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

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 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

Term 4 Manaiakalani Hui

On Monday 14th and Tuesday 15th December I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the Manaiakalani Hui at the National Library. Above all else I really appreciated the chance to connect face to face with the extraordinary team of leaders and facilitators from around the country. On Tuesday we each had five minutes to reflect on our journey over the past three years. Further down this post I've included my reflection slides, but I also wanted to document and share some of the gems I picked up from other people during the day...

Amie @ Tairāwhiti

Amie reminded me that I should be blogging more (other than what I'm doing right now obviously).

She also mentioned meeting weekly with principals. This is something I'd love to do as I've gained so much insight and so many ideas from brief five minute chats with principals this year.

Cam @ Kootuitui ki Papakura

Cam simplified her main goal for next year as getting her schools to work together. This is very much on my radar for Ako Hiko and it's been great to see people working together in our T-shaped literacy PLGs and to hear of teachers wanting to visit other schools next year. 

Cheryl @ Tairāwhiti

Cheryl mentioned talking to individual teachers: What's your data? What's your starting point? What do you want out of this? This is a great reminder for when I start off with the new teachers I'll be working with in 2021.

She also talked about an unrelenting focus on reading which has come up a lot this year and is worth keeping at the forefront of my mind.

Dave @ Manaiakalani

'He aha te rākau hei whakatō mā tāua?' (What tree shall we plant?) This is a great reminder when thinking about what new opportunities we can offer in 2021. I need to remember to talk with teachers, leaders and principals to make sure their needs are being met in order for them to fully invest in new ideas.

Another great quote from Dave, "It's not what you do, it's what they do when you're not there." This got me thinking about sustainability. How will I support the teachers I've been working with in 2020 to make sure the great progress continues? And how can I work with lead teachers to make sure there is consistency across (and between) schools?

Fiona @ Manaiakalani

'Leadership empowers strong teams.' I'm lucky to have an amazing group of lead teachers and am looking forward to working with them next year. I'm also mindful of making sure I give them opportunities to develop and grow their leadership.

Herman @ Tairāwhiti

Herman discussed 'community feels' which reinforced what Cam talked about. He also talked about rewindable learning and what that looks like. Another timely reminder for orientation 2021.

Nicola @ Hokitika

Nicola fed back how people felt overwhelmed with lots of information at orientation days and suggested that it might be worth chunking this information. This is something I will definitely have in mind as I prepare the orientation and site building days for 2021.

Sharon @ Te Ara Tūhura

Sharon emphasised how important listening is (luckily I was listening to her). Especially in terms of listening to teachers and where they are at. You can then use this as a starting point to know what to work on with them next.

As promised here are my slides. My reflection on the last three years was slightly different in that I spent 2018 as classroom teacher and AP at Wesley Primary, 2019 travelling in Europe and Canada while trying lots of part time and voluntary jobs, and then 2020 taking on the EPL role at Ako Hiko.

 

A common theme that came through most reflections was the importance of relationships. I can't wait to meet the teachers I'll be working with next year and start building those relationships.

Another key point I will keep in mind while facilitating is making it explicit what strategies I am using with the class. There was an interesting discussion about our role as facilitators and I think if we are trying to promote effective practices then these need to be pointed out to the teachers we are supporting.

I hope this is helpful to others. Thanks to everyone in the team for sharing their reflections. Let me know if you have any thoughts or questions.

Happy holidays everyone! 

Cybersmart at level 2.5

Kia ora koutou,

I simply had to post today as yesterday I had two of my most successful and inspiring Cybersmart sessions ever.

The success of these sessions is a tip of the cap to the huge amount of hard work that teachers, leaders and principals have put in over the last few months. And let's not forgot the students and the epic stint they have put in!

I've been facilitating from home this week due to the current situation in Auckland. Around two thirds of the classes I was working with were in class and socially distanced. There were also some learners who were at home but joined via Google Meet.

 

 The biggest bonus for me was being able to facilitate lessons as I did during distance learning but having the teacher in the classroom to roam and trouble shoot any problems that arose. I think this was also good learning for the teachers as they could see what the learning looks like from a student's perspective.

I realise there are still huge challenges around equitable access but yesterday gave me so much hope with teachers and learners showing they are flexible, resilient and willing to learn. It also reinforced what I already knew about the technology we use empowering learners and making the learning visible and ubiquitous.

The lessons were around quality blog commenting. Once students had learnt what quality blog comments look like and demonstrated their confidence they moved onto creating DLOs to teach others. The choices included Scratch, Canva and Screencastify. Here is an example of each:

Screencastify - Asfan 

Canva - Mehmet 

Scratch - me (no one chose to do Scratch so I did one)

                             

If anyone is interested here is the link to the lesson on the Ako Hiko Cybersmart site. On reflection there is a lot in this lesson and I might split the create part into two and move the actual commenting half into the learn section and scrap what's there already.

And if you're looking for a chance to practise your quality blog commenting yourself, why not leave me a comment or check out the Ako Hiko bloggers of the week and give them some well deserved feedback.

Ngā mihi

Cybersmart Planning

Another term lies ahead and after my first full term of facilitating I had a lot to reflect on. Here is my list of things that I tried to keep in mind while planning sessions and resources for Term 3.

keep it simple!

less talking by me - use Screencastify videos more for rewindable content

make sure resources are visually engaging on the site

offer different levels of choice for learners e.g. beginner, getting going and smart learner

make sure the create tasks are genuinely creative and that they allow students to demonstrate that they have learnt the 'learn section'

how do these activities reflect the Key Competencies?

more modes of text on the site, especially audio

plan opportunities for students to provide feedback

This seemed like a daunting task and the list seemed to make the very first bullet point impossible. In Term 2 I think I was guilty of trying to fit too much into a session. This meant that sessions were often left unfinished or ran over two weeks and lost some momentum.

I've realised that I can not possibly fit everything I'd like to into each session and still deliver a clear and effective Cybersmart programme. However, I still believe that all aspects of a successful Cybersmart session are visible at some point in the term. From giving students choice over what they create, to challenging and supporting learners with different levels of scaffolding. I haven't forced these features into each lesson but they are there throughout the term.

If you have time to look at some of the lessons I've prepared I'd love to hear your feedback and suggestions.

Term 3 Site:

And here's a link to the Term 2 resources if you wanted to compare:

Reflecting on the Magic

At our Manaiakalani end of term hui each facilitator created a slide deck to show how the Manaiakalani kaupapa of connected, ubiquitous, visible and empowered shone through during (and after) distance learning.

I thought I'd share my thoughts on here. What were your successes in these areas? And what could be your next steps to amplify these successes and lift the lid on the potential awesomeness?

Poetry Slam!

Last week we had our first ever Ako Hiko poetry slam. We had around 30 entries and while I don't want to pick any winners, I thought I'd share some of the poems here. The highlights for me were seeing students work their way through the resources to have a go at new forms of poems independently and seeing students commenting on each other's poems. This included across school commenting and some comments from Kaitaia!

Thank you to all the teachers who supported their students. I think it is so important to keep providing new opportunities like this for our learners. And what an amazing way to get creative! The slide deck will stay on the Ako Hiko site over the holidays if you have students looking for something to do (or if you want to have a go yourself).

Richard @ WIS

Franny @ ODS

Siaki @ CTK

Back In Class - Week One

What a fabulous feeling it was to walk into a school again this week. I realised it was the simple things that I'd taken for granted, like chatting with the office staff, having a rugby ball fly past your face on the way to class and of course actually having face to face conversations with our learners.

Delivering Cybersmart sessions during distance learning was an interesting experience. One of the biggest challenges was not being able to easily judge how the lesson was going by doing a lap of the room and seeing students' screens (although Hapara Teacher Dashboard made this a whole lot more manageable than it could have been). So back in class this week it was an opportune moment in time to reflect on the Cybersmart sessions I had planned for this term (it seems like a lifetime ago that I did this planning).

I read an extremely interesting blog post by Mark Maddren, a facilitator in Christchurch, which got me thinking about how I could differentiate sessions. I find planning Cybersmart lessons a challenging juggling act: trying to make learn, create, share visible while also offering multiple texts for students to engage and provide activities that offer choices. When trying to tick so many boxes it was often the differentiation that got left behind. I'm inspired by Mark's idea of having beginners, stepping up and confident sections for each lesson.

As a facilitator this also hammers home how important it is to develop relationships. By getting to know the learners as well as possible during the one hour a week I spend with them, I am more likely to know which learners will pick which option. And at the end of the day I will also have modelled how sessions can be differentiated for the class teacher who knows the learners far better than I do.

Another of Mark's ideas was including a learning pathway for each lesson. My first thought was that this isn't necessary but then I realised that I was thinking of the lesson from my perspective. Of course I understood the flow of the lesson, I'm the one who created it! It made me wonder what else works for me but isn't working for the students.

It was timely that I came across this article on Virtual White Spaces by Ann Milne. This got me reflecting on my Cybersmart resources more deeply. Milne quotes George Dei as saying:

“Today, Indigenous knowledge is about the struggle to retain one’s identity in the call for a global sameness.”

Milne also quotes the host of a webinar, who when discussing how schools are preparing for distance learning said :

"...(it's like) having these jig saw pieces, but suddenly this pandemic has removed the picture from the box."

She adds her own thoughts to this:

"That’s a really apt analogy, but even when we thought we did have the ‘picture’ in our learning environments prior to COVID-19, the truth is that many children—Māori, indigenous, and minoritised children world-wide were always absent from that picture and their pieces never did fit."

I'm now contemplating whether my Cybersmart sessions are just replicating practice which hasn't worked for many of our learners in the past. Is my planning culturally sustaining or is it culture-erasing (one size fits all)? I was already reflecting on whether I need to get feedback from students each session. Now I realise this is a necessity not an option. Why have I been asking for feedback about each session from the class teacher but not the learners? They are the people the sessions are aimed at after all.

One of the goals for the Ako Hiko cluster this year is to get whānau workshops up and running. I believe this is the ideal moment to collect voice from our communities. Coming out of distance learning I think we must be there to support families so that they in turn can support our learners. We must do this without making assumptions about what they already know or what their capacity to help at home is. This is why we are currently surveying our communities to see what they would like from these sessions.

Hopefully the more we listen to whānau the greater their capacity to support our learners will be while also providing an opportunity for educators to better understand the culture and context of our learners. This in turn enables learners and whānau to see their culture (and therefore themselves) in the curriculum.

I'd like to finish (thanks for reading this far) with a quote from Lessons From Lockdown. In this article Dr Nina Hood states that we should:

"...meet children where they are and give them what they need, both inside and outside of school, in order for all of them to have a genuine opportunity to be successful.”

To me this is super simple summary of what education should be. But are we currently putting enough effort into knowing where children are? And if we are not, how can we possibly be giving them what they need?

Moving forward I hope to stretch myself in these areas by:

• Differentiating Cybersmart sessions
• Trialing a learning pathway for sessions
• Collect more student voice and feedback about sessions
• Get whānau workshops up and running as soon as possible

Ngā mihi

Reciprocal Reading

Had real success with this in Week 1 with both Kea classes. Great to see students supporting each other and using these prompts and scaffolds. Students were in groups of four and changed roles throughout the week.