DFI te rā tuawaru

Today was focussed on devices. We had some time with a Chromebook and an ipad. This integrated well with the Manaiakalani kaupapa because the explanation covered why these devices are the choices for use with the Manaiakalani model. There was also 101 Hapara Teacher Dashboard, a play with the Digital Dig anda chance to register for the Google Educator exam.
We were asked to create a screencast with reference to one of the content areas of the Manaiakalani cybersmart curriculum. I looked at Smart Media because I think this topic is a really interesting area for students and teachers to investigate. There is a lot of content that can be used or adapted to fit the age, stage and delivery angle, and it fits into a variety of learning areas for secondary school students.

DFI te rā tuaono

Data was the big topic today and the group covered Google Forms, MyMaps and Sheets. There was a great amount of content. The challenge was to use a 'create' tool to analyse data and then share the analysis on our blogs. I decided to analyse my blog post frequency over the last 4 years and think about the trends that the analysis shows.

Firstly, I investigated my total posts. I was a little surprised by the downwards trend, although 2019 hasn't finished yet. I looked a little closer at 2016 and was reminded that in that year I was totally new to Google Drive and blogged everything I learned so that my blog could be used by me as a tutoring tool when I forgot. I also reflected that since 2017, I have been carrying two major roles for Kootuitui ki Papakura so that was the most probably reason for the dramatic decrease in posts. Oh, and with this post, my 2019 total will rise to 12!
Secondly, I investigated the monthly data for my blog posting. The trend over each year is quite clear to me that most of my blogging is done between March and September, which is the 'meat' of the year. I don't do much blogging over the summer period and not while I am on annual leave. This is quite reasonable because I only use this as a professional blog, however, I will aim to try and complete a couple of posts over the 2019-2020 summer period to see whether I get views of these posts.

Let's Animate

At DFI 3 we spent some time focussing on animation. Four of us decided to create an animation that we could join together. We decided to use a plane flying through several landscapes. Above is my individual animation. While below is the video of the 4 animations playing one after the other.

DFI te rā tuarua

Kia ora te whānau. Rāmere, 6th Hepetema, he DFI te rā tuarua. He reremahi ko te kaupapa. He pai ki ahau te taupānga Kūkara. Ināianei, i te mahi ahau te wātaka Kūkara, mahara Kūkara, īmera Kūkara, hui ataata Kūkara me te ripa rorohiko.
The create task was to use Quicktime to record a hangout meet and discuss a blog post. For some reason my internal microphone was not working and I only recorded the video with no sound, which I deleted. So, then I did a bit of troubleshooting and discovered that I needed to give Quicktime access to my camera and microphone, which was strange as I only used it about 2 -3 weeks ago for the Online Toolkits. Anyway, then I did a short test which is attached.

Smart Relationships

Here are some learning activities that I put together for one of the teachers I am supporting this year. Resources have come from Manaiakalani and Google, as well as my ideas. Only a few students got really into the Pick-a-Path story, which I thought would be very engaging but wasn't. The reason for this I think was that I probably needed to do some prior work with the students on algorithmic thinking so that they were in a good position to understand the planning process required for this activity.

Smart Relationships

Here is an online book I made with Book Creator. It works easily on chrome and is now good for chromebooks as well as tablets. There are many choices of colours, fonts, shapes and backgrounds, as well as the ability to upload images, record and also read aloud.

Cybersmart Smart Relationships

Click to read this book, made with Book Creator

https://read.bookcreator.com

Manaiakalani Innovation Team - connecting with each other

In the final week of term 2, all the facilitators working in the Manaiakalani programme met together for debrief and planning days. We each had 5 minutes to talk about our work in our cluster over the term. Here is what I presented from Kootuitui. The first slide was a screenshot of what I found when I search Kootuitui ki Papakura in Google images. It shows our logo numerous times, our strands of work, some of our sponsors/supporters and also our links with Manaiakalani and other clusters. The second slide represents the children at the heart of our work - they are always happy to see us and engage in cybersmart learning. Slide three represents the difficulties at times of working in multiple strands, in various places with different people and trying to keep everyone on the same track. Slide four states the goals of our facilitators, and slide five focusses on how we best get the work done; by sharing.

Manaiakalani Innovation Team - Connecting with Each Other

Today I spent a great day with the Manaiakalani Innovation Team which comprised the Manaiakalani leaders, the outreach facilitators and education programme leaders of the first and second outreach clusters. The second outreach is beginning and the team has expanded greatly with wonderful educators coming onboard.
Through the day everyone delivered their 5-minute introduction. This was a way for people to connect with one another. The DLO above was my introduction. I have changed the first slide because I didn't have my pepeha (introduction in Te Reo Māori) written on it at he time. I hadn't put it there because I didn't want to read it. So I had it on my phone as a reminder. However, I used my phone too much and have decided to learn this by heart for the next time and learn to rely solely on my memory.
I shall not be able to join the group again during the week as I have Kootuitui orientation and meetings scheduled, but I am keen to join the weekly online meetings from the start of the term. There is so much we can share about our work and I can learn from the others of the group.

Manaiakalani 6th Annual Hui

The Manaiakalani 6th Annual Hui was held on Friday 25th Aug at the Panmure Yacht Club. Here is the link to the website which has all the information about the day, including presentations that were given. It was a really well-organised day, lead by a team which has worked together and run cluster-wide events for many years. Here are my reflections should Kootuitui be thinking in future to emulate Manaiakalani.

I asked Russell Burt, the Principal Convenor, how many years Manaiakalani had been a formal cluster and he informed me that it came into being as an entity in 2006-2007. Thinking about this being their 6th annual hui meant that their first one was in 2012, and six years after formation. This gave me some comfort in that Kootuitui could also start 'slow' should we be considering a similar type of annual event.

Tea and coffee was available as people arrived. It was a first chance to meet people and reconnect with others. The formal start was a mihi, karakia and waiata from students from Pt England school and principal, Russell Burt. The student spoke confidently and the group sang with heart and love. the student who did the whaikorero said that the marae of the area was Ruapotaka, however there wasn't a kaumatua to start the day. The second thing I noticed was that even though everyone was welcomed, there wasn't a whakawhanaungatanga. Maybe this was because the community of Manaiakalani knows itself well and members see each other often. I am sure that Manaiakalani followed their local tikanga and should we have an event like this in Kootuitui, I must remember to check what our tikanga is.

The first section was student ambassadors from each of the Manaiakalani schools sharing their inquiries through short presentations. These had Learn Create Share as the base and included slide shows and movies, and links to their blogs to invite feedback. The student from Puau gave her presentation in Te Reo. All inquiries were local problems, eg water from gutters through pipes into the Tamaki River; Reduce, Reuse, Recycle; disability parking; transport around the local community; how we can keep ourselves safe in our community; sustainability in school, and an inquiry into a school problem. Following this, every table was given two blog addresses to make a comment on some of these specific blogs.

Having students up first was a very powerful start which demonstrated the impact of inquiry learning in 1:1 digital environment. Students were confident, calm and eager to explain what and how they had learnt. It would be fantastic to have a student representative from each of the Kootuitui schools present as their Manaiakalani peers did. As yet, we have not had any students present to any formal Kootuitui forum. It would be good to think about getting this started, maybe with one or two students first. Having attended a Manaiakalani Open Day last year, I remember student presenters there, so students have multiple opportunities to present their learning within their cluster.

Following the students, some of the teachers on the Spark Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher programme gave their presentations. Each lead us through their inquiries with a digital presentation called an 'Ignite Talk': the slides move on without needing to be clicked. They were doing a run through as a precursor to their presentation at ULearn. One teacher is using the Paideia method which I was first introduced to in the movie HighTech High which I watched at ULearn 2016 and which Kootuitui hired to show within the cluster late last year.

A Paideia Seminar is a collaborative, intellectual dialogue facilitated by open-ended questions about a text or topic – increased understanding of ideas and values. This method is more often referred to as the Socratic Method during which the teacher acts as facilitator guiding the students into meaningful dialog. The teacher inquiries were each interesting for the different questions they were posing, hypothesising and testing.

After morning tea, Rebecca Jesson from Woolf Fisher Research Centre spoke about the efficacy of engaging in discussion driving further learning. Classroom observations within Manaiakalani have revealed that there is not as much 1-1 discussion occurring as previously. The provocation after the earlier presentations is that the leading edge of the wave is focusing on discussion but what is the rest of the wave (the other teachers and students) doing? She suggested that we need to have a broader mindset about 'create' to not just include a finished product but also a process - of thinking, of collaboration. Recent classroom observations by WFRC have also pointed to low levels of student empowerment around tasks although there are other types of empowerment. The teaching focus needs to get to a place where there is more critical thinking. Rebecca believes that critical literacy is difficult to understand let alone do. How often do we see students showing reasoned thinking about what to do or believe?

Rebecca asked participants to reflect on their vision for Manaiakalani, discuss this in their groups and question whether this has changed over the years. Individuals were invited to share their ideas with the whole group, eg such as paddling the same waka up the same river, schools seeing the positive educational results coming through, increased whānau engagement through Kawa of Care sessions with parents, wanting to engage the community and schools further to more fully empower students into careers as doctors, lawyers, engineers, politicians.  Woolf Fisher came into the community in 2012 and part of Rebecca's purpose today is to bring everyone back to the original shared vision to investigate whether it can be further capitalised on. She wondered aloud whether the cluster needs to redo the visioning exercise.

I reflected that we need to make sure we share the research results/evidence within our schools and communities and continue to have discussions about our vision and our shared goals and achievement challenges. We were asked to do a 5-minute audit on the types of thinking that are currently being shown on our student blogs. Do we have blogs that demonstrate thinking about thinking?

Rebecca asked the cluster to concentrate on how it is evolving to greater engage and empower - 'e-words' - students in ways that show up in their achievement. She holds the vision more than the data, believing in very high quality teaching and learning experiences that show up like 'footprints in the sand' when the data is captured. Russell spoke about how schools scaffold students in their learning to assist them but does this very process restrict student agency?

After lunch, Pat Snedden, Chair of the Manaiakalani Education Trust, addressed us. He spoke about the message of hope to Tamaki and other communities like Tamaki and the huge support from funders such as Spark and the NEXT Foundation in the spreading of the Outreach through NZ. He gave a thank you message to everyone doing the work and reiterated Rebecca's message that they must not relax in it but push on. He shared where the money for Manaiakalani comes from and emphasised that the way teachers welcome partners into their classrooms and the evidence of change support the partnerships and ongoing funding. He said that the MET is in service to other clusters raising resources, innovating, and helping make connections as an issue of 'love' and to do what is good for NZ. It was extremely good news for Kootuitui that the Manaiakalani Education Trust is committed to continued support.

It was announced that a new sponsorship has been secured for two teachers to go to Chicago next year to attend the ISTI (Information Systems and Technology Innovation) Conference and that the advert would be put into the Manaiakalani Google+ community before the next school holidays.

The Kahui Ako section of the afternoon was an opportunity for the COL inquiries to be shared via a poster session. This was organised as a bingo session related to the Manaiakalani Teaching as Inquiry Framework. A stamp on the bingo card was given after visiting the display, talking through the inquiry with the teacher and a blog comment being placed on the inquiry teacher's blog. This was an excellent opportunity to get up, move around, talk, investigate the COL inquiries, question, and give feedback. What's more sponsorship had been secured for a few prizes for lucky bingo winners.

The afternoon finished off with the bar being opened and snacks appearing on the tables, for a time of socialisation and welcome to other teachers who had not been able to make it during the day.

The MC for the day was Dorothy Burt and she had a very light and engaging touch which made it seem like the day moved seemlessly from one section to the next. In all, the organisation was expertly crafted and executed with the people doing the most talking being the students and teachers, with a little from the lead researcher and the MET Chair. The breaks and catering were sufficient to get around and chat and take refreshments. The caterers moved quietly and efficiently during the day without me even noticing them.

The main message I took from the day was that this hui demonstrated how the Manaiakalani cluster is a learning community with the main presentations and discussions being lead by students and teachers. There weren't long-winded speeches from school leaders, board or trust members, facilitators or sponsors. The day was about students and teachers sharing the stories of their learning journeys and it felt fantastic.

Putting students and teachers at the centre of the day seemed a natural and effortless way of holding this hui. It is at the classroom level where all the knowledge and skills about combining the pedagogy and the tools are put into practice every day; it is where 'the rubber meets the road'. It is also the place where those who are not in the room hardly ever get the chance to venture into.

Manaiakalani Visitors' Day 15th June

    The day began with individual student presentations from many of the Manaiakalani schools: these children each did a speech about a particular aspect of their learning, eg an inquiry topic and its process, supported by video, slideshows, and explanation.
    After this, the Chef Executive of the Trust, Jenny Oxley, made a presentation. This began with the visit of the Hawaiian waka in 2015, which was a hugely important day for the cluster as the visitors spent time in Pt England school sharing the learning with students and teachers.

    Next, the cluster was explained via key labels and themes, eg decile 1a, geographical location, 2500 children, 13 schools, kura kaupapa, Catholic, and a special school and the paramount importance of equity. Links to the cluster include twitter.com/clusternz and manaiakalani.org. Followed by the members of the team, the trust (to provide more resources than the schools had access to), and the many commercial and philanthropic partners.

    The 3 main elements of the programme were then explained as:
1. Acceleration: children talking about their learning and using technology as a tool.
2. Whanau engagement: parents invest by paying for their children's device. The Trust makes this affordable via micro-financing.
3. Research: investigation of the effect of the programme on student achievement.

    There are 5 Outreach clusters of about 40 schools throughout NZ, of which Kootuitui ki Papakura is one, being supported by the Manaiakalani vision, structure and pedagogy. There is also another group of schools that has taken onboard different versions of the programme.
    Next came the goals of the programme followed by the background from the beginnings and the shift in student achievement. The opportunities for teachers were discussed in relation to the digital teacher academy, the innovative teacher programme, the professional learning groups, the toolkit sessions, the GEG groups, the annual GAFE Summit, the Google ClassOnair, the annual hui, f2f opportunities and the relationship with Auckland University. The Trust is thinking about establishing a housing trust which could benefit teachers as well as whanau.
    Participants were told about the cybersmart curriculum, the use of Blogger as the platform for sharing learning, and shown the circular model which combines LCS and the principles- visibility, ubiquity, connectivity and empowerment. There was quite a lot of discussion around the principle of visibility for both teachers and students. Once a student goes digital, parents can be disadvantaged if they don't have access because the opportunity to view bookwork may have disappeared. 
Dave Winter, Outreach Delivery Manager said, "Privatisation restricts the opportunity to improve. Visibility and Kawa of Care sessions also reestablish the relationship between parents and schools, as schools may have been unpleasant experiences for them in their childhood."
    GAFE, Google sites, Google+ Communities and Hapara were discussed and how they operate together. Also, how the work may be referenced to SAMR and technology is implemented into teaching and learning. Everything in Manaiakalani has Creative Commons so can be copied and repurposed.

Next, it was time for school visits. I meet Fiona Grant, the Lead Facilitator, at Kura Kaupapa Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa o Puau. The children were working on their digital footprint and public/private. The resources are in their class folder and there was plenty of discussion.
    Everyone met back together again for the afternoon session. We listened to 3 teachers about their digital 1:1 teaching-learning environment. 

The first was a year 4 teacher from Pt England School, Room 11, where she'd been for 15 years through the journey. She was in her 6th year 1:1 with both ipads and chromebooks. The approach was to chose a student and follow their learning through the class site. The 'Teacher Notes' were on the site accessible to the teachers and management, not to the students. The student had watched the videos, done a writing task, resolved comments by the teacher, loaded the learning to his blog and by 9.30pm his parents had commented on his blog post. The average child posted about 1-2 times a week. The teacher put folders on her site which contain photos and pictures she has taken through the day.

    The second teacher was a junior teacher in Room 19 at Pt England who used ipads with Explain Everything in her class. She started by working through the tools and then followed up with rewindable reading activities which took the whole lesson eliminating the need for a reading rotation. All activities had audio instruction so that the children didn't have to continuously come up to the teacher. Writing was still done in a book with a pencil, but 
augmented with an ipad and stylus. 


Lastly, we met a teacher from the high school who is a 
participant in the Google ClassOn Air. She talked about applications with the SAMR model and that the ClassOn Air lessons are potentially to be used with training teachers while at training college. Discussions are continuing with Auckland University Teacher Education Department.

This was a very enjoyable and interesting day. It confirmed the journey that Kootuitui ki Papakura are on. I could understand the presentations, the class facilitation and the teacher presentations due to my learning over the last 6 months. Even though our cluster is much younger than Manaiakalani in its digital enablement journey, it is still a work in progress that we are all collectively on. Thanks Jenny, Dave, Fiona, student and teacher presenters.

Another remix project today

https://d157rqmxrxj6ey.cloudfront.net/angelag/45527

Remix with Google Draw

   

This morning at Stonefields School, the students were taught to remix using Google Draw and this is my result.

Chromebook Care Collage

This morning, I learnt to take photos, make a 4-picture collage and then add captions to demonstrate how to care for a chromebook. The students did their own collages and I sat alongside my group making mine. Thanks to the wonderful students of Room 9 at Ruapotaka School. I shall definitely do this when I have classes of my own.

My 6-Word Summer Remix Using Mozilla Thimble

This was a great lesson with the year 7 and 8's at Stonefields School. We remixed a summer poem and picture to learn, create and share our work. We altered HTML script and learnt how to link the outcome to the photographer and our personal blogs.

Outreach Support and Collaboration

Yesterday, the Principal Convenors of the Outreach Clusters met in Auckland at Edmund Hillary School. They come together about once a term to receive the assistance of the Manaiakalani leadership. These meetings move around the the clusters and yesterday was Kootuitui's turn. There is a lot of serious talking to be done in a day, as well as a little socialising on the night of arrival, but it is a pity that the group do not have longer to visit one or two of the other schools in the cluster being visited. Principals have travelled a long way from the West Coast, Christchurch and Northland and yet they only get to meet the staff and students of one school.

Principals from the Ako Hiko Cluster (above) and the Hornby
Cluster (below) address the students at Edmund Hillary School.

Another thought I have was that there could be some benefit from the other principals of the cluster being visited meeting with this group. These people do not have to travel far and could perhaps spare an hour or two participating in one section of the Convenors' Forum. A form of leadership development or at least a session involving a wider number of the school leaders who have opted into the outreach programme. There could be huge benefits to offering a part of the Leadership
Forum day to all school leaders
when the forum visits their cluster.

A third thought from yesterday is that no secondary principals were present. I think there is an issue that all the Principal Convenors are from the primary sector.  In NZ, it is a disadvantage for our children that in our system the sectors are separated and that primary teachers and principals don't have a full understanding of how secondary schools work and vice versa. Secondary schools are different and need to be represented at the leadership level. In fact, the need for secondary school participation is nowhere more plain than for one of the clusters which does not have a secondary school member. Our children all pass through primary and secondary school within their educational lives and therefore secondary schools must be brought on board as full participants.

Thanks to Raina for hosting a lovely karakia with the delightful students of EHS, and for organising class visits, morning tea and "meet the staff" at the school.

Kootuitui logo

"Kootuitui means connecting/linking or weaving together. In this programme it is about connecting the dimensions of Digital Education, Students’ Health and Healthy Homes. The name has been chosen in consultation with manawhenua for Papakura schools participating in the Manaiakalani Outreach Programme.

The logo in the first instance is the result of collaboration between Year 7&8 students and a teacher at Edmund Hillary School. The teacher crafted the logo by combining the main themes and colours from students’ work. Edmund Hillary School’s business partners KPMG created the digital format. Then the teacher painted the logo in oils (pictured).

The logo depicts Uenuku, the Rainbow God, as the source providing clarity from heaven. The purple koru represents Education. The green koru represents Health and the lavender koru below represents Healthy Homes and Whanau. All three koru connect/link to the universe through the name Kootuitui. 

The three waves depicted in the purple koru represent kia ako (to learn), kia hanga (to create) and kia tohatoha (to share). This is the pedagogy central to the Manaiakalani Outreach programme."

na Kataraina Nock Principal Edmund Hillary School October 2015

Kia ora Kootuitui ki Papakura

I am so delighted to be appointed to the new role of Education Programme Leader for the Kootuitui ki Papakura schools' cluster. In my first two weeks I have visited five of the six schools and met the principals, attended three Manaiakalani and one Kootuitui professional development days, started working with Dave Winter, the Manaiakalani Outreach Delivery Manager and Maria Krausse, the cluster's Outreach Facilitator and spent time at my base school, Edmund Hillary School, with the Principal Convenor, Kataraina Nock, and her staff. What a dedicated group of professionals there are in this cluster and working with this cluster, all with their focus firmly on the children and their learning.

"He waka eke noa"

We are all in this canoe together and I am privileged to have been given a seat in this waka.

My blog is going to chronicle our journey. I will write about our plans, activities, successes, failures, and things we learn along the way, and discuss how these shape our direction. Along with the narrative, I will add my reflections and ideas, especially in relation to the quality of my paddling in the waka. 

Well hello Google! Since 2011, I have had just a few forays into the world of Google, sharing documents in Drive and forming circles in Google +. As Kootuitui ki Papakura operates in a Google world, I am busy getting to grips with this world so that I am conversant within it. I now have three 'user' profiles in Google so that I can separate Kootuitui from home and from my base school through which I blog. I have joined a number of communities in Google+ and shared into the Kootuitui site from other sites. I have started using Google calendar, had my first Hangout and have started learning the basics of a Google Site. Finally, Blogger is my first serious attempt at blogging.

I look forward to your comments and feedback.