Introducing Janine Bava - Tairāwhiti's New Facilitator

Welcome to Janine Bava - our new facilitator for our Tairāwhiti Cluster. She started as a facilitator in term 2, 2022 bringing a wealth of knowledge, effective practice and skills with her. 

Janine has been teaching at Awapuni School here in Gisborne for 10 years. She has been part of the Manaiakalani programme in several ways. 

Janine had in-class support for a year. She and her team quickly took on the Manaiakalani kaupapa of Learn Create Share. Her team developed a learning site for their year 5 & 6 students that was visible and contained rewindable learning. 

Janine was also a Manaiakalani Innovate Teacher in 2021. Her inquiry was around inclusive practice in the classroom. Her site is here for you to explore.

We wish Janine every success in her new role and we know that she has so much to offer teachers in our cluster.

Learn | Ako Staff Hui Term 1 2022

In this term's staff hui we worked with school to develop the visibility and rewindability of their class sites. 

The staff learning was to explore and use tools to  level up something they had planned for their class in the coming week/s to make it rewindable.

When using 3rd party apps it is a changing landscape. This is exemplified by the paywall now on Screencastify. We have been strong and constant users of Screencastify over the years but this paywall changes things a lot. Having a 3rd party app Like Screencastify integrated into our Drive makes it so user-friendly for students - and teachers. It is a shame we have lost the functionality of this app.

Mote is another excellent 3rd party app that now has a paywall so we have gone back to suggesting the use of an online audio recorder for voice recording. There is some light at the end of the tunnel with Google developing a Screencasting app for Chromebooks. Watch this space!

Knowing this we included Loom as an option as well as Quicktime for Mac users. 

I subscribe to Richard Byrne's Free Tech for Teachers blog so I can keep up with what's the latest and greatest. Worth subscribing to for teachers.

Orientation - Class Sites for Visible Teaching & Learning

 Part of our Orientation day is to support teachers to build a class site that will lead learning in their classroom for 2020. 

The Manaiakalani Programme hinges on class sites that provide visible and rewindable learning. MOre about this can be read here. Class sites can be created so that teaching is visible and learning is visible and rewindable. Class sites are the enactment of the Visible, Ubiquitous, Connected and Empowered kaupapa of The Manaiakalani Programme. 

Our programme for this session can be viewed here on our cluster site.

Participants are supported during this PLD session to create a class site that they can build on and develop as the year progresses. Participants view each other's sites and provide feedback. The sheet with site details and feedback are on our cluster site here.

Orientation 2022 - Connecting with Manaiakalani

Orientation 2022 took place on 25th January 2022. The Orientation day is an opportunity for teachers new to our cluster schools to connect with the kaupapa and pedagogy of The Manaiakalani Programme.

Schools are invited to send teachers for this PLD opportunity so they can experience the Learn Create Share pedagogy as they learn about the Manaiakalani Programme. This is a collegial space where they can access support and develop a deeper understanding of The Manaiakalani Programme and what it offers them as a teacher in a school in our Tairāwhiti cluster and especially as a teacher in a 1:1 digital environment.

Details of your Orientation Day can be found on our cluster site here.

The participants will create an online profile which brings together learning about being Cybersmart, learning about digital tools and then sharing their creations. 

Their online profiles are included in this presentation. 2021 profiles from participants are included as well.

Tract App: Peer-to-peer Education

This year the facilitators have introduced teachers to the Tract App.

Tract is a platform where learners can follow their passions and interests, learn more then create and share their understandings and knowledge. 

The vision is to empower "learners to think critically and independently and to solve the world's problems" by providing "On-demand, project-based classes and clubs designed to spark creativity and empower learners to develop the critical thinking skills they need to succeed as successful young adults."

We have some school locally using Tract with students highly engaged in creating and sharing their interests.

Gisborne Intermediate won a global challenge for October and recently were awarded a pizza party to celebrate this achievement. What a fabulous way to start our local use of Tract. 

You can read more about tract on their newsletter here.

Learn Create Share Term 4 Staff Hui

 This term we bring it all together in one hui. Teachers will Learn about Canva. They will Create with Canva and then Share in their school as well as in the presentation below.

Canva is a graphic design platform, used to create social media graphics, presentations, posters, documents and other visual content. The app includes templates for users to use. 

View the creativity of our kaiako in the presentation below. 
Please leave a comment.

Scratch - Coding & Mathematics

 I have been attending webinars with Raranga Matihiko on Coding Across the Curriculum. 

This week's webinar included a section about Scratch and using it in Mathematics. Scratch was used to draw shapes initially and then to add a repeating pattern to make spirograph type patterns. Mathematics knowledge of 2 D shapes and measurement of corners and angles are all used in this coding exercise. 

I worked through drawing shapes such as squares, triangles, rectangles and pentagons. I didn't have much success with the pentagon but I will work on that.

Then I put the code together to create the spirographs in succession.  I also worked out how to make the background change colours randomly to make it a bit more interesting. My next job is to see if I can speed up the circle code!