Week 9 Term 3 2021

 External Recognition week. Badge up! 

Don't normally do external recognition unless forced but I really want this... Strange as I'm not intending on leaving my school and thinking I need it for my CV etc.  I think it's because I want to role model go my own kids at home, and the staff at school.  I better bloody pass!  

I've thoroughly enjoyed learning in my bubble.  So good to have new people to collaborate with.  We should keep in touch.  My gratitude goes to Manaiakalani, you've absolutely enabled our school to move forward.  I knew what we had to do but didn't know how to do it.  You've given us the HOW.  

Also massive tino pai to Vicky for her legendary facilitation.  Superb.  I think we had the best coach.  Don't tell the others ;). They were all excellent and again it was nice to occasionally have a different facilitator with a different approach/manner.  The whole programme is so well thought out. 

It's been a great week.  ERO visited and we managed to do some planning for 2022.  Imagine a whole term in advance.  There were sometimes last year that it was literally day to day. 

I passed - Phew.  So hopefully have  2 badges to add to this space.  Woo hoo!

Week 8 Term 3 2021

Computational Thinking  

I did a relieving lesson on computational thinking with the year 10s and it was embarrassing how terrible I was and how proficient they were.  They were incredibly supportive and helped me out.  

Empowered 

Use the term empowered rather than agency.  5 passes a day. Encourage our students to have threaded conversations.  

Minecraft Aquatic Adventure

Really enjoyed having a go at this. Never played minecraft despite my kids playing it all the time. 

Got a little frustrated with Flappy game!  Bet my kids would be better at it!  Ones at home and at school!

Here's my attempt at scratch. 

It was good to see Khrismira on the class on air using the beebops - good to remember the good ole days when I used a roamer in exactly the same way about 20 years ago!

I also really liked seeing the cubetto. Great resource for new entrants/Year 1. My create session this afternoon was creating an app using MIT with Jacob. I did a really bad job at it, but at least I can see how it works and can imagine the year 10s would fly with this following their coding work with Pip.

Basically I set up 4 screens so that if you pressed good you went to screen 2 to a smiley face. etc etc. So had to upload image and code if you press this button you go to screen 2 etc. Really challenging for this newby coder........ The greatest joy comes from empowering students to be the best they can be, our job is to minimise the hurdles and let them leap over them.

Devices

 Me thinks our ipads may need a bit of updating......

Ubiquitous...

Learning can happen anywhere, from anyone, at any time.  Pace adjustment and the ability to re look at things - so important.  So reassuring that our plan from 2020 worked again in 2021. Learning takes place outside 9-3pm.  

I need to utilise the screencastify process with the students.  I've only really used it to teach the teachers how to use different tech tools or our SMS system. 

I have specifically enjoyed the rewindable factor within my own DFI journey. I need to extend this into my teaching and model it for the staff.  I've used some screencastify videos doen by kids to show other kids how to post their work into our reporting system HERO.

What are you proud of?

The plan we put in place last year being reactivated at short notice.  

What do you regret?

Continuing with class dojo as its been a real bugger with the new 'create activity' functionality that kept failing, leading to heightened frustrations of students and parents. 

What have you taken forward into the 'new era of schooling?'

Being cybersmart...positive, thoughtful and helpful.  

I love an annual overview!  

Love the idea of the cybersmart whanau session in kura.  Especially as we are trying to improve learner relationships. 

Love explain everything. Here is my go !

I then had a go at making a screencastify.

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

• We've done the ubiquitous staff meeting so just a good reminder at this stage.

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

• Just good to be able to have a plan around the school site.

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

• This isn't that relevant currently but it is a need to know what/how the teachers/learners work.

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

• Workflow has definitely improved by using the tools that I've learnt in DFI.

Sites - Enabling Access

 I've noticed lots of school sites that have not allowed access so it'll be interesting to learn all about this. 

Less time teaching can make time for teachers to help students, give them more one to one.  Rewindable learning is so important. 

Teaching registration evidence can be the url for the site.  Ka pai.  So easy.  

Question?  How do students whose details/photos are not allowed on the internet do their blog?  Perhaps incognito name with an emoji?  You can also limit who has access to the blog.???

Sites - it was so good to see a variety of sites.  Makes one feel quite incompetent.  There is some amazing teachers out there. 

OK - started the school site. 

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

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

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

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

Teaching as Inquiry

 Question 

Collaborate - Sites

Visible:  Can we see it or can we not?

Thinking visibility of the teaching as well as the learning. 

We used to send an abbreviated termly plan to whanau.  We hardly even mention what our focus is currently.  Good to see WALTs and SC still working well. 

Using google sites to turbo charge their learning.  Online space takes away excuses.  Lost this etc 

Students are able to access learning.  Remove the barriers. 

ACCESSIBLE

AVAILABLE

ADVANCE

BLOGS to share learning.

SITES - teaching

LEARN - Hapara

Good to hear that young students can access sites via ipads.

Some amazing sites that we looked at.  Really high quality teaching in there. 

Multi-modal. - different ways of communicating. 

The young connect via social media. Get kids excited about their learning. Actively involved in their learning. We need to sell our learning. Your site is your shop front window!  WOW factor.  Sites to be refreshed often.  New content frequently. 

Multiply texts and multi modal.  Beh and Cog engagement. 

Recreate a site every year.  Keeps it fresh. 

Multimodal - really cool shared resources. 

Enjoyed collaborating with others on the rainbow fish.  Here is my attempt at the slides...Rainbow fish site sandpit activity

Week 4 Dealing with Data - sigh.....

Interesting times. Lockdown Day 3. 

Share - tohatoha- like the link to hook kids using social media/blog posts. Sharing with purpose. Important to plan ahead. Share to global platform, no constraints. Authentic audience. Audience is able to walk away online not during an assembly. Making connections - straight from KC in NZC.

Purposeful  learning, sharing help the kids complete tasks.  I'm a finisher so I know how important it is for fulfilment.  

Going to look at the class on air and the innovative teacher while I have some time.

Googleforms - I've done quite a few of these as part of gaining student/whanau voice previously.  Have even recently used it for schonell spelling etc following my last toolkit with Jeremy and added a record extension. Locked mode is fab.

Great idea about using it to record behaviours even though we use Hero, if you are tracking day to day stuff you don't want it to be constantly recorded in your system as it would skew the data. 

My maps 

 

Managed to get myself tied up in knots with spreadsheets as suspected.  Love the conditional formatting.  I can see how it'd be really useful when working average points score changes in easstle and also for all my attendance data but really couldn't do it independently without support.  I definitely need some additional help with this. 

And my analysis of blog

Going to try to be positive, thoughtful and helpful during lockdown.  

Media - Tabloid news or flat sheet?

 Friday 13 August 2021

Media 

Create!! 

Hanga - hook the learner. I'm a lifelong kindergardener. I love the new entrant space both virtually and in reality! I love learning stories.  Unfortunately we don't use them at our school. The creativity process is so important at every age and stage.  Fortunately our LT are creative and we are constantly 'creating' and we know the process is more important than the outcome. 

Going to talk to music teacher about sound cloud as two of our students have recently written a rap for our performance and it would be good to share with the wider school community.

Love the secondary kids doing the vocab keyrings!  Respiration rap!  Perhaps I should write a menopause one?  

I created a kahoot all about our emergency procedures rather than going through the usual pppt!  I must do that more often. 

I already had set up my you tube channel using my hotmail.  So just set up my google one.  I am a yout tuber with a channel.  Search and saved a playlist. Made a playlist.  I'd done this before with the choir songs etc. 

Great to learn about we video as I'm just using my voice memo for the podcasts of the kids audio dramas. Gonna check out the tutorials. 

Love the idea of the kids doing the notices via their own tv channel. Defo something to start in the future. 

Love the idea of using drones and paper plates for the video.  e.g. making out school logo on the field using the kids!  Again, another thing for the future.  Perhaps start of year 2022.....

Like the idea of kids recording themselves reading.  

Had a go at google draw.  Good revision for me and especially learning to embed google draw using htlm.

Toby Mini

 I've managed to use Toby to organise the blogs from our staff members. 

Week 2 - Workflow

 Session 1 - It was really good sharing how the week went with my bubble colleagues and sharing the wins and finding answers to some of our frustrations collectively. 

Learn - we really need to work on consistency of our 'learn' at CTS.  Every classroom appears to do their 'own thing'.  This lack of consistency definitely hinders the acceleration at our kura as the students have to change mode not just every year in primary area but every class in the Secondary Place.  Even post PD in maths I see that teachers have 'dropped' their maths target students.  We need to implement change and then monitor until practice is embedded. 

This picture also sums up some of the 'learn' at our school. Sometimes it feels like that the adults are doing all the work and the students are just by standers, waiting to be served their learning. 

I'm pretty cool with google meet but good to learn a couple of new tricks. Was great to learn how to share just a tab! Good to also learn a little more about my bubble mates. 

Never even heard of google keep until now!  So brand new learning.  especially like the idea of using it for common feedback for blogs/marking.  

Gmail.  Goodness mine is a mess...8,000 emails.  I need to archive so another task to do. I currently use labels.  Schedule send is great to ensure that you don't bombard teachers in the evenings or the weekends when I probably do most of my emails!

Calendar - managed to delete some shared calendars that we used during covid remote learning.  Tidied up my calendar - yay.  I use my calendar pretty well really.  Love the shortcut M T D etc - brill.  

Recording the response to the blog on a googlemeet.  Forgot to present initially - DOH.  Don't laugh too much.  

Managed to organise some tabs for the DFI teachers from my kura so far so I can easily look at their blogs.  Although did manage to add toby for chrome and toby mini!  Now just using toby mini. 

Week 1 - Core Business -'It's business time..!'

Sylvia's DFI Journey Term 3 2021  

Week 1 

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

I'd kind of  heard about the how Manaiakalani came about prior to this session but I guess the biggest reflection for me was that how those initial schools put their heads above the parapet and got started.  The trailblazers so to speak.  Great courage.

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

I've made the decision to improve the ability to move around our CTS operational plan by using links to sub headings etc. My drive needs a little clean up but it's not too bad. I've only been at CTS for 18 months and I've been ruthless about organising. Learnt a few new tricks - words over pictures etc.

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

I've not actually used 'voice typing' with more than one student so I'd been keen to practise a little more and then use this functionality with a group or class.

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

It's good to know that you can have a personal profile and a professional profile on the one device and make sure you keep them seperate.