The Public Voices We Hear

Every day I listen to the Prime Minster's Press conference.

Each day starts with an update from Dr Ashley Bloomfield - the  Director-General of Health.  He explains things in layman's terms and is easy to understand. Apart from a break over Easter he has spoken to the nation and kept us informed. He engenders confidence and I am happy to have someone like him at the helm. He even put himself onto social media to answer questions from the public. He has become a household name.

The Prime Minster is equally easy to understand and her empathy for people comes thorough strongly. She is showing true leadership.

So where is the Education voice in all this?

Am I missing something here? Am I not looking in the right place?

We had one day with the Minister of Education last week updating what was being done in the education arena.

We always talk about parents being the biggest stakeholders in their children's education - so who is speaking to them?

I know that the Secretary of Education, Iona Holsted is communicating with Principals via email.  There is also information available here on the official MoE site. But I think a more human touch would build public confidence and ally the many fears people have.

But where was the public voice of Education today on the first day of term 2?
Where was the Secretary of Education or the Minister to talk to parents about their new role today?
Where is the message for the teachers and the extra care and attention they are taking in this uncharted territory of delivering remote learning?

In their absence I hope that Principals and BoT's are picking up the ball and working on communicating and reassuring people of the steps that are being taken to try to carry education on through this trying time.

The Minister did have a Q&A session live on Facebook tonight. But what happens if you are not a FB user? Or you do use FB but don't "like" the Minister?

I think being out in the public domain today would have been critical to making connections with the public, to be reassuring and to build confidence.

Are you ready? Remote Learning here we come!

In the two days we had before schools closing down St Mary's decided to go ahead with their scheduled staff meeting. And as some teachers had selected to work from home, a Google Meet was set up so they could join in. What a great opportunity to practise the coming reality of delivering #remotelearning when school resumes on 15th April.
With the announcement on Monday of the lockdown it made the theme of this staff meeting very relevant. Helen, the Principal, talked about the expectation in their school for how they are using sites to amplify and turbocharge learning. Most classes in this school already had sites set up. SOme had just started using them this year and some teachers have used them since joinung the cluster 2 years ago.
In the past week we had been discussing with school show they will deliver online learning using the Manaiakalani "Limit the Links" doc as the guideline. St Mary's set to last week and ensured every class had a class site and that all content was visible. Their class sites and blogs are all linked on the school site here.
During the week the year 4-6 classes practised using Google Meet to familiarise the student with this Google App. It also gave the teachers an opportunity to set up protocols with their learners for connecting online in a video conference.
So are they ready? Yes indeed. Combine this with effective practice, Digital Fluency Intensive participation, online support from facilitators of The Manaiakalani Programme and a strong collegiality, they sure are ready.

St Mary's staff meeting before lockdown 25th March

Helen, Principal of St Mary's Catholic Primary School - Gisborne

Remote Learning is here

What a week this has been!
The announcement on Monday that we were going into a nation-wide lock down at midnight on Wednesday sent many into a spin.

There was panic buying nation-wide and widespread anxiety from parents about their children's educational future if they miss 4 weeks of school - which is actually 2 weeks because there are 2 weeks of holidays in the 4 week. But who knows if it will only be 4 weeks. It could be longer and we need to prepare for it to be longer.

Our Manaiakalani team were onto it a week before this announcement and delivered a doc title "Limit the Links" to all our schools.

We were preparing all that week before the Level 4 announcement was made. We connected with Principals to ensure they had read the "Limit the Links" doc and shared it to staff and that they realised what a lockdown could mean for their school.

Schools were closed effectively on Monday and teachers were to be at school preparing and teaching remotely. We supported schools on Tuesday and Wednesday face to face as much as we could. Most of the support I provided was about using Google Hangout Meet with learners. Lots of the sites just  needed a bit of tweaking in the schools I supported.

Our Manaiakalani Schools are well poised to deliver #remotelearning. Some schools could tick most items off the list immediately and in particular having a school site with links to class sites and blogs.
Take a look at some of the local schools and their set up for this...

• St Mary's Catholic Primary School - Gisborne
• Ormond School
• Campion College - Courses page

This means there is one portal to all sites and blogs in the school. Whānau only need to Google their child's school and can get to the leanring that their child can do remotely easily.

Click here to view all the schools in our local cluster.