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

Kia ora koutou,

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

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

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

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

Between the ambassadors a Google Site 

was created, posters designed and

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ngā mihi nui.

DFI Session Four

Distance learning at its finest today as we looked at 'tohatoha' or 'share.' I loved Dorothy's idea about your audience being the people who CHOOSE to listen to you. This resonated with me, especially in the current climate. The students who are choosing to access their learning via Google Sites and connecting with their teachers via Google Meet are the audience. So how do we reach and engage the students who are not choosing to check in? Or can't?

The deep dives into MyMaps and Google Sheets were very interesting today. These are two areas that I'm not as confident with. It was then challenging to lead a group on Google Sheets but I feel much more confident now than I did at the start of the day in both areas.

I used MyMaps to create this map of the schools in my cluster with some options for walking (I wish), riding or driving between them. I learnt how to add new layers, which had previously confused me, and change icons as well as calculating distances and areas. I'm also planning on creating a pepeha using MyMaps.

I need to keep using Google Sheets to become more confident with what I've learnt. Turns out I knew some of the trickier parts like conditional formatting and filter views but had missed some basic tricks like resizing columns, date formatting and locking columns and rows. 

I will definitely be using the Google Sheet activity where students create graphs to show their blogging activity. This will be especially interesting with the Summer Learning Journey and distance learning.


And a huge shout out to Dorothy, Gerhard, the other facilitators and participants for making this unique learning experience happen! Ka pai!