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...

Planting Seeds (part 1)

Kia ora koutou,

With it being non-contact time, I finally had the chance to finish a book without it being a case of two painfully slow pages a night before I fell asleep!

I really enjoyed Planting Seeds by Susan Sandretto and thought I'd make a blog post out of the notes I made on my bookmark a) in case I lose said bookmark and b) in case other people may find these insights useful (and maybe don't have time to read the whole book).

Disclaimer: These notes are often more ideas that reading the book prompted rather than direct quotes. Even those parts that are quotes have more than likely been mangled by my hasty note taking.

Chapter One:

I found this opening chapter very useful, just to reinforce my understanding of what critical literacy is all about...

- All texts have designs on their audience

- How a reader, listener or viewer takes to a text is an index of its effect

I also liked the phrases used for the unpacking of critical literacy that could easily be used with students...

- It enables consumers to be savvy in their engagement

- ...so you can appreciate the potential social effects of subscribing to a viewpoint

Chapter one explained that students can be:

code breakers -------- text participants -------- text users --------- text analysts

What really resonated with me is that these don't have to be taught in this order. This fits in nicely with what we are trying to achieve with critical thinking and T-shaped literacy skills in junior classes. Students can still be analysing texts even though a lot of their reading time is still focused on code breaking.

Chapter Two:

Another definition of critical literacy...

'Uncovering perspectives and positions that underpin texts and asking/judging what these perspectives mean in the social context of our world'

What else stood out to me in this chapter was that you can teach critical thinking without critical literacy but you can't teach critical literacy without critical thinking. Even critical thinking can easily become just 'thinking' if you take away cultural and political contexts. 

Chapter Three:

This was the most useful chapter in the book for me as it focused on discussion. Student led discussion is one of our High Leverage Practices and last term I was privileged to go into many classrooms as part of our observations. Discussion was one of the aspects of the lesson (as well as the associated planning) that we were looking at. So I found lots of the information in this chapter relevant and useful.

Here's a little visual I made to remind myself of some of the ideas I hope to experiment with in the future...

 

*to add onto not having a right answer in mind... I realised how often I do this. Even if I'm asking an open ended question, I still have an answer in mind and am therefore biased towards that answer. Do I give enough credit to answers outside of this? Some tips related this this that are shared in the book include:

- At the start of the discussion explain that you're only going to respond to ideas with a 'thank you' or 'ok.' This way all answers are validated and you're not suggesting, by your tone or body language, that some answers are more valid than others.

- It's still ok to share your opinion as a teacher but you can do this at the end so that you don't shut down other ideas because they are not in line with what the teacher thinks.

**to add onto the idea of a shift in power... I really liked the analogy of the ebb and flow of the tide to demonstrate how the power can shift between students and teachers throughout the day. For example, a student can hold the (majority of the) power by being the expert during a discussion without this meaning that when it comes to managing the class the teacher doesn't have any power or has lost control.

So that's the first three chapters of the book which is probably plenty for now. Hopefully I'll cover chapters 4-7 in another post.

Ngā mihi

Manaiakalani TOD - Term 1 2021

Kia ora koutou,

I hope everyone is enjoying their non-contact time. In the last week of Term 1 I was fortunate enough to attend an end of term hui with other facilitators from around the country. I always find these meetings inspiring and motivating. This year we ended the four day hui by joining the Manaiakalani teacher only day. I felt extremely privileged to be able to hear so many amazing educators share their effective practice. So I thought I'd pass on some of my learnings.

The TOD was kicked off by a key note by Dr. Rae Siʻilata and Kyla Hansell. This was truly inspiring but also humbling as it challenged some aspects of my practice that I hadn't considered before. A few simple take aways from this session were:

- Don't call them ESOL students! ESOL is a programme not a student.

- Privilege the people in the room e.g. next time I'm starting a staff hui with our karakia I will offer any Te Reo Māori speakers the chance to lead us.

Photo by Fiona Grant

Digging a bit deeper into the keynote (the full presentation can be found here), another message that resonated with me was that we do not have to be bilingual ourselves in order to allow students to use and utilise their first (or second or third...) language. 

There are lots of resources out there including dual language books and websites like The Coconet that could be extremely valuable. We can also give students opportunities to output (speaking, writing, presenting) in their first languages. It's about showing that their language has value and realising that getting stronger in a first language also helps develop the second language.

The input and output approach got me thinking about our pedagogy of learn, create, share and then this slide appeared:

While planning Cybersmart sessions I'm always thinking about the balance between the learn, create and share parts of the lesson. This got me thinking about giving students more opportunities to their thinking, creating and sharing in other languages.

In our Inquiry PLGs in Term 1 we looked at creating texts sets using authentic texts. My plan at this stage is to move onto other HLPs this term, in particular discussion and critical thinking. Unpacking students' prior knowledge will fit really nicely with this. It was interesting to hear the discussion about the following book cover and how students predicted that the text was going to be about praising the lord! It shows that students' prior knowledge comes mostly from the language and culture most familiar to them.

If I had to summarise my takeaway from the keynote in one question or provocation I guess it would be:

"Whose knowledge are we valuing in the classroom?"

Workshop One:

For the first session I had a refresher on Explain Everything from Clarelle and Khismira. It's always good to have a play on Explain Everything and see what ideas other people have when creating projects.

Workshop Two:

It was a pleasure to work with Cam Cameron from Kootuitui ki Papakura to present our workshop based on the MIT project of Sarah Daly: Accelerating Reading Comprehension Through Questioning.

Workshop Three:

For the final session I attended T shaped literacy skills for juniors by Rebecca Jesson. It was a real pleasure to see how seamlessly Rebecca connected texts to pick up the big ideas and themes. I'm looking forward to sharing this with the junior teachers in Ako Hiko.

Photo by Fiona Grant

2021 DFI - Day 8 - A Coach's Perspective

Computational thinking day! Always one of my favourites. This blog post is mainly about sharing some resources that I explored today that people might be unaware of.

I love Compute It. I stayed away form it today because I end up doing it for hours! This introduces programming language and is great for students to work away at independently. Super engaging!

Hello Ruby was a new one for me today. This has some great offline activities for juniors. It reinforces the fact that younger students already do a lot of activities that involve computational thinking.

I'm still exploring Raranga Matihiko but I'm enjoying the links to other apps like ClapMotion and Gamefroot. I'd be keen to hear from anyone who has used these in class. I'll also be having a watch of the Raranga Matihiko TV home learning videos.

Let me know if you are aware of any other awesome resources that might be useful.

And good luck to all the teachers in my bubble (and all the other DFI participants) who are taking the Google Level 1 exam next week!

Ngā mihi

2021 DFI - Week 7 - A Coach's Perspective

Kia ora koutou,

Today was an extremely busy day on DFI (but then again when isn't it?) so I didn't have too many notes to convert into my blog post.

I did learn a few super valuable lessons though. One for Chromebooks and one for iPads

1. Screencastify shortcuts. These will be so useful and I can't wait to try them out. I think they will really help students too, allowing them to focus on delivering their content rather than worrying about clicking in different places.

Screencastify Shortcuts

2. Screen recording on iPads. I've already made a video about this and shared it with some teachers who might find it useful. I can't believe I didn't know this was a thing!

I'm also super proud of my wonderful bubble. They created some awesome resources in Explain Everything and Workspaces today. They have come so far in the seven weeks we have been working together!

2021 DFI - Day 6 - A Coach's Perspective

DFI day six already! Another great day focusing on the kaupapa of connected and on Class Sites...

Connected:

Dorothy's presentation reminded me of the need to encourage participation in the Ako Hiko Google Currents community. I think there is still a lot of apprehension when it comes to sharing our practice but there is so much potential for us to learn from and support each other that I think it is essential.

Dorothy's toolkit about attracting an audience to your blogs was very useful. I will use some of these ideas while planning Cybersmart sessions in future terms and will also unpack them further with our Ako Hiko ambassadors who are starting their roles in Term 2. 

Class Sites:

Having time to view some sites from other clusters was extremely valuable. I found some great examples where the teaching and learning is visible on the reading or maths group pages. In many cases the learning was also fully rewindable and had links to T-shaped literacy. These will be good exemplars to use with teachers I work with this year.

In the afternoon our bubbles had time to work on their own class sites. It was a good opportunity for me to reflect on my recently built Poetry Slam site (our Poetry Slam is next week and all online if you are interested in joining us).

Ngā mihi

Phil

2021 DFI - Day 5 - A Coach's Perspective

Kia ora koutou,

This week's adventure into the Manaiakalani pedagogy was based around visibility. I don't think you can repeat too many times that the default is to make everything visible. This applies to everything from planning to assessments.

I've been really impressed with the class sites in the Ako Hiko cluster, especially over our multiple lockdowns. I think a next nudge for us is having more of the teaching visible on the sites. This could include teachers' planning and assessments and as we have discussed at this term's staff hui, more rewindable learning.

I enjoyed hearing about the purposes of Class Sites and Hāpara:

Class Sites - making the teaching visible for learners

Hāpara - making the learning visible for teachers

Class Sites:

It was my first time presenting to the whole group today. It made me realise how much content there is to cover when creating a site. I also learnt that simple themes aren't the best for macrons.

In the afternoon our group was collaborating on a Jamboard to share resources for our sites. We found a few things frustrating such as not being able to add a hyperlink and text boxes being a bit awkward. A good reminder here that with any Google Apps you can send feedback. In Jamboard this feature is found by clicking the three dots, in something like Docs it is under the 'help' section. The more requests they get about a certain feature the more likely they are to fix it!

See you next time for Week 6!

2021 DFI - Day 4 - Coach's Perspective

Kia ora koutou,

Day 4 of DFI already! Today we heard Dorothy talk about tohatoha or share. I really like the definition of an authentic audience...

 "people who choose to view your learning"

i.e. they have other options of what they could be viewing. This will be useful to explain to learners, especially when I could be reading and commenting on hundreds of different blogs in the Ako Hiko cluster.

Also a good reminder about why we use Blogger as a platform for sharing...

MyMaps

I had the idea to use MyMaps for story writing. Here's a story I created today which will require the audience to read each section carefully and do some research to find out where to go next on the map. I'd be really keen to hear any feedback you have on it.

ps. I realise I got way to deep into this so it's a bit over the top...

Sheets

I don't think I'll ever stop learning new tips and tricks about Google Sheets. Today I learnt a new way to split data into two or more columns:

data - split text to columns - then choose your separator (usually a space)

My bubble also had great fun learning how to move charts onto separate tabs and then exploring the best way to embed sheets onto our blogs. Here's what it looks like when you move a chart to its own sheet and then embed it:

2021 DFI - Day 3 - A Coach's Perspective

Kia ora koutou,

Thanks for stopping by. Just clocking off from another awesome day of DFI.

Create

In terms of the Manaiakalani pedagogy, today we focused on hanga (create). Even though I've sat through this presentation (or something very similar) numerous times I'm always inspired by it and new ideas always jump out at me.

This video got me thinking about how we can make sure students want to be at school. As one person said while discussing his school experience, "I just wanted to be there." I'll definitely be watching to full version when I get the chance.

 

I'm also going to be digging into this blog post in the future. I was scanning it and the following paragraph jumped off the page and gave me a slap in the face. This pretty much summed up my current thinking about my role as a facilitator.

For all this what has been forgotten that it is the quality of the teacher that ensure such modern environments are conducive to learning; it’s the pedagogy, or teaching beliefs, that teachers hold is all important.

Media

Media is very much at the front of my brain at the moment after Term 4's Cybersmart focus on Smart Media. There were lots of good reminders in Dorothy's session about how how powerful it is to consume and create media.

I started thinking about what media I can create (or encourage other teachers to create) that will engage learners and help them make emotional connections. For example, this video made me feel quite emotional. It could be a good inspirational resource for our film festival this year, especially when students are thinking about who their audience is and what their main messages are...

Slides

The one post it note rule was a great reminder. If you're take home message doesn't fit on a post it note then you've got no chance. I think I've also fallen into the trap of reading my slides to people a few times lately so that was a timely nudge.

My new learning for today was adding GIFs to Google Slides after a good question for one teacher. This one is from Giphy.com.

I really enjoyed the create session I ran on pick-a-path slides. It was also a good chance to share the awesome work that Charlotte, Rita and Isabella did last week. You can check out their blog post here.

Bring on Week 4!

Ngā hihi

2021 DFI - Day 2 - A Coach's Perspective

Another great day on DFI, this time focusing on workflow. I'm so excited about finding new ways to save a few clicks or a few seconds here and there. I'd also love to know how much time I'm saving myself on a yearly basis by using all these tips and tricks.

Ako - 

It's always a great reminder hearing about amplifying and turbocharging the learning. This week Auckland has been back in lockdown and I've found it interesting to have a look at some of the class sites in the cluster. I'm so impressed with the amount of learning that is visible on some of the sites, especially as it's only week two of the year for some schools.

Google Keep - 

I use Google Keep constantly and have it open alongside my Gmail. One thing I hadn't thought of doing is to have it open alongside a Google Doc so that I can add text directly form the Keep note to the Doc.

I also keep meaning to use the grab text and scribble features in Google Keep but never get round to it...

Gmail - 

I have never heard of confidential mode before (even thought the icon is right there). I can't think of a situation where I'd need to use it at the moment but it's interesting to know it's there.

Taming the Tabs - 

I've noticed teachers get very protective over their tab preferences. There are very strong allegiances to Team Toby and Team OneTab. It was good to see another option available that lets you create groups of tabs. It would be awesome if this was developed so that the groups were saved for future sessions. 

I think all these tips and tricks have a time and a place, it's just figuring out which one suits a particular need most effectively.