DFI Session Two

Wow, there has been a lot of new learning today!!

Firstly we looked at the background of the Manakalani Learn (Ako). It's moving schools from analogue to a digital world. It's increasing teacher effectiveness and accelerating learning outcomes in the digital world. Technology is a great tool to give children opportunities to learn in different ways. I love that we share our planning with children on the hub site so they can go back at any time. This is rewindable learning at its best.

Then we looked at Google Meet. I feel that this is something that I have my head around already as we have been using it online with our children since the beginning of lockdown. However, there are a few extensions that could be handy. I love the grid extension which allows you to see all the people that are in you Google Meet. Meet attendance could have been something that we could have used during lockdown rather than me writing it in my notebook.

Google Keep is something that I need to look into a bit more. I realised that I actually already had used it but I think I need to check out all its benefits. It might be something that my team could use to create checklists. I guess it's like a new notebook which can be digitally shared with others.

Luckily my Gmail is looking amazing with the help of my other colleagues that have completed DFI and my thirteen-year-old son. I have folders set up and I have the settings perfect for me with an unread section and then everything else below that. It works for me and that is what it's all about.  I think that some of the children in my hub would benefit with some lessons about how to organise their Gmail.

Google Calendar is something that I had never really taken much notice of before lockdown. I feel quite confident using it for school use.  I know how to add Google Meets and how you can customise your different calendars. I also know that there is more that I could be taking advantage of and this is something that I plan on looking into. 

Here is the video that I made today with Maria from my Digital Bubble Group. We had to find a blog and comment on it. We then were shown how to embed the video into our blog. This is something that would be really easy for children in my hub to use. 

Next Mark talked about blog commenting. My takeaway from him was reminding us that when we post a comment it should be: Positive, Thoughtful and Helpful. 

This is something that we need to remind the learners in our hub when we are back on site.

Overall, a productive day. I am loving having all this rewindable learning right at my fingertips.

What have you read that you might want to learn more about from me? 

DFI Session One

Day one online DFI course.

Firstly I had internet issues, then technical issues with my camera not working. That made it pretty hard. Overall it was a great day of learning.

There are some things that I learnt today that I am really looking forward to implementing into my hub. My biggest takeaway today will be the Eyes on Text: Reading Mileage. I know many of my readers are reluctant to read out loud in any setting, but this would be a really fun task for them all to do over the week. Setting guidelines about how they create docs in their folders is going to be useful and something that I will be trying out in the hub as well. This will make it easier when uploading and marking in Hapara.

I had a couple of quick tips and tricks that I will use.
Shift + z when you want to take a doc from someone else's folder and get the updates if they edit it.
Command + shift + t - This opens your last tab.

I also found that website remove.bg is great for removing coloured backgrounds from pictures. This will be a great tool for the children in my hub and my colleagues when we are creating our a learn, create, share documents in Google Drawings.

I have enjoyed playing around with Google Docs today and seeing all the endless options that can be done on it. I had fun playing around creating a learn, create, share document that our children use.

What was your one takeaway from today?

Cultural Responsiveness

Examine how indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness (IK&CR) are informing the way you are taking action.


Step 1: What is your understanding of indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness and what area mentioned above do you want to focus on for discussion?


Indigenous knowledge is knowing everything about that culture and a group of individuals. Cultural responsiveness is being able to learn and be respectful of your own culture plus the culture of others. I think I was looking at our community needs during the take action planning process of the inquiry.


I had already had the children prior to this inquiry working together collaboratively on Google Docs using a Tuakana - Teina relationship. We had parents/whanau involved and being informed all throughout this process. We asked for feedback and we listened to their ideas and feedback and shared this with the children. I was always respectful to all tamariki and whanau.


Step 2: Examine how indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness are informing the way you are taking action.


Understanding the Culturally Responsive Practice for Maori Scale is something that we should be putting doing in our teaching practice everyday. I strongly believe that Whanaungatanga: building relationships was an integral part of our inquiry as we needed to have relationships with our students and their parents/whanau to have a successful outcome. Bring parents/whanau into the learning environment is so important and children having that authentic audience brings more meaning to them when they are doing a piece of work. In our school, we have a learning showcase each term. This is when parents/whanau come into the hub and their child or other children show them through their learning through the term and get feedback and praise for their learning. This is a time that we can build relationships with many of these families.


Step 3: What might you need to consider or take action on to move up to the next level of cultural responsiveness? What are the next steps?


I think my next step is to be thinking about what I can do to know everything about the cultures of all students in our hub. I need to make sure that these families/whanau are available to be part of our school community. In my home base I have a wide range of cultures and what I would love would be a day where they can come and talk to the hub and share some special traditions, and or special occasions that they think others should know. I want them to be fully engaged in our school community as well as all children to be informed about how to be respectful to all cultures.


References


(Source: Asil, M. (2017). A School-Based Measure of Culturally Responsive Practices. Frontiers in Education

2(17), 1-7. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2017.00017)

Context of different audience members and their perspectives for your inquiry.

Create a reflective entry to discuss how you are addressing the context of different audiences (local, national and/or international) and their perspectives for your inquiry.

The audience that I will be focusing on in the blogpost is the parents of these children in our learning space. We also have other teachers at my school and in the wider community which involves our cluster. 

I think that the other teachers in our school and in the wider community including our cluster would be the most supportive and onboard of this digital change and they would be early adopters in any kind of change like this. They would be interested in these changes for my inquiry as it is part of the skills that the children need to be successful 21st-century learners.  Early Adopters get on board and would be there to support you through any part of the inquiry.

I feel until the parents have seen progress and change in their children's learning but they are still going to be the Laggards in this inquiry. The parent's perspectives and attitudes towards children using digital tools is an interesting topic. The feedback that I most commonly get is that the children will not be able to handwrite like they did. However, there is more behind their concerns. I think that they need to be well educated and at my school, the parents are always welcome to be involved in their child’s learning. The Senior Leadership Team always have seminars showing parents how to use a variety of digital tools and use our digital reporting system.

The theme that I will be looking at is:

The role of current and emerging technologies. This model shows that for your practice to change all these four strategies need to work together.

Linked strategies needed to support educational ICT innovations

When my colleague and I first started our Mindlab journey we had so much support and advice from our colleagues. Our colleagues and cluster members were accepting of our inquiry and were accepting and positive about us scaffolding digital learning for the children.  We knew that our Laggards (parents) would be the ones that would need extra support from us. We have been showing them through the process with their children and what would be involved throughout the inquiry.  We knew that the parents were apprehensive but we have shown them step by step how they can be part of their child’s digital journey. They just need to be open and willing to listen and learn alongside their child. 

References

Bolstad, R., Gilbert, J., McDowall, S., Bull, A., Boyd, S., & Hipkins, R. (2012). Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching — a New Zealand perspective. Report prepared for the Ministry of Education. Retrieved from https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/schooling/109306

Reflection

Rolfe’s Reflective Model

Step 1 (What): Describe something that is significant and has happened during your Inquiry so far.

Our inquiry question was: 

How can we best use digital tools to engage boys in authentic writing? 

The most significant thing that has happened so far has been the engagement that I have seen with these children and not just the boys that I have been focusing on. Walsh (2010), says that there is a trend that children are moving away from engaging with print but at home would use their leisure time to engage with digital technologies. This is something that I truly saw happen during this inquiry. I have seen boys go from writing nothing on a regular basis to share with their peers something that they were proud of. We are a PBL (Project Based Learning) school. This gives the children many opportunities to share their learning with other teachers, peers and family/whanau. This engagement happened in the taking action phase of the inquiry cycle and I was really surprised how quickly the children got on board. 

Step 2 (So What): Evaluate the most interesting/important/useful aspects of this event.

I think that the most important aspects of this event were the full support that we had from our colleagues, The Senior Leadership Team, and the parents and whanau of these children.  I think that this can be explained through all the interviews that we had with many of the Year 4 boys and the information and research that we presented to the audience that was going to be part of this. It was really important to have evidence and research that suggested this was going to be successful. Many of these children's parents were not fully supportive of their children using digital tools so early on in their schooling and not using a pen and paper to write. This is when my partner and I needed to inform and educate these parents about 21 Century Learning in a positive way.

Step 3 (Now What): Analyse the implications from this event to the rest of your Inquiry.

I feel like so far our action plan has been working well for the children. I would like to try and get all children in the year level I work in involved in this inquiry as I feel it would benefit so many of them. Next time I would make sure that I had more time to show the children all the different digital programmes and apps that they could use. I feel like that was slightly rushed and they didn't get all the benefits of many of the digital tools that were offered to them. I learnt that you need to fail to succeed but as long as you get up again and keep trying it will all work out for you. All of the digital tools that I offered the children were the ones that allowed them to share with an authentic audience and having an audience gives their writing a purpose. This was my main goal in this inquiry.

References:

Otago Polytechnic. (n.d.). Reflective Writing. Retrieved from: https://www.op.ac.nz/assets/LearningAdvice/Reflective-writing.pdf

Walsh, M. (2010). Multimodal literacy: What does it mean for classroom practice? Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 33(3), 211–239.

MindLab Journey

Reflect on how you have changed your practice during your Postgraduate DCL journey.

My goals for the mindlab course in week 1 were to be able to effectively use digital technology in the classroom, gain confidence and deepen my understanding of 21st Century Learning. Over the past 32 weeks, I have definitely achieved these goals and feel proud of what I have achieved.

Stage 1: Problem identification.

What drives you to make the change? (What is the problem that arises in practice?)

The problem that we could see was that our Year 4 boys were getting left behind and their engagement levels were low as writing had no authentic purpose for them.

Why is it important to implement the change?

We wanted these boys to achieve like their female counterparts and not be left behind. We knew that we needed to do something to help so that we can get them back on board.

Stage 2: Observation and analysis.

What kind of data have you gathered? What insights have you gained about the problem that drives the change?

The data that we gathered was interviews with the children as well as classroom observations. These interviews gave us many of the boys true thoughts and feelings about writing which in turn then provided us with motivation to make a positive change. 

Stage 3: Abstract reconceptualisation.

What new learning theories or research provide useful background to implement change?

The children that we are teaching have been born into the digital world and this is what they know so well. Carroll (2013) talks about the types of learning that boys positively respond to. She suggests that boys are more interested in learning in purposeful ways, having autonomy over their learning and positive collaborative experiences. For these to be successful, technology is a tool that we can harness and make engagement in writing possible. Brosseuk (2014) findings add to this idea that,

“Mobile Technology devices suited boys preferred patterns of learning. Mind-mapping apps, such as Total Recall and Think Tree created to boys’ preference for the visual mode of organising their ideas and thoughts.” 

What other perspectives are relevant to consider?

One key change to my professional practice was the professional learning standard. This standard has been well covered and I feel that I have improved in my professional capability and it has had a big impact on my learners.

Stage 4: Active experimentation.

What new strategies or ideas you have tried to implement in your practice?

The new strategies that we tried to implement were writing on Chromebooks without using their writing book. Not having to plan in their book, having an authentic audience for their writing. The authentic purpose was a major part of this writing inquiry being successful. When they knew that they had an audience they had a bigger responsibility to complete their work to a higher standard. 

What you have learnt from the change/ experience?

I have learnt that with support from my colleagues and team members anything is possible. I find being reflective hard, but I know that it is an important skill for educators and learners. I have enjoyed being challenged and tested during this 32-week course and I will be a better teacher for it. 

References: 

Brosseuk, D. (2014). A New Direction: Using Mobile Technology Devices to Motivate and Engage Boys in Literacy Learning. Practically Primary, 19(1), 17–21. 

 Carroll, J. (2013). Engaging and Authentic Technology Use for Literacy Learning in the Middle Years. Literacy Learning: The Middle Years, 21(2), 7–17.

Ministry of Education (2017). Our code, our standards. Retrieved from: https://educationcouncil.org.nz/content/our-code-our-standards.

Osterman, K. F., & Kottkamp, R. B. (2015). Reflective practice for educators : professional development to improve student learning.(2nd ed.) New York: Skyhorse Publishing.

Mind Lab Week 2

Week 2 Mindlab

So I was feeling quite overwhelmed about Mindlab and all that is involved but have overcome that and I am really enjoying what it has to offer me for my professional development.

The new skills that I have learnt in the last 2 weeks are overwhelming as we start to prepare to have our first assignment completed before school finishes.

Last week we made a video about one of the 21CLD Learning Activity Rubrics. We choose collaboration. It was great working with Rebecca and Angela who I don't usually work with. 

What do you think of these rubrics? They are so easy to use.