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

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

DFI Session Nine (last one!)

Today, before we took the Google exam, we heard Dorothy speak about the term ubiquitous. It was a great reminder that learning should be available:

Anytime 

Anywhere 

At any pace

(and from) anyone

This made me reflect on distance learning and whether we have achieved these goals. I agree with Dorothy that the dream of having rewindable learning available regardless of time or place has become a reality in the last few months. It's a credit to our teachers and leaders that students are coping with this way of working. But I'm also very aware that not all are students are engaged at this time. So what are the barriers that we still need to address moving forward?

Reflecting on the DFI on the whole I feel very privileged to have shared this experience with an amazing team of educators. I've learnt so much and feel so much more confident supporting other teachers with the content we have covered.

As a facilitator and now Education Programme Leader, I've also been able to up skill myself and start to be able to trouble shoot and help other people through their challenges.

Thanks to Gerhard, Dorothy and all the other facilitators and participants of this cohort. And good luck with the rest of the term and year!

Distance Learning Week One

Well, what a week! I feel exhausted from just a couple of days of distance learning and I don't even have my own class to teach! But my overwhelming feeling is of pride in the wonderful teachers and leaders in the Ako Hiko cluster (and all over the country) for the amazing effort they have put into making the transition to distance learning as smooth as possible.

I'm extremely grateful for the collaboration and support the lead teachers of schools have been giving each other, the enthusiasm with which teachers with differing levels of experience have adapted their sites and set up Google Meets with their classes and with the gusto with with students have been posting on their blogs. This post is really to share and celebrate the awesome successes I have seen already.

I've been really impressed with the class sites I've seen with teachers considering how to make them visually appealing to students while keeping them simple and easy to navigate. This is true from new entrant classes up to Year 7 and 8 and also from beginning teachers through to more experienced staff. Here are a few examples:

I've also been inspired and enthused by students posting on their blogs and seeing teachers and support staff leaving positive, thoughtful and helpful comments.

Zara @ Waikowhai Primary

Gaylene @ Hay Park School

Floyd @ Owairaka District School

And I also need to acknowledge the vast raft of support that has come from the Manaiakalani Outreach Programme and from facilitators around the country. I couldn't imagine being in the role I am in without the advice and expertise that is oozing from such an amazing group of professionals. Thanks team!

Moving forward my efforts with the cluster will channelled into blogging and engagement. I'm asking myself (and others) how we can best support students to blog independently and effectively, especially those who haven't had any practice at this (check out some 'how to' videos o the Ako Hiko Cybersmart site). In terms of of engagement, students seemed engaged by the Google Meet sessions. Our challenge may be how to keep the enthusiasm and engagement up as the days and Meets go on.

Ngā mihi.