DFI - Day 5 - Collaborate

Visible - Making teaching and learning Visible.

Today's korero from Dorothy was all about Visible teaching and learning.  emphasizing the 4 key aspects of it as being ...

• Visibility to the learning, 
• visibility to the whanau, 
• visibility to the teacher,
• visibility to our colleges.

Visible teaching is ultimately about "Can you see it or can you not? It's actually that simple.

Dorothy reminded us that succuss use to be for those students that could read the teacher's mind, and know what the teacher actually wanted, how they wanted it to be presented, and so on.  Visible learning in essence is about making this thinking accessible to all so that ALL students know what we want and how to achieve an end goal.  The introduction of WALTS and Learning intentions being made clear to students was a step forward, but even so, the intentional use of technology to create visible learning is a GAME CHANGER.

For high shift teaching that engages students to become kaitiaki of their own learning, this visible learning needs to also allow for discussions to be had between teachers and learners about what the end goal is and what it should look like.

Dorothy also used the analogy of walking through a maze - if you struggle with your directionality and maps/maize you really struggle with this journey.  The power of visible teaching is like leaving breadcrumbs behind for our students to follow.  In saying this it means that the entire learning journey needs to be visible.  This means not just the LO's and AO"s but all the progress markers and assessment process.

Therefore as teachers, we need to have our teaching pedagogy, ideals and practice DEFAULT set to VISIBLE.  For some teachers it is about changing their teaching mindset, for others, it is a very exciting and empowering step forward.  However, the question still needs to be asked constantly ... What genuinely needs to be private (hidden or limited to only a few), and why. 

There is 2 levels of visibility.  e.g. Visibile to learners (e.g. sites ...) and Visible to teachers (e.g. via blogs and Hapara).  Hapara was designed specifically for us - to create visibility and make the process more accessible for teachers.   (Parents app coming - didn't know parents could access it through Hapara, - and a student app too???)

The digital environment can erect barriers between a child and their learning, a child and their parents and not accomplish what we set out what we wanted them to do. - PASSWORDs are a key part of this. - What genuinely needs to be private. - if it needs a password is it necessary. - Emphasis needs to be on being brave and taking off the blindfold and make learning visible through visible teaching.

In short ...

Visible teaching is ... Accessible, Available and Advance  (No surprises)

Hapara Hot tips - Sharing

The sharing tab shows the documents that students haven't filed into the right folders - this should be empty if they have been filed correctly.

Don't let children make your own folders - Can create an extra folder in Hapara that children can file things in but not creating them themselves - do it through the Hapara management.

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Deep dive

Priority goals 

• Engagement
• Personalized learning, 
• Acceleration
• Visibility
• Empowerment

As educators, we need to rely on more than our personality to hook students in.  Students have had access to digital technology right from the time they are born, therefore we are competing with things like Youtube, TicTok which capture our students' attention and motivation.  Therefore we need to ensure that when we are creating our class and learning sites we need to capture this attention back.

Increased visibility in the teaching and learning process enables accelerated shifts in student learning.  By creating Multimodel sites we can hook in the behavior engagement and design for increasing cognitive engagement that can be achieved by providing access to multiple texts.  T shaped literacy is one approach to increasing cognitive engagement while still providing self scaffolding and enable students to become independent learners.

As always effective teaching practice with technology is vital.  One way to look at this is that eventually, the novelty of a device or app will wear off, and when this happens we need good pedagogy to back up and continue to enable continued learning.

New sites enable us to quickly and efficiently create engaging sites that are only limited by its content.

UDL - Universal design for learning - design to hook students into learning a range of ways (behavioral)

Google Site creation to support T-Shaped Literacy

Here is a link to a site I created during the day.  It is designed to be used with Year 2+ readers.  It is based on a topic that we have recently covered in class.  My main issue with this creation was structuring the site to work and be easily accessible for this younger group.  I also needed this site to be compatible with iPad use.  Although many of the sites that were shared for us to look at, were aimed at a higher age bracket, one site gave me the idea behind how to structure this.  Although we were asked to only use the information on a spreadsheet we were given I have included other resources that we have recently used in class and other links that would support the create section of this site.

I also shared this with Year 3/4 teachers at school for further feedback/feedforward and they too liked the structure and how the butterfly resources were collated were very useful.  They sounded keen to trial it when they had finished with their current T-shaped literacy work.  Am actually pretty happy with what it turned out like.  

My next step is to create another T-shaped literacy site, that SJ (Teaching Buddy) and I can use.  It would also link well to our Play Make Create units that we have been running on a range of topics.

Monarch Website

DFI - Day 4 - Dealing with Data

Connected Learners :  Share:  Tohatoha

Today's big focus was on Share or Tohatoha.  We were reminded that the act of share is important and it's not new.  It has been important to humans from the beginning of time, and it is based on such a range of topics from food and fishing to the things we achieve including our tears, frustrations, and successes. 

At the heart of what we missed in lockdown would have been sharing, sharing time and moments with others.  With lockdown, this caused an explosion of sharing which was evident in the number of blog posts.

With Maniakalani and being a partner school, digital sharing is a huge part of what we are focusing on.

In 2005 Manaiakalani noticed that technology was changing the way we could share. This is when social media was just started coming into its own.  Fight it or embrace it!  Was the decision that needed to be made and Maniakalani chose to embrace it.   

This notion of sharing became another hook to empower our students in their learning. Connecting instantly is a hook. - This was why it was intentionally included as part of the Maniakalani Pedagogy.

We share because we value it - we just have new ways to add to our Kiti of sharing.  We also value the other people who respond to our sharing.  Therefore learning is enhanced because Sharing provides the purpose for learning as there is a real audience.  

Really appreciated the diagram that was shared about "Connected Learners Share"  It was a diagram that had a circle cut into 4 parts at the centre was a picture of a world with hands surrounding it.  The four sections showed the following.  Ask Dorothy if I can include the image from the slide deck)

• 1:1 sharing is vital
• small group sharing (you know the name of everyone)
• A large group (like an assembly hall, theater... - you get a vibe back form the.
• Global audience - Prior to the digital age this was out of the reach of the majority of people.

Blogger was chosen as a main online space this is because:

• It resembles and has functionality like current ways young people share.
• Able to provision it legally.
• Children are able to access it and add to it but it is owned by the School BOT
• Multiple sign-ins are taken out
• 3 ways to check it - Hapara, email account, class blog - kids blogs listed down the sided so we can keep an eye on it as we go.
• Google owns it - google promotes google so will promote blogs.
• Multipurpose - you can pay people to make it look amazing or like a website
• Can be used by both teachers and learners - Also why it is a requirement of this course

Share to finish learning - (change from share to learn).  Some students could leave school without finishing ANYTHING! - It is a life skill and something that students NEED to know about. sharing supports children to understand and a sense of purpose to FINISH.  It's a good idea to change thinking from having something 'finished' - to having something 'ready to share'.

Learn, Create, Share is a spiral and share is a vital place to start - Share to learn - share becomes a starting place for learning this provides the purpose/engagement for students to 

CYBERSMART

The use of online spaces like Blogger is also first and foremost a platform for ensuring our children become cyber smart.

Cybersmart - Likened to a driving instructor

Cars are very functional the purpose of being in it is to become a competent safe driver... Blogger may not be the flashed thing out - but this enables students to really focus on what they need to learn.  - In the end, you have to go out on the open road to learn to drive, and in the same way, we need students to be creating and sharing in a digital space to learn and creating Cyber smart digital citizens. 

Cyber safety is VITAL.  Blogging is about connecting but it isn't the main focus.  It is the NUMBER 1 FOCUS and delivery vehicle for creating this cyber smart digital citizens. 

]Johan Hattie - feedback/feedforward in the high impact shift of our teaching.

Today we also played around with Google Forms and linked this to Google Sheets and from here to my maps as well.  Some great ideas and work were done in these areas.

(Will share another post with the links to work we did in these sessions).

Hapara hot tips.

Blog posts/comments

Great to refresh what I have started doing at school - as my class isn't on Hapara.

Also the idea of using this to work out who to comment on - rather than just commenting on anyone.  Good to also move these students who we need to monitor more closely to the top of your Hapara dashboard.

DFI - Day 3 - Media

DIF Day 3

The CREATE part of Learn, Create, Share Pedagogy

Today was a beautiful reminder for us all about the reason why most of us got into teaching.  Yes, we wanted to make a difference, Yes, we wanted to see our wonderful Tamariki learn and have their light bulb moments, but most of all because we wanted to make a positive difference in their lives.

It made me think of my own learning process...

I remember going to school when I was little and I HATED it.  I hated writing, I hated reading and quite frankly I wasn't good at it.  One year in primary school I remember that writing pretty much consisted of needing to write a 2-page diary entry every day, and as a slow writer, I constantly had to stay in at lunchtime to complete.  To top it off my life never really seemed that exciting.  The learning really didn't engage anyone and I know for me I definitely didn't progress very quickly.  

Creativity was not encouraged and sharing was only if you finished on time and was only ever to your class (whom I didn't want to share with anyway).  WOW look how far I have come now!

As Dorothy talked she spoke of engagement being the key and that it is ALL about the hook, which in light of my own learning experiences was what was truly lacking during this part of my educational journey.  

Creating in a classroom provides both purpose and engagement and therefore becomes perhaps the most powerful hook that we as educators can utilise.  Create is right at the center of the pedagogy of Learn, Create, Share - It is there for a very good reason.

Dorothy shared a quote from Longlife kindergarten "a world full of playful creative people, who are constantly inventing new possibilities for themselves and their communities"  This is truly the case and gives purpose to the need to have 'Create' as a central part of our classroom practice from New Entrants right through to the end of schooling (and beyond).  

The digital age and where we are now with devices can only enhance this creative aspect.  It provides opportunities to learn and access information in ways we never were able to before and also gives us opportunities to create in ways we never had opportunities to do before.  The more we create the more we interact with information and the more we refine our knowledge and our final products or creative outcomes.  

Having said that creating goes above and beyond the digital device.  Often for us and our students, the digital device provides us with opportunities to capture our creativity in other areas.  This creativity then inspires further creativity and learning.  Creativity, therefore, can not and should not be limited to written tasks but to tasks that require students to create with their entire being e.g. creating a wide range of solutions, products, and outcomes that can then be reflected on and refined further.

Another quote I took away from today was by John Dewey who said "Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn, and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results".  Creativity empowers learners and Digital technologies to empower creativity, but thinking is key to making this work.  To ensure thinking takes place most of us need to do something both whatever learning content or context we are covering.  This comes back to our learning styles in many ways but with thinking placed right in the middle.

Hapara hot tips...

You can search Hapara, if you hover you will see a preview of documents ... and you can also change the order of students e.g. Drag and drop priority learners to the top so they are the first ones we see.

Other learning areas

UTUBE - 

You can also share a link to playlists which means that students have access to a range of videos that you have preselected and it will run through them easily.  I think this will be something to embed in planning through the use of QR codes to make it easily accessible.  

Plan to do this for extending alphabet knowledge to some of my VERY new learners - I already have a large number of playlists created as this makes things easier but didn't know you could share a playlist in this way e.g. embedding it in sites/blog our through the use of QR codes.

Google draw

When changing the size of the drawing ... Use the pixels instead of cm so it helps with uploading quality.

We also explored format options.

Google draw I have used lots before to create learning tasks, instructions, posters.  Today's challenge was to create my own Avatar.  This is what it ended up looking like.

Google Slides

We also looked at animation using google slides. Here is the beginning of my animation- again totally based around the level and the content in which I teach this was added while it was still a work in progress (but a good start) as we were also looking at the ways to speed it up (e.g. by changing the HTML code).  Kerry shared a cool but VERY simple way to review changes we make in our code (as I have always just done it directly in the code lines).  She opened a new document, inserted the original code line.  She then pasted it again and changed the bit she believed needed changing - She then checked.  This allowed her to retain the base code if she still needed it.  Not sure if I will do this much but was an easy HTML coding idea that might be useful in the future. 

Greenscreening

On Monday evening Kerry emailed to ask if I could bring along my green screening equipment and share some examples of green screening from our class.  I shared the following document of examples.