DFI Day #2 Tairāwhiti Cohort

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

Lenva presented the "Connecting with Manaiakalani" section today. I was riveted to her presentation. Even though we are immersed in the kaupapa of the Manaiakalani Programme, whenever I listen to one of the team talk about Learn Create Share I alway deepen my understanding of another facet/portion of our mahi.
The part that got me thinking more deeply was about amplifying teaching practice as giving and getting. I have just written 2 blog posts about this part of our term 1 staff meeting. I will go back to these posts and make sure that I have expressed with clarity amplification of effective practice.

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

Workflow and being efficient is hard to nail. Just when you think you have it sussed up pops another challenge - like screen recording in Quicktime. Today's Share | Tohatoha section was to be in a Hangout and record the conversation in 3's. One team recorded theirs but there was no sound. I had helped set up Quicktime for this group but forgot to check that the microphone was set to the internal mic before they started. Grrr!!! Sorry about that team!  It goes to show that practising with the tools and testing is necessary prior to any event.

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

Being able to record your screen is a critical skill to nail to make rewindable material for our learners.
Quicktime is something that I don't use frequently. I use Screencastify with learners in the classroom on Chromebooks and to make tutorials for teachers as the mp4 is automatically saved to Drive and can be shared from there.

Google Keep voice recording on a mobile phone is a fabulous addition to my toolkit.
For today's session I focused on voice recording in my phone app and was pleased that I had done so as there was a question from one of the participants today about using it for Te Reo Māori. This is a great way to record voice, download the mp3 from Keep on a laptop, save in Drive so it can then be inserted as audio into Google Slides. This feature would be so handy for inserting instructions into slides in my Cybersmart lessons. It would function like audio clips in Explain Everything where each slide can now have an instruction inserted for learners to rewind if they forget what to do. I need ot create a workflow diagram for this and share to the group.

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

Keep is such a great tool to have. It integrates with Google Apps so well. I use it lots on my phone. In my personal life I use Keep to save recipes! If I am disciplined as I use it and apply labels it is an efficient file of stuff that I like but don't get around to cooking. I really need to teach my retired husband how to use it. Now there's a challenge!

Why Blogs?

This question comes up all the time in our work as facilitators with The Manaiakalani Programme.

So why do we choose Blogger as the platform for Share | Tohatoha? 

Many years ago I visited Pt England School and saw the way blogging was used with learners. On return to my school I got stuck in and get students blogging. We followed a lot of the guidelines on Edublogs and joined in with their challenges. We also joined Quad Blogging and interacted with schools in USA and UK. It was fun especially when we had a competition to see who could get visitors to their blog form different countries and who could get the most visitors.

I read the Langwitches blog by Silvia Tolisano and she is a strong advocate of blogging. Not just blogging by learners but she advocates for teachers to blog FOR their students.

My main reason for learners to blog is the way a whole bunch of skills come together such as writing skills, reading skills, metacognition skills and reflection skills to name a few.

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Sharing by blogging is core to what we do in The Manaiakalani Programme. We have systems and processes to develop blogging with teachers and students and are able to provision this legally, systematically, and securely under the GSuite owned by each school's BoT so they can share with purpose.

So why should we blog?  I firmly believe that blogging gives the quietest learners a voice, a place to document their learning and to connect with others.

Amplifying our Practise - Giving to others

Continuing on from my previous post about getting from others - here is the second part about giving to others.

When you learn, teach. When you get, give - Maya Angelou

So my question is - how do you give to others? And for that matter - how do I give to others?

Lots of share in our own settings with colleagues. I know that once we became a Google Domain at my previous job that we were able to create and file and share easily. We did not have to re-invent the wheel and that made us really efficient in the admin side of our job which hopefully, left us time and energy for the real part of the job - teaching! Because we all understood each other and knew the context of your teaching we also had the confidence to share with each other. So sharing is easy in our own settings.

Sharing outside our own settings is enabled by the ubiquitousness of digital technologies. We have platforms that we can share and once we are active on these platforms we can get from others. 

Locally we have a Facebook group to share stuff that we find useful. Join us and share the good stuff you have. We also have a Google + community for out Tairāwhiti cluster to share good stuff.

Are you on Twitter? If you are pop your Twitter handle in the comments so I can follow you. You can find me on Twitter @GigagalGizzy.

Is there anything holding you back from sharing which could include documenting your learning? I sense a real lack of confidence and purpose in teachers when talking to them about sharing on a professional learning blog. This could be for many reasons including  a lack of time or technology. Self-confidence can also be a limiting factor and/or worrying about bragging, judgement, or not feeling worthy enough etc. If we lived in USA we would probably be shouting it from the rooftops - or form the laptop screen. IS this a cultural thing? Or is it something else? I need to ask teachers directly instead of making assumptions.   

My job as a facilitator is about giving to others. And yes - I get paid for it, but I believe the work of The Manaiakalani Programme Outreach has meant that more teachers have access to quality PLD in digital fluency that will mean better outcomes for the learners in our local schools. Apart for that I am able to immerse myself in my technology and use Chromebooks and iPads with learners all day, every day. 

Amplifying our Practice - Getting from others

As we plan for our term 1 staff meetings with a Learn | Ako focus, I am reflecting on offerings from  other educators on the WWW as they amplify their practice.

We live in a digital landscape which makes sharing and requesting very easy. With digital resources we can share and help each other.

When you learn, teach. When you get, give - Maya Angelou

There is a plethora of sites with digital offerings right across the curriculum spectrum. Buy oh! how do you sift through offerings such as "50 of the Best Chrome Extensions for Teachers". I really don't have time to sift through these.

I do like lists like this on in a Sheet from Eric Curts where you can use the control + F  function to search the Sheet and get to what you want.

Locally we have a Facebook group to share stuff that we find useful. Join us and share the good stuff you have. We also have a Google + community for out Tairāwhiti cluster to share good stuff.

I have a long list of educators around the world that I glean all kinds of information from. This ranges from global education issues to specific Google sites that provide information about Google Apps. I subscribe to their blogs, follow them on Twitter and listen to podcasts and ma thankful for the material they provide for us all to use. Who do you follow or subscribe to?

Once you tame your twitter feed this is a a place to go to. Hashtags help sort the material. List of edu #hashtags are available as a place to start. I use TweetDeck to help organise Twitter Feeds. I would be lost with out this.

Once we discover a source of material we then need to Cybersmart and use our critical thinking and literacies to determine whether the material is useful, reliable and/or applicable to our context.

One found you will then need a curation tool so you can find it when you need it. I use Google Keep, OneTab Chrome extension, Toby Mini Chrome extension and Bookmarks in Chrome mainly.

In our term 1 staff meetings we have been exploring Manaiakalani Class on Air episodes. If you want to see real teachers in action in real classrooms then this is the pace for you to go. The teachers document an extended plan which allows you to get inside their head and see how they have planned and reflected on lessons they teach and video for us to watch and learn from. This Sheet lists all episodes. Hint: use the tabs at the bottom to explore categories and cntrl+F to find specific search terms. This shared resource really does amplify teaching practice.

iPads & New Entrants

iPads with New Entrants and the old, ex-DP. What a mixture!
CR and I have worked in her class this year with her learners and new iPads. We have worked with the Explain Everything (EE) app and managed to get to the stage where the projects are accessed from the class site then saved onto the iPad so they can work with them.

We have made projects for word work with the word of the week, learning to use the tools in EE and with the big book for the week. At times it was like herding cats.

The biggest challenge has been mastering the iPad/EE workflow for making projects , saving it to our Drive then embedding them on the class site for learner access. It has been a huge learning curve for CR and I.

I am looking forward to extending my work in this area next year with more classes in the cluster. We have 7 classes in total across Tairāwhiti signing up for in-class support with 1:1 iPads and that is very exciting for us all.

 
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Now we are like...


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Capturing those Voices & Moments

As we have held our staff meetings this term and used Screencastify and Flipgrid to capture and share teacher's instructions on video, it is amazing how anxious and reluctant teachers are in making a video using their voice to give instructions. Teachers need to get used to using their voice outside the classroom walls. AI and voice recognition is a growing area of technology. Here is a blog post about voice recognition with summaries from a variety of experts.

In our staff meetings we have got teachers to make a Screencastify tutorial on how to use Google Voice Search. They then shared their tutorial on a Flipgrid (embedded below).

Screencastify is an efficient tool that teachers should be harnessing to use in their class. Teachers can quickly make tutorials to support student learning. Students can use Screencastify to record proof of their learning. More junior classes can use it to read and check for fluency.

There are many sites that give teachers ideas on how to use Screencastify. Here is a starter list from Matt Miller of "Ditch That textbook" fame.

Flipgrid is a tool that can capture voices in the classroom quickly and efficiently. It also enables replying. This badge popped up in my email today. Love the gamification aspect as well. This would hook students in.

Flipgrid Frenzy

This term we have used Flipgrid again to collect teacher work in a staff meeting.

I have also used it in classes to further model for teachers the power of this online tool. The younger learners loved being a "vlogger". By using the post-it to prepare their response it certainly meant the videos were better than talking off the cuff.

The older students in year 7&8 were able to navigate the tool very quickly and just like the younger students got distracted by the selfie camouflage area.

We were able to respond to some videos in later classes. This is all part of the "positive, thoughtful, helpful" mantra that we use in blog commenting. Its so good to have this common language across schools and across tools.

So much activity was recorded on our "Would you rather" Flipgrid yesterday that I was awarded this badge. So exciting! It just goes to show that we are never too old for gamification to appeal.

See our Flipgrid below.