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.

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 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

DFI 2021 - Day 1 - A coach's perspective

Kia ora koutou,

This time last year I was starting the DFI as a participant. One DFI badge, two lockdowns, a switch to full time Education Programme Leader and a lot of Google Meets later I'm back as one of the coaches.

First things first, every member of my bubble was absolutely fantastic today and I'm so proud of them already. Lot's of great questions to keep me on my toes and some wonderful creations using Google Docs.

What stood out for me today is that you can never know everything. Even having done the DFI last year I still picked up lots of new tips and ideas today. Everyone is a teacher and everyone is a learner.

For example Dorothy's session on Google Groups made me think about how I use them with different people, especially when it comes to people replying to messages. Do they realise the messages have come through the Google Group and that everyone can see their replies? A conversation worth having.

Google Docs continues to impress and surprise. I'd never thought of sending a link to a specific heading in a Google Doc and I didn't realise that you could increase or decrease text size using command-shift-< or >

I think I'll try using Google Docs when I'm advertising the 2021 Ako Hiko Student Led Toolkits (check out last year's toolkits here #shamelessplug).

Can't wait for session two!

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! 

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, which is the most effective and engaging Cybersmart lesson of them all?

Well hopefully you've got beyond the huge title and realised it a weak attempt at linking the end of term reflection (hence the mirror) to a more exciting title.

As I've mentioned on a previous bog post I spent around half of this term teaching Cybersmart sessions from home, as Auckland moved into another lockdown and cases continued to emerge in close proximity to some of my schools. I'll try not to repeat myself but you can see that blog post here.

Tips and Tricks:

After a few weeks of teaching in this way (again) I realised that without much explicit planning or conscious effort, my classroom (or Meetroom) management had adapted to suit the new circumstances. Some examples off the top of my head are:

-using a lot of thumbs up and thumbs down to judge understanding

-students showing on their hands (out of five) how confident they were to start an activity

-students choosing one key idea to put in the chat after watching a video or reading a text

-following up a student sharing by letting them pick a number, then counting on Gridview to see who that student is to give them the opportunity to share next

-encouraging students to hop back into the Meet if they were stuck and want to ask a question without having the rest of the class present

Positives:

Because the teacher was in the room but I wasn't during these sessions there was a shift in roles and responsibilities. Teachers were called upon to roam and support students more as I was not able to do so. At first this often meant that we did not have time to catch up and discuss any challenges or goals. I soon realised that it was vital to build this time in. So the teacher and I would stay on the Google Meet once the students had left to catch up for ten minutes or so. As well as the obvious benefits for the teacher this also forced students to be more independent as they started their activities. By using Hāpara Teacher Dashboard we were also able to share examples where students had used this time constructively.

Another benefit is that students won't have had a huge gap between Google Meet experiences if  we were to go into another distance learning situation in Term 4 (here's hoping we don't though). I like the idea of having Meet drills just as you would have fire drills (to help prepare for any future distance learning scenarios) but for the classes I've been working with in this way they would be less of a necessity.

Challenges:

Lights, camera, camera, camera? - I noticed the older the students got the more reluctant they were to have their cameras on or the more easily distracted they got by being able to see each other. My general tactic was to normalise being able to see your face e.g. People see your face all day, on the playground, during lunch...

Who wants to share? Who else wants to share? - Encouraging a range of students to share their work rather than always using the couple of super keen sharers has always been a challenge. Being confident to share in front of your peers relies on having a strong and positive classroom culture. However, I think having lessons via Google Meet amplified the difference between those wanting to share and those not wanting to. I wonder what percentage of the unmuting, chat use and screen-sharing was accounted for by just a couple of individuals in each class.

Timing is everything - Students love creating DLOs but this takes time. Often the class would be incredibly engaged with creating a Screencastify, pick-a-path story or animation, only for the time to run out. I don't like leaving work to finish off for classes as I'm supposed to be taking things off teacher's plate not adding more! 

Some classes continued with Cybersmart when I left so that they could finish and others had time blocked off later in the week for 'finishing off' which seemed to work quite well. After a great discussion with other facilitators I'm also thinking of running multiple sessions with the learn content then blocking off the next session purely for the create part.

Moving Forwards:

As I plan Term 4's Cybersmart sessions I will be keeping in mind the fact that they may be delivered face to face or they may be delivered online. I hope to create sessions that will work equally well in person and over Google Meet. I'm also excited about collaborating more with facilitators from around the country to provide the best learning experiences for our students and teachers.

Happy holidays / non-contact time everyone!

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:

Multipliers

Kia ora!
I've just finishing re-reading Multipliers by Liz Wiseman (technically I finished a while ago and this has been sitting as a draft since then). It wasn't my first choice of books to read but due to libraries being shut and having re-read all my Terry Pratchett books I decided to get stuck in. And I'm really glad I did. As I devoured the chapters I stumbled upon many timely reminders as I start my journey as Education Programme Leader for Ako Hiko.

My primary objective for my first term was not to drop the ball on anything. However, a global pandemic somewhat changed the term for everyone involved. Because of the the circumstances, I started seeing innovative ideas everywhere. Something I've been guilty of in the past is rushing into projects on my own, devoting time and resources to them, only for them to receive very little engagement and traction. Re-reading multipliers has reminded me of the importance of the whole team at Ako Hiko. If ideas are going to get traction people need to have ownership of them. And if and when I step away from the cluster the processes put in place need to stay standing without me there.

Some other key aspects of the text for me:

My role is to invest, teach and coach. The book gave the example of a soccer (American book!) coach and how they don't run on the pitch to score a crucial goal in the last minute of a game, even though they have the ability to do so. 

Diminishers (the opposite of multipliers) tell people what they know whereas multipliers help people learn what they need to know.

Multipliers don't set the direction - they make sure the direction is set.

Multipliers look for native genius in people. What spikes their enthusiasm? They then tell the person about this genus to unlock their potential.

Multipliers never do anything for people that they can do for themselves.

It is this last quote that stuck out the most for me but it's also the one I'm battling with the most. On one hand I want to help (and multiply) the school leaders by making sure they have opportunities to grow and learn new skills. The example that comes to mind is blog building. On the other hand I am fully aware of how busy teachers are and I don't want to be adding to their workload unnecessarily.

After talking with colleagues about this balancing act I believe that there is no hard and fast rule. It will very much be a case by case judgement call on whether a task is something I can support leaders to achieve or whether at that moment of time it's a job I can just get done for them.

During distance learning most teachers showed immense creativity and flexibility. It was also noticeable that their own passions and interests were coming through in their teaching. I'm now on the lookout for these gems of native genius and thinking about how I can use them to multiply others.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on multiplying others. Have you found the native genius in someone? How have you resisted taking the reins and doing things for people? What are your tips for making sure a direction is set?

Ngā mihi

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