DFI: Workflow

We started off the day with a presentation from Anne Sinclair about Learn.  Anne is a fantastic presenter, sharing her years of experience and passion for learning this was an inspiring listen.  What I really liked about Anne's presentation was her reminder to everyone that Learn can and does look different in every school. 
For me this is a crucial element to the success of the Manaiakalani programme and gives school's the ability to make Learn, Create, Share their own, representing their community and learners.  This image below (from Manaiakalani's Learn presentation) shows a snapshot of some the many different styles and learning programmes within Manaiakalani's schools. 

Some of the ideas shared in our group discussion about Learn today included;

• Learning as a teacher and ensuring our learners learn. Learn together!
• Purposeful and engaging. Encourages and fosters student curiosity
• Students, teachers and whanau as  learners and teachers
• Ako is learning, growing, and persevering through the unknown; new topics, experiences, and opportunities
• Relationships and exciting learning experiences based on their interests

It was a really purposeful day and I hope that our cohort felt they had plenty to go away with particularly in terms of organising their school workflow.  The more we are learning online, the more crucial it is to feel confident navigating in a digital environment, whether that's administrative work or developing resources for learners it needs to be streamlined and effortless. 

Sensemaking 2019

Reviewing the slides from last year's Woolf Fisher Sensemaking presentation (November, 2019) the key themes for the Te Hiku 2019 Observational Data were;

Findings from the class observation data suggested there was more of a prevalence from teachers to give evaluative feedback, which I am guilty of at times too. It's that waffly kind of stuff like well done, good on you.  Feedback that is much more worthwhile for students and gives them something tangible to improve on is descriptive feedback i.e. I see you have used a variety of sentence starters to grab attention);
I am mindful of being specific with feedback in my facilitation role when working with teachers and something I learned at Toastmasters years ago never lets me down.  CRC, Commend, Recommend and Compliment. 
Within my own teaching practice, when I'm working alongside students, I need to tighten up a bit on giving bite size chunks of descriptive feedback that is specific to our learning intentions.   Jess Henare, the Deputy Principal at Kawakawa Primary School gave a good presentation at one of the Kiakohekohe Cluster PLG's last year.  The image below is from her resource and here's a link to her full slide deck.  Note to self: make time to revisit this when planning my next lessons. 

Core Business

Today was our first day of the Northland Digital Fluency Intensive Cohort#1 for 2020.  Our group is made up of 15 primary, secondary school teachers and principals, from as far north as Paparore School to Bay of Islands who kindly hosted us in one of their recently upgraded classrooms.
I do enjoy the DFI, it's a real highlight of my week and brings with it a great opportunity to network with teachers in the Manaiakalani Outreach schools from both the Te Hiku and Kaikohekohe cluster.

Dorothy Burt, the Manaiakalani Education Programme Lead was with us and started the day with the origins of Manaiakalani since its inception. Although I've heard Dorothy present this a few times now there is always something for me to take away. 
Today it was Dorothy's innovative pedagogy with her student created podcasts which she started back in 2006.   Getting students to create their own podcasts was an engaging activity which helped to  improve students reading. 
Reflecting back on my own teaching practice back then, I was reminded of a dream I had to create a student radio station that could be broadcast throughout the school and to the wider community.  Back then of course, it was involved a fairly extensive process that involved procuring an unused FM frequency along with the sourcing of some expensive equipment to enable a big enough broadcast reach.

Now of course, technology has shifted so far that many of these barriers are removed.  There are plenty of podcast sites that provide an integrated platform for uploading and sharing self-made audio sound bites.  A quick search brought up How to Start a Podcast and while this site is aimed more at the adult reader, it's got some good references that I may well come back to. 
Talking some more with Dorothy today about this, got me thinking about how I could engage students reading by the creation of their own podcasts.  The possibilities are endless really.  For example, at high school level, students could be tasked with creating a podcast series as a class on a given topic, they could interview each other or better still record interviews with outside experts or members of their own community.  That's taking it off in another direction altogether of course.  A learning opportunity not only for content of a given topic but also students will need to write a script, think about what order they will present ideas, add audio effects and so on to make it an entertaining listen. 
Plenty of ideas bubbling around for me to investigate further and which may fit quite nicely for my assignment for Teaching Computing Programming.