DMIC: Cactus Status

Kia ora and welcome back to another blog post chewing over the topic that has been on my mind lately of status.

This is a continuation of Jodi Hunter's battle against status in the maths classroom and her theories and ideologies related to mathematics and status.

I see what Jodi means. I see status played in many areas of learning. I see status all through life and learning. But just because it is does not mean that it should be especially if it is hindering quality learning and engagement.

Jodi believes that it is the teacher's role to illustrate to the class that every student is capable - not delegating  high status to the high status students - the students who know whether the answer is right or wrong. We want to delegate that maths is the high status here. Maths determines what is right and wrong not human social interaction.

I find this a very difficult thing to do because delegating high status to children who get a correct answer is difficult not to do!

I need to consciously  frame my positive feedback around thinking, explanations, risk taking and questioning. I need to stop having conversations that explain how to get answers and rather listen to the children and choose students who already have a solution to explain and share back rather than choosing a student who has a wrong answer unintentionally thereby unintentionally lowering his or her status.

Jodi suggests a few other strategies:

• Create 'find out what's wrong' questions. Set up maths questions where the children are looking for what is wrong in a question.
• Put the 'onus' on the group. Share back what they heard other's thinking. The pressure is not just on one child's thinking.
• One of my colleagues who is our maths team leader and fabulous at getting her children involved in maths and accelerated in maths came up with the idea of getting the children to write out the problem of the day. "Assign students to write out the question the day before. Give them boundaries so that they are applying what is current in the class. The children then get to teach this and the delegating of mathematical knowledge gets passed to them."
• Give explicit feedback.
• Children's feedback or sharing is much more powerful than teacher talk.
• Get the answer out of the way - now let's talk about why that was the right answer.

Thinking About Strengths

'It is important that no one person has all the strengths.' This should be the motto for group thinking learning and collaboration.

Based on discussions from the group I was sitting with in our DMIC session and Jodi's content I gathered the following ideas to implement.





'It's not the the destination it's the journey.'
Tell the children who want to get the answer that they are wonderful - maybe they are over participators- then re-direct them to think about what strength they contributed to their partner. Get them to explicitly identify which strength that they contributed.

Value the thinking above everything.
When supporting learning give no indication about whether an answer is right or wrong. Rather question whether or not the thinking is right or wrong and revert the students back to the question.
The idea is that the children become comfortable grappling with each other's reasoning and listen carefully to what other's are saying for clues to extend on the problem solving.

Each child needs to have a voice and area of expertise.
It is important that children are aware of what they have that other will value. They need to understand their strength and what they can contribute. This gives them motivation to question the problem instead of simply agreeing with what the 'pen holder' or most vocal child says.
Look for strengths in the children and assign each child their strengths.

These could be in the form of badges:

• pattern person - spots and uses visual patterns
• wonderer - thinks outside the box and wonders about new and different ideas
• picture perfect - draws pictures
• reader - decoder
• super starter - energy booster positive
• equipper - feels comfortable using tactile equipment to create and build thinking
• notator - writes things down
• interrogator - questions thinking
• presenter - shares back to others, speaks comfortably in front of a crowd
• calculator - basic facts strengths
• listener - listens and sums up or repeats to clarify
• detector - makes sure that it is a right strategy or true problem
• speedometer - helps to manage the pace of the group, slows rushing to the answer or speeds the group up.

Motivational, developmental talks help!

Reinforce the the thinking and the team skills that create good mathematicians.
'I like how you are slowing down together. You're really thinking about it and making sure you've got it right in your head. That's what a good mathematician does.'

Pre-correct the likely-hood of attitude upsets and give them stems for extension.
Things that bring a hero down:
I can't...
Thats too easy...
I don't care...
I don't know...

Power boosters:
Lets try another solution
Lets ask for a suggestion

When in an intermediate school fed by DMIC Primary schools, Jodi noticed that the top children (the ones who got placed in gifted and talented maths groups) were mainly children who had been through DMIC. Not only where these children being giving highly challenging maths problems they had been given a huge boost in social skills - developing relationships, listening to each other and equalising status. 

When one child was asked regarding her DMIC training, 'What have you learnt in maths?' she responded, ' I have learnt how to be a good person.' The child explained by saying that she thought once that she was better than other people and would only play with others who were as good as 'me' ( herself). In maths I learnt that everybody had something to share and I started to play with others too, so I learnt to be a good person.

Is maths really the focus?
We want to create learners - in essence, a society -  that values multiple solutions, values others, makes time for different personalities, strengths and ways of thinking. We should be developing learners that can see things in their own individual way and yet make an effort to see things from other's perspectives. I want to create in my students a willingness to slow down and seek the richness of persevering through challenges ( the learning pit) rather than jumping to answers and conclusions - children who encourage and find new and unique solutions together with a team.

Developing Mathematical Inquiry Communities (DMIC) Facebook page

There is no Abilities only Status....

DMIC: Thinking about Status

Ability Grouping

What does this do for children's achievement and mathematical dispositions?
I does not work either if we mix them all up and pop them into their own groups. We need to understand how children work together and what status is. This means status is coming from outside the classroom and affecting what happens in the classroom. This has a lot to do with competence. Other children need to see all children in the class as capable and worth listening to.

"You are valued. You have things to say that are unique to you. You are worth listening to." This should be the mantra of every classroom.

The following ideas are direct notes from Jodi Hunter's second to last DMIC course presentation to teachers.

Create learning intentions that have to do with explaining thinking and not just mathematical strategy.
Today we are learning to share by agreeing and disagreeing using the magic word 'because'. To initiate this you could create a problem to check to see whether or not children could agree and disagree and can say why. This could be a completed problem with a wrong answer.

Always check that everyone has the same information, is listening and ready with their thinking.

Junior children may not always be able to read the numbers so it is important to discuss this verbally and check with partners to make sure things have been heard.

Uses of grouping - positioning and repositioning children -
Grouping means assigning children higher or lower status with your ( the teacher's) words and contexts. The numeracy project advocated for students to be grouped with similar students. We need to stop thinking about students as a stage 4 or a stage 6 child. It is simply indicative of a strategy used to solve something at a particular point in time. As adults we are not stage 1 adults because we use stage 1 strategies.

When National Standards was used in classes children were hearing a lot of 'belows', 'ats' and 'aboves'.  This clarified a status view. Internationally NZ has one of the most stratified systems in the world. Stratification is negatively related to overall achievement.

In uniform groups there is less opportunity for students to use and practice multiple strengths. They are less likely to provide diverse strategies and thinking processes.

But why challenge the status quo? Research has come out to say that children who are in mixed ability groups have more of a growth mindset than those in ability groups. How children are taught in these grouping systems also has an effect on their dispositions and mindsets.

Fixed mindset: Intelligence is status.


Teaching children a 'unit' about fixed and growth mindset makes no difference to their mindset but the words, beliefs and pedagogy we use in the classroom does.

Complex Instruction
Complex instruction has three key principles which are group worthy tasks, meaning that no one child can solve the problem by themselves. They need each other through applying instructional strategies, multiple strategies and status and accountability.



Maybe there is no such thing as ability ... maybe what we are talking about is status.
Usually high ability children are high status children. They have simply had many opportunities to share their ideas, be listened to and questioned on their thinking.
This concept shows up low achievers results as a group problem and a relational problem rather than an individual problem.

Assigning competence - what you will find is that the child who disengages with the group has tried to say something and no one has listened and therefore he or she disengages. Everyone misses out when children are not participating and sharing their ideas.

Think about children as having low status instead of being low ability or low achievers. How do we give children status? How do we raise their understanding of themselves?

You can actually get rid of status.
Status is local and changes within settings and contexts. Value multiple strengths. Status in the classroom reflects that of society. To assign competence, feedback needs to be quality and specific.

Put your phone or laptop near a group and record what is happening in a group. What are they actually talking about in a group? Who has the status?

Ask the status questions: What makes someone good at mathematics?

Tips to re-engage non-participators:

• Ask low risk questions in private conversations in groups. ( "You might think this is difficult but I want you to be the best mathematician you can be.") 
• Use ice-block sticks - at the end of this session you need to have repeated three things (three ice-block sticks) 
• Get the child to respond in a group not in front of the class.

DFI: Certified Level 1

Once again back in the learning pit. Once again feeling that strange nervous pressure. That feeling which the children in my classroom struggle with all the time. Once more recognising that in my own way I have not been walking in their shoes.




Last night the nerves kicked in prior to the following day's DFI ( Digital Fluency Intensive) Google Certification. It was good, but uncomfortable, to be be sitting a test. To recognise the pressure but also the natural need for it.

Google Certification Level 1... check!

So what now...

Now as Term 4 start rumbling forward, carrying us along into summer like a tidal wave the question of next years goals is beginning to arise.

I am posting these goals online to ask you to help keep me accountable! I aim to accomplish at least two.

Goal 1: Run an online Toolkit either in Term 4 or next year. - Extension: aim to run an Online Toolkit once a year.

Goal 2: Apply for MIT in 2020

Goal 3: Apply for Google Class on Air

Goal 4: Investigate Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu

Goal 5: Sustain my online blogging presence.

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

We make a difference. Maniakalani makes a difference. Blogging, relationships and love of learning makes a difference...

Owning this knowledge, understanding how the pedagogy came into being from the ground up, has been invaluable. I have learnt that this pedagogy is not just solely academic education focused. There are a multitude of programs that do this. Maniakalni makes a difference because it is educating the humanity and the academic aspect within all of us. It is a collaborative approach where teachers and students are learning alongside each other. Knowledge is free and accessible and we learn, create and share together - learning through learning, learning through creating, sharing and we create, sharing as we learn, inside, outside, upside down.

It requires relationship. it requires validation. It requires purpose and it makes a difference.

I learnt that this is not just a school philosophy, it is not a government initiative, it is not just an organisation. It is a pedagogy and philosophy that I need to incorporate in my own understanding and actions in order to make the greatest difference now for my children. I am sold... twice over.

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

Having the skills to quickly and easily use all of the google suit has increased my personal confidence and opened up a whole raft of other tools and tricks that I did not before think of using. If the thought crossed y mind, it was often placed into the too hard basket because the time taken to figure it out fail and experiment was just too valuable.

I feel so much more confident to be using google sheets, groups and hangouts and have extended and clarified my use of everyday tools such as sites, docs, drawings and slides.

Little expectations across the course for speed and efficiency have raised the speed of preparation in everyday access to teaching: shortcuts, searches and url. changes have made a difference.

The following document is a collection of key ideas, tips and tricks that I have found most useful and is what I am currently endeavouring to use and put in place in the classroom.

A big shoutout to the facilitators, Maniakalani and the sponsors who made this possible. Thank you to the incredible principal of Hornby Primary for the opportunity to be a part of this DFI. Thank you to all the teachers who participated, for your feedback, great conversations and inspirations.

I am proud to be a part of the Learn Create Share community... this is where it's at.

DFI: Sheets and Forms - The Great Data Wrangle

Welcome back to another great Digital Fluency Intensive day shared here on this collective puddle of thoughts...

After being away for a week, it was good to be back in the learning pit. The morning's opening, where everyone shares and listens, was comforting and stimulating to hear. Challenges, like others sharing how many comments teachers were making per day on blogs or ideas they were developing, helped to inspire and shake up healthy competition.

Dorothy graced us with her presence visiting this session from Auckland. She shared some of her personal life with us explain how she is living and working in her decile one community and walks to all her schools within her community. She say that while living in a decile one community you are entrusting your children to your community and are grateful for the blessings of everyday in comparison to the living standard of many around. 80% of Dorothy's community is statehousing. The average wage the Maniakalani community live on $1900 per annum. In an incredible way most make this work without asking for handouts. It is Dorothy's mission to empower all communities to access learning and break down barriers no matter what decile, condition or status our learners start life from.

EMPOWERED: Empowering the un-empowered

Why do we now talk about EMPOWERING our whanua instead of using the term Agency?
Maniakalani now uses the term empowered because this is what is necessary in order for learners and whanau to  be agents of their own lives. They found that agency had far too many negative connotations especially for the most vulnerable in communities who had been caught up in multiple webs of 'agency' red tape. They did not need another 'agency' in their lives.

If Maniakalani/ Learn, Create, Share/ and the Chromebook platform was just a tool then causing our impoverished communities to buy this expensive tool is just cruel.  The philosophy of Learn Create Share needs to  effect every part of our communities' lives for the better. Their water, power, and daily habits should benefit from changed ideas and skills.

What is being empowered?
If we want to make a difference in the lives of our whanau we need to empower them. As an example, if we are struggling with a digital issue we are able to connect with Dorothy who can pass on a contact who can help. This might save around two days of our working life of having to trying to figure out the learning ourselves. This is empowering.
If we give the children and parents the opportunities and the skills. (eg. how to book  doctors appointment online) being familiar with online platforms, give parents confidence online, give parents the opportunity for internet access, it can change their lives.

This is education people... it is making education, ability, aide and clarity available for all.

Let's Get Learning

The following are ideas, tidbits and information that I will be using, developing and following up with in the classroom and with my children at school.

Google Forms

When creating google forms:
- use the short cut: google.forms.com
- or go direct through the folder you want it to live in

If you are making a form for anyone outside of the school it is important for question one and two to ask: what is your name and what is your email

Remember to check settings:
- send response receipts: so responders can check, 'what did I write?'
- collect email addresses
- and ... more options

On a site embed the form next to the google sheets- That means whoever fills in the form can directly see their data transferred over to the form. You can hide columns such as emails or phone numbers.

It's important to put in the school or be specific about the questions and the structures that you ask.
If you ask people to write in the in their school data may not be consistent and the from may take one school and collect it as three separate ones 9 eg. HPS, Hornby Primary,  and Hornby Primary School.
It really hard to get people to 'do' data entry consistently. The more drop down menus you can use to get your data consistent the better.

When creating an important form, especially for tests or important surveys create it first in google docs. This better to work through with colleagues and share editing rather than just sharing them the form.There is an app you can use called doc to form that will turn your doc into a form.

Under responses, create a spreadsheet. In the spreadsheet select 'Tools' then 'notification rules' and set your notification settings. In forms under responses you can select the destination you want your data to go to. You could send it to a specific form or spreadsheet on a certain page. Always check the three dots - select the destination - and then select 'existing form'.

Google MyMaps

Map Sharing
Google map sharing, (when picking up someone from the airport) , allows you to see where someone is. Similarly to using uber, if a friend or partner has shared their map with you, you are able to track their location.

Using MyMaps
When designing a task or project put the places you want to use into  a spread sheet first and then import it into a mymap.
Mymaps can have multiple layers.
You can use mymaps in maths, geography, histroy and social studies.
Think about where do you live? Where did you live overseas? Find out the distance between...?
Use mymaps to develop maths context questions.
Follow a journey through a novel study.
Data, such as photos can be added straight into mymaps and this is a novel way for children to create for their learning.

In the explore session of our course, the class filled in a google form with our desired holiday destinations. The destinations where processed through google sheets and imported onto mymaps. On a separate layer we had to calculate the distance or plan a journey between to locations.

Sheets

Sheets has always been a frightening platform for me to use. I think and work visually and for most of my teaching career have stayed within the safe zone of what I am familiar with and can quickly and easily manipulate. Only this year have I decided to start using google sheets to record data and log blog posts and have used the tedious skills of google docs within sheets. Today was an eye opener for the allowances of googles sheets and below are a few of the key skills that I have learnt or refreshed.

• Freeze columns: select: view + freeze column or freeze row
• To select all: click the row letter + shift next row number 
• To shrink: select all + find the thicker blue line and double click
• Grabbing the blue square on a selected segment and drag to apply to all
• Add ons - 'crop sheet' - gets rid of all extra rows and columns
• You should never be typing numbers in a sequence in a sheet if its in any sequence. Type only the first three numbers or words of the sequence, click on the little blue square and drag to apply your sequence to the following blank boxes in the sequence.
• There are many ways of doing the same thing in google sheets. Find the shortcuts that work for you.
• Highlight data and click on the explore tool - what does google offer?
• If in doubt click on the three dots at the top right hand corner of any google app.
• If you have put in all your data perfectly and someone changes things it can be challenging for our character! If you want to be able to work together on sheets its important to protect your sheets, columns, or cells. Set the sharing settings. (ie children can put in their own links or scores but not have access to anything else on the sheet.) Select a column or box. Right click and select 'protect'
• Data we don't want people to see, we can hide. Select and right click to hide.
• If you are working through data (eg. reporting on one child at a time) rather than scrolling just hide the sections you have already done and then it is easier to keep track.
• Order from the highest scoring: select z- a
• Click on the filter button to filter: select the filter symbol at the right hand side of each heading to filter for that section.
• Conditional formatting. For example this is where you can find and select all the children who scored less than average in their E-asttle raw score and colour code them all orange. Select formatting- click conditional formatting -  (eg. you could select less than) and then choose a different colour to colour code.
• Calculating and percentages - click on a column letter, select format as a percent. If you have any number of columns with numbers in them you can in a new column ( C ) insert a ' = ' then click a segment in column A. Use a mathematical symbol( eg. / for divided by, or + ) and then the next box in column B. Column C will then calculate the percentage ( if you used divided by) or the number the you have mathematically programmed. Click the blue square in the box and drag down to apply to all.

Let's Wrap Up

This week I am going to frantically sneak away moments to practice my google skills in readiness for the following week's google exam. I hope to cover the speed challenges set by Dorothy and watch all the training videos that I can.

I hope you have found this post helpful in some way. Please let me know if you have tried out any skills and which ones you found successful in your own practice and workflow.

Have a fabulous week! Nga mihi!

DFI: Connected

It was a bit strange to study up on this week's Digital Fluency Intensive without the great team from Cohort 2. However, I have been lucky enough to have been teaching in a Learn Create Share school for a while and have had the privilege of having the Maniakalani passion filter down and out to the staff.

As a junior teacher in one of the first outreach clusters it was interesting to observe the change in philosophy and the connection developing between teachers within the school. Over the years these connections have grown, collaborative classes and shared thinking is now the norm. Learning successes and ideas are grown together. The highschool and primary have more symbiosis. The clsuter has pulled together and relationships developed through inter-school partnerships and PLGs. Blogging has been a huge part of this with children now following their peers at the highschool, commenting on blogs from the cluster up on Twitter and building relationships with buddy class blogs.

As humans we are designed to be connected. We are grown connected to our mothers. We have no humanity without relationship and so it follows that one of the most powerful reinforcements to learning is to be connected to others.

The learning that I stumbled onto during this DFI is my role as a playmaker. I can aid the children's connection with others. I can raise the status of the less known and give them the connection or recognition they need by passing on their blogs, emailing it our to others, and commenting.

The other key part of this week's learning was based in one of  Google's more recent acquirements, Youtube.

Youtube

We use youtube in the class for so much research, reading and learning through sight, sound and motion. But, I had only basic knowledge of using youtube, uploading videos and building playlists.
it was good to refresh this knowledge and be pushed to develop new knowledge in readiness for the Google exam.

One of the pieces of information that I found most relevant to my everyday teaching and learning was the consolidating the boundaries and expectations for a teacher's and student's use of youtube. Essentially, the students never need to use youtube except for viewing. Their videos can be created and uploaded directly to their drives where they can imbed them into most platforms.

Here are the Maniakalani guideline for youtube use in the classroom:

Thank you for popping along to have a read today. I hope you have found some of this useful. I would love your feedback so please feel free to leave a comment below. Ka kite for now.

DFI: Making it Visible

via GIPHY

Welcome back to another Digital Fluency Intensive. Our speakers today were Dorothy and Clarelle supported by Mark! Shout out to you all!

Dorothy started us off again by encouraging us to be visible. This is an uncomfortable place for me and has been the subject of many colleague discussions as it requires us to be vulnerable with each other and our whanau and students by opening up our planning and teaching ideas to criticism. Possibly jut imagined criticism.

What is being 'visible'?

This comes down to one big questions: Can you see it or can you not? There is no room for grey areas, foggy or cloudy vision. This is a straight forward idea. Can it be seen?

This is not only about the learning journey being visible to the learner but also to the wahnau and colleagues. A lot of the past failures in the non-digital age has been because much learning journey processes have not been visible to learners. Dorothy relates this to being in a maze and guessing where you are going.

For too long success has gone to the children who can figure out the teacher's mind. They were the ones who could succeed. The cultural capital and those children who have received a lot of interaction and discussion with adults and experiences have a head start in this area. This links to Jodi Hunters PD last week about ability and status. Are the children who lack the ability simply the ones who do not have an elevated status because of the experiences, cultural capital or ability to relate with the teacher? ...These are difficult questions to ask of oneself.

Sharing WALTs and learning intentions over the past yers has made a big difference however this can be taken a lot further with digital technology. The young person should be at the centre of the learning and everything should be visible around them. Manaiakalani has found that visible learning is one of the key factors that make a difference to learners success.



We shouldn't kid ourselves about where the children sit in terms of their assessment data. They  already know where they sit in relation to the class and we can't keep this hidden. We need to be prepared, open our minds and genuinely think about what needs to be kept private and what doesn't. Is there any reason on earth that a maths lesson plan needs to be kept private?

Sites are a way of recharging the whiteboard and making the learning fully visible and Hapara has opened the visibility up for teachers.

Following each others blogs, opening up professional enquires and sharing what we do in classrooms breaks down walls between colleagues and professional staff also. Power and imbalance changes.

Posting and sharing learning has changed the way that children view learning and connection.

The difference in writing where the children make huge gains in writing is where students have visibility in their learning.

Why do we share with others and on our blogs?

• To communicate with a real audience and purpose in mind.
• To inform others about my learning.
• To enlist others to my point of view.
• To get others to think something they never thunk.
• To make a difference.

Visible Teaching and Learning

One of things that concerns Dorothy in the digital environment is that it is possible to lock parents out of the learning process like never before. Now that we are in a digital environment there are barrier systems to parents locating what their children are doing... let alone understanding how to navigate through a world that they have far less experience in than their children... BUT by making everything visible and having no problem with it being visible then allows for an augmented connection with whanau, colleagues and learners.

Working on Sites

The day continued with Clarelle sharing her site and other sites from Maniakalani. She encouraged us to think critically about how we organised our sites; the accessibility, visibility and movement through our site.

Nothing should be seperate from the other. Blogs, planning intentions they all come together in a process of learning.

When you're making a class site you need to think about what has come before. Is the pathway clear ad continuous. Do they understand how it works from using it the years before?

When working on a class site think:

• Who are the learners?
• How are they going to access the site? Making a site for a chromebook is very different from making a site for ipads.
• What is the theme of the site?
• Why are they using the site? This will be different based on the way you structure your schol and classroom.

Clarelle's Presentation Slide 

So....

After Clarelle's Chalk n' Talk we all linked our sites to a shared document and put our sites up on the big screen. We had to do a speed talk through our sites and everyone responded with feed back on a google form. It was interesting to be put in the hot seat in front of the group and  put myself in the shoes of a learner once again.

Here are some goals that I need to follow up on and some great ideas that have collected from other's sites.

Make a parent portal on my site:
Welcome video
A navigation video
Links to notices and hail

Re-engage with maths:
How is this going to be organised?
Check out others maths pages on site. Kaupeka 2019
Use the format on the writing page and match it for maths to enable clarity and consistency.

Link Planning
Link all planning to my blog with the same planning icon.

Stolen Ideas: Thank you Sharers!

Ipad Ideas:
Its not about the number of apps its about how you use them.
Blogger, Sunshine Books, Explain Everything Drive and Scratch

Keeping up with Goals
On a google sheet put up criteria and as children complete learning tasks that demonstrate these areas they link their work eg. using similes - children link up the learning task that they did that showed hat they learned similes.
eg. 'You need to hyperlink ____ in before you go for lunch."

Check Your Site Functions
Check that all your learning and planning is visible by going into your own site incognito.
Command + Shift + n for an incognito window.

Writing with Google Forms
Use a google form to put up a 100 word challenge so that children can write at home too and submit their learning. This makes it easy to view, collate and publish.
Check out Terry's site for linked and collated sites and material.

Keeping in Site
Each year make a copy of your site and label it as that year instead of writing over it. This is a good record for ERO and for teacher registration.

DFI: Getting to know our Devices

It Tuesday and we are back again at Maniakalani's Digital Fluency Course.


Today started off with a refresher of the Cybersmart Program. Its always a good reminder for me to be newly aware of what the Cybersmart curriculum contains as so often, like the children, I easily slip into bad habits.

It was good to get a reminder about children managing their chromebooks and having the knowledge to sign other children off their chromebooks, (not have other children signed in on their chromebooks in the first place) and respecting the capability of the device.

Being visible is at the heart of the pedagogy of Learn Create and Share.
Visible - nothing is hidden or secret, everything online needs to come with the understanding that it is freely given and shared with no strings attached.

There should be nothing that I do on the internet as a teacher that the students don't see.
Digital Citizenship and being Cybersmart is all about children being educated to live in the and with the internet well.

When I'm googled there should only be positive things that appear.

Hapara

Wow, there is so much that Hapara is capable off that I didn't know. One of the things I have struggled with in managing blogs is the visibility of easily seeing and accessing blogs and comments and up till now checked the children's blogs by individually scrolling through and accessing each blog. This is a slow process. The ability to see all the blogs at once, those finished and those still in the editing process is a treat.



Highlights is another important and underused feature for me.

Some of the things I need to follow up on are:

Sharing links with students: Remotely type in up to 10 site links and it will get those tabs open for them. They might then need these bookmarked.

Using guided focus sessions - Often  docs. google.com and drive.google.com need to be included. Think carefully about all the sites that need to be accessed within that session. PATs could also use focus sessions which will allow the students to only use the PAT test.

Filtered Browsing may be better than creating a guided focus session for children type in the sites that you don't want them to access eg. block youtube.com

Activity Viewer - hover over the yellow/ green bar to take a snap of all the children's screens. These get deleted after 7 days, however if it is something you need to keep you can email it to yourself.

Workspace - works a bit like google classroom. You can create different workspaces and set up learning to be accessed at different times. Children can submit work and time out of the workspace. Eg. Time a unit so that children cant rush ahead in the unit.tHe benefit of workspace over google classroom is the fact that everything is visible. In google classroom the children would need to share everything with you whereas if a child has just started some work and has not submitted it it is still visible.

Hapara is not a monitoring and filtering tool. It is to support teaching and learning. First of all children should be in the right place in the right time. It is just for the teacher to have full visibility to the children's learning as they are the care givers and have the responsibility to ensure the best learning possible at school.

A student's drive is like their bedroom they need to regularly go in there and keep it tidy . Set up systems like the 1 minute morning email check and do the same with drive. Set the timer and get the children to tidy their drive at least twice a week.

It's really important that children's drives are ordered and put into the Hapara folders before the end of the year. All documents get archived but the archived ones are shared with the children so that they can get their old document out of shared with me. Personal folders don't count... they will be deleted.

Chromebooks

Protection should be seamless. Every students and every piece of work should be visible. This is supported by the cybersmart curriculum where children should self-mangage and make good choices about their learning. Kids will very quickly learn how to bypass a school network. They need to have the intrinsic values and not just firewalls.

The fact that everybody has the same device makes it easier for everyone. ( BYOD - Bring your own disaster) In the case where parents kick up a stink it is usually IT parents: the solution to this difficulty is saying that the child can have that device at home but at school we will provide them with a chromebook.

Deep Dive shortcuts to remember:

Always use 'Command + F'  or 'Cntrl + F' to find keywords in a document.

'Cntrl + L' on a chromebook locks the screen (eg. It takes them back to the sign in page) Show this to the children and get the to use it when they walk away from their chromebook or pass it to someone else.

Remind the children to use ' Shift + Command + V' ( Once again this removes the formatting and pastes the content in the font that is currently being used.)

Ipads

The same thing that happens for chromebooks should be happening for ipads. This is set up by fusion and needs to be done right following protocols. It should be set up with exactly the same icons and exactly the same place. Mistreating equipment - there should be consequences for children who mistreat the equipment.

Get the children to begin using 'Explain Everything' again. Especially for maths modelling.

Screencastify now has draw tools which can be used for maths modelling in a document. Here is a screencastify that I made for my children this week and as a practice session for using the draw tools.



Every Tuesday I am consistently reminded to keep learning, keep creating and the wonder of shared learning.

Nga mihi everyone,
Alethea

The Theory to Viral Attraction

Just thought I would share a little something that I stumbled across today that seems very relevant in a society vying for everyones attention.

Another DFI: Computational Thinking

Welcome back to another blog full of tidbits of Learn, Create and Share.

Please explore the resources that you find below as a wealth of resources and information was shared today that will change the way you think and teach as it has for me.

Notes about 'Share'

Human beings thrive on connection. We need connection with each other for sustainability and fullness in life.  Connection is sharing.
...it has been happening since the beginning of time.

The digital social media platforms that began in 2005 all hooked into the tag line of human instinct to share. (eg. the caveman drawing himself and mammoth for the more developed man to view hundreds of years later.)

Social media has brought speed and amplification to sharing. Viral posts are an example of speed and amount of people who can access the subject you are sharing in a short amount of time. Amplification of sharing is through feedforward and feedback often via commenting.
Applied to learning this is far more powerful than the once common practice of a child sharing their learning by taking it home to their parents.

In order for learning through sharing to be as effective and validating as possible the viewers need to be an authentic audience.


What is an authentic audience?

There are those who are 'forced' by their responsibilities, job or situation to be a part of a shared setting. This created space is artificial. (eg. picking on a child to read aloud creates an  artificial audience as they are 'forced' to listen and do not do so by choice.)

An authentic audience on the other hand listens and responds by choice.

Learn Create Share has also had an incredible impact on students finishing their learning. It is so pertinent for children, as they develop, to have the success of finishing, especially as they go into the workforce. This is not only to accomplish life skills but to gain validation and self- empowerment.





This is different from the past where the purpose of finishing was to park a finished task in a book. Sharing allows for the beginning of new learning and gives a joy, power and purpose in completion.

Reading and commenting on peers' blogs is shown to raise achievement. Sharing is a powerful tool.

Time to Reflect

Pedagogy

Today's session reinforced the need for me to continuously upskill. My pedagogy and theories of learning need to be alive and wriggling with all the latest learning and skills in order for my children to have the best possible platform for life. 

Kia Takatū ā-Matihiki is the basis for developing oneself through independent course and PD. It is houses a wealth of resources that support the digital technologies curriculum and incorporates tikanga Maori.

Digital technologies curriculum

My next step is to read and become familiar with the digital technologies curriculum. Dive in and explore Kia Takatū ā-Matihiki and be prepared with the knowledge i need to teach our tamariki in the best way possible.

Confidence, Capability, Workflow and Passion

Scratch:

Last year I became passionate about the idea of Genius Hour. Children had a 2 hour session every Friday to explore and create in workshops that they opted into. One of these was a Scratch Coding group. This was run by a group of expert boys who were very adept and taught other children how to create and design on Scratch. I explored in a limited way and made my own account on Scratch. 

Today my learning has been extended. I am now far more confident and very grateful for the time and direction given during this session. I realised that having the time to explore, create and learn through creating is so critical to embedding knowledge. 

Things I achieved from working on Scratch today:

- ideas for how literacy, numeracy and computational thinking can be developed in this platform.

- personal knowledge of how the game works, basic refresher and extra skills.

-confidence to teach and modal coding in front of the class.

- knowledge to set up a class account and student accounts

Check out the game that I built!

Calcifer's Maze

The Wonder of Hands on Programming:

I was blown away by the possibilities of hands on practical discovery and creation and the blending of digital programming into all areas of learning. ( ie music) 

Makeymakey shop link

Instant Ideas for the Classroom and follow up tasks:

Introduce an Hour of Code into the classroom share Code Combat with the learners.  Personally investigate Toxic Code, Silent Teacher and Compute IT to introduce to the students.

Get children to promote their blogs for more views. Every visitors who lingers and visits promotes a child's blog higher in googles search ranking.

Investigate and implement the Digital Technologies curriculum in the classroom through using the lessons and resources on OMG Tech.

Make a teacher and class account on Scratch

That's all from me today. Please try out the Scratch game and share your own thoughts or ideas in the comments below.
What has your journey into digital tech been like?
What tips and tricks do you know?
...and... have you learnt anything new from this post?

Nga mihi,
Miss D ;)

DFI: Creation is the Beginning

We need to ensure we focus on the opportunity to create. 

Creation is everything. Without creation we have nothing to share, nothing to offer. We are not empowered or validated. We are purposeless and limited, feeding off the creations of others.

Dorothy Burt did not call creativity lacking teachers purposeless life suckers, but she did stir an inner flame of creativity in the members of the DFI cohort today. She put creativity back on the platform of 'things that make the world tick'.

Quora succinctly described creativity by stating, 'When someone is creative they turn imagination in reality'.

Have the children in my classroom had the opportunity to create today?
Have I had the opportunity to create?

These are the questions that challenged me. These are the question that I should be asking myself everyday. The thought that niggled at the back of my mind while Dorothy shared was 'I need to be what I teach'.

I constantly need to be raising the bar in my own life. The children aren't mimicking or seeing the skills that I learnt before, the limited knowledge that I had as a child or even as a beginning teacher. They view the skills that I have now. The behaviour that I am displaying everyday. If I am encouraging them to be mindful am I demonstrating this in the classroom each day?

And so it follows:
Am I being Creative each day? What have I created today? As a teacher is it just new knowledge that I create? What about all of those other rich areas of creativity? Am I using these? Am I including them in my classroom everyday?

What is to stop us going back and re engaging with the richness of creativity of time and exploration?
We need to leave behind the old mentalities behind, as the weight of responsibility to 'do it all' becomes just too much to carry. Dragging old school approaches along within the phase of change fills me with a weight of guilt  and incapability. There is world of creativity waiting. In the building of new sites, the creation of new resources, the discussion and sharing of ideas. We should be excited and inspired by this and not overwhelmed.

What I love about the Maniakalani approach is the gathering of collective knowledge and the richness of meaningful experience. This gives such a genuine and grounded view. It is an old school view of the community carrying the knowledge. This is worth applying and hanging onto. It's another one of those 'things that make the world tick'.

Another point that resonated for me was something that I have been guilty of doing many times before. Dorothy went on to explain that...'Teacher's often expect that they plan for learning and the teaching of this incredible learning will go straight to the child's brain. Very few brains work this way. Most humans need a conduit to allow that information and skills to take hold. Something needs to happen to be done and this is the create process. All of these conduits can be amplified and are contained in digital technologies. An example of this was Lachlan's blog post. The head boy at a local high school who created and mixed multiple pieces of music, captured these with the digital processes and used his online platform to share and publicise his creativity to a wide audience.

Dorothy continued to explain that great shifts in learning and acceleration comes about when teachers intentionally plan rich tasks for children to create.

We can empower students through:

• choice
• information and knowledge
• developing skills
• building capacity
• scaffolding

Many of us create to learn. But learning and creation are synonymous. Learning comes from creation. The creation of a hook, event, assembly, moment, site or object can be the spark which ignites the learning. They are interconnected.

An example given in one presentation today explored the idea of starting learning with a hook. Teachers created plays, special assemblies and information videos to share with their learners the creation that the children would soon be partaking in. I considered wether the hook might the game away? Does it remove from the children the choice and the development of something new?
Why is it purposeful to learn prior knowledge if the task is already designed?

I am challenging this example because I accidentally discovered the richness of 'creation' when my class and I decided to build a canoe to learn about the process of paper mache. The project grew into its own beautifully unplanned rich inquiry. Experiments regarding, weight , balance, displacement, bouyancy, materials and all manner of cooperative learning ensued. because of this 'aha' moment I am always wary of the downfall of intentionally planning locked in content.

We can fall into the trap that one size fits all. This is the opposite to universal design for learning. I have fallen into this trap. I have been guilty of planning to use a special site, a special app, a technique or process without carefully considering the limitations of the 'create' section in my planning.

Dorothy explained it in, reffering to Chrissy Butler's work in universal design for learning, in words similar to this: As educators now, we cannot deny that everyone is different and unique. We know that learners don't learn the same way. If we give them one tool that they love and engage with even then it limits them to just one way.  The default used to be myself, starting from what I know - this is no longer true. There is no default. There is only multiple opportunities and modes and we need to use them.

It would be a scary downside if leaners and people simply consumed ( opportunities and technologies)  rather than created.

Dewey said, "Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results."

Leading companies have hooked into the creativity-less vacuums and theories and systems are beginning to emerge and flourish. Free tools are not only available but rampant. There are no barriers and anyone with the time to dedicate can access and create powerful ideas and methods of connection. Children are empowered by creation and the imbalance of power between children and adults is diminishing. But this is another curious social development altogether.

In finishing, I would welcome your feed on the thoughts, questions and reflections that I have shared here. Also, dear readers, this particular post was prompted by the Maniakalani Digital Fluency course in which Dorothy Burt presented via google Hangout.

Nga mihi



(The following notes are in reference to the DFI course and the new  tools and techniques I hope to action this week.)

Things I learnt:

• Make a new google site in a folder by just clicking on the plus button and selecting new google site.

• Get funky with slides: Change the html from 'present' to 'edit' to 'copy'.

• Sharing resources and the weight of creating multimodal learning pages is a treat. Thank you to all the amazing teachers who have shared their hard work and knowledge. I will be calling into the shared Excel document, adding to it and referring to it to boost, develop and create my own multi modal docs, slides, drawings etc.

• Sites can be used not only as a platform form class learning and planning but to collate information greater than can be contained in a multi modal artefact ( I don't know if this is the correct term.

• I am currently working on a Sight Sound and Motion sight to collate the vast amount of tools and creation possible fo our learning this term.

Things I have learnt and am definitely sharing with my learners this week:

• You can change the size of a google drawing by going, file > page setup > custom > pixels, and changing the size of your drawing by inputting different values.

• Don't go to google and find the image! Create the image: make it yourself!

DFI: Help! It's Hangouts!

Kia ora again,

It's good to have the reflection time to catch up with you all here and unload the hefty amount of learning that is pumped out for each of our Digital Fluency sessions.

Here's a shout out to all our great leaders and support crew that ran the session!

Workflow is one of my main weaknesses in my digital fluency journey. This started back in the junior school when I was teaching Year 2s with a limited amount of ipads in the class and enviously stressing over how to build a site and create rewindable and accessible learning while it seemed as if all the answers were being poured into the senior school. I am now sheepishly having to undo some of the bad habits that I have impatiently stumbled into at that stage.

I am desperate to increase the productivity of my design for teaching and learning and hope to start in the following areas addressed today:

Hangouts

As in all social situations, etiquette is important. Some of the etiquette of Google Hangouts is...

When group calling:
- use headphones
- mute your mic unless you are talking
-don't laptop share ( you end up too far away from the laptop to both be in the screen and this creates unnecessary sound feedback)
- always have your video turned on this is recognised as being part of the chat ( If you turn of your video it is as if you have walked out of the room.)

At the end of the day, we had a session where we had to create a google hangout with a small group of people to put into practice the skills that we learnt through out the day.

New knowledge and skills were leaping out about in my brain and in a near panic I managed to organise and capture a few following thoughts:

Quicktime player can be used to record your screen. Screen Castify is what I would normally use as this is what they children and my self are most familiar with in the classroom. As a teacher when using the internet and recording your screen using a non web-based program like Quicktime will be less of a drain on your streaming and internet usage.

It was interesting how members of the team responded to Mark and Stephany's instructions differently. I was internally feeling the need for support and validation and once again felt grateful for the reminder of what it is like to be a student. To feel what my students feel and understand the healthy 'stress' of gathering, remember and applying newly taught knowledge with the 'imagined' pressure of having to get it correct the first time.

It was also interesting speaking to others with the team muted. The lack of verbal validation and feedback was an interesting experience and made me consider how much I look for non verbal and verbal feedback when having a conversation. It also highlighted the familiarity with filming themselves that I notice in my children everyday and the lack of practice I have in filming myself and having conversations online.

The Maniakalani Pedagogy with Dorothy Burt

Prior to this practice session, we again had the privilege of hearing and interacting with Dorothy via Google Hangouts earlier in the morning.

She took us to the heart of teaching and learning by breaking down the 'what' and 'why' of LEARN.

This begins with accessing and engaging with exisiting knowledge ( in a digital learning environment), recognising effective teaching and accelerating learning with the consideration of moving teaching and learning pedagogy into the digital world without disrupting current learning ( not throwing the baby out with the bathwater) and even accelerating and improving learning outcomes within the digital world.


She highlighted the need to recognise effective practise - What is it that teachers are doing that is effective? How long do I spend noticing the practices others engage in? Do I look for good practice?

Google Class on Air

Effective practice is then to turbocharge the new learning practice by extending it in multiple ways. (SAMR) Rewindable learning is a big part of this: everything accessible and fast paced.

It was noted that these seven actions were synonymous with effective teaching practice.

Embedding effective practice in  technology enables us to remove barriers and provide opportunities for children that have never been possible and will not be possible within the schooling system. It allows solutions to problems in way that were never before considered.

 
Below are a collection of notes and learning from the day:

Things I've learnt from my colleagues:

• Focus sessions on Hapara con be set up through using 'Highlights' to lock certain students into a set screen. I have a lovely little autistic child in my room who 'stims' by setting timers that countdown, and will search bells and his favourite youtube songs in seconds when not monitored. This is going to be a great setting to help remove the distractions/ barriers to his learning.
• Right click on any open tab and select ' pin tab'. This feature remembers your tab and reopens it whenever you open chrome. I am going to teach this to the children tomorrow.
• 'Colour Picker', 'Eye Dropper' and 'Colourzilla' are all extensions that be used to selct specific colours. This is a tool for designing slides, DLOs and sites where the designer wants to match a background with a particular colour in an image.

Google Hangouts:

1. Create a new event in Google Calendar.
2. In the 'Advanced Settings/More Options' select 'Add Conferencing'.
3. Choose 'Hangout Meet'
4. Select the meeting url and paste it into an accessible location ( ie. shared document, site, or minutes)  or personally invite members by email.
5. Enter the Hangout link and admit any members who are joining.
6. Mute your microphone and message the group with a greeting.
7. To share your screen click on the screen to get your action toolbar within google hangouts and then click on start presenting - allow your entire screen to be presented. Move into the desired page. Don't forget to unmute at this point when you start talking. Click on stop presenting then mute when finished.
8. It is good protocol to have a member of the group act as MC. in essence chairing each meeting, prompting, providing feedback ad keeping the session on time. 
9. The entire conversation can be recorded. ( Quicktime is the best non internet program for doing this.)

Google Keep:

• Is the place for taking notes!
• use labels to keep track and organise your notes
• Install 'Google Keep' on your phone. Images can be taken on your phone and turned into text using the camera in Keep and selecting the three dots after taking a photo. Use the 'Change image to Text' option.
• Use Keep for reminders. Keep can send you reminders for birthdays, or, if a location is added to a note, will send you a notification when you are in a location that is connected to said note.
• Once Keep is installed it becomes an optional side bar in your documents. You can use it to ...keep... canned comments or stickers for adding to children's learning as feedback. ( Shoutout to Murray).

To wrap up, I hope to keep this learning fresh, integrating it in everyday use and coming back to this post to revisit my thinking and learning. I hope you will do the same!