Let me tell you a story ...

A story of what can happen when a teacher believes in the kaupapa of Manaiakalani.

My friend Ruth Blair taught at Yaldhurst Model School when Manaiakalani Outreach first began
supporting Uru Mānuka. I need to say from the outset that Ruth is an incredible teacher who brings joy, energy and fun to her classroom. She blows me away with her dedication to her craft that is teaching.

During her time at Yaldhrust, Ruth was supported by Mark for a year of in-class support. Ruth enjoyed the learning and supported the kaupapa of Manaiakalani. She changed her practice based on what she learned and quickly became very fluent in the affordances of digital technologies in her classroom. The Woolf Fisher team found her classroom to be ahead of the curve at the time and she received many accolades from them because of what was happening in her classroom, particularly around student engagement. In 2017 Ruth left Yaldhurst Model School to bike around the North Island. She blogged her journey for her students, friends, and family to follow. She was very committed to sharing her journey.

Following this time she did a lot of relief teaching in a range of Dunedin schools while trying to decide if she wanted to continue teaching full time. During this time she shared how she couldn’t understand the lack of knowledge on how to best use the Chromebooks so many of these schools had in their classrooms. It confirmed for her that her time at Yaldhurst Model School learning the Manaiakalani kaupapa was worth it.

Luckily for education, she has rejoined the profession and is now teaching outside 20 minutes out of Invercargill at Lochiel School. Lochiel Primary is a fantastic rural school with a very supportive community somewhat isolated from the rest of New Zealand.

Ruth has constantly stayed connected with the Manaiakalani kaupapa through conversations we have. She also helps my own development of ideas as she is someone that is always asking questions and learning. Currently, she has three different areas of learning developing for herself through school PD and her own PD of choice. She is incredible.

Enter Covid. Ruth was straight onto what she can do and use to support her learners and her staff so that they can do the best they can for the time of lockdown. Because she was already using blogs and was connected with a mini 'Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu' she set up with a couple of teacher contacts through Mark and myself she had the beginnings of what was needed to help the students to fly. A quick whip up of a site, plus time spent as staff using the 'Limit the Links' doc to shape their way forward and Lochiel School was ready to go.

Mark Maddren said the following about Ruth:

Ruth's site and blogs that have been implemented this year are a real testament to the sustainability of Manaiakalani once a teacher has had the support and continues to stay connected with the programme through colleagues.

With this lockdown, Ruth has been able to upskill her colleagues and ensure their teaching and learning is also visible during this period.

So to end this story I just want to say that I believe that Manaiakalni kaupapa is not only powerful in the context of the Outreach, it is also something that can be adapted to any context. The pedagogy is rewindable, it is visible and most of all it is ubiquitous in any place where a teacher 'gets it'.

If you want to check out what it all looks like then head to these links. I'm sure Ruth would love to see some people checking our her class site and blog.

School site: http://www.lochiel.school.nz/

Class Sites for Online Learning

Below are the links to their online learning programmes for each class.

Room 1:  https://sites.google.com/lochiel.school.nz/room1-2020/home 

Room 2:  https://sites.google.com/view/lochielschool-room2-2020/home 

Room 4:  https://sites.google.com/view/lochielschool-room4-2020/home  - Ruth’s Class

Room 5:  https://sites.google.com/lochiel.school.nz/room5-2020/home 

Some examples of the blogging that her students have been doing:

https://lochielgymstar.blogspot.com/2020/05/bloggers-welcome-back.html

https://lochielcameront.blogspot.com/

https://lochielalexia-rose.blogspot.com/

And her class blog: https://room4lochiel.blogspot.com/

Evidence - we do work in the holidays!

Above is a photo of Claire from St Bernadettes, Anna from Hornby High School and myself meeting on the first Wednesday of the holidays to put together the Teacher Inquiries for our Term 4 presentation. 

As School Leaders it has been our job to lead a group of teachers from the cluster in their Teacher Inquiry on Prior Knowledge. We have lead three meetings over the year and in the final term, it is our job to present the findings of the teachers. 

We spent almost two hours going over the work the teachers had sent us and putting it together on a Google Site. We really impressed with the quality and creativity the teachers showed in their presentations, as well as the evidence that shows that adding Prior Knowledge to the students learning process is increasing their understanding. 

You can check out the site we created here.

We've had to do a little bit of chasing around access so that all are seen and are now all fixed. Kelsey Morgan, our 'manager' sent us this email to congratulate us on what we had done.

It has been an interesting process leading other teachers from different schools as you only make connections with them a few times. It was a good thing to do and it has grown my confidence in speaking in front of other adults and leading them. It seems much harder than dealing with a room full of children. 

Drones, hand held cameras, live YouTube and Me!

Today started with Kent from Point England introducing us to some pretty cool tech. Drones, handheld cameras and VidiUPro, all to be able to Live Stream. You can check out the presentation here: Presentation

Point England use Live Streaming to be able to include family members who are working, unable to attend or live overseas in the events and school life. They stream sports, performances, class items and other school events. Whanau simply join the link and watch what is happening live. St Francis of Assisi senior class has also used it to share learning one day. They didn't have the same equipment, they used teacher MacBooks to stream.

We had our own experience of failure today with Dorothy's link to us suffering from the dropouts and then having an alarm. Ironically it was about Connection ... but next week will be Connecting in person with Dorothy, as she is coming down to Christchurch.

Some notes from her chat with us:

• Being connected digitally is a way of empowering the learners and we can do it because the learning is shared and visible. It extends from the individual, potentially to the world.
• This is an inclusive model and again, taps into the human instinct to SHARE and to be connected with other human beings.
• Diversity is celebrated - what ties us together is the language of Learn Create Share
• Digital turbo-charges but face to face is also just as important. Digital allows us to do more or include those that can’t be there.

“If you are all paddling in the same direction, you have greater power, you are more efficient. There is an impact on the nature of teaching and learning because if the teacher and student each know what it is you’re meant to be focusing on you are more likely to reach your goals.” - Dorothy Burt

You will often find the words connected and share tied together in Manaiakalani resources and events- it is impossible to have one without the other. Because connection is a two way, two-person action. You have to give to get. If you want others to share with you, then you need to be a sharing kinda person.

Powerful learning, creating and sharing comes into it's own supporting a Connected network when teaching and learning is visible. Connectedness is powerful when teaching and learning is visible, learners (and teachers) have been empowered (have agency), and ubiquity is supported.

The rest of the time was spent exploring YouTube, Google Drawings & Google Slides. We saw some pretty great examples of Pick a Path and Animations made on Google Slides. Examples of planning in the Juniors and the Seniors done on slides. Comments can be kept private so that only those that have editing rights can see them. This can be powerful so you don't need to keep separate planning and teacher notes. 

I had a good play on Google Drawing and created myself. I've seen a number of my students do this and I have wondered if I could do it too. I don't think it is that amazing but I'm proud of myself. 

I think it can be challenging for our students to learn how to use a tool like Google Drawing. Even learning to manipulate the tools to create the shapes is hard. But it is important to learn, because 'we don't Learn Google Share, we Learn Create Share'. I think we as teachers need to model this more than we currently do, or at least I do. 

- quote, Mark Maddren.

So my aim this week is to try and show my students more examples of me being in the learning pit. 

Is it a bird, is it a plane ... no, it's a site!

Sup ... yo ... hey ... opps ... I mean Kia ora, hello, welcome to this week's blog. We have the privilege to have Clarelle, from Point England with us. Clarelle has been teaching at Point England for four years. She also had an awesome TIGER top!

Dorothy took us through visible learning. This is such an important part of the vision of Manaiakalani. The power of learning being visible and available to everyone; students, whanau, community and the world means that the students are provided with an authentic audience for their work. It also means whanau can be connected to the classroom which goes beyond simply walking into the classroom and finding a book. 

Visible Teaching removes the surprise element, time upfront and the learning rewindable for afterwards but also in advance. - Accessible - online, shared visibly to anyone with the link, removing password barriers. Available - everything the learner needs is present - no scrambling to share material, activities etc at the last minute. Advance - BEFORE it is needed, before the deadlines.

We know how excited students get when they find comments on their blogs from a parent or another family member or even a random person. This also counts for what they are working on. Knowing that Mum, Dad, Whanau care enough to look and talk or comment means that their work is valued. And that is what children want ... to be valued and for their work to be valued.

Also ... sharing online and with the world is powerful and leads to all sorts of wonderful things happening. Check out this video to see how being online found a special audience.

The rest of the session was spent exploring sites. We spent some time analysing sites; what was great about the way they look and about the way they function. Then we had a turn sharing our own sites for analysis.

It is amazing how quickly you realise that it isn't the way you thought it was and all the things you need to do to make it more user-friendly and visible. I know I thought I had made sure all the things were available for others but it turns out they weren't. Sad face!

Thankfully, the timetable allowed us time to have a good tidy up and a cleanup. I spent far to much time sorting the header for the home page. Note to self: simple is best! and if it starts to take longer than 20 minutes its time to do something else.

The finished product isn't terrible, it looks better than it did. (Should have taken a photo of the original but I didn't).

Angela did a lot of sorting the folders out so that they were available online. This means all the work for this year is now freely available. I did a lot of 'zhuzhing' of buttons and things, working on the flow of pages and making media available from the site too. The biggest changes were to the blogger page. I wonder if any of the students will notice?

It has felt really good to be able to get things sorted. Often I notice that things need fixing but I run out of time or forget about them. What a gift this course is for the teachers who are attending.

Is it scratchy in here?

Did you know that sharing is a really important part of the Learn, Create, Share circle? I know when we first started this journey a number of years ago we didn't really understand that it was to be more than just a blog post of perfectly finished work. What we have discovered and learnt is that we don't just share to finish our learning, we actually share to learn. The brilliant thing about having a blog allows us and our students to share even further than just parents and teachers.

Something that really stood out to me was Dorothy sharing this:

As teachers, we ask our children to write for an audience and there is a compulsory audience who is forced or paid to listen or read this. An authentic audience is someone who chooses to listen/read your work.

This is so true. The students know and expect that we will read there work. In fact, they get frustrated when we don't read it, but they don't always have an expectation that anyone else should care about their work. But seeing the excitement on their faces when someone they don't know or someone they really care about, particularly an adult, writes on their blog helps us understand why it is so important to share with that wider audience. Authenticity is what these students need, in a world where nothing is really that authentic ... and they know that.

Do you agree?

Computational Thinking! 

This is something I've done two PD's in before, however, because I am not using it in my classroom I have forgotten most things. Because I am Learn Create Share leader and using digital technologies in the classroom then this is something I haven't thought much about. But today has been a good reminder that we have to teach this from next year and that you don't need to much stuff to be able to teach it. No need for fancy robots (though that would be fun).

We started by doing an unplugged exercise where we were sorted, just like a computer algorithm. In this exercise, we had to google the distance to where we were born and then 6 at a time got sorted from furthest to closest. It was pretty easy and you can see how that would be quick to do in a classroom with any sort of data.

Getting Sorted:

Kawana came to us from the Pam Fergusson Trust, who are working with teachers to get ready for the new digital technology curriculum. Kawana has a background in computer science and is passionate about helping Maori young people access this area. You can check more out at https://trailblazers.pamfergusson.org.nz/

A key part of today's learning was around exploring the concepts of computational thinking. This involved thinking about ethics and morals, understanding binary and the practical side of using different types of apps. We also spend some time looking at the new Digital Readiness site that the government has put together for teachers before the 2020 launch. 

My biggest learning was around using scratch to make something. This is definitely a learning pit area for me. I have spent a tiny bit of time exploring but it has been a couple of years. It is logical and involves problem-solving (as all math really is) and it wasn't as hard or as complicated as I remember it being. You can check out my process in the slide below. 

There is much that I've learnt that we can use in the classroom. In fact, we have put Computational Thinking into our Tuesday plan for Term 4, a great way to do some creative problem-solving in a different way. I am looking forward to this.

What do you to introduce computational thinking in your classroom? 

Three is a magic number for making sites about dung

Despite feeling a bit under the weather I was looking forward to another Tuesday of learning, and I haven't been let down.

We met Danni Stone, our Year 7/8 Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu partner from Point England. She was here to teach us all about Google Sites. It was lovely to meet her and to make the face to face connection. She is very knowledgable and helpful, also willing to share her journey of how things have evolved over the 5 plus years she has been on this Learn Create Share journey.

Dorothy introduced us to today's theme of create. Create is such a powerful tool to use. I took many notes as she spoke but here are a couple of standouts:

• Creativity is a doing word … the whole parts of our body, not just a screen.
• The digital world can give us a world that turbocharges our creativity … but it isn’t the be-all and end-all … it is one part of the wedge. (see graphic to see the different parts of the wedge)
• Digital can capture the creativity.
• We don’t want our learners to be consumers, we want them to be creators. 
• Students that take more responsibility for selecting topics to learn about and this lead to accelerated learning. 
• Create: empowering through choice, information/knowledge, developing skills, building capacity & scaffolding.

"Creativity focuses on the process of forming original ideas through exploration and discovery. In children, creativity develops from their experiences with the process, rather than concern for the finished product. Creativity is not to be confused with talent, skill, or intelligence. Creativity is not about doing something better than others, it is about thinking, exploring, discovering, and imagining" (Kohl, 2008).

All this information has made me ask the question: 

Does our YMS belief mean that we only think it is about the digital? Do we ignore the other wedges of creativity from the classes that are using digital devices more than the juniors?

Sadly, we don't get much time to verbally process this information. Sometimes I wonder if it would help me work through what we are already doing in our class/school before we move on. I know my brain can be like a sieve and things come and go as fast as Katy Perry changes her hairstyle.

(or Mel Raisin 😊😊)

The rest of the day was spent with Danni taking us through Google Sites. I have some experience using sites but it was great having some sandpit time. The tips on this slide are fantastic, especially the size for headers and buttons.

In anticipation of the opportunity to do some creating, I had brought along a new Sharp Reading resource on Insects. We have been able to create our own site which we will be able to use for half our class for reading next week. It was great to be working on it with my fab work wife. Angela hasn't had a lot of time on creating sites and I think she found it helpful.

It was also interesting learning about Dung Beetles. We aren't quite happy with it but the bones are there. A bit of tweaking and we will be away.

Our Site

What do you think about it? What would you suggest?

DFI ... a new journey for me.

Beginning today I started walking a 9-week-long journey exploring digital fluency. Even though I have been teaching using digital devices for over 5 years I still have a lot to learn. Angela (my work wife) is also attending, which is and will make our teaching stronger. Already we have created a google doc for Maths Week using what we have learnt.

Today's session was called: Core Business. 

It has covered the origin story of Manaiakalani, shared succinctly and passionately by Dorothy Burt. Gerhard Vermeulen and Mark Maddren took us through a very full day. Mostly we were going over some google basics and how to work smarter not harder. I found it to be helpful, a reminder of things that I've forgotten, and new things that I want to use to be smarter in my teaching and work life. 

There was some simple learning; how to make your bookmarks icons only, how to copy and paste without formating (a key for blogging), how to use the explore tool in teaching and for our own work. I'm sure I've been shown these things before but these things slide out of your mind when you don't use them regularly. 

Some new learning for me was: 

• Using tables in docs but colouring the lines white and having the boxes coloured so it changes the way they look. 
• Getting a free icon sourcing page!
• How to use commenting and explore tool together for extending learning.
• Voice typing now has a New Zealand option. This is so great for us and for students.
• How to keep my personal and work Google accounts totally separate user account change in the toolbar, not just in the account. This is really great, especially to keep searches and work-life separate. 
• Command + number allows you to jump between tabs. This can make life faster when you are moving between tabs.

It was a good learning day. I am looking forward to what the journey ahead is going to bring. I feel that it will enhance my teaching greatly, as well as making me a more efficient teacher. I look forward to what it brings. 

Learn Create Share

Today I attended another fantastic Leaders of Learning session. I feel very lucky to be part of a group of people from my cluster who are diverse, supportive, thoughtful, caring and pretty funny. The thinking from many of them challenges me and I always come away feeling very privileged (and having learnt a lot) to be part of this group.

Today was no different, however, it was a day that I was especially looking forward to because I had missed out on 'The Day' (as we are calling it) where the group spent 7 hours unpacking the Learn Create Share pedagogy.

I had begun to grow my understanding through conversations with some of the members of the group and because of my involvement in the Delving Deeper presentation but I need more.

Prior to this session my understanding was:

Learn - what we know (prior knowledge) and what we need to know.
Create - All the things we create to share our learning.
Share - How we put our 'creation' out into the world.

But I knew it to be a little more than this, not linear but circular, all interconnected and intertwined.

This is now my current understanding (and I still don't think I have it embedded yet) based on our conversations and discussions:

Create = using and combining prior knowledge and new knowledge to synthesize the learning. It involves learners proving their understanding, creating brand new knowledge and learning skills as they create.

Share = connecting and collaborating with the purpose to gain feedback/feedforward and it is done on the learners' own terms. It's about the connections with others, their own agency and feedback/feedforward.

I believe I witnessed this in action today when two Year 8 girls worked near me putting together a video to explain bedmas to others. They came up with a plan, asked for permission to use a cell phone to create the video, worked on the video by discussing, correcting, editing as they clarified each part of bedmas until they had a finished product. Is this not a great example of Create & Share in action?

And finally, Learn.

Learn created a lot of discussion amongst the group, as those of us that hadn't been at 'The Day' had a different understanding of it. Learn isn't learning, learning is embedded in the whole process. Learn really should be called knowledge because it is about the prior knowledge the learners have.

For example when you take a guided reading session and you start the lesson with "What do you know about ..." you are at the Learn part of the pedagogy. Everyone shares and the group has then a shared knowledge. As soon as you pick up the text and start reading you are in create. Basically, 10% of a lesson sits in Learn. As educators, we provide access to Learn when we provide resources for children to access.

Now I'm thinking about Learn Create Share in terms of time spent to help me with the thinking around this. 10% for Learn, 70/80% on Create and 20/30% on Share.

Therefore my next step in my own learning and understanding is to begin to think about this as I work to improve the work the students are accessing. I also need to be able to explain it to my teaching partner and further to this help the whole staff have a shared understanding of this. The journey continues.

So School Leaders out there, have I got this right, or what thinking do I need to tweak?