Blog comment power

We are learning what makes a quality blog comment. I have made a comic strip showing how a comment can affect a person’s feelings when they read it.

Reflecting on the 'magic' of Covid-19

 My shared thoughts of how Hokitika Hub shared their magic during Covid-19 and my thoughts as to where we go to next ...

Lockdown Learning

Today will be another momentous day in history as we learn at 4pm whether we will move out of Stage 4. What will the next stage even look like? So many questions and way too many people's views and opinions.

I've found the 28 days have actually gone very quickly. I still haven't managed to get through all those wonderful housekeeping jobs I had planned to do, We have managed to celebrate 3 family birthdays via a Hangout and despite being squashed into our little house, it's been a lovely time of sharing, 80% of caring for each other, and enjoying those daily walks for exercise.

The 'two weeks of Clayton's' holidays were anything but a holiday. What an amazing time of learning I had. The teachers I hung out with had so many inspiring ideas to share and I was almost envious that I hadn't had this opportunity to learn online when I was at school.

As I said in a previous post, as a Manaiakalani Cluster, we were ready for this and the majority of teachers jumped at the opportunity and became so inventive. Fortunately Google Hangout Meet decided to come up with a grid extension and that just make leaning so much more enjoyable, being able to see the whole class looking like a scene from The Brady Bunch!

I've lost count of the number of Hangouts I've attended, but am pleased to say that by the time Friday comes round, they become a little more social with the microphones turned on.

So, what have I learned through this new way of teaching ... well when I trained in the 80's this would have been seen as a scene from The Jetsons! However, I am now drawing on the initial three P's from my reading recovery training; Pause, Prompt, Praise and I'm going to add Patience in there too. Kids are all too happy to click things and have a go, but as adults we are a bit more cautious. Screen sharing has become my new go-to. Those four P's then take over because we all know how important it is to learn by doing. However, I must say that by 3pm I start to get a little tongue tied with my instructions and on Friday at 5pm my family confiscate my laptop to ensure my square eyes go back to normal. I am however really enjoying this new way of teaching. I love being invited into the classes to work with the students and I really enjoy hearing all these new inventive ways of teaching. I'd be quite happy to keep teaching this way and when we are back to face-to-face learning I think this online way should be included in the daily program, because these students are so clever about using it now.

I keep wondering if this could be the new way of working in the future and how lucky our kids are that they got to learning like this. Until the PM's talk this afternoon, I believe we should be patting ourselves on the back for how smoothly this has all gone. 

Kia Kaha New Zealand

The new 'normal'

It seems that the offerings of Manaiakalani are very valuable and the realisation of their potential as we learn online are becoming very obvious. With a house full of internet users and people needing their own space, I have taken myself to our laundry/sleepout area. While not the prettiest room, it's certainly quiet and remarkably the cups of coffee and home baking still arrive!

What I have noticed however, is that we seem to be reverting to habits that were exciting in my childhood and I'm quite liking this trend. My 83 year old mother is missing us terribly and I can't say that the Facetime calls are totally successful. Once we realised that her comments of "you're not making eye contact with me" was due to us looking at her rather than up at the camera, hence the missing eye contact, we all had a bit of a laugh.

But when you have a  bit of spare time, what can you do with it?

Well, my three girls got out the arts and crafts (one of the benefits of having a mother for a teacher) and decided to write letters to their nearest and dearest. This was most exciting for the 11 year old, who had received birthday cards and gifts in the letter box, but the concept of writing a letter was something totally out of this world. Even the envelopes were handmade (something I could still remember the template for) and decorated to match the person who would be receiving it. They couldn't believe they had so many things to share even though they had been stuck at home and the letters were looking pretty awesome before being put in the envelopes.

Of course, you then have to go out for that exercise walk and buy some stamps ... who would have thought sticking on stamps could be so much fun - I'm sure the postie's had a laugh at the weird places they got put, after all who new they were supposed to be on the top right!

Then they go into this box, but Miss 11 couldn't for the life of her see that this box would get them to the people, when we're all on lock down. Well hats off to the posties, because just three days later she received a phone call from my mother to share her delight in receiving mail. In her words "It was just like the old days, and such a lovely surprise."

The conversation was so surreal, I almost wished I still had a video on to record the contents of the phone call about what would have happened to the letter, because Miss 11 had absolutely no idea of the places her letter had been.

Today was just as magical, when she went to grab in the paper and low and behold there was a letter for her in the mailbox. The excitement, of finding it, the rush to get it open and the sheer joy of reading the letter ... I think it's time we all spent some of that spare time we now have to write a letter to someone ... it could become the new (old) trend.

The times, they are a changing ...

Apologies that my blog posts haven't been happening. I know I'm supposed to lead by example, but I'm human just like you and there are no excuses except that time has moved quicker than I have managed to keep up with.

In the last 7 months, my world has changed in so many ways. I'm ever so grateful to have a reliable car, because I have lost count of the kilometers I have travelled during this time. Connecting with such motivated people, who want to share the Manaiakalani pedagogy with their learners always makes my facilitating in schools so enjoyable. To watch these teachers blossom in their delivery has this amazing flow on effect to their learners, and little did we know that this would be a necessity in 2020. 

I've also learned just how precious family time is. Despite it being an eight hour trip each way to see my father, we had some very precious times together in the last weeks of his life. While I miss him terribly, I am so eternally grateful that he passed before Covid-19 became the new norm, because we would not have been able to have those special times together.

Ah yes, Covid-19 has certainly turned the world as we knew it, upside down. As a vunerable couple, my husband and I have taken the lockdown very seriously. I was however happily amused to receive a call from my three children (all in their 20's) to say they were coming home to be in our 'family bubble'. While all families have their moments, so far (okay, it's only been a week) we have had some real bonding moments and I can feel the pressures of everyday life lifting, as we learn to enjoy a more relaxed time and share some quality family bonding. I'm still working online from home and my three daughters are also onine with school & uni, so there have been some wifi sharing moments that have been a little difficult, however they've been the perfect opportunity to make a family timetable. We take turns to choose a family movie at night and that has been interesting, but we're learning respect as we all share our different interests. Luckily the weather has been fantastic, so we've been exercising around our little village where even the beach is within the two kilometer limit. Little jobs are getting done around the house, and when I relax after my day's work, I'm liking what we are becoming.

I thought I'd share a poem that I wrote to sum up life over the last week, and while I won't promise, I'll try to blog more often, cos there is so much new learning happening in my life...

On Tuesday 24th March Covid-19 lockdown started

The kids arrived home, no longer wanting to be parted.

The house quickly filledwith 6 people and 2 cats

And yes you guessed it, on day 1 they had a spat!

Under the kitchen went the kitten called Venus, 

Taking the cupboards apart was really quite henus.

But, family bonding, laughter and love

Brought us together like a hand in a glove.

Day 2 was uneventful, thank goodness I thought.

But Day 3 sent us a challenge of the medical sort.

It's amazing how a community comes together under stress

And the required medications arrived at our address.

Day 4 & 5 saw lots of family fun

Bike rides, walking, board games and a run.

Down to the beach (it's only 2 k's)

Marshmellows on a fire and a rig caught by Craig.

Then Day 6 came and all was sound

3 of us working and 3 pottering around.

The deck got varnished and the trees got pruned

Time fow a walk I said, feeling marooned.

Suddenly the silence was broken by the phone

Bad news came through and I could only groan!

A nosy kereru, in our cherry tree

Decided inside was where it wanted to be

At the window it flew shattering glass all through

Of course we're in lockdown, so what do you do?

A board replaced the window, the view no longer there

The kids decorated it using their creative flair.

The scariest part is that we're still in week 1

With 3 weeks to go, I'm thinking Hmmm, this could be fun!

Learning to use Screencastify

This week we have been learning to use Screencastify and publish our work on our blogs. The hardest part I found was trying to find somewhere quiet to do my video. How do you think I have gone?

Am I showing my age???

Over the holidays, i was asked by one of my fabulous teachers to take a lesson on transformation, in particular enlarging a drawing using a grid.

'Really, on a digital platform?' was my first thought as I vividly remembered how I used to love making enlargements of pictures in my childhood. I remember getting the activity colouring book in my stocking as a child and using it as we traveled to our holiday destination.

So I set to making a slide show with tasks for the students and enjoyed reliving one of my passions but on a new platform. I personally thought it was quite fiddly using the polyline tool to draw the object, but with lots of concentration, I managed to complete the task and have to admit to enjoying the challenge.

I found the students reactions to the task so interesting. This was something so completely new and challenging to them and even the 'tricky' students were totally on task. They were so keen to share their efforts with their classmates and are looking forward to blogging about their learning at our next session.

That night I was sharing the days events with my family and I suddenly remembered the amazing 'Pantograph' that I had received as a gift. It brought back fond memories to both my husband and I, however while I knew the students would laugh at this device, I never expected their teachers to have no idea what I was talking about. It seems I really am showing my age, but in my day it was so cool to have one of these ... yet another extinct tool!

Sharing over the term break

Term 2 concluded with another awesome Hui with the Manaiakalani team in Auckland. Creativeness played a huge part for me this time as bad weather cancelled the first leg of my trip, meaning my connecting flight was just not going to happen. With bag packed, I needed to be there face to face as no Hangout was going to suffice for this 3 day Hui. So I began the 3 hour drive (no comparison to what would have been a 35 minute flight), and managed to avoid being blown off the road, surface water and slips to make a slightly later flight. With the focus being on SHARE, it was so beneficial to do just that with my colleagues from around NZ.

Blogging is a huge part of sharing and is something we discuss in our family quite a bit. Having been a parent for 34 years, I sit back and smile at how things have changed over those years. Phones were joined to walls and one would never have imagined they would be carried in our pockets, and certainly not a way of taking photos or sharing our learning via social media. I remember training for Reading Recovery in the early 90's and being told we would be facing an ongoing battle of getting children to focus and concentrate when they were watching TV before school. (Yes, children's programmes had just started playing from 6-9am and who would have thought they would now be available 24/7?).

With my youngest just reached the double digits, it was impressive to think that I would have some well earned down time these holidays while she visited relatives. However it has been far from that as I field sad phone calls because she has run out of things to do. Yes you guessed it - there's no internet! This child loves the outdoors, enjoys reading, and has a wonderful imagination, but tells me it would be nice to be able to share what she's done with us and see what her mates are up to. I totally get that because that is the way she is learning, but the 'Y generation' family members she is staying with don't understand it at all. The 'we never did that' conversation keeps rearing it's ugly head, and they don't want to share how things have changed and that she's not complaining to annoy them, she's simply trying to voice that a part of her life is missing. Don't get me wrong, we have lots of breaks away (usually in the summer) where there is no internet, but we are usually so busy doing new things that we don't have time to contemplate it's not there, and because it's rained everyday these holidays ... things are a little different.

These relatives struggled to learn by conventional methods and would have benefited greatly if they had been in a 1:1 learning environment where the 'Learn, Create, Share' pedagogy was used, but sadly they won't see this while they have their heads buried in the sand and refuse to get internet connected. After all we are simply sharing the learning we are doing, as we have always done, and there is so much learning happening, what better way to share it than on platforms such as blogger. So, my answer was to write it down and together we will share it when she gets home, don't think a smile was born with that answer, but it's the best I can offer from 500+kms away!

Digital Fluency Intensive Day 9

Ubiquitous

Ubiquitous  means accessible anytime, anywhere, any place. Learning Sites do exactly this. No student needs to miss out as by having your learning visible, every student can access it even when they are not at school. Also for those who need to revisit the lesson, it is visible so it is rewindable.

Being able to access the internet outside of school hours and outside of the classroom empowers the students to want to learn because they are not being disadvantaged. 

We offer our students the Summer Learning Journey, and Tuhi Mai, Tuhi Atu to keep them connected. Teachers are offered Toolkits, PLG's, Google exams and to participate in Tuhi Mai, Tuhi Atu so as to empower them to be on top of the learning they are setting up for their students.



These 9 weeks have been fabulous to empower me in my role as Facilitator and I look forward to sharing my knowledge with other inspired teachers in the future.

Digital Fluency Intensive Day 8

Devices

It is really important that as teachers we make the time to try out the devices our students are using for their learning. It was a wonderful opportunity to play with these devices today and feel the frustrations the students have when they are in them. 

It was also beneficial to remind ourselves of the shortcuts available on the devices, and how the language is the same no matter what device you are on.

Hapara has certainly made it more visible for teachers to ensure their students are in the right place at the right time. This visibility is the key to empowering the learners, the whānau and the teachers to partake in the Learn, Create, Share pedagogy.

It was really informative to learn how Manaiakalani 1:1 devices came about. Partnership, Participation, and Protection are all important to ensure there is engagement and whānau are able to experience this, but in a safe environment.

Screencastify is a great app that can be used by both students and teachers to show rewindable opportunities.  It was great to hear how others use this resource in their teaching. 

Digital Fluency Intensive Day 7

CONNECTED:

Learn, Create Share pedagogy, the default is visible, so it is important to ensure all our connectedness is visible.

Clustered through connections in our outreach groups. Principals traveled to Auckland to connect. Now we have made it possible for Facilitators & School Leaders to travel & connect.

Shared language of Learn, Create, Share is very important in this connection and this happens because of Manaiakalani's pedagogy and visibility consistency. This enables us to support our colleagues.

Digital has a lot to offer in our 'time poor' lives

Connectedness through Tuhi Mai, Tuhi Atu, Online Toolkits, Twitter, Outreach Group sites, Blogs, Class on Air, MIT teachers, Google+ communities - all are very VISIBLE!

YOUTUBE:

CyberSmart ways to use YouTube include making a playlist and embedding videos onto Learning Sites are ways to ensure students are only exposed to what they need to be seeing. We need to remember that children don't watch TV these days. they go onto YouTube so we need to ensure they are using it correctly and smartly. 

GOOGLE DRAWING:

Patience is a necessity when experimenting here, probably more so for adults. There are so many wonderful ways to use Google Drawing and this slide has some great examples that could be really useful in a create situation. 

GOOGLE SLIDES:

Slides are only supposed to support the presenter, they shouldn't be the star of the show. Keep the format simple and remember blank slides are also empowering. 

Slides enable access to learning, and allow rewindable learning. By putting a weeks learning for a group on a slide, you can provide links, then copy the format of the slide for the next weeks work.

Slides can also be used to allow learners to create animations, story boards, pick-a-paths, 

movies and digital pepeha.

This is a great way to show collaboration amongst learners.

Kent from Point England School came in via Hangout and explained how they see visibility in their community. He explained the need to push the waka out so that the students are proud of their efforts. It is a great way to have the whānau involved by having a live link to the video on YouTube. Drones etc are costly but worth the effort to show the students learning in good quality. Videos can be used to do rewindable learning and are a way to turbo charge.

Today I have come away with a lot of new ideas for delivering the CyberSmart curriculum and making it visible to my learners, the teachers and the whānau. I can see the benefits of using new ideas and how this will empower them in their learning.

Digital Fluency Intensive Day 6: Let's google Google ...

To be empowered is an essential element of the Manaiakalani pedagogy. All learners and teachers need to be empowered and it is essential to recognise  that technology is not just a tool, it is something that should be transforming our learners lives.

                                                                            

Using Google Forms are an excellent way of collecting data as it automatically links to a spreadsheet so can be analysed. You are able to analyse individual or group responses and then present them on a spreadsheet so they can be discussed.






Google Sheets is a fantastic tool but it does need to be set up correctly for it to display the information you put into  it. There are many shortcuts that were shared with us today and these alone will make our production of Google Sheets so much quicker.

Google MyMaps is an app that I have  not explored prior to today. I can see how beneficial it will be with so many of my classes who have been asking how they can get their students to do some mapping of their community. It will also allow students to map their journey and all of these activities can be embedded on a student's blog.













I found this session very practical. It was great to see everyone using their sources of data to make use of these Google Suite tools. I really enjoyed being a part of conversations with teachers about how they could use these tools in their classroom and everyone seemed to appreciate the facilitators assistance with their ideas.

Digital Fluency Intensive Day 5

Computational Thinking ... as it's now an integral part of the NZ Curriculum, it was great to have the opportunity to have two skilled visitors expose us to some of the amazing skills we can teach our students. Zoe & Viv from OMG Tech shared a workbook with great ideas that we could use with our colleagues and students, including practical activities that would be a wonderful addition to school play areas.

What this session confirmed for me was that we must allow students to be the problem solvers. We can structure their learning, but ultimately they need to be empowered to work independently and use the skills they have been taught to work things out. 

Digital Fluency Intensive Day 4

Share - Tohatoha 

was the focus of today's session and how important is it to acknowledge that we have always shared our learning and that of our students so we mustn't throw the baby out with the bathwater! The difference is that our audience has changed. This DFO shows how this has happened.

In order to share globally, Manaiakalani has come up with Blogger to ensure we are sharing safely and widely. It is certainly not the most out there way of sharing but it is a simple, safe and reliable way of allowing our learners to share their learning.

So, how do we get that authentic audience to interact with our learning? The same can be said about getting the learners to interact with the class site, and this is where we went with the final part of the session. I felt very privileged to be given the opportunity to view other's Class Sites, and they empowered me to rethink my ideas about what should be on a Class Site and the ways students can connect to this site in a positive way that assists their learning.  I found it of interest to talk amongst secondary and primary teachers and things they found worked better with their age groups. It was of interest to hear secondary teachers say that they felt some of their learners would connect more if there were more visuals, something they hadn't considered until they had seen others sites.

This was a wealth of information that will assist me in my future facilitation of class sites.  Danni had such wonderful insights to share and it made me inquisitive to look into other sites and see their amazing efforts.

Digital Fluency Intensive Day 3

Create / Hanga - It's all about the hook!

As Kohl says, "Creativity focuses on the process of forming original ideas through exploration and discovery" and so today has seen my creativity be allowed to shine.  My memories as a young child are full of fun times. I barely have any memories of doing reading, writing and arithmetic (as it was then called) but can vividly remember the painting, the chalk drawing, making the fort into a hut, dressing up, dancing and the list goes on, and so, I could totally relate to the 'HeART of the Matter' clips.

Create is a verb, a doing word and so it makes total sense that Maniakalani has used Dewey's quote, and this illustration to show the importance of it in their Learn, Create, Share pedagogy.

Clarelle shared some amazing ideas using multi modal resources that will be useful to empower the 'create' in all of us. 

We were lucky enough to be able to explore the Garden Science link and build a collaborative site on this topic. I found this an amazing resource, but was intrigued to see that the reluctance of our students to work collaboratively obviously comes from how the see the adults in the life collaborating. It was intriguing to me to watch those who chose to get an amazing resource they could use, making a great site, while others went off on their own to produce something of importance to them. Still great practice, but to me an opportunity missed. 

From this session, I take away a clearer understanding of multi model resources and see the utmost importance of create in the effective practice of teaching. 

Digital Fluency Intensive Day 2

Day 2 saw lots of experimenting in Google Calendar, Google Mail, Google Hangout / Meet and recording using Quicktime.

One of the best ways of learning is to try and work out why things aren't working as they should. It was  informative to see how to use these tools to make our workflow simpler and how they can be used in sync.

Using Quicktime was relatively new to me. While I had used it, (I was unsure of actually how to use the tool and have sound and pictures actually working on my finished product), save it and share it to a blog, by embedding the video. It was great to learn this process with others in the group and by doing the recording, I will (hopefully) be able to do it again successfully.

However, the best thing I learned today was the Toby add on. I plan to use this rather than One Tab which has not been as useful as I had hoped. I believe Toby will be more useful for me to organise my tabs and look forward to sorting them so they are easier to find.

Digital Fluency Intensive - Day 1

What a fantastic programme to be involved in to assist my digital knowledge which will (hopefully) in turn assist those I work with. It was fantastic to hear how Manaiakalani had evolved and Dorothy and Russell Burt's passion is a gift that our learners will always be very grateful for.
Learning new Google tricks was amazing and should help me in my delivery. While the session was at a fast pace, it was great to see so many people meeting the challenges and wonderful to be able to assist those who needed a bit more time. Now my task is to revisit the day's programme so I can fully understand all that we achieved, and I will be recommending https://www.remove.bg/ to teachers.

I have been lucky enough to read the other participants blogs and share in the knowledge that they too found this a fantastic opportunity to learn new skills and I look forward to the next session.

Students and their chromebooks ...

I can't believe the difference a year makes in a 1:1 digital class. This time last year I felt like I was a broken record, reminding students that their chrome books were their learning tools and needed to be brought to school everyday and must be charged - I mean you wouldn't bring a pen with no ink to school would you.

I feel like I'm working with a different group of students. I guess some of these students have been using devices for over 3 years now and while they are the new students in the high school, they're leading by example to their peers.

Today as I came into class I watched the continuation of a  wonderful lesson where the students were making a digital card to a senior student that had helped them at camp. They were all at work on their devices, no power cords were to be seen and there was lots of conversation happening about having to fit all their comments on the one page, not deleting other's posts, colour choices and complimenting others on their work. While quite noisy, everyone was on task, the teacher was confidently checking students were in the 'right place at the right time' on Hapara and positively reinforcing their efforts.

When some students began having a loud conversation about the task 'not working', the teacher stopped the class and used a CyberSmart lesson to remind them about being respectful of others when all working on the same page and the class had a discussions on ways they could work together better to get this card completed with every class members comments visible. It was interesting to hear them allocate the task of moving and maybe making the font size smaller, to a class member that they felt would respect their efforts.

These students have certainly have come a long way.

Dreams becoming reality

Well, my best laid plans of blogging every week have sadly come apart at the seams. With all the excitement of starting a new year with great teachers in fantastic schools, once again, I have got myself so involved, that the blogging just didn't happen.

However, I must say how invigorating it is to go into classes so immersed in digital learning that their teachers are keen to grasp onto any new ideas or ways to incorporate my support into their planning.

The excitement from the new class getting their first chrome books to the classes who were on the Summer Learning Journey with so much to share is like a breath of fresh air. The teachers are so encouraging of their students, that the feeling of success is contagious.

I saw this wonderful quote the other day and believe this is a great bit of advice to using the Learn, Create, Share pedagogy of Manaiakalani.  I plan to use it, what are your thoughts?

Getting my 'Creative' working ...

My planning time without having to visit classes is rapidly running out, so my mind is swirling on  that 'creative' side enabling me to plan lessons for the purposes of learning. I'm really needing to bring in that creative element as many of the classes I'll be working  with have been on devices for several years now and I don't need that complacency element creeping in.

It's such a great opportunity for me to search other blogs, lessons, posts etc and work on getting that 'aha' moment happening. In saying that I also need to provide just enough information to allow the students to want to search for more, and to use their own creativity to produce a quality pice of work. All very thought provoking and challenging at the same time.