Digital Fluency Intensive Week 2 - Workflow

Today was Day 2 of the DFI. I thought I was prepared for the intensity of the day after last week, but found it soon to be another day of information, deep diving (and occasionally coming up for air), clicking, thinking, processing and doing. I really had to get my multi-tasking on.

I loved seeing the group growing today. There was a lot of shared talk and asking each other for help. The collective knowledge in the room is immense and it is good to see them asking for help and others offering help.

Cathy and Gina

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

Reiterating the recognition of effective practice came through strongly here. This section of the day I feel is one of the most important for our cluster. With the challenging start to the programme in our area we need these types of sessions with teachers to expose them to the kaupapa and pedagogy to deepen their understanding. Even though we have covered this information in our staff meetings we need to keep revisiting the key messages of the Manaiakalani Programme. Every time teachers hear this they should be able to take a little bit more away with them. I really like the railway track analogy and the strong message of recognising effective practice.  

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

Thank you Maria for showing me how to use the Zoom accessibility function on my MacBook so I can magnify part of my screen while presenting on a screen. I can see how useful it will be for me to use in class with teachers and students. 

Helping to get screen recording going with small groups in the afternoon was useful for me to use Quicktime again. I use Screencastify lots so good to get the use of this tool nailed.

Once Perky's group completed their recording she and I searched on how to screen record in Windows and she did a quick test to see if it worked... and it did. Pressing the Windows+G keys to bring up the "Game Bar".  Instructions are here for PC users. 

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?

Taming tabs will be something that I will bring back to the surface in classes. Bookmarking is covered when bookmarking blogs, class sites but some of my classes need their Drive, gMail bookmarked so they can get to it quickly. I can see a session on this then get them into moving files into folders. Many of the classes I work in have files just sitting in Drive and not in their Hapara folders. 

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

Google Keep for recipes - thanks Maria! I have used Google Keep quite a bit to curate stuff but haven't used the photo snapping that grabs the text and puts it separately under the photo. This was a Wow! moment. Making use of the voice notes function in Keep in the phone app is going to be a game changer. I don't think we use the collaboration function fully in Keep either but maybe that's because we use Google Docs and Trello (locally with our team) and share our thinking that way. 

Digital Fluency Intensive - Cohort 2 2019

To be included in this PLD programme is the highlight of my job. I have been looking forward to this with much anticipation. I am always learning and view this opportunity to extend myself as well as support teachers. As a facilitator my Friday's have been up until now in schools providing in-school support for teachers as an Outreach Facilitator. For this term my Friday's are gong to be full-on days attending the DFI with this band of committed professionals. I am going to buckle in and enjoy the ride of Learn, Create, Share.

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?
Everytime I listen to Dorothy Burt talk about The Manaiakalani Programme I find out more about this highly effective programme. This time I concentrated on the building of partnerships with whānau. This is critical to having whānau fully engaged as partners in their child's education and to students' success. I have been involved in many whānau hui in my current role and the school's are always disappointed with the small turnout they have and the focus some parents have on homework, neatness of printing or screentime. These topics overtake the hui and the main reason for the hui gets lost in the hype around these issues. Schools are asking how they can engage whānau in hui that is learner and learning focussed. I can hear another blog post coming up.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?
Workflow is so important in my role. Anything that improves or makes for speedy execution is welcome. Today I brushed up on Table of Contents in Google Docs, voice typing (with hands cupped around the microphone) and unique URLs for headings within Google Docs.
The new learning for me was the power of Comments in Google Docs and using it with students to reverse roles by getting them to read text and assign questions via Comments.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners? 
The Google Doc section today was full of content that allowed me to review some of the features I was aware of and extend my knowledge of Docs. Today we were given applications in the class e.g. use of Comments to get the students to do all the work while working with texts.

The voice typing with hands cupped around the microphone is definitely going to be a game-changer in a class of 31 very vocal students. I think I remember seeing somewhere the use of paper cups with the bottoms cut out for this purpose too. I'll try the hand

I am a Google Drawing fan and it is my default app for anything to do with images. I used Google Docs today to create a poster that highlights the use of shortcuts. Shortcuts should be the way students do stuff. I am currently in a year 2/3/4 class where lots of them have difficulty using click+drag. Shortcuts eliminate the barrier of not being dexterous and needing to control via a trackpad.  Maybe I need to review the pinkness of it. What do you think?

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?
Getting in and Kondo-ising my Drive is a must. My personal Drive is a schmozzle and my work one is a mass of folders. I need to get in and cluster folders together and bring joy to my Drive.

Pecha Kucha - Autodraw

Today we worked on a Pecha Kucha style presentation to share a tool. I have shared Google's AutoDraw. It has turned me into an artist!
I found it really hard to talk for 15 seconds. I thought I was a talker...but this was difficult. I do admit to doing it off-the-cuff.
If I did it again I would definitely have to write the script and time it.
I love Screencastify. I use it lots to make tutorials. I am using it in my classes to introduce teachers to the power of "vlogging".
I will let my passion for Autodraw speak for itself in my Pecha Kucha.

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.