Our last session we shared together on what we had learnt over the last 9 weeks. For me I have personally found learning more abut the Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy really helpful. Most things I was aware of and using like email, google draw etc but it is all the little tips and tricks that have added up. These have made my life a lot easier and can definitely take these with me into my classroom and teaching and continue to use these.
Ubiquitous: Ubiquitous learning is all about learning anywhere, anytime, anyplace. Especially after this year with Covid-19 and our level 4 lockdown this was so important for our learners to be able to have rewindable learning online that they could access from home. Dorothy even mentioned for example while we are on this course for 9 weeks we have also left our relievers work digitally to continue.
"Your learners have the potential to be experiencing high quality learning experience right now while you are here"
What do I need help with?
My next steps are continuing to implement the things that I have learnt into my classroom practice as well as things that make my organisation and teaching better.
This morning Dorothy joined us to talked about empowering our young people and that 'empowered' is apart of the Manaiakalani kaupapa.
"The Manaiakalani kaupapa of empowerment is about the advancing of Rangatiratanga"
Rangatiratanga means the ownership one has over one self, ownership, autonomy. The choice of words they have chosen is powerful as our tamariki are our Rangatiratanga. Dorothy stressed the importance of empowering our learners with the right tools, knowledge and skills to be successful.
Coding and Computational Thinking:
This was a great opportunity to explore other simple coding websites as this is our topic for the term. The children in my class have mastered 'Scratch Jr' and I know they would really enjoy code.org. Below is the 'Scratch' code that I worked on which is possibly the next step for some of the more confident learners in my class.
This morning we connected with Fiona Grant and the Manaaiakalani kaupapa of 'cybersmart'. I liked this quote as it is about all children, whanau and teachers to empower out learners and access to their own device.
"at home in the digital world"
I thought the ice berg metaphor was powerful to show the smart and secure learning as apart of cyber safety. They both work together (top of the iceberg and bottom of the iceberg) and compliment each other. The key messages about the cybersmart that it is important that it is a whole school focus so that everyone is on the same page and it is consistent. I know at my own school we are consistent and we all do specifically teach cybersmart and the key categories around being cybersmart.
Digital dig:
We worked our way through a digital dig using a chromebook so we were aware of how to use the shortcuts and some of the challenges that may come with children using these. Below are the tasks that I completed. I found this very useful and going over the shortcuts is a huge help in making my life a lot quicker and easier.
Exploring Explain Everything:
I'm lucky that my juniors already use Explain Everything so this is not a new app for me however we are in the beginning phase of using files to go alongside readers as an online task/worksheet etc. This was good having a play around with so I know what the children will be doing when we are at that stage.
Below is the Explain Everything task that I made around Smart relationships and using positive/quality comments.
Another informative day learning lots of tips and tricks to help with my learning journey and using Explain Everything with my class.
This morning Dorothy connected with us and talked about Manaiakalani's pedagogy of connected. She explained the main goal for Manaiakalani is to connect children with authentic audiences. Even more so in this digital age I can see how important this is to have my own students connected in class, connected during lock down and if this was to happen again. Using Google Meet to catch up digitally was so powerful to share our learning, ideas and feelings during some hard times for children!
Chalk N Talk:
Venessa talked us through some more tips on organising our class sites. One thing that I have learnt today is to not delete things off my class site. In the past if the topic is finished or I wanted to change my layout or organisation I have deleted things off my site. However Venessa made a good point that all our learning should be visible and online so children could access it at a later time. She made me realise that children can also continue learning from home as it is all rewindable.
Explore:
Today our main focus was exploring sites across the cluster at different year levels then we got to look at other peoples sites from our DFI group. Both of these were a great opportunity to give myself some feedback on what I can work on as well as give me some great ideas on how I can improve my own class site. Today I had time to refresh my home site and make some slides for writing next week. Feeling much happier with the overall look still a long way to go though.
We were joined by Dorothy this morning who talked to us about one of Manaiakalanis main pedagogy of 'visible' and that teaching and learning needs to be visible. Very simply it is either visible or it isn't there is no in between. Every part of the learning journey needs to visible for the learner. She made a valid point that children aren't mind readers and cannot know what we want them to learn.
Learning needs to be visible for:
learners
whanau
colleagues
Multi Modal:
Kerry talked to us this morning about the multi modal pedagogy.
How does multi modal modes relate to teaching? We have to be able to cater to different learners and in ways they can understand and follow even if the teacher isn't there.
There are four priority principles to this kaupapa:
Engagement-the hook: making learners engaged and hooking them into the learning. We need to sell our love of learning.
Personalising- future focused teaching and learning relevant to the learner.
Acceleration-having authentic learning and learning outcomes to accelerate learning.
Empowerment- empowering learners that their voice and beliefs are important.
Kerry made a valid point that our class site is a reflection of us and in theory a shop front window. It should reflect ourselves, our learners and be engaging and want students to hook in and dive further. From this I know that working on my site is something I can continue to do.
I had time to explore multi modal sites and I must say that this has given me so many ideas. I can see that teachers have collaborated with planning and making resources. I like that there was a variety of online tools that children could use like Explain Everything, they had made specific tasks for each reader. This is something that I know I want to work towards doing I just feel like I need time to do it.
Google Sites
Most of today's session was spent around planning and designing our own google site from scratch. This planning process allowed me to have time to organise what I want my learners to be able to access. In the real world of running a classroom/with multiple sites I am not sure if I would do a proper 'plan' as such but get stuck straight into it and plan as I go on sites.
Today we met with Donna to talk about the Manaiakalani pedagogy of share. Dorothy talked about the year 2005 and how the year changed with social media. Social media began to become a huge influence on how we share. This was when Manaiakalani saw a hook into my sharing possibilities and embrace this change.
"The purpose of sharing is the audience"
I know for myself and school we have a school Facebook page, classroom blogs for parents to access. We try and have lots of opportunities for our children to share and show their learning in real time.
Google Forms:
Donna talked us through how to make a Google Form I myself have completed many Google Forms but I have never created my own form. This was quite exciting and I can see would be useful in the classroom to get feedback about teaching and learning as it gives all the responses in graphs and summaries etc.
Google Maps:
Together we practised making our own maps from destinations that we loved to visit as a cohort. I then learnt how to add specific places change font, add labels etc. This term our focus is mapping and we have just started learning positional language and started using scratch. This would be perfect for children to be able to find places from their community and then work out how many metres/kilometres to the school to the shop etc. What about if you walked? drove? etc.
Very cool the kids will love this! Especially because it is our community and they are the experts. I am so excited to try this.
Google Sheets:
Donna walked us through Google Sheets and doing the online course today I must admit I will definitely have to go back and look at the slides and notes on this again. I feel like I need more time to get my head around this.
Making meaning of content:
Lastly in today's session we looked at how to access our blogger data and graph this to interpret the data. Below is my graph and analysis.
Today Dorothy talked with us about 'create' and how important creating is apart of our own wellbeing.
There is no age limit to creativity
I agreed with her that all children in early childhood, primary and secondary school should all be creating. Together as a class we shared together the things we had created in lockdown, it showed that even we are still actively creating whether it's baking, puzzles, art.
"If we want creative thinking we have to do something with our hands, minds or bodies"
How do we get children to do this?
I enjoyed this quote form Dorothy this morning as I think it is so important for children to engage with their learning. As teachers we need to do more not just have it in our plans we need to give them opportunities to engage and create.
"Creators of content not just consumers"
This is the goal for Manaiakalani to get children to create and by doing this will empower children's learning through:
choice
information/knowledge
developing skills
building capacity
scaffolding
Chalk N Talk-Youtube, Channel, Playlists:
As educators Manaiakalani recommend that only teachers have a Youtube channel and not the children. Kerry also made a good point to embed videos into your site and to not share the video with children directly. The reasons for this are valid for example privacy, adds and child appropriate content.
We learnt how to set up our own Youtube channel and made it suitable for teaching and learning. Here is the playlist I made for our junior cross country running practise.
Chalk N Talk:
Deb took us through some quick tips of how to use Google Draw. I am lucky enough that with year 7 and 8's last year that we used this a lot for posters etc. I know from working with children that they LOVE using Google Draw and this is something that I want to work on and show the younger class how to use.
Here is my two Google Drawing that I made for the class as we are looking at mapping, coding and positions and for my blog.
Chalk N Talk:
I feel confident using Google Slide as once again I have used this with the senior class before, it was a good reminder to use things like the explore tool to look for pictures and photos as in the past I have googled images. The explore tool is a fast way of finding photos and will be good to re show the children.
Create:
I spend time on Google Slides doing a 'Pick a Path' this was so much fun and I'm surprised it took so long to make. However the feedback from others have said kids will find this so fun and really enjoy it.
Here it is please try it out but be aware it isn't finished yet.
Overall: I can see how I can step up creating with the kids particular the pick a path and google draw I know they will really enjoy creating on those. Time to try it out!