Education going forward

DFI 9 Revision.

Well the DFI programme has finished today but the digital journey will continue with enhanced skills and understanding of Manaiankalani.

Today we covered ubiquitous, probably never before in education has the need been so great in this time of our nations lockdown.

The last 7 weeks has truly proven the value of this, our pupils have had opportunity to genuinely choose where and when they studied, this is empowering agency for them, and also for the teachers to see how a new normal could look like.

Educators now have the chance to adapt and incorporate the online environment and skills both in the classroom and beyond.

At NBC we have already started having this conversation with our teachers, what we have learnt and will continue but one positive now is that we know we have the community with us as they have witnessed first a hand the power of Manaiakalani pedagogy.

 The ability to rewind learning was one aspect that wasn’t explored enough in the classroom, with teachers having to remove barriers to learning  online through many means  it enabled more visibility with the documentation  enabling rewindable learning to seamlessly happen.

So what am I proud of?

·      The whole staff, not just teachers but also the teachers aides, and the ancillary staff who were quickly added to our system to allow them access to pupils’ learning on line, another barrier gone! And everyones confidence and skill level rising above all expectations.

·      The consistent approach through out the school, that daily that gave students and whanau sense of continuity.

·      The relationships that were kept nurtured on line with daily meets , which hopefully will enable a smoother transition back on Monday in level 2.

The challenges now:

·      To keep the momentum going of learn create share.

·      To capture all the positives and apply them.

·      In the light of our experiences to explore Manaiakalani pedagogy with renewed clarity.

   

 Succinctly summed up below

A huge shout out to the Manaiakalani Team and especailly Mark and Sharon, who have not only supported me during the DFI but all the NBC staff  on our digital journey together with all the extra support during lockdown. Thank you.  

DFI 8 Empowerment

DFI 8 Computational Thinking

I love the strength of the word "empowered", and the reason why Manaiakalani chose it over the word “agency” for those who community many have a negagtive contitation towards  the word, is thought provoking.

In communities where they are disempowerment over everyday basics of housing, money, food giving back through empowerment is pivital to their lives.

A stong  message behind  device use  is that its not just a tool but a way of transformig the learning experience and lives of students and whanau.

A video that I viewed through  the Manaiankanlai  site, showed how a boy through  using his device helped his dad get employment, I realised that day that we are giving the gift of Rangatiratanga,  so well said by  Pat Sneddon in his quote below.

Following on from this was another statement  that resonated with me today ,   we want our tamariki to be  creative directors instead of passive consumers.

 Enabling our teachers to be digitially fluent which  leads to digital fluent students,   is a believe of  Manaiakalani  which is evident  through MKO's strongly, developed digital fluency programme, which they  support their MKO  schools so generously with, with   faciliatiors and  teacher release.

 Today  through  exploring The New Digital Technologies Curriculum, the rational behind Digital Computational  thinking and Design and developing  for educational outcome  becme clear when its set in the framework above.

 The links and resoucered to gain further understanding I found valuable were

https://rarangamatihiko.com/  and  https://kiatakatu.ac.nz/  

I will be unpacking these with my staff when things return to the new normal!

The alignment with the cybersmart curriculum will show the staff that it's not another add on but one they have already being implementing , knowing this connection will increase their awareness and need of this aspect of the technology curriculum.

Lastly today I dabbled with Mindcraft, a first for me! I can see the appealing hook of some of the coding apps but I also realised that you do not necessarily need to use a device to start computational thinking, so lets start!

DFI 7 MKO at NBC

I always find the Manaiakalani journey fascinating and an important one to know,

as it gives a foundation to why we took this pathway of learning at our school.

I hadn’t made treaty connection of Partnership, Participation and Protection before, so I will use this as a great introduction for parent and Whanua meetings each year.

Partnership brings a sense of belonging to the journey,

Participation gives us a clear way forward about the pathway and the why we need device ownership
Protection is the behind the scenes tools that gives our whanua and parents the security they want to see and know about in this cyber world.

Basically the what, the why, the how of Manaiakalani.

To enable our children to be  good  digital citizens we must  empower our learners  to  be confident decision makers.

Consistency of, programme implementation, at every level of the school, along with known language and deliberate teaching are all vital for this to occur.

The cyber smart curriculum must be programmed into your yearly plan and have links into weekly / unit planning to ensure that deliberate teaching takes place, at least once a week when children get their device and then recapped each year.

There are 12 categories in the cyber smart suite but the 3 below are the key ones to be to taught yearly

                

The importance of consistency of language needs to be reinforced across the school: right place, right choice, right time and positive, thoughtful, helpful are to be seen and heard in every learning space.

By giving a child the skills to harness a device and empowering them with positive on line behaviour they will be  confident, connected lifelong learners who can be ubiquitous in their learning.I liked the question if  “I google you in 10 years time will you be happy?” we have succeeded in ensuring our children have digital citizen ship if they can answer, ”yes”.

So for me my review questions  for NBC are

Are we  visual in the what, why, how of our Manaiakalani journey?

Does our yearly curriculum document explicitly state the cybersmart categories to be covered?

Is our Manaiakalani programme robust enough, in pedodagy and practice?
Are we being proactive enough with our whanau and parent education?

COVID19 level 3

COVID19 level 3

School is open

The signs are up, the desks are labelled the floor is taped, to ensure the 1m physical distancing, the new staff roster and daily timetable completed.

We’re ready to welcome back our tamaraki group of level 3 COVID 19, 2020.

My usual first day of term ritual of standing at the school gate getting high fives and hugs from the children and knowing smiles from parents of  “they’re yours now” before they head off to their coffee groups was different today.

There was, the smile but keep your distance, this is what 2 m really looks children, then the reassurance and explanations to some the parents before they give a concerned look before they hurried off to their work places. Oh what a difference from day 1 of 2020, 13 weeks ago.

A thought to ponder

A staff member on TOD commented that with the slower pace of life and been able to focus on teaching without all the other distractions together with the level of student engagement on line, has given her back the joy of teaching again.

So what do we need to learn from this, so we keep our young teachers in this career energised and with the passion that they started with?

Todays Gratitude

Having the Manaiakalani outreach programme over the last two years, has given NBC a renewed direction, a journey that allows 21-century skills and competencies to thrive.

A positive of this unique time in our history is that is has shown our community how MKO pedagogy driven through connectedness, has been visible and ubiquitous empowering their children through agency to grow knowledge. No marketing or persuasion of mine could have done it better.

So unknowingly, COVID 19 has shown the Manaiakalani pathway to be again a success story, which hopefully given our leaders food for thought for the direction of future educational policy!

DFI 6 Collaborative sites

Collaborative sites.

Today felt as though I had a some scaffolding to hang onto as we were building on our site knowledge from last week.  Each week until now has been new knowledge for me so to have to time to go over, and refine my skills and consolidate my knowledge on google site was appreciated. The more you delve into google site tools,the more I realise the options available and where I can challenge myself.

I enjoyed looking at other sites and critiquing them today, it gave me a clearer direction of the model  I'd like to achieve, as a visual person this was one of my goals.

 Today  as we worked in small groups  on our site goals,  with  the conversations naturally flowing, with questions and answers coming from all,  I realised everyone was a learner and teacher and I relaxed, which is the best sate to learn in for long term memory. I enjoy this supportive of type of facilitation.

The Manaiakalani pedagogy highlighted this week was CONNECTED, this is so  needed and amplified in our present lockdown.
I was reflecting on the days after the earthquake,10 years ago when our pupils were out of school for 4 weeks, how far we have come. My home landline was the only form of communication to my community and staff I had for weeks. Fast forward a decade, every family is connected to a teacher daily, we zoom and google meet with our staff and learning has continued, in a new format.
Hopefully our connectedness  isn't fast forwarded by event in the next decade, but the power of  being able to network so readily has opened up our world.

I will now go and review our school sites to ensure the visual appeal and site functionality under the below criteria are meet, enabling us to be as connected as possible.

DFI 4 Dealing with Data

Dealing with data.

The pedagogy we looked at today is Sharing which is in our human DNA its who we are as a race we love to share; we’ve gone from smoke signal to YouTube!

In this digital age students have access  to a global audience across many platforms, Manaiakalani has chosen to uses blogging to share and respond.

Blogging has many advantages as seen below,

 but  some parents may need guidance and information on security and as the fear of the world been able to see their child’s work or  them being let onto the www is beyond their safety net.

As with my just in time learning, that I’m doing presently with Google meet, sites and forms, hopefully the need and authentic way that students are using blogging with this lockdown may enlighten some to the powerful learning tool that blogging is.

Today I realised the vast amount of information that can be accessed by the blogger and enjoyed using this data to create a spreadsheet.

The short cuts and tools avaiable in sheets like many in the Google suite is amazing.

Given the time to explore is appreciated in our DFI day.

A fun tool is Google MyMaps;

it’s an exciting app that allows you to plan journeys

in a customised way, while we’re all in lockdown have some fun and plan you next holiday. ! 

DFI 5 Making learning visible and sites

DFI 5  Making learning visible  & Collaborate sites.

The pedagogy of making learning visible is one that I have been striving for across our school, it gives clarity, transparency on many levels and is an enabler of success.

In the classroom from a learning perspective, "guess what the teacher is thinking or wanting " needs
to go and make way for  a very clear visual scaffolded approach to learning that considers the learner and their style of learning more.

Making  the default  always to be visible allows parents and whanau to access their child learning and become more involved.  In our present situation  with online learning, a parent emailed me with the comment how excited she was to be able to see what her child needed to learn and explore and her child's response to it.

When students see the, what, how and why, learning gains more purpose and gives them more control over setting their own goals and targets  and success criteria.
With students too making any part of the learn create share visible, to an audience there is an increased response, which inspires a learner to continue.
Hatte's top influencer of learning was feedback,  the way we are structure the feedback with positive thoughtful helpful  further enhances this.
 Visibility for the teacher comes with the use of Hapara again a tool that allows for instant feedback, and is invaluable to ensure students are at the  right place at the right time!


I really enjoyed searching  through the multimodle sites, which engages the learner in so many ways.
The hook has always  resonated with me, finding that for your learner I believe is the key to a great learning relationship.

The new learning of creating our own sites, was exciting, and a learning curve, but the unlimited possibilities to engage learning is unlimited.
This is perfect timing for the world we are presently in.
I created an ANZAC site  which I shared with our Year 8 teacher, to give to her students and give me feedback!