Digital Fluency Intensive Week 6

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

Being Cybersmart - we want our students to be confident using digital devices in a safe manner (behaving appropriately online). Manaiakalani's Cybersmart Curriculum is based in an NZ context. It's great to see the range of resources developed to support both teachers and students with implementing the Cybersmart Curriculum. There are three main categories from the Cybersmart Curriculum that relate to everyday life including:
-Smart Learners (Term 1)-Smart Footprint (Term 2)-Smart Relationships (Term 3)

Link to the Manaiakalani Cybersmart Curriculum.

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

Today I learnt how to use Explain Everything. I have been waiting for this opportunity all year and I finally have this app on my classroom iPads. There's a mountain of resources out there and they are really easy to make. I'll be checking out a few other teacher's classroom sites to get some ideas for what to make. Uploading the resources and linking them to the class site is something I'll have to practise a few times as I wasn't logged into my own account because I borrowed an iPad. Khismira's iPad presentation is very helpful and a good introduction to using iPads a Year 1 class (I think this will work just as well with my Year 2/3 students). I have also just found out that Sunshine books are available to Manaiakalani Schools for free! 

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

Last week I made a resource using google drawings and linked it to my site. I soon discovered that google drawing is not available on iPads so thank goodness Explain Everything is available to our school now as this seems to be the one stop shop for making iPad friendly activities. 

Week 5 working on making a resource for my students in google draw.

I am going to begin introducing Explain Everything in a very structured way and make sure my students have a lot of time to practise using the tool and be creative with it. I need to make sure they press record before they begin any activity so they can show me how they completed an activity. 

Kawa of care is something we have focused on since Term 1 so I need to move onto the other aspects the Cyber Smart Curriculum offers. This will be a lot easier now that I've been shown the resources that are available. I am very keen for my students to become digitally fluent. 

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

Overall having access to shared resources will save me a lot of time and not having to create resources from scratch all the time will be a nice change. I feel if we work together at a school and cluster level, we can build our own bank of resources that are relevant to the children in the Far North area and this will make life easier for everyone.  

Digital Fluency Intensive Week 5

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

Making learning completely visible is hugely important and give students an authentic audience. If learning is not visible to whanau it can seem as though we are putting up barriers. Whanau having access to student learning through Google Sites has a very positive impact on home-school partnerships and gives parents an insight into what their child is learning at school and can prompt learning conversations between our students and their parents.

Multi-modal- different modes of communication.

Engaging - the hook: using multi-modal raises student engagement e.g. videos, maps, text, 

Once the hook is in - teach! Multi modal addresses behavioural engagement but multi-textual achieves the cognitive engagement - it gives the learning a purpose.

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

I learnt a lot more about google sites. I already had a clear understanding of how to use it but now I feel more confident with the idea of what content to add to my site and to make sure I add instructions and explanations to do with the multiple modes I am embedding on the site e.g. make sure youtube clips have an instructional purpose captioned below. I am now motivated to create a range of google sites to run our class inquiry topics through.

A few tricks for making images the correct size for google site:

-960x300 pixels header size for google sites

-200x200 pixels for buttons (make sure buttons are quite large for use on iPads).

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

I created a school garden site with links to videos, google drawing activities, and digital text links. I also converted a junior journal text about gardening into a google slide to make it more accessible to my students. I plan to do more of this in the future to build my own bank of digital resources. Making texts into slides will make handling school resources more manageable as I won't have to worry about have enough copies of books for the students in their reading groups. They can also access these resources from home. 

Link to the site I worked on today:

Link to my class site:

When kids are first starting out at year 4 with chromebooks, the instructions need to be specific with the tech e.g. what colour to add text to a shared doc, make a copy of the doc etc... The older students get the less technical instructions needed as they get used to using google apps.

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

Making digital books accessible through google slides will enable me to work from home more as I can access the digital texts for this like junior journals and school journals from home. I can update and add digital content from home onto my site also. I need to keep in mind that making digital resources is really worthwhile for using year after year. Building a bank of these should make my workload less as time goes on.

Connected Learners Share Workshop

Activity 1 - Blogging! Has It made a difference?

What is the new strategy?

After reading Simon Scott's blog post, I have gained new insight into how blogging can really motivate, engage and support student learning in writing. He has experienced great success in terms of students motivation, thoughtfulness and raising student's punctuation levels in writing (eliminating the need for a worksheet).

I have gained a lot of ideas for how to scaffold my students to' make meaningful comments on their peer's blogs. I like how basic his 3 step blog commenting prompt is and I can see this working in my year 2/3 class.Check out his Blog Commenting Prompt below:

What are you thinking about trialling in your learning space?

For a start I need to set blogger up on my students iPads as they are currently using Seesaw which is quite limited in regards to making learning visible with the world - as only parents have access. I need to focus on scaffolding students to make quality blog posts and highlight the fact that these will be open to the world. I's love to find or develop a '3 Step Quality Blog Post' model to guide my students so they have something to refer to when struggling to make a blog post. If anyone out there is reading this and has something similar to the commenting prompt above but for making blog posts I'd love it if you could share it!

What new learning, resources or support could your Manaiakalani Outreach Facilitator provide?

I would definitely love some more support with setting up blogger on the iPads, making quality blog posts and having a go at commenting on each others blogs. My students love to share on Seesaw so I know they will be excited with the prospect of broadening their audience.

Activity 2 - The Acceleration of Sharing

How has sharing changed in your lifetime?

Sharing has changed hugely over the my lifetime. I was born in 1990 (wow!). Checkout the timeline below:

In your role in your learning area how has the increased sharing opportunities enhanced your teaching practise?

I feel like the amount of content online has revolutionised teaching! I can't imagine a world without the internet and I can't imagine what it would have been like not having content and knowledge at my fingertips. I have to admit sharing my professional reflections has been a tricky aspect to get my head around but I am slowly gaining confidence in this area (especially with the the expectation of my students sharing their learning and knowledge with the world).

Week 19 / Contribution of Teacher Inquiry Topics to my Communities of Practice

Descriptive

The teacher inquiry topics I am interested in researching are as follows:

Inquiry Topic 1: How can I raise student achievement levels in writing by moving them from a fixed to growth mindset?
Inquiry Topic 2: How can I engage reluctant writers using digital tools such as Coggle and blended learning approaches?

I have two communities of practice which include my fellow junior syndicate colleagues and the Kaitaia Mindlab study group I am apart of. These two CoPs are made up of like minded colleagues both of which encompous the dimentions required in a CoP: Enterprise, Mutuality and Repertoire (Wenger, 2000).

Our junior syndicate is a very effective CoP for myself as a lot of ideas and observations of lessons are shared and analysed together. Our school's overarching inquiry for this year is raising student's achievement in writing which is why both of my chosen inquiry topics are focused around writing. My fellow colleagues in this CoP are all heavily involved in using digital technologies to enhance learning with a few of our classes being 1:1 iPads and others gaining access to this next year.  We are also a pilot school for the Manaiakalani Te Hiku cluster. 

The Kaitaia Mindlab study group we have formed involves a number of schools around our Far North district and is a safe and supportive space to share ideas and give and receive feedback/forward. I feel the colleagues within this online CoP are already proving to be beneficial to my own professional practice and I have enjoyed building trusted professional relationships with these people. As noted by Wenger (2000), participating in communities of practice is essential to our learning.

Comparative

Inquiry topic 1, I am hoping will benefit not only our junior syndicate but also our school. This is because the Growth Mindset theory is already valued and taught within the school. All classes have posters displaying growth mindset sayings and I have had a few discussions with fellow colleagues about the importance of our students (and ourselves) having a growth mindset. I am however unsure of how deeply understood this notion is within the school and I am interested in finding out more about this in the hopes that I can share this knowledge with others within our CoP. I know for myself that the notion of a 'False Growth Mindset' is a very real possibility in my own classroom and that it is not enough to only use positive affirmations and language to make a growth mindset a reality (Dweck, 2016).  

Inquiry topic 2,  is of interest to my fellow colleagues in both CoPs I am participating in. One fellow colleague in our junior syndicate is inquiring into student engagement in writing but without the digital aspect due to lack of devices in her classroom. Therefore I feel the outcome of my inquiry could be of use to her for next year when she acquires more devices. We have also discussed the use of 'front loading' target students with lesson content in preparation for a future lesson that maybe taught whole class at a later date - I feel this can be achieved with the idea of the flipped classroom using short video clips, quizzes and collaborative discussions (Bergmann & Sams, 2012). 
I also know the Kaitaia Mindlab CoP are interested in the blended learning aspect and how this can enhance student engagement in their classrooms. We have discussed the use of different apps in our Mindlab face to face classes and shared success and failure stories as well as the barriers we face. 

Critical Reflection

Overall I feel the inquiry topics I have mentioned are very relevant to both of the CoPs I am apart of. I look forward to sharing my findings and discussing different approaches others have used in relation to growth mindset and blended learning. I have a much better understanding of what Communities of Practice are and can see the relevance these have in regard to working together to achieve a common goal and sharing differing knowledge and perspectives in order to improve our professional practice. 

I have used Jay and Johnson's (2002) reflective model for this weeks reflection.

References:

Bergmann, J. & Sams, A. (2012). Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day. Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education. https://books.google.co.nz/books?isbn=1564844684

Dweck, C. (2016, January 11). Recognizing and Overcoming False Growth Mindset. Retrieved July 26, 2016, from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/recognizing-overcoming-false-growth-mindset-carol-dweck

Jay, J.K. and Johnson, K.L. (2002) Capturing complexity: a typology of reflective practice for teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 73-85.

Wenger, E.(2000). Communities of practice and social learning systems. Organization,7(2), 225-246.

Digital Fluency Intensive Week 3

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

Today I learnt about the 'create' part of Manaiakalani's philosophy. This aspect is focused on engaging learners in creative tasks and is not based solely around a device. Dorothy made a point of explaining that everyone learns differently; and we need to provide a range of opportunities for students to create and use the whole body to do so (the  infographic to the right demonstrates what this looks like visually). It is important to note that devices are a small part of 'create' and is often only used as a recording tool to capture the creativity e.g. via photo or video. Devices are a way of turbocharging the learning and creativity!

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

Today I practised making buttons. I have already had a go at making buttons for my class google site, but it was great to have a refresher. 

We were shown how to change certain settings on our youtube channels to make them more private and make sure the videos we embed on our class sites are free from showing suggested videos; therefore eliminating the element of distraction of unintended youtube clips. This will definitely help with keeping my students more focused while viewing content via our class site!

I also started to make an infographic for book week for our school as it will be held next week. As a library leader I thought this would tie in great with making things more visual and creative! 

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

I had so much fun creating an animation using google slides. I can definitely see my students utilising this and creating all sorts of animations. It is important to remember to make duplicate copies of the slide as you go to make it easier to move the images gradually to make it look more realistic. I got some great feedback from my fellow course buddy Blake Masters on how to improve my animation and it was easy to adjust. You can view my practise animation below. 

One thing I'm not sure about is how to make png images work on iPads as the pixelated backgrounds still show up once an image is inserted. This will be an issue for my students in class as they are one to one iPads. If there is a way to fix this please feel free to comment! 

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


Learning how to adjust privacy settings and create labelled playlists on youtube will be invaluable both professionally and personally. I have always been reluctant to upload videos to youtube as a way of storing them and as I've found out for good reason. It turns out it's not good to post videos of students to youtube especially for Years 1-8 with the comments feature present. I know as a parent I wouldn't too happy is my child was in a video online especially without my permission and for public view. 

This has prompted me to recheck my child's youtube account settings to ensure the restrictions are appropriate (now that I know how to do this).

Week 18/Future-oriented Learning and Teaching

Step 1 (Description):

Since starting my studies through The Mindlab, the number one thing in my future oriented practice that has been impacted is the way I implement technology into my classroom. I have had one to one iPads in my classroom for a few years now but have known deep down that I wasn't utilising them in the best way. For instance I would download any app I heard another teacher talk without actually trialing it properly myself, and I didn't have pedagogical knowledge about fostering digital technologies in a 21st century learning environment. 

By analysing my implementation and leadership of past digital initiatives in my Mindlab assignments against relevant theories and research, it has helped me to better understand where I was going wrong and be more thoughtful with how I implement digital technologies in the future. Now my iPads only have apps tested by myself. These apps are linked to my class google site that I have developed to run my classroom programmes through. It has enabled me to make learning more visible for students and their whanau.

Step 2 (Feelings):

Initially, I felt as though a light bulb went off. I finally had access to the resources I had been searching for. It was a little hard to look back (in the Mindlab assignments) on all of the mistakes I'd made but I've decided those needed to happen as part of my own learning process. Now I feel a lot clearer with not only the 'how' to implement the technologies but also the 'why' I should do it a certain way. 

Step 3 (Evaluation):

My students now see the iPads as a tool for learning, not just something 'fun' to play on. They are more goal driven and a lot clearer about what they are learning and why. The handful of whanau that have been given access to the site have enjoyed seeing what their children have been learning at school. I have a student in France with her family who have been accessing the site to keep up with the learning that has been occurring in the classroom. 

Although this process has been hugely beneficial to my teaching practice, it took me a while to get my head around the fact that our learning programmes are visible to the world. My google site is still under construction and is a work in progress so there are a lot of parts of it that are unfinished. The changes I have made to make learning more digital and visible has improved my practice and really made me think about the content I am teaching and different ways I can improve it using digital technologies.

Step 4 (Analysis): 

I feel the models SAMR (developed by Ruben Puentedura, ) and TPACK (developed by Punya Mishra and Matthew Koehler, 2009) have helped me build confidence with digital technologies and  enabled me to think more deeply about the potential the learning tasks I create have; as well as inform/evaluate my practice.

With the use of the Assessment Rubric for TPACK and SAMR developed by Grandgenett, Harris & Hoffer (2010), I can assess the quality of my technology integration and effective teaching approaches. 

Step 5 (Conclusion): 

In conclusion, there are always things I could have done/ can do to make the implementation of digital technologies more efficient. In terms of my google site, I could have waited till my entire site was up and running before I introduced it to the class, but it is still evolving so the fact that I have been about to trial different aspect of it has been great. 

Step 6 (Action Plan):

I have learnt that with the correct tools and theories, I am more confident with implementing digital technologies. The change I have made has benefited my students and their whanau by making learning more visible therefore strengthening home school partnerships. My next steps are to roll out the access to the class google site to all student's whanau and ask for feedback/feedforward iso I can make further improvements to it.  

I have used Gibbs (1988) reflective cycle for this reflection about my future oriented learning and teaching.

Reference List:

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

Finlay, L. (2009). Reflecting on reflective practice. PBPL. Retrieved from http://www.open. ac.uk/opencetl/sites/www.open.ac.uk.opencetl/files/files/ecms/web-content/Finlay-(2008)-Reflecting-on-reflective-practice-PBPL-paper-52.pdf

Koehler, M. J., & Mishra, P. (2009). What is technological pedagogical content knowledge? Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 9(1), 60-70. Retrieved from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/29544/article_29544.pdf

Puentedura, R. (2010). SAMR and TPCK: Intro to advanced practice. Retrieved from http://hippasus.com/resources/sweden2010/SAMR_TPCK_IntroToAdvancedPractice.pdf.

Digital Fluency Intensive Week 2

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

Today I learnt that the 'Learn' part of Manaiakalani is about effective pedagogy in a digital learning environment. I liked the analogy of giving a student a device without a proper framework and pedagogy to guide them, is like giving a child a car. They need to be scaffolded to use these tools to support their learning otherwise it will be a waste of time and could end in a complete disaster. 

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

Today I learnt how to organise my tabs! I am the queen of having so many tabs open that I can only see the icons. I had no idea that the extensions Onetab and Toby even existed and now I am keen to see what other extensions are out there to keep things organised. 

I am also confident in using Google Hangouts now and have planned to 'Hangout' with a few of my Mindlab buddies tonight since our classes are no longer face to face. Using google calendar to send invitations to 'hangout' is so easy!

Organising my school gmail has been awesome! I have changed the way my gmail is set up and can find priority emails. The promotional emails (which are mainly junk) are now separated into their own category. My gmail at the last school I taught at was set up like that already so I'm glad I know how to adjust different features myself now. 

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

Since I am one to one iPads in a junior class I feel a little out of depth as they are so different. At this stage I would use my MacBook and connect it to the Apple TV to use 'hangouts.'

I am keen to learn about the Explain Everything app and am hoping for more of a connection to iPads to be made with the content we are learning.  

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

Organising my gmail will definitely help with finding emails. I have created a few labels so it is easy to find different online bills and other personal things as before today everything was a bit of a shambles and I struggled to find anything I needed. 

I also recorded a google hangout between myself and a few course mates using QuickTime. It's shows us learning as we go so excuse the floundering we do!

I have a personal goal this week to comment on a few blogs so feel free to comment on mine :-)