Student move to another platform

I haven't blogged for a long time, but that was not because nothing has happened in my teaching life; on the contrary, things have been very busy and action-packed.

I am going to try to get back into the habit of regular blogging, so I am starting today with a short post about the fact that our younger students have all moved to a different platform now. This is because of the changed age restrictions on Blogger, which have meant that our Manaiakalani cluster has migrated to Edublogs for most of the students. Our Year 12s and 13s will continue to use Blogger until they finish school and then all our students will be on Edublogs.

At the moment, I am intending to keep my own blog here, but that may change in the future.

Not the Ninja Turtles!

My Year 11 students are currently studying Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. We started by exploring the historical context of the Renaissance and learning about life in Elizabethan England. As part of this, the students investigated some famous Renaissance artists and made a short slide show to present what they found out. You can check out some of the student blogs from the links here on my Year 11 class website. 

Social Media

Most of you will have noticed that Twitter is imploding. I am pretty unhappy about what is going on there, including the firing of half the workforce, including the teams responsible for keeping the twitterverse hate-free. My @shakespearenut account there has been deactivated and I have set up an alternative account elsewhere. 

If you want to follow me on Mastodon, you will find me at @shakespearenut@mastodon.nz and also at @shakespearenut@mastodon.education

Creating Digital Learning Objects in English

I went to a great online meeting today with some other English and Media Studies teachers from Manaiakalani high schools around NZ. The focus was on the CREATE aspect of our Manaiakalani pedagogy.

It was interesting hearing about what other schools are doing in using various different tools and media. We learned that research showed that while in the short term recall from traditional versus multimedia creations is similar, in the long term, students retain more information from creating a multi-media object than a single media object. For example, researching and presenting via docs, slides and screencastify to provide a voiceover will mean better student retention of information than writing a document.

LEARN

I learned about a few new sites and apps which could be fund to use in creating digital learning objects (DLOs):

Canva.com - web-based design site. I will explore this another day and see what I can do with it. One school explained that students were using it to create static images.

photofunia.com - a site where you can create cool fake photos, like when you met President Obama, or whatever.

makebeliefscomix.com - a site where you can create comic strips.

break your own news - creates a fake 'breaking news' TV-type picture.

CREATE & SHARE

Here is the cartoon I created on https://makebeliefscomix.com/

On photofunia I made this picture of a fake newspaper story:

And then I used breakyourownnews to create this fake TV news page:

So that was fun. They really pay us to learn and teach these things. Honestly.

Thinking about teaching reading - online discussion

 We had a great online meet today with other secondary teachers in Manaiakalani with a focus on reading. I made a record of the discussion questions and my responses. In some cases, I have changed my thinking as I reflected on the discussion.

• Describe what was happening for the group of learners you selected, their strengths and needs. Discuss evidence you have e.g. anecdotal observation, learners’ blogs, data, student voice, conversations with whānau and previous teachers

My group of learners is the Y10 Literacy target group - students reading or writing below curriculum level 5. These are divided into A group (those curriculum level 3 or below) and B group (those at CL4). About one-third of my Y10 class is in at least one of these groups. One obstacle is that most of the students have low confidence in their ability and are so used to 'failure' that they are very risk-averse.

• Summarise the student learning challenge you planned to focus on in 2021. Talk about why this is important for your school/kura i.e. what difference will this make for your learners/school?

The challenge is to accelerate the progress of these learners. The underlying challenge is to engage the students and get them motivated and hopefully actually enjoying reading and writing.

• Your hunch - describe what you can change or do differently in order to improve learning experiences and outcomes for students. The simplest way is to say -  if…..    then…..

e.g. “If I encourage my students to write for real reasons, then they will be motivated to write.”

If I can enable these student to experience success in reading/writing, then they are likely be more motivated to learn and try their best.

• Learning - Describe how you have acquired new knowledge and skills to make changes in your practice e.g. PLD, readings/research, ideas from your colleagues

I completed the DFI course last term. Also, I engage in ongoing PD via school, twitter and Manaiakalani. I also want to look into the Manaiakalani research in more depth.

• Taking action - describe what you are planning to do (or have done) differently. 

Have you planned to regularly monitor the impact of what you are doing differently? e.g. surveying learners/whānau, Smiley Face Chart  from e-asTTle, something you are already using to assess e.g. Running Record, doesn’t have to be quantitative.

Is there a take out from this session that could work for you?

With the next unit I teach with my year 10s (film study) I want to build in some reading activities with a range of related texts, looking at some of the issues raised in the film such as virtual reality, gaming addiction, escapism online v real life, etc. In terms of monitoring the impact, the reality is that it will be mostly formative feedback and observation, until we do our end of year Asttle and PAT tests.

DFI9 - Manaiakalani - Digital Fluency Intensive Course - Week 9: External Recognition & Looking Forward

This was the final week of the DFI and the big thing on our minds was the Google Certified Education Level 1 exam!

Learn

Reflecting on what I have learned this term over the time of the course, the most important learning has been finding out about the Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy. 

I was pretty tech-savvy already, having been an early adopter of a lot of the tools and technology available and attending various GAFE and ULearn conferences over the years. When our college joined Manaiakalani I was happy about the digital tools and learning to use new ones, but to be honest, I was a bit lukewarm about Learn-Create-Share and how relevant it was to me as a senior high school teacher.

It has been reassuring and really helpful to find out more about the history of how the pedagogy was developed and the strong research base for it. It is also great to see the synergies between Learn-Create-Share and the NZ Curriculum.

Now, as a curriculum leader, I want to ensure that Learn-Create-Share is fully integrated into my curriculum planning. I want everyone in my department to have the opportunity to complete the DFI so that when we begin planning our new courses and units for the revised NCEA Achievement Standards, we can incorporate the Manaiakalani kaupapa fully into the planning from the outset.

I wish I had done this course years ago - it has really changed my attitude to the whole relevance of Manaiakalani to my teaching and learning programme.

Create

Today's CREATE focus was the exam, in which we had to apply some of the skills we have learned to creating and manipulating various files and using the different Google tools. I can't tell you WHAT though, because... duh... it's an exam!

Google Exam - Success!

Share

Editing Images in Slides

I just have to tell you about something I learned last night when preparing for the exam. Did you know that you can edit images actually IN Google Slides? I did NOT! I was like: it doesn't fit, it's the wrong shape - download it, open in Preview, crop it, change it up and then upload it again. But there is an easier way!

In your Slide presentation, you can right-click on an image, and you get a handy little editing menu pop up, which enables you to do all the standard things like crop, rotate the object, adjust colours etc. And if by accident you mess it up, there is even the option to Reset Image back to the original!

Te Reo Māori Keyboard on Your Smartphone

Years ago when I set up my keyboards on my iPhone, I couldn't find one for te reo Māori. I'm not sure if it just didn't exist then or I couldn't find it, but it is now available. I often use Italian or French when chatting online with friends so it was great to have those keyboards, but I became really tired of having autocorrect try to change my Māori kupu into English. If you have this problem you can find the instructions here for adding the Māori keyboard to your iPhone or Android phone or tablet.

Looking Forward

Now that I have completed the DFI, I think one big challenge for me, moving forward, will be to continue to make time on a regular basis for exploring new online tools and learning new skills. My first goal is to pass the Google Certified Educator Level 2 exam.

In terms of my curriculum leadership role, I want to delve even further into the Manaiakalani research base and ensure that the kaupapa and pedagogy are embedded in our revised programmes and units as the NCEA changes roll out.

DFI8 - Manaiakalani - Digital Fluency Intensive Course - Week 8: Computational Thinking

It's the second to last week of the DFI and the pressure is hotting up! I am trying to stay calm about sitting the Google Certified Educator Level 1 Exam next week, but with planning, marking and reports to do as well, it is hard not to stress!

Learn

The 'New' Digital Technologies Curriculum

Kerry reminded us that the 'new' (or perhaps more accurately 'revised') Digital Technologies Curriculum has been mandatory for Years 1-10 since 2020, though its final launch was somewhat overshadowed by Covid-19. There are two new learning progress outcomes:

- Computational Thinking for Digital Technologies
- Designing and Developing Digital Outcomes

The main change is for students to be using the technology to create digital content rather than just being consumers of it. As teachers, we need to be making sure that what we are doing in the digital environment is helping students achieve their educational outcomes. For me, as an English teacher, the digital outcomes side is easier to relate to: movie-making is part of the English curriculum (creating visual text) and slides and drawings are part of what we do as well. It is harder to stretch my mind around some of the other tools, digital learning objects and computational thinking, but a colleague in my bubble did give the example of a class using Tinkercad to construct a model of an historical pā site. I can see how you could potentially apply this to students exploring, for example, settings in a novel.

Empowered

Today's Manaiakalani kaupapa from Dorothy Burt was EMPOWERED. In the original Manaiakalani cluster in Tamaki, the average adult income is NZ $19,000 p.a. Low income like this limits choices that families can make: choices about housing and health among other factors. New entrants arriving at these schools are behind both academically and in their health and physical development. So empowerment for these communities is a huge kaupapa. 

“The Manaiakalani kaupapa of empowerment is about the advancing of 

Rangatiratanga;  taking back control of their own lives.” - Pat Snedden, Chair, MET.

Manaiakalani does make a difference for these students and their whanau. Research has shown, for example, that the vocabulary and language skills deficit can be overcome by teaching conversational patterns (using the 5+ a day and ping pong conversation idea). Through families purchasing the students' devices for a minimal payment ($4 a week or similar) they find that after a year, the family now has a credit rating for the first time and is able to access hire purchase arrangements which were previously closed to them. Students are also able to help whanau use the technology to make and access medical appointments online. Having their children's learning connected, ubiquitous and visible is empowering, not only to the students themselves, but to their families as well.

Dorothy also recommended we check out the following TVNZ show from Nigel Latta where he explored what it feels like to be a person who does not feel empowered in many areas of life.

Skill Learning:

Our skill learning for today was all about computational thinking. The last times I had anything to do with coding it was all about writing programmes to pull information out of a database or to model expenditure and interest rates etc. At that time I was working as a policy analyst and other people were writing the programmes - I was coming up with the modelling parameters for them to work with when writing the code. Today we were given a variety of different learner programming tools to choose from, some of which are created for very young learners.

Create

Minecraft Voyage Aquatic

During the Explore time before lunch I had a play with Minecraft, using simple block coding. I completed the first tutorial/adventure.

You can check out my awesome block coding skills here at this link.

I also got a certificate for completing my Hour of Coding:

Minecraft Hero's Journey

I enjoyed the exploration time on Minecraft in the morning, so during our Create time in the afternoon I joined the Minecraft group to learn some more coding. It was lots of fun. I found the hardest thing was understanding what the instructions were asking me to do. Actually doing the coding was easy once I had worked out where I was supposed to be sending my agent!

The only thing I have yet to figure out was how it remotely relates to teaching senior English, but I am sure I will think of something eventually... suggestions welcome!

Share

The Future of Technology

Vicki Archer gave us a look at some different cutting edge technologies that are impacting our lives. Probably the big one was messenger RNA vaccines which, as we all know, are hopefully providing a rapid solution to the current pandemic. Another interesting, but to me slightly ominous one, was GPT-3, which is all about machines learning to write. (Shades of Orwell's 1984 novel-writing machines.) 

Aside from advances in robotics (Hanson Robotics' Sophia, who walks and talks and all that), there was a handy app (sadly not free) called SkinVision which scans your mole and compares it to 3.4 million images, then tells you if you need to get it checked out by a real doctor. For us, with the high levels of skin cancer in NZ, this is probably a good one to know about.

A good site to explore with students to look at the ethical issues behind how machines are programmed to make decisions is Moral Machine, where you can see scenarios that a self-drive car, for example, might encounter. Whose life is valued more: the homeless person's or the car passenger? The male pedestrian or the female one? Scary stuff...

Minecraft Coding

If you are reading this blog and think you could never learn to code, go to this link and have a little play, it is fun!

Bye for now, I'm off to play with Minecraft prepare for my Google Certification Exam!

DFI7 - Manaiakalani - Digital Fluency Intensive Course - Week 7: Devices

 I really enjoyed focussing on my class sites last week so I arrived at this week's DFI with a sense of accomplishment. Folks in my digital bubble were very complimentary about what I had done on my Year 13 Literary Criticism web page, so that made me feel GOOD!

Learn

Today's Manaiakalani kaupapa is UBIQUITOUS: that our learning is anytime, anywhere, anyone, at any pace. It's about removing barriers and making sure that our young people have the opportunity to expand their horizons.

Our rangatahi can take part in the activities they want to, which enrich them, but still have access to the learning from school and be able to review it at a time which works for them.

By the time they start school, students in lower socio-economic areas, regardless of language spoken in the family, have heard 30 million fewer words than students from wealthier socio-economic backgrounds.

The Manaiakalani research has shown that the 'summer slide' effect on learning outcomes is significant, so they instituted a Summer Learning Journey. The students who participated showed it is possible to arrest the summer slide: their writing results accelerated over the summer holidays and they also made some progress in reading. This is with just THREE experiences they choose to participate in over the summer.

Making learning REWINDABLE makes it accessible to more learners.

If it's worth LEARNING,
it's worth capturing.

Note: Rewindable does NOT mean staring at a video of the teacher's talking head for an hour...

Cybersmart Curriculum

From the start of Manaiakalani, there has been an emphasis on digital citizenship and empowering our young people to make smart decisions about their digital footprints online. In the Manaiakalani model, - Being Cybersmart/Tū Atamai i te Ipurangi - is the roof over our whare.

The idea is that you would take the resources from the Cybersmart site and personalise them for your school and class. Cybersmart is a whole school focus right from new entrants so that young people are making good decisions from the start - through planned and deliberate teaching of digital citizenship.

The idea is that you would take the resources from the Cybersmart site and personalise them for your school and class. Cybersmart is a whole school focus right from new entrants so that young people are making good decisions from the start - through planned and deliberate teaching of digital citizenship.

• 
  Term 1 - Smart Learners (LEARN)
• Term 2 - Smart Footprint (CREATE)
• Term 3 - Smart Relationships (SHARE)
• Term 4 - a combination of cybersmart issues.

So... hopefully, by the time students in our cluster arrive at senior secondary school, their cybersmart knowledge is consolidated and inbuilt. Well, that's the theory!

"Whenever and wherever we share online... it's personal!"

Skill Learning

Our skill learning for the day was experiencing the student learning interface. For Years 1-3 in Manaiakalani, this is on iPads, using an app called Explain Everything. While this is not applicable to me as a high school teacher, it was interesting to see what the learners coming through our cluster from Year 1 will have experienced. I have to say that I found the iPad experience extremely challenging and our bubble coach definitely needed to 'Explain Everything' to me! We also used Chromebooks - the devices my students use every day - to complete a number of tasks. I found this much easier as I had at least used the devices and taught some of the skills before.

Create

Using Explain Everything on the iPad

This is a thing which five-year-olds can do really easily, but which I found very difficult! I had to add an app to my iPad mini and learn how to make a project and record my voice. I exported my project as a video and tried to embed it here on my blog, but something went horribly wrong... causing my entire blog to go haywire when I published it and for me to have to completely redo my blogpost... so instead, here is a photo of what I created! 

I also completed a teacher-created writing project in the app. My iPad is too old to work with a stylus so I was writing with my finger, which didn't help! I did not succeed in saving the reading project in a format which would work here on my blog, so you will have to take my word for it that it was not very flash!

Creating screen recordings using Screencastify

This was our main creative task for the day which, for me, was a lot less challenging than completing a five-year-olds reading task! Admittedly, this was mainly because I have used Screencastify before, including with a green screen, so it was more familiar territory. 

For the content of our videos we were asked to engage with some of the resources and learning materials provided by Manaiakalani for teaching our students to be CyberSmart. I created this video which could be used to introduce students to the Creative Commons licences and show them how to search for resources by the licence:

This video could probably be used as it is now on my class sites. However, it is a bit long, the section on the slide show goes on too long and I could have focussed more on the summary slide. I don't think it is terribly classy or engaging! It does the job though, and it would be rewindable learning. It achieves the learning aim of explaining what Creative Commons licences are and how to find and use that information. But I can see why being a TV presenter is an actual... THING. It doesn't just 'come naturally', even to those of us who spend all day presenting to students in a classroom!

Share

Hapara Workspace

Did you know you can search for Hapara Workspaces by 'NZ Curriculum'? I did not. On the menu bar in Workspaces Home, click Discover (to the right of My Workspaces). Then select NZ Curriculum and search by keyword. 

Screencastify Tips

The latest version of Screencastify has a little sidebar which makes it easier to pause and resume recording and stop recording:

I also discovered from experimenting today that it is easiest to record video related to separate tabs as separate recordings. You then open the first Screencastify recording in the Editor, and add the other recordings to it. 

If you want to trim the beginning or end of one of the separate videos, you need to do that BEFORE you add it to the combined recording (as I discovered by doing it the wrong way the first time). The final video I made, as posted above in the 'Create' section, was actually five different Screencastify videos all joined together after trimming where needed. You export the final version and... voila!

Blogger sidebar

Makaore showed us today how to add in a list of blogs as a gadget on your blogger sidebar. I am thinking about whether I would do that on this blog or not. One advantage of having a class blog list on the sidebar is that it sorts by who has most recently posted, so it is easy to see who in the class has completed their posts and who has not. But I have four classes, not all of which blog. I have the blogs for my Year 10 class linked on the class website and that is probably more useful for now. I can see that for a primary class it would be great to have that gadget on the sidebar of a class blog. Now to decide whether I need/want a class blog for my Year 10 class... watch this space!