Past students inspiring visit

Today our school had a visit from a past student who shifted away from his beloved Kaikohe town to live in Abu Dubai with his family about 5-6 years ago.   He spoke to the whole school about how when he left our school he felt like he was 'the man' and that he could do anything.  When in-fact he still had a lot of learning left to do.

He is now 15 and has done much of that learning, and wanted to give back to a school and community that he and his family hold dear.  While he realises his learning journey is not over he wanted to inspire the children in our school that they to had a lot more learning to do and that it is something to embrace.

He also told stories of many of the teachers who are still there, and how they had inspired him as he undertook this journey and how they have helped him to reach his ultimate goal.  Hearing him talk about the brief period of time I had taught him (while doing a 5 week stint of relieving for another teacher) truly made me feel humble and honoured.  Humbled that he had remembered me and honoured that I could have been apart of such an amazing learning journey.

It also made me remember all the mixed emotions that this brief period of relieving had evoked.  At the time my daughter was only 5 months old and me being me agreed to make this happen.  In hind site this really was crazy, and exhausting.  Between planning, feeding my 3 kids and getting 2 off to a different school, dropping of a baby to my sister in law, Breast feeding and making sure my little one had enough for the rest of the day (which meant extra work during the day and night to make this happen), planning, teaching, doing duties, attending staff meetings and all the other things that go with being both a teacher and a mum.  It really was challenging.

However to have even 1 past student visit who only knew me in that brief instance to remember me (and hug me as soon as he saw me) and be able to reflect on how I had impacted on his life...

It was ...

inspiring.

My six word story for today is ...

Other Sydney MIT Trip highlights.

One of the highlights of this trip was being with an AMAZING bunch of teachers who are innovative, inspirational and energetic about teaching, education and life in general.

I have to say I loved spending time with you all and sharing this fantastic experience.  Thanks once again KPMG, Pat Snedden, Jenny Oxley, Dorothy Burt, and Anne Sinclair for making this happen for us all.  Lots of learning and for me, pushing myself outside my comfort zone.

I am not a person that shares very frequently and although I have been challenged to present before I have never had the additional nudge that you have all given me.  Thanks to everyone for your support and also to Tania Coutts who has been nudging and supporting me in taking this step.  

I FINALLY DID IT.  

This event also enabled Dorothy and I to come up with a plan for when Team Maunga use a release day, to pop down to visit some classrooms at Point England, to be immersed in 1:1 device environments, to see what one can look like, and to connect on a professional level with teachers to talk about what works and what doesn't work within their digital learning environments.

Team Maunga are super excited about this as we are seeing more and more opportunities for devices to be used to extend and enhance learning, but as we are not 1:1, we don't know what we don't know.  

The only way to change this is to immerse ourselves in experiences, literature, and inquiries, that will shift our current ideals of how to use devices to improve learning outcomes for our students.  As a team we are already doing things that extend us in all of these areas but we feel that this visit might be a catalyst for further change and shifts in our teaching practice/ideals.

Further things to take away from this experience...

Share More:  Both the positives and the struggles.

Although within the Kaikohekohe Cluster I share HEAPS, I need to push myself to present more at these kind of events.

Tell my story and encourage students in our learning space to tell their stories.

<<<Other things>>>

Sydney's train system is FANTASTIC

Uber app now installed on phone (Don't think Kerikeri is ready for this however), but though it might be useful when getting from Parramatta to Sydney Airport by 7:30 Wednesday morning, and also when attending next MIT meeting at KPMG

I MISS MY FAMILY

My room buddy was amazing to talk to.

Ignite Talks

Here are a few quick notes/thoughts that either inspired me as I listened or that sprung to mind as I was listening. What a great ending to a great conference. A big thanks once again to KPMG, Pat Snedden, Jenny Oxley, Dorothy Burt and Anne Sinclair for making this a reality.

Lots of fantastic learning to take away from this experience. WATCH THIS SPACE!

Kim Sutton - Good Questions

“If I don’t ask questions how do I know how to change the world”.

Who is going to invent ? 

The kids that are asking questions now, are the ones who will design flying cars (and future innovative ideas).

How do kids like these become inventors like this?

It is by teaching them how to question the world around them, and to challenge themselves.

Teaching answer is not as important as teaching questions.

- the rubrics cube is a question waiting to be answered.

Moments like this - google - video

Michael Davidson (NZ Teacher)

Innovation is a state of mind

Jay Attwood

It is far better to do the right thing wrong, than to do the wrong thing right.

3 Lessons from Granny - photo taken.

• Know what is trending
• Learn it.  Share it.
• Everything is hard, before it is easy.

Engaging Students in Writing

Session 8 - Jacobs session - engaging students in writing

Jacobs session was really interesting.  I went along to support him in his presentation but found that he had lots of innovated cool ideas and tools linked to his presentation and planning.  However many attendees were more focused on creating a site rather than thinking about the content that was embeded in it.  Made some great connections with other teachers and one in particular who taught in a year 2 classroom in Sydney.  Hoping that we can connect our kids up when we go back to school.

She loved looking at our Team Maunga site as it was a bit more Junior focused rather than intermediate focused.

4 Tips for creating websites

3 clicks max

Use white space

Less is more

Be consistent

As with all site creation ... you must PLAN IT FIRST. Plan what you want it to look like, what pages you want and what you want on each page (keeping in mind the 4 tips mentioned above). This will help keep your site simple to navigate and user friendly.

Other things to pear in mind...

1080 standard size of header/page

Digital Storytelling

Session 7 - Lindsey Wesner - Digital storytelling

This was a really exciting and innovative session focused on story writing. This session fitted really well with my MIT inquiry and I can't wait to get back to class to try some of these things out.

LOTS of playing around with. I am extremely excited about adobe spark - a story telling tool. as it works on iPads as well - So perfect for in Team Maunga!

Socrative

Adobe spark

Can use on computers … also can use as part of Adobe Spark Video APP (on ipads…).

Story spine

Good for icebreaker - Teaching children what makes a good story - fun

Six word stories

(alternative version of 14 word stories)

With 6 words you can say - so very much

Combine 6 word stories with 6 shot videos.

Book creator

This is now available on chrome

Create A Formative Assessment Using G-Suits

Session 6 - John Meing - Create a formative assessment using g-suits

This was a very theory based workshop with lots of discussion around John Hattie - effect size

Douglas Fisher’s - visible learning in mathematics

“Formative assessment refers to to a wide variety of methods that teachers use to conduct in-process evaluations of students comprehension, learning needs and academic progress during a lesson, unit, or course .”

Dillian William (good friends of Paul Black) - discusses the difference between formative and summative assessment.

Proposed Model

Doug fisher - learning can be at any point along the continuum - All 4 components must be present in every lesson at some point - it creates a whole cycle of learning if you do all each day.

Focused instruction -

• purpose, (not intention/objectives - because relevance must be there - e.g. must have intention and relevance (interesting and relevance.)
• Modeling-  open up your brain and talk about the process.  I statements not we or you statements … When I read this … I was thinking about…

When i saw the problem … META-COGNITION should have a because, why or how.

Guided instruction

The strategic use of questions, prompts and cues.

• Ask questions prompt or cues that means that they do the cognitive work not us …
• Insert yourself into the group or take children out of different groups and work with you as a small group.

Collaborative

• Student to student interaction (in academic ways, with academic language).
• No on learns language from listening to language they only use it by producing the language - students must use the language to learn the language.

Independent learning

• In-class we are pretty good at this - we aren’t so good at out of class independent learning - we give homework prematurely …

The keys to making this work within our classrooms

Establish purpose  

School planning template

Teacher modeling

I do it …

Guided instruction

• share 3 different versions easy, medium and hard and have students choose their own - if all choose easy then we know we have a problem
• In google docs - you can set the comments to only the owner and teacher can comment.
• If you design your Kahoot well you can set it up as a good formative assessment tool.
• Google sheets - validation can support - not super interactive but will allow them to check their answer and have instructions on how to add. - also self marking.

Productive group work

• Google suite’s is all shareable …
• Class Dojo - PBL (positive behaviour learning - which doesn’t always work) - however they do have a think/pair/share.

Independent tasks

• Captivate - a new tool.??? Not sure of its use…

Their schools worksheet tool/example. This was interesting but I have to say that I love how as a school and team we plan/talk and together with our children we Learn, Create, Share within learning contexts that relate specifically to our (students and to some degree teachers) interests and learning needs.

This was an interesting workshop to attend as many that were offered were about applying skills rather than the theory behind it. Was interesting to see/hear an Australian schools point of view. John worked at a school that currently has been awarded an innovation award 3 years in a row for their innovation in education.

Side note: Cool problem - see picture (answer is 5 - count the circles)

PBL in a digital world

Session 5 - Kimberly Hall - PBL in a digital world

(lots of links from to other sessions in the top drop down menu).

Ultimately it doesn’t really matter which model of inquiry you use - but consistency within a school is key. It should be similar - and the process need to be similar to encourage collaboration …

Start with a challenge or question that we are wanting to delve into - must be one that has depth and also one that is something that people want to find out about . - see doc for collated list of things you can do.  

Google Feud

Hyper docs

Answer garden

Live word cloud - collaborative - Screen

Plant a seed (idea) and watch it grow

Really cool - Love it !

Major setting to change is the spam - turn it on (defaults to off). - If you change this to on, you automatically remove some questionable responses/words getting through.

Change discover-ability to hidden rather than public - due to it being used in an educational context.

Inside search

googles inside search -

Search for a person place or thing

The bar on the right of a google search seeks to answer the next logical question that you will ask next - e.g. it answers questions you haven't yet asked.

A great place to broaden understanding of a person place or thing - links connections that you may not have already had.

Padlet

recently updated

Lots of new bits - can link record add photos ...

(comments can also be added to individual stickies).

Terms of use require us to directly supervise children's’ use of this tool - Permission and use from under 13 year olds is OK if supervised.

I loved revisiting this as part of creating my presentation for yesterday. Loved how you could also use your own background image - to personalise it more.

Canva

Make things that look beautiful. - including certificates, posters … Vouchers …

Piktochart

Rewordify

lots of opportunities for our readers.

dotEPUB

an extension that will take a website and convert it into an e-book.

Wikiwand

converts ugly wiki information into something that looks nicer to read - install the extension (downloadable to chrome).  But only works on wiki

Read and write

link to free version for teachers - takes 24-48 hours to authorize premium access.

Premium tools - fill in the form and you get it free.

This can also make a word list with word, definition, picture and place for notes

Highlights can then be added directly to a document (with links back)

Can simplify a webpage to make it accessible to everyone!

TAKE AWAY IDEAS!

So many cool things to use back in my classroom.  Its more a question of where will I start, but we need to start somewhere ... SO here is my plan.

Answer garden - for whole class Inquiry

Canva - for both class and MIT Inquiry

I liked the sound of dotEPUB so would like to investigate this further

Keynote Speaker - Day 2 EdTech Team - Sydney Summit

My take on Keynote speaker - Lindsay Wesner- Once upon a time

In order for our students to feel OK with failing, we need to show our students how we

ourselves fail. We need to do this by normalising it as part of what we call innovation, and

also by doing it on a regular basis so they see that it is just apart of everyone's learning

journey.

In order to do this well we need to ...

BE BRAVE - even if your not … Be the goldfish with the shark fin on!

By doing this we force ourselves to go outside our comfort zone.  When we do go outside our

comfort zone we go to where the magic in education happens.  Not just for ourselves but also

for our students and their whanau.

Lindsay also talked about the intersection of education, technology and passion, and how in

the middle is the sweet spot - and how its where things become more personal as well.  This

also links into Jesse’s Keynote about finding the superhero in our students and that to do

this we need to find the passion and ignite/foster this passion.

What is INNOVATION - and what does it mean.

• Innovation is things that are not necessarily new, but that unlock new value - e.g. what is the new value, what is the point of it. This links to David Andersons “parrot of purpose” and also John Hatties “Know thy impact” type ideas.
• Change is hard - it creates conflict, and challenges our thinking/standard practice. Some change works some does not. For me it's knowing which changes to persevere with and which ones are not.   This comes back to the they key idea above of knowing your impact or the impact (or possible impact) this change will make.
• As a teacher we are or have been at a point of conflict for others in their educational journey- if we navigate the conflict we determine what the conclusion/climax are.  This relates both to ourselves, other educational professionals and also to our students.
• When we challenge students but support them to navigate these challenges their learning and experiences propel them forwards.  

A key point for me in this process is capturing these moments and experiences and ensuring that these are shared. I am fantastic at capturing pictures of children succeeding but not so good at capturing them struggling.  A NEW GOAL.

This leads onto 2 questions Lindsays' challenges us with;

• Students are wanting to digitally document - tell their story. - How do we harness this?
• What would the world look like if we gave our students the opportunities to tell their stories?

The next ideas she shared challenge us personally as educational professionals;

• If you look at how many pictures you take in a day - how many do you share?
• When you scroll through social media threads you can’t see the difference between ours and people in other professionals.
• What is the picture that others have of education/teaching? The stories we tell as educators will shape the perception that others have of education.
• We all share the good stuff - not the nitty gritty bits that actually make up life. - We have an awesome story to tell.
• Tell the stories of students getting hooked, stories of students engaging with the changing world, stories of their light-bulb moments, stories of their challenges/struggles/successes.
• Use buzz words like - unpack, stem, future focused, growth mindset, coding, computational thinking

It's about finding the things that our students want to solve. - if we do that then we will have good stories to tell, and so will our students.

We have the power to create change within our classrooms, within our communities and within the wider world.

“Yes BUTTTTT…”

These types of comments are the enemies of our stories …

Lindsay then discussed …  

The Enemies

Time	you develop way to get time back students can do lots when you invest time you create that development/progress	I can make time
Curriculum	Our responsibility is not to cover the curriculum but to engage students within curriculum	The curriculum needs to be the catalyst
Fear	Reminder of shark fin When you feel like you can’t... strap on the shark fin and pretend you can.	Change is hard and messy.

Our Weapons

Vision	Develop the vision of what we want it to be like
Community	We have each other Never doubt that a small group of people can change the world.
Our stories	Never underestimate the power of our stories and the stories of our students.

We have the power to make education in any country GREAT.  To make it bigger than the landmarks that are iconic for different countries and nations.  

But…

It is about sharing our stories.

It is up to us to do this.

So … MY CHALLENGE/TAKEAWAY

Share more, share the hard bits, share the successes - making sure to show that challenges that have been encountered along the way.