Day 9. Revision and the Exam!

It has been an honestly rewarding and enjoyable experience. I've loved working with other people who are so clearly dedicated and passionate about effective teaching and learning.

Manaiakalani: Ubiquitous Learning.

Anytime. Anywhere. Any pace. From Anyone. Ubiquitous learning makes learning no longer constrained by time, place, people or pace.  This creates fantastic learning opportunities for our students who generally start school being behind by 30,000,000 words than students living in higher decile areas. The summer learning journey has proven that our students are supported ubiquitously through technology and they have made exceptional growth in their learning in many areas.
I'm very excited to lead this change with my school's junior classes. I believe it is our role, as teachers,  provide rewindable learning experiences ensuring that all of our students have the tools they need to be successful.

Time to reflect and share with my colleagues one more time:

- What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?
I truly believe that the Manaiakalani Learn Create Share pedagogy allows teachers to better understand, explore and utilize Curriculum connections to make learning more meaningful for their students. This pedagogy makes learning rewindable, accessible, visible and ubiquitous empowering our students to achieve their successes.

-What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?
Driven by the idea to gain a better understanding of contemporary education practices and learn how to integrate relevant technologies and techniques into my programme, I joined and successfully completed the Google Certified Educator Level 1.

-What did I learn that could be used with my learners?
Most of the Google Tools will be definitely explored within my learners. We have already used Google Slides, Gmail, Google Sheets, Google Docs, Goggle Maps, Google Earth and I look forward to utilizing their fantastic features to motivate, engage and educate my students.

-What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?
I believe that I now have more knowledge and skills to support other Manaikalani teachers and learners. I sincerely believe in the Manaiakalani LCS pedagogy that aligns with my own professional beliefs, values and goals.

Thank you, Dorothy and Gerhard!!

Day 8. Devices

Being Cybersmart - Manaiakalani Cybersmart 

(great resource for cybersmart lessons)

https://beinternetawesome.withgoogle.com/en_us

Reinforcing and consistently using POSITIVE language with our learners is very important!
For example, using positive videos for one week reprogrammes the bad behaviour (this method was used with autistic kids, videoing them doing the right thing and then playing it to them for one week)

The same approach when we teach our student to be CYBERSMART. Talk to the learners using positive/smart language avoiding negative wording.

   




    Focus on being Smart (not unsafe)
    Smart teachers
   

    Keep revisiting Kawa of Care

    Do it in a positive way (film positive
    moments, what students should do, not bad
    behaviour!!)

   Only POSITIVE videos, ideas, blog posts,
   language can change bad behaviours!!


Hapara

My Hapara access: https://www.teacherdashboard.com/#/td/manage/

Using Hapara effectively - display all day long on the screen to make it visible to everyone in the class.
Creating folders on the top - can be done for the whole school or for individual classes.

Sharing Tab - making sure that their work/ posts/ entries are shared! (make students do it once a week to clear the folders)

Highlights
Pause screen - it freezes students' screens. 'Stop - Look - Listen' tool. The current settings have defaulted to 15 minutes.

Guided browsing.

Highlights - Activity Viewer - Collaboration

Dashboards - Posts - checking the blog posts. Draft posts (lighter shades with a pencil sign)
you can also check their blog comments
comments highlighted in red - comments came from an anonymous account (not necessarily spam, but needs to be checked out)

The text box at the bottom of the page - feedback or questions to Hapara.

Class Info Tab
Teacher's tool to manage kids accounts. Ask the students to reset the password using your computer

Into to Devices

We had a chance to try and use Chromebooks and ipads. It was really good to experience what our learners experience during their learning journey.

Handwriting in Junior classes in Manaiakalani - stylus - it's just a modern tool. People wrote on different objects throughout history: on wood, on stones, on glass, paper etc. Now it is a new digital era when the kids can practise their handwriting skills using stylus pens on ipads.

Beginning the year with the Junior learners: 

Video to play:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1tuvPxXCuTMG0GyXawcE0wqm3641u3EkwWKcD1leyYEA/edit?usp=sharing





Explain Everything Presentation

Great tool. It needs to be deliberately taught during the first few weeks to develop students fluency in using this tool effectively.

Maths activities (examples)

Great ideas to use explain everything in the classroom


Screencastify
Screencastify is the simplest way to create high-quality screencasts from right within your browser.

Screencastify can be used for:

• Instructional Videos. 
• Narrating Slideshows. It's easy to use Screencastify with Google Slides to narrate over slideshows.
• Explaining Student Understanding. 
• Dubbing A Video. 
• Practising Fluency.
• Providing Feedback.

I found a very good resource full of ideas and activities on how to use Screencastify efficiently in the classroom.

https://www.screencastify.com/education/resources

 I'll practise using Screencastify as I think it can be very useful for creating rewindable learning opportunities. The students can also record their thinking, ideas and explain processes. Very excited to use it with my learners.

Another great DFI session full of practical tips and tools!

Day 7. Computational Thinking

Connecting with Manaiakalani

Pedagogy and Kaupapa - Empowered

              

NZ Treasure recognised the value of the Manaiakalani programme and its results.

Agencies are not social workers but the real meaning of "agencies" is the empowerment of the families. 

Technology is just the tool, but the Manaiakalani tries to make it not just a tool providing the new experiences through technology and the pedagogy that is changing the lives of our students and whanau. Technology helps our community to take control of their own lives and enhance the quality of their lives. Ongoing learning to improve their lives because most of our families have a median income of $19000.

An average 5-year old child from our community (Manaiakalani) comes to school being experienced to 32 million less spoken words than a child from the middle-class family. Blogging is a great basis to start oral or/and written conversations helping these kids to catch up.

unpacking the Digital Technologies Curriculum and delve into all things Coding, Computational thinking and tech.

OMGTech! Trailblazers Presentation

10 BREAKTHROUGH TECHNOLOGIES … according to Bill Gates

MIT Technology Review has been publishing Breakthrough Technology lists for eighteen years, and in 2019, for the first time ever, they asked Bill Gates (of Microsoft fame) to be a guest curator. As the Editor-in-Chief Gideon Lichfield says: "Bill's list reflects his belief that we're approaching a tipping point in humanity's technological development - from technologies that mostly make life longer to those that mostly make it better. His choices highlight some of what he considers the most important challenges and opportunities of our time."

Read the entire article here https://www.technologyreview.com/lists/technologies/2019/

Computational thinking

Computational thinking is a two-step process:

1. Identify the steps needed to solve a problem.
2. Use your technical skills to get the computer "working" on the problem.

The algorithm is a set of rules/ steps

If you have a larger number, go right

if you have else - left (or if you have a smaller number - go left)

debugging (the process of identifying and removing errors from computer hardware or software)
- you need to think like a machine and set up the rules to solve possible problems.

Ethics and Morals

The Moral Machine. It is a platform for gathering a human perspective on moral decisions made by machine intelligence, such as self-driving cars. They show you moral dilemmas, where a driverless car must choose the lesser of two evils... does it kill two passengers or five pedestrians?

Curriculum Deep Dive

Digital technologies is MORE than coding. It is about thinking. It is about problem-solving. It is about making choices. There are two parts: -Computational Thinking for Digital Technologies (students will develop an understanding of computer science principles that underlie all digital technologies. They’ll learn core programming concepts so that they can become creators of digital technology, not just users). -Designing and Developing Digital Outcomes (learning how to design quality, fit-for-purpose digital solutions).

Designing and developing digital outcomes: Progress outcomes, exemplars, and snapshots 

Hour of Code Activities

It was great to explore a range of educational coding activities that can be used with my young learners.

https://www.kodable.com/register

https://hourofcode.com/nz/learn - a great place to get ideas and resources!!!

Scratch https://scratch.mit.edu/ - Apply for a teacher account to set up a class. Inside the class, you can set up multiple studios and projects.

Block challenge activity: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/311936379/

*** !!! Scratch Junior Projects can be saved in Photos.

You need to add the screen recording button to your Control Center, which you can do using the Settings app. To record the screen, pull down the Control Center and tap the record button. Completed videos are saved in the Photos app

Basic Electronics/ Electricity

Using Zombie Lights to teach/ introduce basic electronics. Can be easily extended to the zombie cross-curricular lessons.

Makey Makey

https://makeymakey.com/

We haven't explored Makey Makey during the class time, however, I had a chance to talk to our educator during the lunch break. To take it further, I googled for some projects and here are projects that inspired me:

• Interactive exhibits with Makey Makey
• An interactive poster (poster, split pins, Makey Makey, Scratch)
• Use Makey Makey to create an interactive poster board
• Makey Makey Hacked Poetry

Today's learning will definitely help me and my team implement the new Digital Technology curriculum.

Day 6. Dealing with data

The Manaiakalani Pedagogy: Learn Create Share

Today we focused on 'Visible' teaching and learning and reflecting on its importance.

Tasks for the weekend:

Reading: Steve Hargadon

“The students who aren't succeeding usually don't have any idea that school is a game. Since we tell them it's about learning, when they fail they then internalize the belief that they themselves are actual failures--that they are not good learners…”

Exploring the professional blogs of Manaiakalani educators who use class sites to make learning and teaching visible to support students’ agency and make connections with the wider communities.

GOOGLE FORMS

Google Forms is a free online tool from Google* which allows users to create forms, surveys, and quizzes as well as to collaboratively edit and share the forms with other people. 

This allowed me to learn how to create my own Google form that I might use at the beginning of the new school year to get to know my team.

Your Personal Preferences Google Forms

Google My Maps

Analysing the completed Google Forms about our group's holiday destinations, we discovered another useful app: My Google Maps that can be used to teaching and inspire my students and extend their learning experiences.

We also had a chance to create our own Google Maps and explore its features.

GOOGLE SHEETS

Google sheets include almost all of the same spreadsheet functions as excel—if you know how to use Excel, you'll feel at home in Google Sheets. I've used both programmes in the past but today's learning was very useful as I had a chance to refresh my knowledge and also learn a few new functions. You can also download add-ons, create your own, and write custom code.

It's online, so you can gather data with your spreadsheet automatically and do almost anything you want, even when your spreadsheet isn't open.

Google Sheets is a great tool for collaboration and it's available from any device.

Analysing Data

Then we looked at some student blogs' data and analysed it. Next, we were offered to analyse a blog of your choice using our new Google sheets knowledge and skills. I chose to look at my class blog. Here is one of my Tabs showing the data I analysed and presented in Google Sheets:

Day 5: Enabling Access - Sites

Connecting with Manaiakalani - Pedagogy and Kaupapa 

As educators, we can teach our students how to utilize online connectivity in ways that support individual interests and passions, and help students meet their own academic and personal goals.

As professionals, we have to stay connected to upgrade our skills, collaborate, learn from each other and contribute to the educational community.

Let’s reflect on why connectivity matters. I believe that:

• Connectivity supports students’ passions.
• Connectivity means your work is accessible and mobile.
• Connectivity supports learning about your interests (or studying for the SAT).
• Connectivity allows for collaboration and contribution to creating meaningful work.
• Most importantly, teachers and students can learn, create, express themselves, be themselves sharing their new learnings, experiences and ideas.

Tuhi Mai, Tuhi Atu is definitely to join in next year with my class.

Manaiakalani Toolkits to be explored over the weekend.


Google Sites

Being new to the Google Sites, it was a great experience for me to explore the existing Google Sites and reflect on their design and how do they meet their purpose.

Exploring some Examples of Class Sites - it will be my homework to evaluate these examples and learn from their creators. Another great resource is our collaborative evaluation because this will help me to filter the advantages and disadvantages of these class sites through the lens of my experienced colleagues.

My very first Class Site

Finally, I got an opportunity to start creating my own Class Site (still in progress).  Currently, I'm using a Seesaw blog with my class but feel a strong need to extend my students' learning experiences.
The Class sites that I looked at today had some great examples of visible teaching, rewindable learning, multimodal and multi-text content, etc. My next step for the next year:-)

DFI Day 4 - Collaborate - Sites

Multi Modal Learning and Universal Design

Last year I found a good article about three types of engagement and their interconnections: behavioural engagement, cognitive engagement, relational engagement. Today we discussed behavioural and cognitive engagements and how it's important to think about all of these aspects to actually 'hook' our students into learning.

Multimodel lessons will provide multiple opportunities for increased student engagement. We looked at the different examples of multimodal lesson designs and some of them immediately made me, an adult, want to participate in these lessons. Imagine an impact on young learners! Universal design for learning is a powerful tool to engage students and cause authentic learning.

I'll definitely spend more time exploring examples of multi-modal lessons and use them to design my own tasks creating learning opportunities with lots of options.

I need to present a variety of texts, images, videos and audios, opportunities to provide learning opportunities for all students and their diverse needs because learners are going to perceive information in a different way. The same with how people express what they know, what works for one student isn't going to work for another. Navigation is also crucial for learners to be able to access the content.


Creating a new Google Site

It was my first experience of creating a Google Site. Elena's Sandpit site is here

1. Plan/ design/ map your new site's look using pen and paper (3 clicks navigation is the Golden Rule)
2. Give it a name
3. Greate your subpages (pages tab on your right)
4. Subpages (create a new page, drag and drop it into the page to create a subpage)
5. Create Dropdown subpages - select and hide from Navigation (3 dots to show more options)
6. Insert Tab - pictures et. Double clicks on the page to bring up the 'Insert' button on the page

Multi Text

T shaped Literacy Skills also known as 'Wide and deep with a narrow focus'

The learner is presented with a variety of texts to read (watch, view) including one each of: 

Complementary, 

• Scaffolding, 
• Challenging, 
• Learner 
• Selected 

MultiText Database designed for the teachers to learn from and contribute. 

My First Multi Text Site - Our Solar System 
(still to include the templates and links for the follow-up tasks)

Great learning today! Lots of relevant and practical material and ideas that I am very keen to use with my class. 
I believe that implementing Google Sites, Multi model pedagogy and use of the Multi Text literacy approach will increase my students' motivation and bring their learning and engagement to the next level up.