DFI Day 6:  Enhancing our Google Sites

Manaiakalani Kaupapa story continues...

These slides from the morning's Manaiakalani Pedagogy Story - remind us the world our students are living in is always a connected one.  As such, our teaching and learning needs to be part of that process too.  Key slides for me in the Connected set shared today by Dorothy Burt of Manaiakalani   While this slide emphasises the gist of the Manaiakalani Kaupapa, the image with the foundational concepts and practices of Learn, Create, and Share being supported by the joists below, the support offered by Manaiakalani in our schools to help us learn with technological tools being ubiquitous, connected, visible and empowering for students, families, colleagues and the community.  

One aspect I had not considered - until today, yet seems obvious now, is the more I use sites or hapara or any tools to make the learning visible from anywhere, any time and any place, the more I will be able to spend less time "teaching the - what we are going to do today" and more time in the more important learning conversations with students - facilitating learning, questioning, and working with students. While I know I have made progress with this, in general,  I have not yet met one of the main goals of teaching students - using the technology tools to help students become more self-reliant, independent and in charge of their learning. Some of my class routines and structures will change to better facilitate this in class.  Prior to today, I had not considered how further "empowering" students in this manner will allow me to have deeper, more valuable learning conversations with my students. More 1:1 and small group discussions means deeper connections with students and hopefully, better outcomes. 

Afternoon: Leading the Learning with Google Sites

Much of the afternoon was spent exploring sites and considering these elements from our "Leading the Learning with Google Sites" slide set shared by Vicki from Manaiakalani.

This slide reinforces the idea that the research has shown as students become more independent with their learning online, the student experiences with the teacher can also be more personalized - engaging in teaching and learning conversations.  More "guide on the side" style vs the older "sage on the stage" style of teaching.  Both still have merit, but in today's world it is easier to address learning needs as well as the greater synchronicity we have been challenged with during the pandemic.  

Goals to work towards as my sites progress.

I am going to commit to making this shift to using Class sites as my main learning platform for at least 1 class in 2023. This will likely be for my junior classes - Humanities 9.  But, who knows, maybe I will gain enough confidence to try using sites as my primary learning access point for all my classes.

Exploring time:   These sites offered a lot of inspiration - thank you!

"Shout Outs" 

I like the simplicity and clarity of this site in particular - also in my subject area. 

Repetitive structure - easy to follow and clear for anyone who wishes to "see" into your classroom. 

Learning Goals, Content, Tasks. 

*This site is one of the ones that have convinced me I can "hook" learners without it being too busy or confusing, yet still attractive and appealing.

 Hornby High English and Media

I am still exploring these sites but each have some interesting features I have not yet tried - from collapsible content and buttons.  Some even have moving headers!  More learning to do!

Create time for Me:  

Sad to say - today was mostly a pen/paper planning day for me thinking of my bigger questions in the hopes of being able to sort out some of my questions.  I still have some reservation about switching from Hapara as my main learning "platform" but want to give it a go and compare next year. I have now a plan for structuring my layout and class sites.

Next Challenge - how do I want students to use their blogs in Humanities (or any course)?  This one is still percolating and processing in discussions - mostly in my head, to be honest, but considering discussing in my departments too.

I have also been thinking a lot about the sharing aspect for students and how their blogs may become their digital portfolios. My students so far have been reluctant to blog, but I am working on this and hope to embed it more regularly next year. 

However, one of my "wonderings" is around the empowerment aspect of sharing work.  To be truly empowering, we would want students to have choice in what they post.  To fit more Manaiakalani pedagogy - the more we share, data shows student learning accelerates.  I noticed this with my own students over 10 years ago teaching in Surrey, BC and using Blogger with my classes (we did not have sites -I don't think).  We usually started or used the blogging for one purpose at a time - eg. literature circle groups, or Law 12 discussion groups. My students also noticed their writing and engagement increased - as well as their interest in presenting and sharing "cool stuff" within their blogs - from games, videos and other little widgets.  We learned together and I am thankful for those early days and now the DFI course and Manaiakalani to further my own practice. 

Here are some of my rambling thoughts and questions:

Should their digital portfolios be more process focussed?
        Consistent posting on blogs would help with that. 

Or more "showcase" and summative in nature?  

        Students selecting towards the end of term to showcase their learning and reflections on their 

        own progress. 

In this case - perhaps a Google Site may be a better option? 

Or a combination - process work on main pages and published "proud" works on summative / showcase pages?  

Solutions discussed today suggested - to use the blogs for both digital showcase portfolios and ongoing process assignments.  How to do this without pages (like in Sites) instead use tags and labels on their blog posts.

This should work - but will it be as appealing and intuitive to find as they would be on Google Site pages?  

This might be a great conversation to have as a school - for some consistency around blog posting and doc labelling.  EG. student initials and course code / year  at the beginning of all posts or docs?

Example:  VLS HMT9A - Types of government 2022

                   VLS SCI 9A - Flora and Fauna of NZ 2022

Thinking - we are already having some consistency across our Hapara workspaces with Learn, Create, Share and adding New Pedagogies for Deep Learning Practices to our planning.  Perhaps a conversation around something like labelling our work, filing in folders and sharing on blogs would help us overall as a school.  "Singing from the same song page creates beautiful music, even when we sing in different melodies and beats."

I will be looking at a few more sites this week for sure - Waiopehu College (our hosts for DFI F2F Horowhenua 2022 Term 3 - has some great sites and ideas too!  I love their theme unit titles like Guts and Glory! 

Watch this space!

DFI Day 5: Collaborating and Creating with Google Sites

 Today's Manaiakalani Kaupapa 

Part I: Making the learning Visible - all aspects!

In earlier years, it has been well established that often student's way to success in school has been trying to figure out the GWITH of the lesson - "Guess What's In the Teacher's Head?" This is true from the planning, the lessons and learning, to the assessment. Often parts have been visible to different people at different times.  Eg.  Parents receive the end reports and sometimes the lesson activities when they help their children with the work, students work on the middle processes - the learning and assessing, and the teachers start from the beginning through to the end.  This also means that those who learned to "do school" could do well and those that could not or did not have support were left lost. 

At Ōtaki College, some of us use Hapara and some use Google Classroom as their main platforms for managing student work.  This is in addition to our class sites - which some teachers use as the learning platform for student or parent access, but others, like myself, have used my class site as a more static site for information with links to the actual work.  You can see this here on my varied class sites for 2022.  

VLS HMT 9A 2022        VLS English 10-O        VLS SOC 10T        VLS English L1

To be kind to myself - I had to learn very quickly how to make sites during lockdown.  I was able to do this with the generous assistance of my colleague tutoring me through a Google Meet session, and several Manaiakalani toolkit sessions that I used to "upskill" myself as last year was my first year at ŌC.   I decided to make things manageable - by having the only real "live" or changing parts of my class sites being my "Daily Planner" slide shows that detail our learning daily with links to guide students. This seemed satisfactory and working.

However, after today's session I am once again rethinking using Hapara as the main learning access site and instead switching to my Class site - considering the "store window analogy" in the video below. To attract engagement and make things simpler for students and their whanau - class sites may be the more user friendly option as they will be similar to other sites most are familiar with.  

However, I am also conscious that the layout of Hapara does lend itself to making things easier for those students who need a clear and repetitive structure so as not to get too distracted by the "bling" you can use in class sites.  Additionally, students are not the best at creating docs, naming them and filing them.  But... that is partly my fault for not establishing this at the beginning of the year in our routines.  

One negative aspect about class sites is that we need to recreate them each year for each class.  This is more work in some ways.  This is in addition to setting up Hapara workspaces, Google classroom (which I use as a backup- and to communicate quick reminders to students).  

 

So where to from here? 

My class sites are already mostly visible.  (So yay!)  

        Students can access their learning through my class sites and see the tasks and resources linked. 

             But I can make things even more clear.  

                    I am looking forward to next week when we will be "boosting" our class sites, 

                    or starting fresh.  

DFI Day 5 - Part II:  Collaborating and Creating Multi-Modal Sites

One part of the learning that has not always been visible or accessible to students, whanau and the wider world has been the teacher planning aspect.  Students are usually provided with content or skills to develop using content, and sometimes a learning goal or Big Question / Inquiry Question to Explore in a unit.  While most teachers I know are fully aware of the complexity of trying to meet the diverse needs of our learners, as well as find resources to attract student attention, today was review of T-shaped Literacy and planning with multi-modal texts.  In simplified teacher speak for students and parents, T-shaped literacy means providing access for students to broaden their understanding of a topic with a variety of types of texts and perspectives and deepen their understanding with varied complexity in the content.  You can read more about it here.  

Last year I attended a Toolkit session facilitated by Manaikalani and they, in collaboration with the  Woolf Fisher Research Centre, had some quick and clear resources to explain this concept with a slightly different slant on the types of texts we should try to aim for in our planning of content.  Take a look at their videos. 

T-shaped literacy marries well with using multi-modal texts to find as many ways as possible to allow students access to content.  T-shaped literacy and planning to include multi-modal texts are not so much new concepts in teaching and learning, but building upon or reframing from earlier educational practices.  My early teaching days used Bloom's Taxononomy and Gardener's Multiple Intelligences (now considered somewhat debunked) as ways to remind us to provide as many opportunities as we can for students to learn, develop and practice their skills.  Later, we were reminded again with language shifting to "differentiating" to meet the needs of all our learners.  How T-shaped literacy differs slightly  is in the description of the 4 types of texts.  Instead of multi-modal in terms of genre, text type and difficulty level, they use the types of texts described below, on the understanding that teachers will already be differentiating to meet the needs of their learners. 

Scaffolding Texts:  Introduce the Topic (content), "hook" student interest, 

set purpose or goal (best with a question) and introduce key new or topic specific vocabulary.

*Accessible (multi-modal), key concepts and vocabulary

Complimentary Texts: texts with similar perspectives or building upon the knowledge of the topic.  

 Challenge Texts - provide alternative points of view or questions to further student critical thinking on a topic.  Cause tension with students to push them to think beyond their own perspectives or the most common perspectives.

Student Choice Texts - allowing options for students to explore.  These will be texts students choose to fit their goal / purpose of their task or unit concepts. 

With this in mind, NZ Teacher, Dave Winter, along with many others, have put together this starting database to help teachers share resources and plan with this T-shaped multi-modality in mind.  

Today, a group of us collaborated and gathered resources that might be used for a "language feature focus through the use of stories with twisted endings.  You can see our collected resources here.  Keep in mind, our goal was to collaborate and gather resources quickly as a means to the introduction of creating a class site.  

From those resources, we spent the afternoon playing and setting up a new site - you can see mine linked to the screenshot below:

I chose to make this site as a single page site.  I can see that this one has a simpler, therefore more intuitively user-friendly layout, and has a bit more appeal in colours, images and selections.   This one includes all aspects of the planning and content.  The only thing missing is the actual tasks - and this is only because it is a demo practice site and not one I will have added the student learning tasks to... yet.  I think this shows some further interest and development using the T-shaped literacy multi-modal design.  I hope it shows further growth than my first sites linked above.   Suggestions are always welcome!

I am looking forward to learning more tips and tricks to continue my sites' development. 

Data Day at DFI - Day 4.....

Data Day at DFI Day 4 Horowhenua F2F Cohort:

I have to admit, I was not keen on today's topic but thankfully found it more useful than I thought it might be for me as an English and Social Sciences teacher.  Lots of opportunities in Social Sciences to play with different data but less so in English.   

Manaiakalani Pedagogy:  "Share" Images and Key Take-aways.

1. Sharing - Overcoming sharing online because we are not wanting or used to having an audience... basic nerves.

 

This image is one that I may use with my classes to remind students that actually, people have always shared 

• 1:1 --> 
• in small groups -->  their friends and whanau
•  in front of larger audiences --> in an assembly, athletic or cultural performance
• and now online --> globally

The Why:

Sharing online helps remind us that any engagement with others will have a purpose and an audience. Even when we "hang with our friends" we will be connecting, learning and communicating all the time.  Perhaps this week I propose to students that we need to let go of the idea that our work online (or in class) needs to be "perfect" or "right." We, teachers, also need to open up to the idea and model making mistakes online and problem-solving, just as much as we do "in person" in our classes.  

How?  

1. Shifting from a "fearful/overly cautious" place to a more "mindful and purposeful" mindset.  Our language matters.

Instead of being fearful of sharing to a world wide audience through our blogging, we could change our language and our mindset.   Blogging and sharing our work is an opportunity to develop our skills to attract an audience.  Responses will help us figure out how to attract viewers and readers who want to share ideas. Sharing open, reflective and process-oriented work, along with our polished and published pieces can help everyone feel more human online.  

2.  "Learn - Create - Share" is not meant to be a linear process only. 

One of the aspects I have been grappling with in my classes is the reluctance of students, and myself (as I have mentioned previously) to think of the sharing process as a need to be completed and/or as "perfect" as I can get it before hitting publish or submit.  I think this is where my students feel the most reluctance too.  It was a great reminder that the Manaiakalani kaupapa of Learn - Create - Share is not meant to be a linear process only.  As a teacher, I am aware of this but had not thought of trying to engage the students with the idea that we can also Share to Learn and the process is more cyclical. 

We need to see the learning process as ongoing and 

fluid.  Learn - create - share

or  Create - share - learn from others

3. Google - My Maps

I need to have a bigger play around with this tool.  I wish I had learned more about it last year as I was trying to get my students to create and map the journey of the characters in the novel Refugee.  I will be trying to use this in a few weeks with my learners in Social Sciences 10 - watch this space for updates!

4.  Google Sheets:  whew! 

This session was the one I was most fearful of, as spreadsheets are not my strong suit.  I try and use them, but get frustrated when I can't figure out ways to use them efficiently.  Admittedly, it has been a long time since my own secondary learning in my '80s IDP class (Intro to Data Processing - year 12) and I have mainly used sheets as a table for record keeping having long since lost any memory or ability to figure out formulas for different calculations.  Thankfully Google Sheets, and the AI that learns with our use, has created some great shortcuts.  The AI and the Explore option for analysis was a great eye opener for me. New knowledge for me - the AI learns with my use of Google Sheets and suggests options for analysis and trends in the data.  

I found the session quite fast and furious but I am glad to have the resources to go back to when I want to remember some of the simple quick tips that save time. Eg.  Filling in a sequence like months, days or numbers and having the technology carry it through after the first 2 cells. 

I need to play and spend more time with sheets to make better use of them.  But hoping that will come in time as I start to use them more.  I especially like the Spark Line feature to show at glance progress over time.  Although - admittedly, I quickly became frustrated creating the simple chart and data collection below - thank you to Moahia @Otaki College - here is a snapshot of graph I made of her blog posts.  

Final Thoughts.... and advice please...

I have also been thinking of how I may be able to use Sheets to help with building student ownership and responsibility using sheets like tick box "to do" lists.  I am thinking I want students and whanau to be able to see their own progress and link their work, but without breaking their privacy and showing other students work progress at the same time.  I am not sure if this is possible and I will be exploring whether this can be done via assigning students their own sheets (pages) within 1 Google Sheet or if there may be another way.  This may not be possible - ideas and/or possible collaboration welcome!

DFI Day 3: Create and Different Media Forms

Welcome back to my R-e-learning Day 3 DFI Horowhenua 2022 (online day)

Manaiakalani Pedagogy - Create 

My Reflections as a Learner

I have to admit, I am thankful and enjoying the time and expertise of the facilitators sharing tips and tricks of tools I know and use, but also introducing new ways to use them.  Today was day 3 of our DFI (Digital Fluency Intensive Course) and the focus was on Create - using varied Media.  

Where I am struggling is trying to finish my reflective blog posts.  I feel like a student who wants to share their best, but keeps starting, stopping, revising and then admittedly wanting to redraft to perfect.  In fact, I am still working on my first post for Day 1 as I had had a few hiccups and needed to restart the blog, and then.... teaching life happens.  (I will finish soon).   My second post (Day 2) was certainly less than perfect as our main task - the video, had no sound and we did not have time to re-do.  I decided to post anyway, mistakes and all - good modelling for students too I hope.  It is interesting to me that the hesitation to share online is now my own issue as a professional, when, in the past, I was always happy creating and sharing our class work on our class blog or student blogs.  

This process alone is helping me to empathize with the akonga in my classroom as I am just getting started with having a professional blog.   I have long believed blogging helps with my own reflective practice and provides opportunities to archive my own growth as an educator/lead learner, but until this course, I had not actually started my own fully.  My first attempt (nearly 10 -15 years ago) had my students naming my blog ("Midnight Musings of a Modern Day School Marm"- they loved the alliteration even though it was long.  I like to think it was my constant reminders about "word choice" mattering that led to their suggestion,) Sadly, I never published this professional blog to be visible, and now I can no longer access it as the account associated had become corrupted. I think part of the reason for my reluctance was I had not quite sorted out the focus and Why of that professional blog.  DFI has pushed me in this way and I am thankful for this, even though I still ramble, revise and take a while to commit before publishing, then revisit, refine and update my posts again.  I suppose that too is really what we all want of our learners - to keep improving and growing.  

Today's Focus:  Create - using varied Media

Today's focus was on the Create aspect of the "Learn, Create, Share" Manaiakalani Pedagogy.  I am aware that in recent years my own classroom process has been a bit more of the "low grade clerical work" Ken Robinson refers to in his Ted Talk "A Future For Us All."  

 

 

I agree with Ken Robinson and other educators that often we don't have time, or feel we have the time, to engage our students in creative tasks.  This is partially driven by the greater "testing" culture in Aotearoa New Zealand that I have been readjusting to when I arrived.   It was good to be reminded of what most educators, parents and kids know intuitively - we learn far more though the creative process than through some of the work I have assigned in recent years.  Yes, this has been pushed by the frantic shift to hybridized learning the Covid world required.  We all scrambled to become more flexible providing learning online and trying to make sure families had access at home.  Some of the ideas and video clips shared today are included here in the Manaiakalani DFI Create pedagogy led by Vicki today.   The discussion and video clips today suggest we can't afford not to shift our teaching and learning in schools to enable more collaborative and creative opportunities.  This is a global issue that can only be made better through individual efforts of teachers willing to engage themselves in the same process.

Today reminds me to be less worried about the time it takes to create, which tends to be more than we feel we can allow.  I will be trying to re-focus on the engagement opportunities and quality of the learning that occurs naturally through the problem solving, communication, critical thinking and collaborative nature of creative tasks. 

What did I learn that can be used with our learners?

Google slides can do so much more than present...

I will start with my junior class - as early as tomorrow using the "Types of Government - 'Pick a Path'" task I have designed for students to collaborate with me.  Wednesday (today) it is in it's incomplete form but hopefully tomorrow and Friday it will be completed by the students.  Granted, the instructions are not allowing students as much "creative freedom" but the goal for this task is working together to produce a cohesive presentation.  My students have struggled with completing collaborative tasks lately so I am also hoping this one will be short enough to complete in 1-2 periods, and then share with them on my professional blog.  Perhaps my modelling of sharing my thoughts and our collaborative work will help students to overcome some of their hesitation to share online. 

Below is a slide show with a "pick a path" interactivity aspect that I created today in Google Slides - My year 9 Humanities class at Ōtaki College will be working on this tomorrow in pairs.  

 

Finished Product from 9A at Ōtaki College

Perhaps the next "Pick a Path" Journey will be to create their own story slide show - like a "choose your own adventure" story students can create and share on their own blogs.  Stay tuned.

 DFI Day 2:  Creating with Google Meet 

*Apologies for the shorter post today - too many glitches to work out with my first post and setting up my blog on Blogger.  Everyone, in the cohort, is using Edublog at this time, but I opted for Blogger as my current students are still grandfathered in using Blogger.  This led to a few bumps in the set-up week. I missed some of the create time for a mini-private session with Vicki, facilitator from Manaiakalani.  I had to restart my blog.  It happens. 

DFI Day 2:

Google Meets:

Today was an opportunity to relearn how to record a conversation about student learning evident through student blog posts.  The snapshot below was our task today:

I met with fellow ŌC yr 7/8 teacher Saph Taylor to discuss Rael's beautiful poetry

Please remember to be kind - this is our first attempt at running a Google Meet Discussion in a while and it is amazing what you can forget to do when you aren't in the practice of doing daily like we were in lockdown last year. For instance -the video is a very rough recording of our discussion, mistakes and all, including me forgetting I need to turn my headphones on to hear Saph! 

Wish me luck that this works!  

Ok so.. Upon watching and reviewing.  Next step.  Learning to record with sound - hah!

Problem - we think this occurred as I did not turn on my headphones right away.  Ugh... it reminds me of some year 12s I had in Canada who were learning to film.  These two girls were highly academic in their courses, but as such, they never really allowed themselves the time or space to play and learn with the technology, until their Genius Hour course (I really wish I had access still to my early class blogs to show you).  They learned via trial and error that you can't move the camera (iPad) around and fix it in editing, and that it is difficult to get good sound on a windy day!  Today reminded me being a learner takes time.  Sadly- we did not have the chance to "repeat and refilm" our conversation for today's post.

Lesson learned - 

Students will usually need more time than we imagine for new learning or ways of showing their learning.