Educational Platforms - Beliefs and Values

We are all products of our upbringing and experiences. Everything that has happened to us shapes our beliefs and values.

Recently I listened to a school leader talking about what has shaped him and his leadership. He spoke of personal experiences and how that influences the way he interacts with his school community. This established his priorities and drove him to his desired outcomes. As I listened and realised that he only referred to research and theorists to make connections to his current practice. It was inspirational!

It got me thinking about my educational platform and what it is that shapes my beliefs and values in education.

My favourite teacher was Miss Takarua. She taught us at Tolaga Bay School in the 60's. We all loved her! Why? Because she believed in us all. She encouraged everyone. Now this is a class of kids that moved through the school together each year to another teacher. Only new enrollments were the the change. So as a class we had been together since we were 5.  There was a stark contrast with Miss Takarua to the teacher we had the year before who berated the kids who couldn't get the maths, or couldn't read. They were constantly put down. It was a ghastly year.

One thing that Miss Takarua did everyday was to ask us about the happenings in our life. She would ask about what happened on the marae in the weekend, who went fishing, who jumped off the wharf in the holidays, who helped with docking or shearing on the farm. She was genuinely interested in all of us. So in a way as Form 2 (Year 9) kids, we didn't have "morning talks" as such, but we shared what was important for us, what was fun and community events. Everyone was included.

And there's the start and finish of all -  the word included. She got us to work a lot in pairs and small groups and made sure no one was left out - especially new kids. When I look back on it now as an educator I reckon she could have written a lot of the educational textbooks we read nowadays.

What we did at school when we were kids...

Only the Teacher Talks to Me

As part of my inquiry this year I have been thinking about inclusion and how this manifests itself in our classes. It became glaringly obvious one day in a Cybersmart session that we can unintentionally exclude students, rather than provide an inclusive environment for them.

In most of the classes I work in the teacher's use a prompt of "turn and talk" to get students to talk in pairs or small groups. When this prompt was given one day, I noticed some students on the fringes of the mat area alone with no one to talk to. The teacher quickly intervened and guided these 5 students to make a pair and a threesome. In subsequent lessons, one of the boys often ended up alone and so the teacher took on the role of being his partner to share ideas. In most classes when students are bought together on the mat, friends sit with friends and only interact with their chosen few. 

You might ask - is this a problem? I think it is. One of the big points of moving to flexible spaces is to provide the opportunities and conditions for students to collaborate. And wouldn't you like your students to collaborate with more than just their friends? Or in the case of the lonely boy who only talks to his teacher, to widen his world and have him included in the learning in the class with his peers. 

This got me thinking about my cooperative learning training many years ago with RTLB and how the philosophical approach to cooperative learning can raise social and academic learning. Our whakatauākī was "a rising tide lifts all boats" - J. F. Kennedy

Now lets jump along to the Cybersmart lesson on "Collaborating Online". I asked the teachers to pair the students prior to the lesson and to use the tuakana/teina principles. That is, to be paired with a buddy that is closely matched in ability. In these pairings there needs to be opportunities for reciprocity. At the beginning of the lesson, we sat the students in pairs and moved on to the thinking and talking part before their digital work. 

This proved to be a good way to work but there was still something missing...what was it?

Cohesion - that was what was missing. In all the classes I facilitated the collaborating online lesson, there was the uncomfortable stage at the beginning of having to talk to the partner assigned to you. I know now that in the pressure of only having an hour to deliver the lesson, there was a negligible amount of time given to building cohesion in these pairs. 

So - how can I rectify this? I would like to use CyberBuddies in my Cybersmart lessons next year and have partners that stay together and work together over time. In this way, I can build cohesion so that they build trust and are able to work together. This is also a way to model to teachers how to work students in collaborative spaces and build resilience in the ability to work with a range of people.

In this way, the socially isolated students will be talking and interacting with their peers, and not be the person that only the teacher talks to. 

Apple Teacher Certification

Another wet weekend so got stuck in and did the iPad Badges which resulted in gaining Apple Teacher status. While doing this realised the power of an iPad and will revisit these apps and extend my use of them, especially iMovie and Garageband.

Accreditation Application

One of the uncharted territories of my new role is to go through the application process to be an accredited PLD facilitator with the MoE. Once accredited, facilitators can then tout their wares and be contracted by schools under the centrally funded PLD scheme. Being a Manaiakalani facilitator means that CFPLD can be used as we work in schools in our cluster.

Under the professional supervision of Anne, she has cajoled and encouraged me to complete this process. Being the queen of procrastination I found many excuses to not get going like being "busy". Being busy is a good smokescreen that many of us cough and splutter behind. But Anne kept it on the front burner and finally, a wet weekend forced me to confront this herculean task.

The first words that jumped off the application form were "No more than 10 pages in size 10 font".  I have never written 10 pages about myself or my work. How would I fill 10 pages...and in such a small font?

Anne's prompt of looking in our Drive and at the work we have done was my starting point. I looked a the big picture stuff first and summarised what it is that our work as Manaiakalani facilitators is all about.

I remembered one of the first days at our orientation with The Manaiakalani Programme in January and we had to write in tweet format what we thought Manaiakalani is. Good way to start. With that I got going...and once I got going there was no stopping. Anne - you were right, I had plenty to write about.

Three examples of practice were asked for so I chose the Manaiakalani Outreach programme and all that it stands for as #1. #2 was about collaborating online. #3 was about using assistive technologies to support diverse learners in accessing the curriculum. Phew! And those 3 examples are each a blog post in themselves. Watch this space.

Wow - thank goodness for 10 pages and size 10 font or else this would have turned into a textbook. Can see why the limit is put in place because I'm sure some would write a textbook. Now the waiting game for the result.

Google Certification

Having just completed the Google Level 2 certification exam (yes, its called an exam), I was thinking about how stressful exams are. I haven't sat an exam for many, many years. Even when upgrading my TTC to Bachelor of Teaching & Learning way back in 2003, there were no exams. That qualification was based on assignments.

Once again, to be put into the place some of our learners are in is good for us to understand what it feels like.  There was a mixture of emotions leading up to taking the exam - anxiety, fear of failure to say the least. Why is this so? Even having been well prepared by going through the training material diligently - even if I thought I was au fait with the content, I was still quite nervous going into the exam.

Adult training or Andragogy, is well documented and I was aware of this as I prepared and went through the training material and considered my experience and knowledge as I did them.

I considered the assumptions of andragogy [1][2]  following this exam to see if there was something in here to explain the nerves...   Need to know: I knew the reason why I was learning this. 

• Foundation: I was using experience as the basis for learning
• Self-concept: self-concept was not a tick - I wasn't involved in the planning or evaluation of this instruction
• Readiness: this had immediate relevance to my work 
• Orientation: this learning was mostly problem-centered, scenarios were included, and there was some content-oriented material.
• Motivation: and the motivation for me was internal rather than external as I knew I needed to dig deeper into the Google Suite. External motivation was also a factor as it is an expectation of our employment. 

No real clue in there either as all but one was a tick. Maybe I am just an over-achiever? And it just goes to show - you're never too old to learn. 

Upshot of it all is that I now have Google Educator Level 1 & Level 2 and ready to take on the Google Certified Trainer next - but first Apple Teacher.

1. Instructional Design: Theories - Andragogy M. Knowles Encyclopedia of  Psychology. http://www.instructionaldesign.org/theories/andragogy/  Retrieved 2018/08/12

2. Malcolm Knowles, informal adult education, self-direction, and andragogy. 

http://infed.org/mobi/malcolm-knowles-informal-adult-education-self-direction-and-andragogy/ Retrieved 2018/08/12

How Did I Miss This?

We all know how important feedback is. We all know how important learning intentions and their associated success criteria are. So how did I miss putting these elements into my Cybersmart lessons? No excuses except to say that lessons are an hour long and time pressure is huge- just as all teachers experience all day - every day.
I had to get back to what I know works and have inserted these 2 elements into the Cybersmart lessons.
Learning intentions and success criteria really should be co-constructed - but there is that "time" word again.
Feedback and feedforward go hand in hand. For the purposes of the Cybersmart lessons, I am using Sheena Cameron's 2 medals and a mission, or 2 stars and wish for younger students.

Incorporating this feedback into each Cybersmart lesson will lead into quality commenting on blogs when students need to comment in a positive, thoughtful, helpful way.
The format for blog comments are...
Positive - something done well.
Thoughtful - a sentence to let us know you actually read/watched or listened to what they had to say.
Helpful - give some ideas for next time or ask a question you want to know more about.

Created in Google Drawings

A Cybersmart lesson for Smart Footprint

Making "How To" Videos

This week I wanted to give oral instructions on how to use Voice Typing in Slides. I had experienced Screencastify a wee while back so dived in to record the instructions. I found it interesting that I was a tiny bit nervous about recording myself and then putting myself out there. This is how our teachers and learners will feel as well I think. Always good to be in the position of a learner.

Part of this learning for me was about how to embed it in blogs. The Manaiakalani protocol is to save the video to Drive and to embed video content from Drive. Screencastify saves videos automatically to Drive so all I had to do was to find out how to get the embed code.

As usual, there are complete instructions on the Manakalani Cybersmart site here.

2 steps that I followed for this post are..

So here goes with my first Screencastify video on how to use Voice Typing in Slides...

Creating Portfolios with Google Sites, presenter - Emily Fitzpatrick

Google Sites are our bread and butter in Manaiakalani for visible and rewindable learning.  Our Pilot teachers build a class site to make learning visible and rewindable for their students.

While I am quite happy with how my use of the new Google sites is developing, this session was a good reminder of how to work with people new to Sites to get them to set up a site from scratch. As this is my focus for our Tairāwhiti Toolkit later in May, a very timely session indeed!

Emily's resources are here.

The other great resource for anything Google is Steegle.

Visit our Tairāwhiti Site which Maria, Renee and I build for our Manaiakalani Outreach Programme.

Keep it Together! presenter - Rachel Duckworth

Google Keep is my new best friend. This is a powerhouse organisation tool. Add the Chrome extension to really power it up. Thank you Rachel! My life is sorted!

You can view Rachel's presentation here.

Best tip of the session...

Automate the Mundane, presenter - Emily Fitzpatrick

Emily really got us making tech work for us. there was so much in this session that I was almost dizzy. Take time to go through the slides and give them a go.

I tried setting up IFTTT App on my iPhone but it is definitely better on Android as Emily pointed out. I was trying to set my phone to turn off wifi as I leave my house and turn it on when I return. How good would that be?

Keynote #2: A Māori Perspective on developing Resources to Support Te Reo Māori, presenter - Te Taka Keegan

Te Taka Keegan has a mantra that if you need something then you probably need to do it yourself. This session highlighted the difficulty in NZ around having Te Reo Māori resources for classes.

Te Taka has worked with Google and Microsoft to develop resources such as Google web search in Māori and Google Translator Toolkit for Māori and The Māori Macron Restoration Service.  Take a look at them and see if they are useful to you.

Taka did caution us about the use of Google translate as it is throwing up lots of inaccuracies. He thought he needed to make another trip to Silicone Valley to help them fix it up!

Taka showed us Swiftkey - an on-screen keyboard that you swipe to type. The beauty of this keyboard is that it remembers your keystrokes which is great for Te Reo Māori and dialects. SwiftKey learns your writing style to suggest your next word - much better than any other predictive text keyboard I have used before. I have been using it and already it has turbo-charged my keyboard on my iPhone.

Flipgrid: The Tool For Student Voice You Didn't Know You Need, presenter - Nick Brierley

Nick is a teacher in Sydney. Having only used Flipgrid once before it was great to have time to explore and have a go with this tool.
Nick's resources are here.

How to get the most from your Chromebook, presenter - Suan Yeo

Suan describes himself as an Education Evangelist. He works at Google in the Asia-Pacific region heading the Education business unit. So what he knows about Google is huge!
He spent quite a bit of time going through Chrome extensions which was really beneficial. My takeaway from this session was the Toby Chrome extension.

Details about Toby...

"Bookmarks are for books, not browsers. Organize your browser tabs into Toby so you can access key resources in one-click instead of seven. Toby is better than bookmarks, it levels up your Chrome browser. Toby is a visual workspace that lives on every new tab. Add new tabs by dragging and dropping your browser tabs into collections or save a whole session in just one-click. Access all of your collections on any desktop with automatic sync. Use tags to organize your collections or create notes for your to-dos."

Reflection: after having made 380-odd blogs and using OneTab to collect student blogs together in their classes, I realised the power of Toby in that it is web-based and collections can be accessed in all my profiles. A life-saver! 

Design Thinking and iExplore at Ormiston School, presenter - Michael Davidson

If anyone is really into design thinking then maybe go and visit Ormiston School and see it in action. Michael's resource page is here and his blog is here.



Check out his page on making a Digital Breakout. We had a go at his Anzac Escape one. Tricky!

Michael is very active on the www with "The Monthly Maker".  He has a You Tube channel MakerEd NZ. A must see with the new Technology Curriculum now being implemented.

Keynote #1 - Let's Make Some Magic, presenter - Emily Fitzpatrick

Emily was a really engaging presenter. She was full of vim and vitality and really got us thinking. Link to Emily's resources is here.

Emily's point was that there are ways to make magic happen in the class...

1st magic: Questions inspire. What questions inspire your classroom? Do your students ask the un-Googleable questions?

2nd magic: Go beyond expectations. High expectations student rise to the challenge. Expect success rather than accept failure

3rd magic. Find a new normal

Closing remarks: The right person finds the right question. the importance of being problem solvers

Magic makes the impossible happen...

How will you make magic happen in your classroom?

Tools help to create magic in the classroom

What tools are in your toolbox now?

Reflection: this session really feeds nicely into our Manaiakalani term 2 focus on "Learning empowers creativity". And the big question of how do digital technologies turbo-charge creativity?

Ed Tech Summit - Wellington

During the term break, I attended the Ed Tech Summit in Wellington. This summit was 2 days jam-packed full of Google Goodness. It was held at Amesbury School which is pretty new and that was a delight to be in modern learning spaces.

In true digital immersion fashion, an App was used to communicate and organise schedules. The neat thing about using an app like this at these summits is that you can change your schedule whenever you like. This is particularly handy if you miss a great session and can pick up on it at another time.

The sessions I attended were...
Keynote #1: Let's Make Some Magic, presenter - Emily Fitzpatrick
Design Thinking and iExplore at Ormiston School, presenter - Michael Davidson
How to get the most from your Chromebook, presenter - Suan Yeo
Flipgrid: The Tool For Student Voice You Didn't Know You Need, presenter - Nick Brierley
Google and the 4 C's, presenter - Kim Sutton
Demo Slam

Keynote #2: A Māori Perspective on developing Resources to Support Te Reo Māori, presenter - Te Taka Keegan
Automate the Mundane, presenter - Emily Fitzpatrick
Keep it Together!. presenter - Rachel Duckworth
Creating Portfolios with Google Sites, presenter - Emily Fitzpatrick

I got so much from each session that I think I need to reflect on each session in a separate blog post with links to resources.

Feedback - or lack of it.

We all know the score on feedback and how important it is and why we should do it and how we can do it. So when I was sitting the Google Certified Educator Level 1 test I was struck by how the lack of feedback set me on edge. As you work through the test there is no indication of whether your response was correct or not. This is quite different to the Fundamental training modules on the certification site where the unit reviews give you that instant feedback.
It set me to thinking how often do we do this to our learners?

Google Certification

One thing about this role is that it makes you do stuff - like Google Certification. This was on my "to do" list but it kept getting pushed down the list by other things.
I got stuck in over the holidays and worked through the fundamental training for Level 1with the intention of sitting the 3 hour exam while hubby was on a fishing charter trip. But as with all good plans they quickly change. The fishing charter was cancelled and the 7 day deadline for sitting the exam was quickly disappearing. Grabbed the bull by the horns last Thursday after work and beavered away at it. And passed! Phew! Now for Level 2.

Day 2 - Goodbye Paper Diary

As we proceed in getting our new cluster organised the calendar is starting to fill up. After many, many years of being tied to a paper-based diary, I have chucked that away and now use Google Calendars. Feels a bit like the comfy blanky being wrenched off me and tossed away never to be seen again. Have to practise what we preach. Thanks Renee for showing us how to set up reminders.

New job - new horizons

How many people get this opportunity to change jobs at my age and at my stage in my career? I have moved from a long standing position at Awapuni School in Gisborne to becoming a PLD facilitator for The Manaiakalani Outreach Programme in Gisborne.

"The purpose of the Outreach Facilitator is to deliver high quality professional learning and
development (PLD) to support leaders and teachers across the nominated Kahui Ako/Col/Cluster to
become proficient in the Learn Create Share pedagogy, and successfully transition from analogue to
digital learning environments, becoming “At Home in a Digital World”

A key focus is to support educators to use the affordances of technology to accelerate learning
outcomes, encouraging “Future Focused Learners in Connected Communities”."

Such a great kaupapa - let the mahi begin!