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?

Reach For Greatness - Yong Zhao

"We are obsessed with what children do not know or are unable to do. In a new world where smart technology has replaced and will continue to replace humans in routine tasks, we need humans to be creative, unique and entrepreneurial."

This book reinforced a lot of the thinking I have been doing about education recently. As we moved out of distance learning and went back into classrooms one of my focuses has been on how we keep the creativity that flourished during lockdown now that we are back at school. Yong Zhao talks about how much effort is put into fixing students deficits and not enough focus is put on helping them develop their strengths and passions.


Everyone is above Average

Yong Zhao suggests that everyone can be above average, especially when you look at average as a median value. For example the test mean score of a class might be 70% but the median could be 85% if only a few low scores pull the mean downwards. Therefore, by some definitions, the whole class bar a couple of low scorers could be considered above average. Maybe it's time we ditched the word average?

"And even the achievements of those above average students are not great compared to what they could achieve. There is no end to the need for greatness, the more we learn the more we want to learn." Are we pushing those above average students enough to really meet their potential?

One of the biggest take aways for me from this book was that everyone is above average in some aspects of their lives. In previous classes I've taught, students would start and end each term reviewing their jagged profiles. Students put themselves on a linear scale for qualities such as leadership, collaboration and resilience. It was incredibly empowering for students to know that they were experts in one of these areas, even though they didn't view themselves as one of the 'smart kids.'

Passions

I don't think we have to look far to find areas where students are above average. Distance learning brought a lot of these strengths to the foreground, from delicious baking to beautiful poetry, from inspiring art to persistent coding.

"Everyone has potential even though that potential may be overlooked undervalued or even judged is abnormal by society." Are we giving students (and adults for that matter) enough opportunities to follow their passions and build on their strengths?

I was fortunate to have some time out away from education last year to explore some of my other passions. From being involved in wetland restoration projects to completing a book of poetry and from working on the Tread Lightly caravan to helping build a house made from tyres in Canada. I was very privileged to be in a position to do exactly what Yong Zhao said is necessary for our students: to use their passions, strengths and efforts to serve the world beyond themselves.

Personalised Learning vs Personalisable Education

"Personalised education is about fixing students' deficits and assumes that all students should learn same thing, even if they need to learn at different speeds and in different ways." Yong Zhao makes the point that in this situation someone else (the teacher) has done the personalising for the student.

In contrast personalisable education is about enhancing strengths and supporting passions. It assumes that everyone has the potential and need to become great (not average, great!). As I write this paragraph I realise that the word personalisable is made up of personal, is and able which sums it up really don't you think? 

This got me reflecting on how many students I've deprived of opportunities to become great because I focused too much on their weaknesses and the gaps I needed to fill. As a facilitator I now have the capacity to offer some new experiences to leaners in the Ako Hiko cluster. Maybe this will help some students find new passions and give them opportunities to be great!

"Musicians must make music and writers must write."

What are your passions? And how do they come across in your teaching practice?
What successes have you had with finding the strengths and passions of students? And how could this be amplified?

https://twitter.com/YongZhaoEd

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

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

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!