.

Gerhard then gave us a demonstration of some features of Google Sheets that are useful for school. Then we broke into smaller groups based on our level of confidence to learn how to take data from Google Sheets and create a chart from it. This knowledge is going to improve my capability as a professional when recording reading, writing and maths data on my students during the year. My chart is embedded below.

The final session of the day was presented by Kerry who spoke about blogging tips and labels. Labels are useful for both bloggers and their readers as they enable posts to be viewed and searched by label within the blog. When labels are created they appear in the labels gadget in the sidebar of the blog. When you click on a label this creates a unique URL that displays all the blog posts with the label. I have started adding labels on my own blog and I know this will be really useful when showing evidence of teacher practice for Registered Teacher Criteria.