Misinformation / Misconceptions

Kia ora koutou,

I realised that I hadn't posted for a while so here we go. This term's focus in class has been Smart Media, with part of this topic being misinformation. It was really good to clarify for students the difference between mis and disinformation:

I came up with a nice way of remembering this... MISinformation could be a MIStake i.e. the person spreading the information might not know it's false. DISinformation is DIShonest i.e. the person knows the information is false. Also, I'm sure someone else has come up with that before me so don't credit me with that!

So with that in mind, I thought I'd share some misconceptions that I've come across this year as my hunch is that these MISconceptions might be caused by some MISinformation being passed on.

I was going to make this post themed on the 12 days of Christmas but I don't think I'll be able to come up with 12 ideas!

Disclaimer: this is by no means a moan or a criticism of anyone in particular. It's more of a reflection on the systems we have in place and how we share information with each other.

1. Cybersmart does not = Kawa of Care 

Hearing some conversations and reading some comments, I sometimes wonder if everyone realises that Cybersmart has many strands, from Smart Learner to Smart Surfing and from Smart Relationships to Smart Money.

Yes, the Kawa of Care pops up in Smart Learner and is an important lesson to revisit termly and as needed, but it is only the tip of the Cybersmart iceberg! Just because a student can look after their device is does not necessarily mean that they are confident when making Cybersmart choices in different situations.

2. Cybersmart does not = Digital Skills 

Yes, students do need to learn how to use their devices and familiarise themselves with new tools and apps. But I feel like it's selling the Cybersmart session short when I hear phrases like, "Phil is here to teach us some new digital skills." 

3. Cybersmart does not = Older students or 1:1 classes

I believe that if we wait until students are in the senior school or are in a 1:1 class to teach them about making Cybersmart choices then we're already too late. Many students are surrounded by devices, whether that's at home or at school, so not teaching them how to make smart choices online is an equity issue.

In fact some of the most fun and engaging content on our Cybersmart site can be found in the junior lessons. Sure, we use apps like Explain Everything and Scratch Jnr a lot but there are also offline activities for all our Cybersmart lessons.

4. In Class Facilitation does not = Cybersmart

Yes, as a facilitator I go into classes and teach the students Cybersmart lessons. But that is just the lens we use for in class facilitation. The real joy of the job comes from empowering teachers and ensuring they are confident to use devices effectively for teaching and learning and for their own workflows. 

This year for example, while students have been working away on their Cybersmart activities (being scaffolded by the rewindable resources for each lesson), I have worked with teachers on using Google Keep to organise their to-do lists, turbocharging lessons by moving beyond substitution on the SAMR model, exploring engaging activities like Genius Hour, integrating apps like Explain Everything into literacy and maths, ensuring students have an audience for their blogs using blog hops and creating animations for our film festival.

All these opportunities have relied on teachers understanding the purpose of in class facilitation and being vulnerable and honest about their current needs and goals.

And of course receiving in class support is only one piece of the puzzle in terms of the opportunities that are on offer to teachers who are part of the cluster...

5. In Class Facilitation does not = One year only

In Terms 3 and 4 I start to back off and hand the apron over to the class teacher to lead the sessions. This ensures that the following year, when they probably won't be receiving in class facilitation, they will be confident to implement everything they have learnt throughout the year.

Of course the facilitator will still be available to support as and when they can, but if all goes to plan the teacher will continue teaching Cybersmart, using an effective class site, integrating blogging and using tools like Hāpara Teacher Dashboard as part of their effective practice.

Fin

So there we go, some ideas to ponder over the summer. Please leave a comment if anything resonated with you or if you'd like to catch up to discuss any of the above ideas.

Ngā mihi nui.

Two Years In...

Kia ora,

Time flies when you're Education Programme Leader. One minute I catch myself thinking I'm still new to this role and moments later I feel like I've been doing it forever. Technically it has been two years and one term since I took on the role so I thought I'd share some thoughts and reflections on this time period.

In the spirit of full visibility I am sharing my original scribbles. The first one shows the brainstorm I made while convincing myself that taking this job was the right choice after stepping out of the classroom a year earlier.

I've enjoyed being in class with students and still believe that supporting them to be at home in a digital world is a vital and incredibly fulfilling task. Something that has been difficult is not getting to know students as well as you do when you have your own class. While I don't miss writing reports etc, it is hard to support learners when you don't know them as well as you feel you could.

The reason 'missed opportunity' is there is because I had the chance to step up to this role way back in 2016 (I think). I always wondered what it would have been like so I'm glad I did take a chance.

One of my favourite parts of the job is the opportunity to be creative. I've loved organising poetry slams and podcast episodes as well as student toolkits and film festivals. I appreciate the flexibility that my job offers and the fact that I still have the energy to come up with creative ideas. This was not always the case when I was still in the classroom.

As you can tell for the circling, storytelling was a big part of why I took the job. I really wanted students and teachers in the cluster to have the chance to tell their stories. Through my own personal writing projects I've realised how empowering it is to tell your story and how important this is as a reflective process and something that helps you move forward. I helped create a short film where students tell the Ako Hiko story and what it means to them. The more recent podcast episodes have also been focused on students telling their own stories, something that we've also started looking into with a survey that over 400 of our learners filled in.

The bottom right scribble talks about multiplying others. I'll leave that for the next section...

This second picture shows some thoughts from pretty soon after accepting the job that loosely come together to create a vision statement. The Ako Hiko Education Trust has the vision of accelerating student achievement by increasing access to digital learning but this brainstorm was more about me having a clear idea of what I was bringing to the table.

Having read Multipliers a number of times, multiplying others was also a priority when starting this role. I feel like I've helped to multiply and empower students through teaching them about being Cybersmart, podcasting, offering the chance to be Ako Hiko Ambassadors and taking part in various projects including student toolkits, film festivals, poetry slams and coding challenges. Supporting students to utilise their blogs as a way of sharing has also contributed to this.

Something that I've found more challenging is multiplying teachers. Through in class facilitation and coaching on the Digital Fluency Intensive I'm confident I have multiplied and empowered teachers but it's difficult to know how impactful you're being. I'm always striving to be of more use to teachers and often wonder if I'm being utilised as much as I could be. One way I'd like to empower teachers is by encouraging more sharing. Google Currents is on the way out so I've stopped pushing this but I have created a Google Group for all teachers in the cluster and have started sending a monthly update to keep everyone connected and informed. I'm hoping that this role modelling of sharing may normalise it and encourage others to share more too. I'm currently thinking of how we can use our staff hui and Inquiry PLG time most effectively in this respect.

Shifting to Edublogs was a good chance to multiply and empower lead teachers in terms of their admin responsibilities and I think all our schools are now in a position where they can take care of the admin processes internally. A next step for me is, now that admin is taken care of, supporting lead teachers to be real drivers of the learn, create, share pedagogy in their schools.

By far the most difficult group to multiply has been whānau. We created three workshops in 2020 but only had two sessions at a school before lockdown kicked in again and momentum was lost. Having said that, the Kanorau Digital programme is available online to our families. As well as promoting this opportunity, my focus has shifted towards how we can support our schools to connect with their communities and how we can allow time and space for schools to share these ideas.

The third year...

So my big takeaways from this reflection and some next steps include:

- PLGs and staff hui - how can we use this precious time to encourage useful sharing that will help accelerate student achievement?

- Storytelling - continue to use the podcast to share students' stories. How can we reach a wider audience with this?

- Whānau - how might we support schools when engaging with their families and provide opportunities for schools to share ideas?

Ambassadors' Coding Challenge - A Story Of Empowerment...

Kia ora koutou,

It's been a while! In previous bog posts I've talked about some of the new(ish) ideas that I've implemented since becoming Education Programme Leader for the Ako Hiko cluster of schools. I've often struggled to get uptake and buy in to new ideas which has been frustrating but interesting to reflect on. With this in mind, I have been absolutely delighted with the introduction of the Ako Hiko Ambassadors.

Let's take a moment to delve into how this started. Interestingly, rather than it being something I dreamt up from scratch, it was a conversation with some of the lead teachers from our schools that planted the seed. A good example of how ideas are far more likely to stick and get some momentum when they came from a collective consciousness rather than an individual brain.

So each school selected two students to be ambassadors in 2021. Our first meeting was face to face but then lockdown happened and we didn't get much done for the rest of the year.

Then 2022 rolled around, with some new ambassadors being chosen. This year we have met twice a term via Google Meet and the ambassadors even requested a third Meet in Term 1 so that they could collaborate more effectively! It was during this fruitful term that the ambassadors came up with the idea of a Coding Challenge for the cluster.

Between the ambassadors a Google Site 

was created, posters designed and

resources created. The ambassadors were assigning themselves to jobs, promoting the challenge in their schools, working on their tasks in their own time and sending (cybersmart) emails to the group. This was super exciting! Students were being empowered having the opportunity to connect with other students outside of their school and also by leading an initiative and promoting it within their school

But in the end participation was disappointing. We left the challenge open from week 5 until the end of term and only had 8 students submit their projects. All entries were from the same class so I feel like the goal of empowering students by being able to connect with others from across the cluster wasn't met. A chance to further empower and connect our learners missed.

One reason is the obvious point that schools are busy and this was another extra being added on top at the end of an already busy term. I do know that some classes took part in the challenge but did not get round to adding their projects to their blogs or filling in the Google Form in order to share their project.

This second point has made me reflect on the sharing process. Mainly...

- Do we need to scaffold students into actions like embedding projects onto blogs and filling in the form?

- Is enough time set aside for the share part of the learn, create, share pedagogy?

This second question could be a whole blog post in itself. I know that there are amazing examples of learn and create happening in our classrooms. My ponder now is what percentage of this activity is being shared beyond the walls of the classroom? i.e. How much is visible for someone like me who may never set foot in that classroom?

In conclusion, there are two big ideas floating around my skull at the moment. Thoughts, ideas, questions and wonderings about these ideas are more than welcome. Get in touch if anything resonates with you or if you have any suggestions...

1) How might we provide new opportunities for our learners without them being 'extra things' for teachers to fit in?

2) How might we ensure that students have the chance to share authentically beyond their classroom walls?

Ngā mihi nui.

Minecraft For Education - Teacher Academy - Modules 6-11

Kia ora koutou,

Welcome back to more Minecraft adventures. This post covers units 6-11 of the Teacher Academy. My last post covers the first five units. If you have any questions about Minecraft then feel free to leave a comment, I may be able to answer...

These two questions were part of the course's reflection so I thought I'd talk a bit about them here:

• What tools within the in-game world experience provided opportunity for learners to engage in ways that might not otherwise be possible?

I really enjoyed exploring the chemistry tutorial where you could create elements, combine them into compounds and also break up materials into their basic components. How cool that students can learn about these things in a safe environment where they don't have to worry about explosions and chemical spills?

I also found the concept of redstone (the power source in Minecraft - a bit like electricity) really interesting (as well as very frustrating at times). What an awesome way to introduce concepts of engineering to students.

My first lever and lamps (didn't mean to put them in the wall as well as the ceiling).

• What 'out of game' materials are needed for the learners to use before or during the lesson?

I like how a lot of the lessons talked about having a paper plan/design and encouraged students to discuss their ideas before starting the build. It also highlighted how important it is to have a contract or agreement with students about expectations in Minecraft (just as you would have PB4L expectations for different areas of the school).

Me looking proud with the moat I built (this is the book and quill I mentioned last time).

Collaboration

Collaboration, creativity and communication are key to Minecraft. Students can start worlds and invite others to join. Teachers can also start worlds and host students. When creating worlds it is suggested that you encourage a 'productive struggle,' i.e. you give them just enough information to ensure they are scaffolded towards success without removing all challenges and difficulties.

Classroom Readiness

Here there were lots of great tips to make sure your lessons are smooth and successful:

- Plan in unstructured time to give students a chance to explore.

- Have a non-Minecraft alternative at the ready, just in case!

- Stick to creative mode even though students might be more familiar with survival mode (in creative mode students won't lose their work and they have infinite resources).

- Give strict time limits. Students will always want more time. Encourage them to meet their objectives first then try to perfect builds.

- Changing skins (the appearance of your character) is a good first activity so students feel like their character reflects their identity.

- Another good first lesson is just asking students to build a house. This will help you see what ability levels you have in the class.

Proof of finishing the last module (even though it says up next...)

Test Run 1:

So this was all great learning but it doesn't mean much if I didn't test it out! So thanks to the Kea team at Wesley Primary for letting me try out some of my new skills. I learnt one important lesson in this session: you can't host students who are in a different domain. Luckily the students were confident enough to create their own worlds and host each other.

Test Run 2:

Thanks to Room 13 at New Windsor for allowing me a second shot at the lesson. This time I was able to host students. I challenged them to build a structure with a specific volume. I built an example as a scaffold and provided the instructions via NPCs (non-player characters) and a poster.

In this lesson I learnt how important it is to give a strict time limit (I forgot to do this at the start). I also learnt how important it is to check the settings of a world. This came to my attention as someone started setting other students' builds on fire. I'm still not 100% sure on the settings but now I turn anything that sounds remotely dangerous or destructive off: fire spreads, TNT explodes, friendly fire, mob loot, activate cheats, mob griefing... (I also learnt to flick on 'always day' when learning. It's hard enough to build in daylight let alone in the pitch black).

Some students and their builds. I've not mastered taking screenshots while flying because hitting shift means you start dropping back down to earth.

Final Thought:

Something else that stood out to me during the course was how many links there are to our Cybersmart curriculum. Whether it's being a smart user by being able to navigate the game with the appropriate commands or developing smart relationships by collaborating with others online and offline.

I highly recommend looking into Minecraft. I've learnt a lot but feel like I'm only at the tip of the iceberg...

Ngā mihi

Phil

Minecraft For Education - Teacher Academy - Modules 1-5

Kia ora koutou,

I decided it was finally time to get my head around Minecraft, especially after seeing what some Ako Hiko students were creating. Check out this awesome blog post.

So I started the Minecraft For Education: Teacher Academy and I'm really enjoying it. If you want to look into it here's the link. For fellow facilitators you can ask your Fusion person to set you up with one of your school accounts.

I didn't think about a blog post until I was well into module 4 but I thought I'd share some things I've been learning.

Camera, portfolio, book and quill 

These are all tools that students can use as evidence of their progress and to document their creations. They are a great way for students to reflect on their learning and they are able to be exported.

A photo from my portfolio (sunrise selfie)

Slates, posters and boards 

These are all ways of providing rewindable instructions for groups or students. The only differences between the three are their sizes. What a great way to scaffold learners into tasks. The is also an immersive reader built in so if students aren't confident reading the text they can have it read for them.

A poster (middle sized) with some instructions. 

Non-player characters (NPCs) 

You can spawn non-player characters for students to interact with during the game. These NPCs can give further instructions, give links to external resources (e.g. YouTube videos) or prompt students to carry out commands (e.g. open the door).

 

NPC before clicking on them.

NPC after clicking on them.

Monthly Build Challenges

These sound like good places to start to introduce Minecraft to students. Also on this screen you can see How To Play which are little interactive tutorials that have been super helpful for me as a total beginner.

So I'm about half way through now. You earn little badges as you go which is nice. Funnily enough this latest one is the only one I haven't got 100% on.

See you later for modules 6-11...

12 weeks of lockdown

Kia ora koutou,

Twelve weeks ago was the last time I set foot in a classroom. Despite there being plenty of positives about working from home, it has been a very challenging time. Over the weeks I have constantly been asking myself what is the best use of my time, what are the biggest and most urgent needs and how can I serve my schools, teachers and students most effectively?

This blog post is essentially a reflection on the ideas I have played with over the last three months. Writing these out has made me realise that I've tried a fair bit but I still get the overwhelming feeling that I could still be far more effective and efficient. I feel like there are missing pieces of the puzzle I haven't found yet.

I would absolutely love to hear about any ideas you have trialled in your schools or clusters as well as any feedback on the below items.

1. Podcast tutorials

I was keen to keep the Ako Hiko Podcast running so I put together four tutorials to support students while making their own episodes using Screencastify (audio only). Initially this was aimed at the Ako Hiko Ambassadors but I posted it on our blog so that anyone could have a go.

There are 54 views on the first tutorial, 36 on the second, 8 on the third and 6 on the last. I'd be interested to dig into why there was a drop off and what the barriers were that prevented students from producing an episode. My shining light though is Neha @ HPS who took up the idea and ran with it and it now preparing season 2 of her own podcast.

2. Podcasts and critical literacy

With a lack of episodes coming in and no chance to get into schools to record students I decided to make some episodes myself. I'd been doing a fair bit of reading around critical thinking and critical literacy so I set out to create some activities through the podcasts that would help develop these skills.

As you can see the numbers aren't huge but the episodes did get used, with Who is the baddie? being the most popular. Another aim of those episodes was having a main provocation to get students commenting and interacting with each other. Four comments in total was not a huge success on this front.

3. Relentless about reading

At a principals' meeting some people mentioned that they were concerned about whether students were reading enough. This reminded me of a wananga where the term 'relentless about reading' was used. With the help of some fellow facilitators I created a set of resources that teachers could use to keep engagement up with reading. 

It's a bit harder to know how many people used these or how useful they found the resource but I have seen the slide deck pop up on a number of class sites and this post has been a good reminder to follow up with those teachers.

4. Animated Film Festival

One of the huge disappointments was having to cancel the Ako Hiko Film Festival. We did still want to provide a creative opportunity for students so we turned it into an animated film festival instead.

I put together these resources for teachers and students to use and yesterday we had our first offical entry (see below). I also know that a couple of schools made this a big focus either at the end of term 3 or at the start of term 4 so I'm looking forward to seeing those entries come in.

5. Fun ways to engage students during Meets

I can't take credit for most of these ideas. Joining different class Meets and perusing class sites has helped me 'magpie' some great activities. Would you Rather has been one of the most popular so I've made a few of these on Google Forms. They have actually provoked some great discussion, with students justifying their choices, agreeing and disagreeing with each other and sharing whether they have been persuaded to change their minds.

My current favourite is playing Guess Who? with the people on the Meet screen as the characters. This has also been a great way to reinforce the expectations of having your cameras on and sitting still.

6. Currents posts

The number of people in our Currents community has kept creeping up. With some extra time on my hands I've tried to do a weekly update to share Blogger of the Week, other examples of quality blog posts, activities on class sites and other opportunities and events coming up.

7. Holiday blogging

This was more of a recycling and curation job to make sure students who were keen could do some holiday blogging.

8. Blog boosters

I created these blog booster lessons earlier in the year but I got a chance to use them in some classes where students had been blogging for a while and were ready for an extra challenge.

9. Online and optional Inquiry PLGs

As our Inquiry PLGs came a few weeks after lockdown started we decided to make them online and optional. We started with a demo slam with myself, lead teachers and a few other teachers sharing tips and tricks that we find useful, especially in a distance learning environment. We then broke out into groups to have discussions around discussion, critical thinking and creativity. 

36 people attended with representatives from each school present.

10. TBC - my thinking cap is on and open for ideas...

Ngā mihi nui

Thanks for reading this far...

Planting Seeds (part 2)

Kia ora bloggers,

This post is number two in a duo of blog posts. If you'd like to read part one you won't have to scroll too far to find it!

Let's get back into Planting Seeds by Susan Sandretto. One small note, these are not the official names of the chapters (I've now returned the library book so can not check), more a summary of what I learnt from them...

Chapter 4 - Making Critical Literacy Visible

Text selection...

The example Susan used was really interesting: the back of a box of pain killers. It was discussed who is excluded from this text. Anyone who is not confident with English is more than likely to struggle with the scientific and technical language. This just goes to show that you can teach critical literacy with almost any text.

Starting with a slightly simpler text was also recommended so that students aren't bogged down with decoding. This goes really well with the idea of scaffold texts that we use in our T-shaped literacy units. Another idea is to use a text that has already been used with students. So that they don't become bored with it, you can explain that this second reading has a different focus.

Role of the teacher...

Critical literacy and quality discussion can only happen when the teacher  has set up a caring environment for students where they respect each others' opinions. Teachers should also model having a questioning stance and support students to make connections, both between different texts and between texts and their own lives.

Role of the student...

It was interesting to read about literacy circles, with students having time to read a text, then prepare to take part in a dialogue (which may be written or verbal). It made me reflect on how often I expected students to have an opinion or to take part in a discussion immediately after reading a text and how unrealistic this is an an expectation.

Image by Wokandapix @ Pixabay

Reciprocal teaching was also mentioned at length, something I know a lot of Ako Hiko schools use or are experimenting with. What stood out for me here was how important it is for the teacher to model the roles of predictor, clarifier, questioner and summariser before expecting students to be able to do them independently.

Chapter 5 - Assessment

I learnt that assessment comes from the word assidere which translates as 'to sit beside or with.' This made me realise how much we have deviated from this original definition with so many of our current assessments, with the teacher being a long way from the student's side (literally and metaphorically).

Summative (assessment of learning) and formative assessment (assessment for learning) have obviously been discussed a lot but I loved the analogy used in this book. It said that summative assessment is equivalent to when the customer tastes the soup whereas formative assessment is when the chef tastes the soup. It's pretty obvious to see which is the more useful if the goal is to make the soup taste as good as possible!

It also highlighted the importance of assessment AS learning or in other words students being actively involved in self-assessment.

Chapter 6 - Student Voice and Feedback

Again, the importance of self and peer assessment was highlighted here. This time peer assessment was suggested as a scaffold to allow students to move towards self assessment. Other benefits of peer assessment include:

- Students often use language that is easier to understand

- The teacher is freed up to have other discussions (which reminds me of our 'powerful teaching conversations' High Leverage Practice)

This whole chapter reinforced for me how powerful blogging can be as a way for students to post published work but also to reflect on their growth, skills and progress towards goals.

This term we have a big focus on Smart Relationships which spends a lot of time on Quality Blog Comments. For the first time I started to think of blog commenting with a critical literacy lens. I'm not sure how or where to work this into lessons but I'm interested to explore ideas around:

- How am I making the blogger feel with this comment? Am I making them feel like they are an expert? Or that they are deficient?

- How will they consume this feedback?

I'm now rethinking how I get feedback from students on my sessions. In the past I've got some classes to fill in a Google Form. This was a bit time consuming and ate into the already busy sessions. I also realised (after reading this chapter) that I was excluding some people's voices from this feedback. For example, it was typically the more fluent and settled classes that got round to filling in the feedback. This probably gave a skewed view of how successful the lessons were. The voice of those students in classes who didn't get round to finishing the lesson was probably more valuable but was missing.

Image by Gerd Altmann @ Pixabay

Moving forward I might experiment with ending sessions with questions like:

- What did you learn about _____?

- What did your teacher do to help you learn 

about ______ today?

- If you were the teacher, how would you teach ______?

Chapter 7

My notes on this chapter were brief but pretty important I think:

"It doesn't count as critical literacy unless there is social action."

The book suggested a continuum which might be useful as Ako Hiko schools develop on their T-shaped literacy journey.

1. Shift thinking about texts

                2. Reconstruction of texts (writing our own)

                                3. Localised action (the example in the book was a group of students                                                         choosing to stop using the word gay in a negative context)

                                                        4. Global action

This continuum really resonated with me as someone who is passionate about the environment and does a fair bit locally. It was also a timely reminder at the end of the book that learning all of this content and reflecting on these ideas from a text is great, but it's pointless unless you act on it. This reminds me of a quote I heard this week....

"Knowledge without action is like a bird without wings."

So what next? (not a chapter anymore - just my thoughts)

Something I'll do straight away:

In my sessions on quality blog comments I'll make sure there is discussion on thinking about how people will consume our feedback. How will it make them feel?

Something I'll do soon:

Our Ako Hiko ambassadors are already creating podcasts. I'm now wondering if these could be used as shared books/texts in classes.

Could critical literacy be used as the focus for shared books for one day of the week? e.g. Monday = new vocabulary, Tue = punctuation, Wed = critical literacy?

A slow burner:

After reading Planting Seeds I feel like I'm in a far stronger position to support teachers or schools who want to dig deeper into critical literacy. I also feel more confident to offer PLG workshops or toolkits on critical literacy using many of the ideas I've discussed here.

Thank you for reading this far. I'd love to hear where you, your class or your school are at on their critical literacy journey. What have you tried? What's worked? What are your challenges? Let me know in the comments...