GarageBand workshop

Last night was our our Kaikohekohe Clusters Term 3 Tool-kits.  This continues to be a great opportunity to connect with other professionals from within our cluster and across a wide range of year levels and experiences.  Last nights tool-kits included;

Although there weren't a huge amount of tool-kits the tool-kits on offer reflected our clusters current needs and also offered opportunities for professional growth for everyone.  Kaikohekohe Cluster ROCKS!  

On Friday afternoon I got the call from the amazing Raewyn, asking me to run a tool-kit on GarageBand.  So in between having 3 sick kids, doing GST returns, and trying to catch up on MIT bits I also created a presentation to use for this Garage band workshop.

Below is a link to an 'answergarden' brainstorm that anyone who is reading this blog can add their ideas to (for the next week).  It asks the question "How could we use GarageBand in our classroom?"

At the end we had a bit of fun together recording us having a conversation about who we were, what we were doing and why we were in the GarageBand workshop.  Will upload this over the next few days.  

Thanks to all the attendee's

Please make sure you share them to me - I would love to hear your personal & classroom creations!

KPMG - Day 3

Today was our third KPMG day in Auckland.  No agenda was shared with us so we were all a little excited (and nervous) as to what was in store for us.

When we arrived we were greeted with the fresh smell of coffee (and tea) and we set ourselves up for the challenges we knew were ahead of us.  

Today’s session had been devoted to listening to each MIT participant shared the progress you have made within their inquiry and also with the tool that each were making.  Following this we were asked if we would like to cross blog our feedback - Of course we said YES what a great idea.

So we then used a random name selector to determine whose tool/inquiry we would comment on.  I was very lucky to draw Danni and interestingly she got me as well.

Danni’s inquiry started off focusing on literacy learning in years 7 & 8 and how that school and cluster data was showing that the rate of learning in many senses was stalling or dropping.  Her inquiring focused totally on what she could do to prevent this in her classroom.

Today Danni started out by sharing her site - a resource bank of texts she has created and used in her classroom.  This was broken into different pages relating to Text Analysis exemplars, Writing Techniques and Connecting Reading and Writing.

This provided us with rich examples and questions based around different genre/examples.  This looked like a fantastic tool at a glance. When we delved deeper it appeared to be even more of a rich tool.  

One of the challenges that Danni had been having is finding/accessing examples of text that will support this resource, some suggestions were made as to who could help including

Mark Milford English teacher

Cynthia Orr

Aaron Wilson

Rowena Clemence

Robin Sutton

During the morning we had discussed her inquiry informally and part of this discussion highlighted how many of her shifts in student achievement was related to her high expectations of her children both in what they will achieve and also in the contexts in which she teaches these through.   We talked with Danni about adding a page on high expectation.

As discussion wound up we also discussed possibility adding in how you might use these resources Multimodally (showing links to resources and sites that she and others used..  An interesting point was also raised about ESOL strategies being something to consider within her resource.

Reflections on my own inquiry were huge.  I will cross share Danni’s reflection here and then add to it my own thoughts.

Thoughts going away from KPMG today…

Learning together is empowering - and connecting with those outside of our normal realm of teaching extends our thinking.   As Zac put it “team work is dream work”.

Student Voice

Recently I have been questioning children around their use of digital technology to support their learning.  Obtaining student voice and perspective is hugely important in this inquiry as they are the intended audience of this inquiry.  If they are not engaged and buying into this approach to raising achievement then its not the right direction to take.

• It’s very useful.
• It helps us remember.
• Because its fun.
• Because I get better at learning, and it helps be get better at remembering.
• I go on the blog and share what we are up to.
• Sharing our learning with them (mum and dad) by showing them things we have made at school.
• I can use it in the holidays and when I am sick to keep learning
• Everything on there is about our learning.
• The best thing is when Mrs G puts my work on the blog.
• I share my work by someone putting my work on the blog so the whole world can see it, then other people can see my work and what it is about.
• When people ask questions on our blog it helps my learning.

Students perception on what would make it better is to have more blog posts.

Already this year we have been trialing lots of things with improving this last perception and this is paying off from the comments we received above.

One strategy for increasing blog posts is to make it easier for students (and teachers) to access devices.  As we are not a 1:1 device classroom this presents us with many challenges as we complete our work digitally.

Additional challenges relating to access

1. Remembering which device they were using.
2. Charging of device
3. When work is in progress quick saving is a better option as you don't end up with multiple copies of the same Explain Everything but at different finishing points in G-Drive.
4. Not enough for 1 device per child

Our action to minimise as many of these issues as possible.

Knowing that something needed to change to reduce these issues and make it easier for children to access their learning on the devices I labeled iPads with students names.  These students were the ones in my morning 'Accelerated Writing Group', and also our top reading groups as they are capable of completing work more independently on them and can then support others to complete their tasks.  

This was a huge step for me as I was really worried that this would make these students who had name labels on iPads become very possessive of  'their iPad', and those students who didn't switch off from using iPads as they might feel that they weren't able to use named devices.

I guess as this was a massive concern for me I made sure that this was not the perception that either group of students took on.  As a result of introducing it to students in the way we have, the students whose name is on the iPad almost is the person that others go to for support when they are working on it.  This adds Mana (Value) in the work that they all complete together.  This is also helping the students in the accelerated writing group feel more of a leader and adding more Mana again to the work they complete within our morning group time.

Also students that use them remember which iPad they are using better than the number system we used last year (this is still on each iPad - but they DO NOT use it), weather it be a device with their name on or another students name.  It is also much easier for Teachers to support children with getting their posted onto the blog as the labels make it easier to find devices that work is on.

This has been a good change!