The Creative Brain

What's a Saturday morning with no sport... Netflix has provided! Check out the preview:

This morning I fell upon THE CREATIVE BRAIN. It promised to take audiences on a journey with neuroscientist and best-selling author, David Eagleman, to meet accomplished professionals from across the creative spectrum, unravel the creative process, and encourage all of us to be more creative.

As teachers, it's crucial that we understand this concept. We are in the creative age (not the digital age, as some still believe). Creativity is a fundamental piece that our educational experiences are lacking. WFRC has been telling us this for the past few years, however I think teachers lack the understanding of what that means. It's not "creating", in the traditional sense.

Creativity is the ability to take on new information and put it together with what we already know.

Humans have transformed the world we live in like no other species. People often link creativity with the arts, however, it is so much more than that. To consider what doesn't exist. To rise above our instincts and consider our other options before deciding what to do.

Most animals have the input and output parts of the brain right next to each other, so there's a direct path between the two. There's an instant reaction. Not much happens in between. Our brains are wired differently, we are able to disengage our instinct to see it differently. Input can collide with what's already there to forge new pathways, make new connections... considering possibility based on what's already there. We can process information in limitless ways. The enlargement of the human cortex, the expansion of the prefrontal cortex behind the forehead... This gives us imagination.

Being original is not about generating something out of nothing

Michael Chabon - Novelist attempts to debunk the theory saying there never has been such a thing as a truly original idea. A Pulitzer Prize winner that's not afraid to take ideas from anywhere, he operates on a basis of instead of "how can I make mine different from my predecessors? How can I utilize what they did to make mine better?"

What we create is unique because our life experiences are unique.
It's about getting out into the world and generate new concepts. Take the ordinary and make them extraordinary by putting them in a yet unseen combination. The creative process often involves making something, yet it also has the power to remake our lives.

Ehron Tool - Potter. He was a Gulf War veteran. He came back with a notion to do something different with his life. His creative outlet allows him to create discussion, generate a feeling. It's become a real healing process.

Lafayette Correctional Centre runs a groundbreaking programme by writer Zachery Lazar. His father had been murdered and this impacted his entire life. Upon visiting a correctional facility as a journalist he realised something surprising. He was surprised by a connection he felt to a lot of the people he talked to. He felt that there was a real lack of creativity in the prison. He felt that by harnessing those people's creativity, it could be a way of preventing them from being in the prison cycle. He now works with the prisoners to nurture their creative writing skills. The impact has been described as helping them think differently about things, think differently about themselves and think differently about other people. They are able to see themselves. It's about changing the narrative.
Tim Robbins (of Shawshank Redemption fame) runs acting workshops with prisoners. Often prisoners are defined by their mistakes made and any potential is never considered. By telling them that they are defined by who they are as human beings. The emotions that they suppress are real emotions. Prisoners taking part in these programmes are up to 80% less likely to re-offend.

Michelle Khine of Shrink Nanotechnologies, combined her childhood experience with Shrinkydinks and utilised it to advance science, by creating the tools she needed.
In order to advance science, you need to think about things in a different way otherwise nothing changes.

Bjarke Ingels is a Danish architect renowned for his imaginative designs. He operates by using a lot of material on hand to mash it with what is in his imagination. We have the power to imagine a world that isn't our world yet.

He blended his idea of lego with preconceived notions of a house. A ski field with perceptions of a building.



 Nathan Myhrvold - Bill Gates described him as the smartest man he knew.
Taking ideas from one place and putting them in an entirely different context. He surrounds himself with influences.

"It's always better to be a critic than a creator." Nathan Myhrvold

Creativity is the interplay of billions of neurons sending trillions of impulses. Every experience you have is a raw material for your brain to create with and fashion into new ideas, by bending them into something new.

It's all about refashioning what already exists

Phill Tippett - Animator and Monster Maker.
He has a things and ideas room filled with "junk and stuff I've picked up over the years". He has organised it into an ideas generator. He randomly cut out pictures and put them into a book. He described the feeling of "I got it" when using them. It's an ability to put disparate information together and make something useful.

Robert Glasper - Musician
Jazz is a mashup of other forms of music. All of the forms of music that were around at the time was pulled together and reflects the time it was created in... it's always changing. If it stops changing then it's not following the tradition. If people of the previous generation are saying "You're not doing it right" then you are doing it right.

3 ways we can take advantage of how we are wired:

1. Try something new.

Being creative means fighting the instinct of not choosing the path of least resistance. Our brains naturally default to what we've done before. We need to dig deeper and get off that path of least resistance and try something new. For adults, this often translates as a career change. I've heard of the idea of getting kids to generate the first 3 ideas that spring to mind, then drawing a line under them and saying "You can't use this." Specialisation can mean 'learning a lot about less' can transpire into 'knowing a lot about nothing'. To be able to think outside the box you have to be willing to be wrong. You also have to be willing to be right when everyone thinks you are wrong.

2. We have to push boundaries. 

Our brains are novelty seekers. There's a fine line between exploring the range of possibilities between the familiar and the unfamiliar. Being willing to turn your back on traditional unwritten rules and test ideas that might be considered "wrong". Things that are considered "weird" are things that people are unfamiliar with. If it is considered weird than it is pushing boundaries. There's a spectrum between too familiar and too far out and wacky... its the in-between that is where the magic happens. tp create something that's not too new too unfamiliar but something in between.

3. We need to risk failing. 

Failure feels awful so we avoid it. The reality is that most peoples successes arise out of the ashes of their failings. Game of Thrones co-creator and writer, D.B. Weiss describes himself as failing very consistently for a very long time. He learned to be less worried about failing. All of the failures ultimately contributed to him being able to do this thing.

A school transforms...

10 years ago a Vermont School was on the verge of being shut down. Poor community. Terrible test scores. H O Wheeler. to save the school they decided to put creativity and the arts at the heart of every subject

When can kids learn? When they're engaged. - Bobby Riley (Principal)

When you focus on the arts and the process of the artistic experience, then they are able to blossom in unique and very special ways.

Learning geometry through the medium of abstract art. When it is integrated it hits more avenues that different learners use to access information. With creativity at the heart of every subject, the kids are learning a creative mindset. They're being taught to get off the path of least resistance and keep trying. It's about teaching them to try their best and to take a risk. It's about developing the process that allows them to interact with the world around them.

To succeed in an unimaginable future we need to instil creativity in our the children we teach so they can be successful in navigating that world.

How can we instil more creativity in our akonga?

Manaiakalani & Outreach Wananga 2019

What a fabulous welcome, as always, from Point England akonga.

Pat Sneddon

Pat described it as a "cauldron of change". Tipping orthodoxy on its head. The statistics for ethnicity in our education system is not ok. It's fundamentally wrong and needs to change. 

The "Manaiakalani Outreach Expansion Investment" is all about getting the things that facilitate what we do built into the education funding budget in future. 

WFRC

Arron & Rebecca

Backwards mapping from th student outcomes, back towards what kind of leadership choices are going to impact those the greatest.

Longitudinal writing data shows us, compared with norm, an accelerated trajectory. 

Readding data is parallel and not accelerated, as is math.

What are we thinking about, in terms of teachers and in terms of teachers. It's the same message... what can ee do to build on the strengths of writing that we have achieved? While our conversation today was about reading... it's the same for math.

Background: 2018 Milestone Findings (TMP Slide 16)

• Recommendation 1: Resource Base
• Within the focus on strong language competence, develop a shared resource base that builds oral and written languages for curriculum content

Lots of practice reading authentic texts and how to unpack those particular texts. If we as teachers are simplifying the text and summarising the text for the students all too often, we are removing their opportunities to practice reading skills.

"Instruction that focuses on deeper features of reading, such as criticality, helps lift all aspects of reading whereas too much focus on features such as literal meaning-making places a ceiling on reading development"

When we focus on the deeper features, it also lifts the surface features. The opposite is not true, from all indicators. Literacy is a social act, which is why collaboration is so great for improving literacy. There is no evidence that strategy instruction and increasing criticality is not present. These have been key areas indicated for a number of years now...

MIT

Hannah -

Sandra -

Santi -

Joanne - This could link really well into what Whakamanawa are doing.

Marc - Learners combining Assesment capability with agency, culminating in creating digital assessment records.

Kelsey - Raising Reading Achievement. Tool relates to Purple/Gold/Silver readding levels.

Amber - from Belfast School - Storytelling (make link to Kathleen's blog post from her Storytelling PD)

Eugene - Literature circles, video creation and blogging to accelerate reading (Context of Yr6 Boys).

Nicola - iPad APp to support writing in the early years. Could we do something in our kura/cluster, to develop a word card relevant to our learners?

Naomi - recording learners reading.

Manaiakalani

Provocations:

• What lower leverage activities can students/teachers do less of in order that they can do more higher leverage activities?
• Are we ensuring that there are opportunities for rich discussions?
• We are hearing the same recommendations. Why are we not listening and actioning change!?

What Next?

• We need to be actioning change. It's simple.
• More authentic texts
• More extended discussions.
• I've listened to multiple examples of learners recording their reading, to improve reading mileage as well as oral language. How might this look? I'm pondering a separate blog, where learners use the secret blog email address to email their post, including recording, to this blog...?

DFI 9 - Beating Around the Bush

A weird feeling with this being the last day of our intensive. What will the next challenge be? It's been great having the opportunity to delve in deep and soak like a sponge. It's highlighted that I thrive on that and in many ways need it.

Ubiquitous

Leaping into the learning pit:

Today I leapt in and became the learner. We often put our kids in assessment conditions and flippantly assure them "not to worry", "it'll be fine", etc...

To leap into that position as adults, many of whom in the room were rather nervous about the daunting task ahead of them... was actually a really valuable reminder of how it feels. 

I had a few glitches while attempting the practice tests for modules on the certification site. Many of my problems were due to my nature of over-thinking. "Could it be that simple?" "Surely it's wanting more...?" Apparent;y it wasn't.

The Level One test was in two parts. One was multi-choice, with a scenario given and the number of answers which should be checked.

The other was actual tasks that we were required to go through, from creating a site with specific content to creating a YouTube playlist and sharing it with a specific audience. 

The daunting part was dealing with Google Classroom, which I haven't used before. I found it easy to complete the actual tasks within that domain, however it was hard for me to answer the multi-choice questions because I couldn't relate it to my own tangible experience. How often does this happen with our students, particularly those stepping up into Year 4 and suddenly working in a digital learning environment?

All in all... I passed!

So Many Opportunities:

Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers

- Focused on your Inquiry. Throughout the process, you design a tool to be used to support this Inquiry. A fabulous think tank experience to help develop your inquiry process. Great opportunities from this as well as the extra support.

Google Class On Air.

Throughout the year, you put up 16 episodes of learning in your classroom as well as the work that akonga present from it.

Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu

Buddy classes from throughout New Zealand. 

Online Toolkits

Term 4: October 22, 23, 24

Professional Learning, where you lead a toolkit in something that you are comfortable with sharing. It doesn't have to be absolutely amazing... just something.

Social Media

Keeping up with what's running already, such as professional blogs, Google + Community, Twitter etc.

What next?

The question of the day.

I've come to realise that I'm a creature that likes to be in the deep end and being challenged. I can't just paddle in the shallows. It has been invaluable being in such an intense learning environment for this past term. I need to keep the pressure on to keep learning.

• Google Certified Teacher Level 2
• I've committed to leaping in and giving this a go... what's the worst that can happen? I fail? (I'm forever telling the kids that it stands for First Attempt In Learning)
• Hapara Champion Educator
• I've submitted my application for this online course. The Objective is to develop basic proficiency in the Hapara Suite—Highlights, Dashboard, and Workspace—from the point-of-view of a classroom teacher. Practice and reflect on positive, student-centred instructional use. While I've been using most of the features for years, I haven't been using workspace, so I'm interested in looking into this and how it can be harnessed for my practice.
• Could we be doing mini-interviews for everything that happens at school... then putting up a mini news bulletin, a simple iMovie, that is uploaded to blogs and Facebook at the end of every week.
• Next Year... there are a number of opportunities floating around. I need to "step into the arena".

Empowering: Learners, Teachers... and Me!

Connecting with Manaiakalani

We had the fabulous privilege to have Dorothy Burt leading us today. I always find that her perspective serves as a bit of a recharge.

Empowered

Learners and Teachers

Each of the 11 Manaiakalani communities has there own "why".

It began with the word "agency"... but that doesn't work within some of our communities, as the agencies that whanau are used to equate to various government Agencies... which equate to also turning their life upside down. Whanau interpretation is more important than ours.

It's important to not slip into a deficit model when talking about our communities. Despite the housing shortages and financial difficulties. Despite the outside influences that are impacting and adding stress.

5+ a day

Creating a dialogue with our kids, to develop their oral language, by bouncing the conversation backwards and forwards 5+ times. (Just like we want to create a thread with our blogging). This is a great strategy to combat the low oral language that our akonga arrive at our door with. By having deliberate conversations with the children we are effecting change in a positive way for them.

Google Forms

We went through a Chalk n talk to create a Google Form. It was great to be forced into amping up the use of it, rather than sticking to the tried and true. We created pathways etc, which was good to actually get stuck in and done.

Google My Maps

I'd never seen or used this before. pins can be dropped on actual maps, then pathways can by mapped, with distances measured etc.

Could use it at the beginning of the year to get kids to locate where they're from. Houses or countries.

Google Sheets

Protecting cells

Super Sheets! Using the Explore tool to work for you, creating graphs etc.

Tips & Tricks

• You can freeze more than one row by selecting the row first and then freeze up to row.... You can also "grab" the grey line and drag it to where to freeze to.
• Resize columns by highlighting the range. Then go to the top... double click on the blue line that appears. It'll allocate width due to length of word.

Getting Creative with Google Sheets

• Split name Add-on... when you have both names in one cell, you can split them into two columns (first and last names)
• Crop sheet Add on - to delete all the extra blank cells in a sheet, so that focus is drawn to what you're dealing with.
• Filtering for effective workflow and saving to utilise them
• Conditional formatting
• SPARKLINE adds a visual line to
• Macro Recorder... formatting a sheet and recording that, so that you can apply the same formatting to another sheet.

Students carry out a statistical inquiry about their blog.

Open a spreadsheet and gather some data.

What opportunities/provocations are there for 2020?

• Who would benefit from doing the DFI next year? 
• Whoever is new to the Takitini Team!
• Whakatau Leader, to ensure that the pedagogy is embedded within the Whakatau team.
• To quote Brene Brown... I need to step into the arena! 
• I'm interested in applying for Google Class on Air for next year.
• I want to consolidate some of the systems that hav'nt been working and have them more efficient to hit the ground running. 
• Amp up creativity.

Blinging sharing with Biteable

Today I leapt onto the learning pit alongside my learners to test a new tool. We learned to make a video using Biteable where we could teach others how to comment on our blogs.

It's such an easy tool to use and could be great for akonga sharing their learning about any topic. It also helps the,m to think about font and colour for easy readability for their audience. 

Here's my creation:

Learn to comment on a blog on Biteable.

Connected Learners and Teachers

DFI #7 - Media

Live Streaming YouTube

What is possible?

What can you do?

How can we take the kids passions and what they do further?

I WANT A DRONE!!!

Live Streaming all school events. We have a multi-cultural school who have whanau all over the world. How can we get what they are doing out to them?

- Streaming from our phones as well as laptops.

Connected

Maaniakalani has created a powerful network. It sprang from a culture where people held things to their chest without sharing. 

How can we create stronger connections between our two clusters? School Leaders?

It is our Shared Language, which creates the connection. The pedagogy and kaupapa language. Learn. Create. Share. Visible. Ubiquitous. Connected. Empowered. We create the language for our akonga through the cyber smart programme.

Our akonga need to be able to make authentic connections. In order to make a connection, both parties need to Share.

There's a misunderstanding that Share is about digital sharing. Seeing in real life is always going to be better than seeing digitally, but it makes it possible for people who aren't able to be there and to take it out to a wider network. Face-to-face is always the ideal.

Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu was designed specifically to connect our learners.

Online Toolkits then came about. It enables us to connect and learn alongside colleagues from around the country.

Google Draw

We looked at ways to utilise Google drawing. It really is the tool for any task and is very underused. 

I can see uses that have previously been monopolised by websites, such as Padlet, which were once free but have now locked themselves down to needing to pay to maintain services.

The Google Drawing Sandpit gives some great examples of how this can be utilised in the classroom for a wide variety of uses.

I created the About Me drawing for the sidebar of my Professional Blog.

Google Slides

Concepts around using Slides as a tool to enable access to learning have been sitting in the back of my mind for a while now. I've been trying to throw ideas around in the back of my head, for a method of planning on slides that tick all the boxes and is effective as well as efficient.
There are so many benefits for using slides over docs. It's useful for embedding onto sites. It makes it easy to embed and link content, texts and tasks. There is clear and consistent formatting, making your end-user appreciative. The current week's slide can be moved to the front.

Because you are an editor, you can see the comments. If people are view only, they can't see reflections in the comments. All planning is on slides so that it is visible, while still keeping reflections private to editors because they are comments only.

By putting instructions in the side, off the side of the slide, it means it is there for akonga to see and use, but once they publish it, only the pallette is seen. Same is the case in Google Draw.

You can also insert audio instructions with the teacher's instructions.

Way more than just a slideshow - Jesse Lubinsky

Game Changers:

• Getting traction for change with Google: when something isn't working, then email them with what's not working. Even better, email your class with the wording for what you want them to say and get them to copy and paste the wording into the help box.
• I'm envisaging learners creating their own jeopardy game to share their learning from Literacy!

I'm falling down the rabbit hole of additional resources and links at the bottom of each agenda!

Arse Kicking and Shit-Storms: Stepping into the Arena

Watching "Brené Brown: the Call to Courage" on Netflix tonight has been an absolute privilege. It really resonated with me, particularly with where I'm at right now.

It's really easy to slip back and cruise when things feel a little chaotic and uncomfortable. When we are uncomfortable with our vulnerability, it's easy to default into sticking to your comfort zone and not taking risks.

Brené Brown talks about the fear of criticism. Do you engineer smallness in your life? We'veg all been there. You stick to the status quo and don’t take chances or don’t put yourself out there... because you don’t know whether you can withstand the criticism.

When we've put ourselves out there and regretted it, finding ourselves in a shame shitstorm (her term... I love this term!) you know, where you slip into hibernation, numbing ourselves with tv or a movie. Probably unhealthy foods etc... She reminds us that "it’s not the critic who counts". The credit belongs to the person who’s stepped up into the arena. The one who’s taking chances.

If you choose to be in the arena... You’re going to fall. You’re going to get your arse kicked. If you’re not in the arena, stepping out of your comfort zone then your opinion actually doesn’t count.

Each day when you get out of bed, say to yourself "Today I’ll choose courage over comfort".

Vulnerability is having the courage to show up when you don’t know the outcome. There are millions of cheap seats in the world. It’s not that you don’t give a shit about what anybody thinks, it’s that you don’t give a shit about what some people think. The people who make the list are the people who care about and love you not despite your imperfection and vulnerability but because of your imperfection and vulnerability.

How can you let yourself be loved if you don’t let yourself be seen. When you have thoughts running through your head during uncomfortable conversations, have the courage to say “The story I’m telling myself is...”

Vulnerability

It is often considered to be:

shame

Scarcity

fear

anxiety

uncertainty

But it also gives birth to:

love

belonging

joy

"The opposite of belonging is fitting in."

Belonging is speaking your truth. Being yourself... who you are.

Practice gratitude... Allow yourself to lean into joy.

Understanding what we can do better to "show up":

1. When you are grateful for what you have, you are able to understand the magnitude of what has been lost. It can be healing.
2. The ordinary things... the simple moments that you don't take notice of when they are happening. You miss them when they're no longer there and gone. We're quick to chase the extraordinary moments while just skipping over the ordinary.
3. Just do the joyful thing for the hell of it.

Work Vulnerability

empathy

trust

innovation

creativity

inclusivity/equity

hard conversations

feedback

problem-solving

ethical decision making

No vulnerability = no creativity.

No tolerance for failure = no innovation

We need to ensure we build a vulnerable culture. To not have the conversations because they make you uncomfortable is the definition of privilege. When we build cultures at work where there is zero tolerance for vulnerability, where perfectionism and armour are rewarded and necessary... you can’t have difficult productive conversations.


We spend more than half of our lives at work. You can’t have a joyful wholehearted life if you are miserable at work.

Brave leaders are never silent around hard things. 

Our job is to excavate the unsaid.

Vulnerability is defined as: uncertainty risk or emotional exposure. There is no courage without uncertainty or risk.

The Myths of vulnerability:

1. Vulnerability is weakness
2. I don’t do vulnerability
3. I can go it alone
4. You can engineer the uncertainty and discomfort out of vulnerability.
5. trust comes before vulnerability
6. Vulnerability is disclosure

You choose who has the right to share your story. Vulnerability minus boundaries is not vulnerability. You don’t measure vulnerability by the amount of disclosure, you measure it by the amount of courage to show up.

Vulnerability is scary and it feels dangerous... but it’s not as scary and dangerous as getting to the end of our lives and saying “what if I would’ve shown up?” What if I would’ve said I love you?

Show up

Be seen

Answer the call to courage

Come off the blocks

Curiosity Unleashed

While trying to find the personal blog I began about a year ago, only for it to sit on the back burner... I stumbled across the blog I began 'way back when'.

Check out Curiosity Unleashed HERE

This is exactly what I needed right now. This is exactly why we as professionals blog. It gives us a window into how far we have come and the process we go through. I had forgotten so much of this part of the journey as it seemed to go by in a blur.

This blog was 5 years ago.
I was in a single cell class. My kids had individual desks which were identified in a painstakingly labour intensive in-depth consideration as to the seating plan!
Everything was completed in books.

I cannot fathom teaching in this way again. The fact that it was only 5 years ago... when it feels like a lifetime.

Reading it, I can remember the excitement and passion I had for the paradigm shift I was embarking on. I was stepping into an unknown world, where we were leading the charge for those around us. We had to make the mistakes ourselves to find out why some things needed to be done in certain ways.

For anyone who questions why they should have a professional blog... This is why!!!

Enabling Access by suping up sites

We explored how to maximise our class/subject sites to maximise visible teaching and learning.

Evaluating Class Sites:

We explored a selection of Class sites looking at the two key criteria of:

• Visual appeal - shop window!
• User experience - easy to locate ‘stuff’ (2/3 clicks)

considering what works well and what doesn't work well.

Colour checker - put a link to your site and it will analyse points to consider.

Visible Kaupapa

Making teaching and learning visible... essentially can you see it or not? We aren't necessarily talking about John Hattie's work as he takes it to a whole new level which becomes quite complicated. Manaiakalani simplifies this. It's visible not only to learners but to whanau too.

FAIL - so much of the learning journey has traditionally been hidden from the akonga. Dorothy likens it to an adult version of a maze where you can only see a little bit in front of you.

It used to be that those that succeeded were the ones able to read the teachers mind. Those who had an element of cultural capital. When success criteria are open and displayed it opens up the learning journey and makes it visibly accessible. We can take it a lot further still with the intentional use of digital tools. Every step of the journey should be visible.

When we say that the default is visible, what genuinely needs to be invisible or private?

Biodata (Date of birth etc), Health info, Behavioural data etc... sure, however what about assessment info? Five-year-olds know where they sit in relation to their peers. How precious do we need to be? We need to open our minds up about what genuinely must be kept private.

We've been using google sites to repurpose our learning since 1:1 classes began.

Making teaching visible removes the element of surprise for learners and whanau. It provides an advance warning as well as rewind ability afterwards.

Hapara's tagline is Making Teaching and Learning Visible. This is exactly what we are wanting to do. Effectively it enables us to be able to access the children's desk.

Hapara Parent Portal. DO our parents have the ability to access this?

Manaiakalani Google Class On Air

Stalk some teachers and see what it's like. At the end of this term, the applications for 2020 come online. Is this something we can get done down here? I'm seriously considering "stepping into the arena".

Visible Teaching as Inquiry

Having them open and visible across the clusters to access and learn from others, just like our learners. We stress the power of feedback and feedforward for our learners on their blogs. Do we do this ourselves with our own learning as professionals?

This connection only came about because they were visible online in a positive light for learning. A number of people argued that other communities were more impoverished/deserving, however, they didn't have a digital footprint.

Data shows that if a child is present over three years in a Manaiakalani School... the rate of gain in writing was twice that expected nationally. This means that these students on average made one more year's progress above the expected rate per year if they were there for three years.

A concern that when kids go digital, we lock parents out of our children's learning. Schools can create barrier systems to prevent ease of parents being able to find what they have been doing. By making everything visible and making it so that there is no problem with it being visible then we are keeping it open.

Leading Learning using a Google Site

An overview of setting up a class or subject site.

We need to consider the learners' pathways. It all needs to be connected so that kids find it easier to use when transitioning between classes and year levels.

When creating a new site... the first consideration is who are the learners? A site for Chromebook users is very different than a site that is for iPad users. Why are they using the site? What are the key things they are going to go to?

Think really carefully about Colour... you can you tools to pluck out colour from uniforms etc. Do the combinations make your eyes hurt? DO they look okay when viewed on different screens?

Consider Layout... how easy is it on your eye? There's a lot to be said for clutter-free.

It's important to think about using a consistent font. Try not to use more than two. This goes for the things that you are embedding too. Google has begun to include Lexend fonts, which are meant to increase productivity. You can see that they are rather boring though...

The 3 click rule is very important. You should be able to get to anything within 3 clicks.

Purposeful Learning Tasks:

We need to consider how we can ramp up the learning task to utilise the tools available. It's not always "What can we do better?" but how can we redefine the way we are doing things to make it more purposeful and authentic.

For ERO etc, it's very easy to copy sites, so even if you are going to use the same site, it's a good idea to make a copy of it so that it archives everything nicely.

Feedback on our Group Sites

We provided a link to our class site. We received down and dirty feedback. Well... that was the theory. Everyone was actually rather kind. To be fair, many in the room are only starting out with their class sites, so a few kinks were still being ironed out. Ours, on the other hand, are humming as they should be. One of the things that have been frustrating me about mine is the clutter of rewindable learning. I had developed a bad habit of just "dumping" DLO's at the bottom f the page. They were there and rewindable, but the shop window was in disarray! Certainly not providing a visually appealing visual appearance to engage learners.

My feedback from the group was too "nice":

"It looks great. Thanks for sharing Mel."

"Well done Mel. I liked your simple layout and it is easy for children to use."

"Looks great Mel. I like the cleanness and few steps the kids have to go to."

There was nothing I could use to set a goal for my class site for the day. I needed to come up with three specific things I wanted to achieve on my site today. My focus is on User engagement.

• Cleaner pages 
• rewindable learning is clearly marked as per term.
• Less “busy-ness"
• I need it to be more engaging (insert magic wand of inspiration here)
• More “extra’s for expert” for kids to do at home.

I managed to clean a large portion up. It's much tidier and more user-friendly. I still need to be mindful of upping the engagement factor.

I finally got some links in there for literacy. I can just keep adding to this now... meaning kids have a place to go to when they are looking for "Homework" to do.

Sunshine Books:

Manaiakalani gets free copies of Sunshine books, to coincide with the online subscription. There are a huge wealth of resources out there to coincide with them.

Game changers:

Shift + Z - creates a ghost file in a different place.

100-word challenge: put a google form with a picture prompt in. You can then pull them off easily.
Google form: find me an interesting fact.

Devices

Today at DFI, our guest facilitator was Lenva, who works 4 days a week for Hapara and the other day for Manaiakalani.

We refer to Cybersmart rather than Cyber Safe to teach our kids how to live in the world rather than be scared in the world. We want our kids to know how to deal with things as they come up and how to keep their own footprint as clean as they can.
One of the most important aspects of the kaupapa is that it is visible. It's all transparent and open.

Smart Learners 

It's about being able to tackle different programmes and tackle different parts. Students learn the kawa of care, which is about teaching them to be responsible for their own device and who has access. It's crucial for the culture of looking after the tools for learning. Many assume that our learners know how to use the devices; however, they know how to use them in a different context. Often in a gaming "play/toy" context.

Smart Footprint. 

Term 2. The Create Term.
This is where our learners begin to be seen. What do they want people to know about you? How do you want people to see you?

Smart Relationships. 

Students interacting with the rest of the world. How do we speak on our (and others) blogs? If it's not positive, thoughtful or helpful then we are not going to say it. Authentic audiences and buddy class blogs encourage us to do this too.

Hapara - Making Learning Visible.

Hapara allows us to focus on teaching rather than technology. Hapara is not really about monitoring and filtering. It's about supporting the teaching. The focus browsing and Filter sessions are for those few individuals who need extra support.

Some key tools:

• Sharing: All unshared documents, even those in folders.
• All Docs: Every document created.
• The only thing you cant see is empty trash, because who really does that?
• Filter Session: The opposite to Focus session. You can identify the sites you don't want them to go to. 
• Comments: Shows all comments made and received by that student.

Workspaces. It can be embedded into the class site. Units can be visible to some students and not others. You can control what they see. They submit it back to the teacher.

Tamaki College is currently undertaking all of their NCEA exams within a focus browsing session and students submit their work upon completion.

Chromebooks

It was all about finding the best device for learning for EVERY young person.

Partnership

• Ownership of the Chromebook is a partnership. Often it becomes a family tool. Thus it is not only empowering students but whanau as well. They look after the device better if they own it, rather than when it's a school-owned device.
  

Participation

• Bringing the device to school every day charged.
• Because they are all using the same device, it empowers the teachers to work confidently with them.

Protection

• It should be seamless. Everything should just happen and be visible.
• The important things are behind the scenes.
• By teaching a Cybersmart curriculum then we are assisting students to make good choices about what to do when things go awry.

Its a really good idea to go through the Digital Dig so that you know how to assist students with workflow.

Check it out here

iPads

Apple Classroom works similar to Hapara, but for iPads.

It's vital that the routines are established right at the beginning. If they are established young, then they have them for life.

Visible Teaching and Learning

By embedding a link to your Explain Everything on a slide, you can put in easily on your slide.

To view on your Mac, download the Explain Everything Viewer (which sits in your Appa)

Screencastify

We created a Screencastify on how to use a tool. I took the opportunity to create one to share the differences between Onetab and Mini Toby, which we looked at a couple of weeks ago when covering Workflow. My learners use this easily and happily. As adults, I think we are often hesitant to record ourselves. There are so many uses for this tool.

Computational Thinking

Share - Tohatoha

We need to mindful that it's not just the great things that we share, but the reality too. Some times our perceived failures are the things that we learn most from. Sharing is what makes us human. Sharing our successes. Sharing our failures. F.A.I.L = First Attempt In Learning.

Youtube was born in April 2005. Social media spaces sprang up... Facebook... Bebo... Twitter... The taglines that they all chose to put with each space was "share your life" in some way shape or form. It opened up the world and the way that we share. 2005 brought speed and amplification to the way that we share.

Remind ourselves of our Manaiakalani goals. "Work with learners to establish an authentic audience for their learning outcomes." - Raise Achievement outcomes.

Authentic audience... gone are the days of the audience being a teacher at night with a red pen in hand. Natasha from Hornby High is a student who blogged about Vans. She sent the post to Vans and they commented! She made an authentic connection!

This connectivity is within the realms of every individual who has access to the internet. We need to utilise it to excite and accelerate our learning. Our kids are often limited in the connections that they make in person. Some often don't go many places beyond home and school. This is their vehicle out!

Blogger

Blogger was chosen for a number of reasons. In the beginning, a number of options were explored. Blogger won hands down.

• Resembles the spaces our young people want to be on: While it may not be the coolest place that young people want to be, it functions very well to do all the things it needs to do.
• Able to provision this legally, systematically & securely. The board of Trustees is the legal owner of the student blog. The student is merely the author. This gets around the age constraints and legalities of the blog.
• NO new sign in required for GSuite users... no new list of usernames and password.
• Guarantee that there's a three check system. These are mechanisms for us managing the safety of our children online.
1. Blog posts and comments go to Hapara Teacher Dashboard for teachers to check.
2. The teacher who is responsible for that blog gets emails to notify them.
3. Gadget on the side of the class blog, that lists the class blogs. Make the setting so that the most recent post goes on top.

Cybersmart Curriculum

It's okay for students to be operating online, but they MUST be taught the cybersmart curriculum in order to ensure that they have a positive presence online. Providing an ability to connect with each other in a respectful way.

A lot of the other spaces are great. The benefit of Blogger is that it's within the google suite, so no further password or sign in is required. 

Share to finish learning

An eternal frustration, particularly in lower decile schools. It can encourage akonga to celebrate being "finished". They just move from one job to the other and then move onto the next without finishing one off properly. This can be a lifelong habit which transfers into their work habits post-school.

The process of 'Share to Learn' becoming a spiral is extremely important. Not only sharing to finish, but sharing to begin learning.

(Slide 18) "Positive thoughtful Helpful" - links to John Hattie and Feedback & Feedforward.

By embedding this language all the way through, it cements it and becomes a natural way of being. By embedding this it gives our kids a toolkit of how to behave, both online and offline.

We need to teach our kids some tricks to hook in their audience. You can't just be passive about sitting back and waiting for it all to happen.

Even reading and commenting on each other's blog has the ability to accelerate learning.

Every lingerer on a blog registers with googles algorithm. If you linger, it'll be noticed.

Kawana - OMGTech - He's the Course creator in the background.

Pam Fergusson Charitable Trust. She was a paraplegic who mortgaged her house to buy a computer because she saw that was the future. Her boys now are all computer programmers and run a multi-million dollar company.

Technology in the world we live in. It's about connections and who you know. Our kids need to have the ability to make connections.

Boston Dynamics Big Dog - ethics... it was funded by the military. It isn't just for war, but for rescues etc

Sophia the robot - Singing with Jimmy Fallon.

The algorithm adjusts within the song to match pitch. It has learned by itself. Sophia absorbed the knowledge. Can robotics be creative?

Skin Vision - $80/year. Consumer Institute wasn't positive about it, however, the more people who use it the better the algorithm gets. Getting a body scan for moles is around $200... Could become a new party trick?

Cost becomes a barrier.

Zephyr's Cora - Self-flying planes. 

Tech ethics...should we do it?

The new content covers two key areas, computational thinking and designing and developing digital outcomes. It has been designed to be flexible, so it can respond to new developments and technologies as they emerge.

In fact, when Hon Nikki Kaye announced the curriculum in June 2017, she said:

“Computational thinking is about understanding the computer science principles that underlie all digital technologies and learning how to develop instructions, such as programming, to control these technologies. 

Designing and developing digital outcomes is about understanding that digital systems and applications are created for humans by humans, and developing knowledge and skills in using different digital technologies to create digital content across a range of digital media. This part of the curriculum also includes learning about the electronic components and techniques used to design digital devices."

• Inquiry & Communication is the use
• Construction & Expression is the programming and create

Check out the glossary here.

Other stuff:

• cs unplugged - a huge resource of unplugged resources.
• Hour of Code. Limit to one hour or kids disconnect and check out
• toxicode and silently teacher: when they've moved on from hour of code.

Scratch

Kiatakatu.ac.nz

Kia Takatū ā-Matihiko

Digital Readiness - It’s worth having a look at. You can complete a self-review, to guage where you are at with implementing the new digital curriculum. It has great resources for you to upskill or be informed.

I completed the online self-review tool to see where I was at, as a leader.

Makey Makeys 

Cardboard Stumblebot

A-MA-ZING! Today was fantastic! I now feel like I've had a range of tools and ideas unleashed, but I've been able to have the sandpit time with them to successfully take them back into the classroom. I can see where a range of what we did today should be introduced to our akonga! It also involves critical literacy in that we are challenging our learners to consider the ethics of G-Tech and where things are heading, rather than being passive consumers of things that they are told about or introduced to.

I've already been on AliExpress and purchased a 3D pen, with filament! 

DFI 3

Hanging out with Dorothy:

Create... Hanga - It's all about the HOOK!

• How do we as teachers ramp it up in the classroom?

You can check out some research around this here: We Teach Who We Are: Creativity in the Lives and Practices of Accomplished Teachers by Danah Henriksen & Punya Mishra

"The Lifelong Kindergarten Group" - A world of Playfully Creative People..."

• This may be beneficial for our Te Ara Whakatau team to check out, particularly regarding Play-based learning?

The goal is to have no learner missing out on the opportunity to create within their learning journey.
It's time again to focus on Teacher Creativity. We need to be celebrating this within our Kura as well as wider.

The heART of the matter talks to the learners as adults as they describe what it was like to learn in this way.

It wasn't National Standards that killed it, it just slowly wilted away. Let's go back to it! Focus on the front half of the curriculum as well as the back half.

Exploring Create in the Manaiakalani Programme open doc. This is fascinating to look at, particularly after our own clusters journey to unpack what Learn, Create and Share actually mean. It's great being able to look at this knowing how many brains have pooled to create this shared understanding. It's also something that I feel we need to refer back to in order to continue to be on the same page.

This image, created by Karen Ferguson from Tamaki College, which sums up what it means to Create in our Manaiakalani pedagogy.

Manaiakalani Foundation goal: to "motivate our learners to engage with the curriculum"... Are our kids actually being encouraged and lured into engaging with the curriculum? Or are they being expected to engage?

We need our kids to be Creators of content. If they are not being challenged to engage, then they become consumers of content. Passively surfing the net etc. It's "learn, create, share", not "learn, go google, share". (Brilliant quote from Mark Maddren)

Purposely creating the opportunity for creativity and learning.

Often the learning hook starts with the opportunity to create, then they have to go away and do the learning.

We need to pull it back to the purpose:

Motivate our learners to ENGAGE with the curriculum

The 6 C's of education in the 21st Century.

Creativity is key. Nobody wants to employ somebody that just knows how to tap in to find existing info, they want employees that can generate ideas and thinking.

Ken Robertson was an actor before he was an activist in creativity.

SISOMO

Kevin Roberts from Saachi and Saachi (A Kiwi who was CEO Worldwide) Sight/Sound/Motion.
If you want people to buy-in you need to touch their hearts. To do that you need to use these 3 ingredients.  SISOMO creates innovation and imagination as well.

Cool Hacks

Slides - if you are stuck in "present" mode, you can delete the end of the url to see the speaker notes. Likewise, if you are sharing something, put "/copy" on the end and it will force them to make a copy.

Multi Modal

Engaging "The Hook"

Our challenge is that our learners are immersed in a world where everything around them is competing to engage them and we have to be able to hook them in the same way. We need to hook our kids in, at the beginning, so that they think "Oh wow, I really want to get into this". Pt England use Immersion Assembly's to hook their learners. 

Initially, the technology alone engages, but the novelty wears off. It still needs to be what we are actually doing as teachers.

"Once you've hooked them, teach them!" - WFRC

Sometimes we have to gift them with the prior knowledge so that they can access the inferential knowledge. 

(Links to wide and deep)

Chrissie Butler - UDL

Breaking down the barrier of it being the same old same old, but with a different cover.

Acknowledge that people are different in order to provide for the different ways that individual learners are going to perceive the information. We need to be mo=indful that the variety supports the students, rather than narrowing their perimeters. We need to create a default where there is lots of variabilities. choice over accessing content as well as choice over task.

Creating Multi-Modal Resources

I created this resource, ready for next weeks literacy class. It is now not only in our Uru Manuka Shared Resource Folder, but shared with our Te Ara Tuhura Cluster also. These connections are massive in terms of moving forward. It reminded me of the journey we have been on these past 5 years. I remember way back when...  we were having to start from scratch and it felt like we were reinventing the wheel. Once we began to collaborate, within our schools and cluster, life got a whole lot easier. We openly chat about different things we "borrow" from each other. I feel doing this helps drive our practice forward, as we improve on them while using.

Google Sites

We created a sandpit site (along with a sandpit site folder) to just experiment with. Here is mine.

Using Google Drawing, we created a site header of our own. (1000x250 pixels). We downloaded it as a png and then upload it.

Buttons: 250x250 pixels. To make it a specific shape, you go up to the arrow beside the crop "mask image" and select a shape. I had forgotten to download my button drawing as a PNG image, therefore I wasn't able to easily create the link. 

I experimented with creating an image carousel to showcase photos.

My question around the homepage is what content should be on there, as I have gone away from using buttons to link to the pages. They use the tabs at the top.

DFI 2

Google Hangouts v Google Meet. 

Hangout effectively means that you can share your screen with the others in the group, whereas Meet is just video.

Etiquette

Noise within the group. Muting your microphone is crucial! The screen changes according to who is making noise... so if you are a foot-tapper or fidgeter (I am!!!) this could be quite disruptive and frustrating for the other members of your group.

Headphones reduce the amount of feedback so sound quality is better with them. I quickly realised that I need headphones for my laptop! - My iPhone ones arent compatible! If using a laptop and phone, there is a delay between you talking and hearing.

Manaiakalani Pedagogy - Ako.

Effective teaching. Accelerated Learning.

Our DFI Goals:

3. Our teachers are supported to understand how digital technologies used effectively can have a significant impact on accelerating achievement outcomes.

4. Our teachers are supported to understand how the Manaiakalani pedagogy and kaupapa has been co-constructed over more than a decade to maximise the impact of effective teaching and learning in a digital learning environment.

It's all about Increasing teacher effectiveness and accelerating learning outcomes in this digital environment. Supporting teachers to move from analogue to digital.

We need to be recognising the amazing things happening in our Kura and Amplify its impact by sharing it out. 

Turbocharge - doing things that have never been done before.

Challenge: What teacher actions are promoting student learning?

What does LEARN (effective practice) look like in my school? (Recognise Effective Practice).

What are the programs in our school that make learning happen? 

Great teaching + digital affordances =acceleration.

I'm reminded that I need to be more conscious when designing my reading experience, that I need to be including more text for general consumption.

I've been touching on the SAMR model (Dr Ruben Puentedura), for a number of years now. I really liked this link into Blooms, as I'm mindful that a number of teachers still refer to Blooms. 

Manaiakalani Google Class On Air

Teachers have webcams in their classes and are capturing learning online. You can look at them and see effective practice in action.

Google Keep

Found on the sidebar of Slides, Gmail, Calendar, etc is Google Keep. Another game changer! Even more fantastic... having it connected on your phone. With your phone, you can add voice notes. You can also take a photo of text, open it in Google keep, click the 3 dots... grab text and HELLO... it types it for you! Think about handouts in meetings/conferences... School Journals... so many different uses.

Gmail

We learned about a number of features to create a better workflow with your Gmail.
- undo send! You can change your settings so that you can retrieve a sent email within up to 30 seconds.

- Smart Compose (Tab to enter... on phone just tap at the end of the sentence.)

- Nudges... keeps me on my toes.

- Smart Reply - Great for responding quickly to acknowledge that you've seen it.

- Stars - I was running just a yellow star. Now I've got "All-Stars"... game changer!!! I can have different colours as well as a few different buttons. I'm using these to quickly sift emails I need to go back and action etc.

Keyboard shortcuts...

- G+T = Sent box

- G+V= Moved to

- G+S + Starred

We also created Labels to tame the inbox. We do it for our Google Drive, so it makes sense that we would our Gmail too.

Calendar

W discovered a number of previously unknown Shortcuts:

D - Day view

A - Agenda

W - Week view

x  - 4 weeks

in month view - J = previous, K =  next month

Create "Appointment Slots" - set the timeframes and then send it out. This would be fantastic for inviting people to make a suitable time for professional discussions etc.

Controlling Tabs

One Tab 

- Great for taming tabs!!! Clears them from all being tabbed. I for one am terrible qat running a ridiculous number of tabs on a number of windows... potentially even multiple personalities!

- Great to "lock" the list so that they stay there. Can get rid of the work tabs, without actually getting rid ot them.

Toby - mini

Collects them under collections. Easy grouping when running a lot of tabs at once. More visual than just the tabs at the top. I am loving this one! I can group my tabs according to "Planning", "School Leader" stuff and just having a play in general.

Other Handy Tools:

Colour picker

Colour Zimmer

Extensity Extension... to turn extensions on/off when not being used.

QuickTime Player

Today was my first time using QuickTime Player to record our groups' discussion. It served as a great reminder of what it's like to be in the sandpit getting stuck! I had thought that the first member of our group was silent... perhaps muted... alas no. I hadn't increased the sound for recording!

The next trick for young players arose when the sound feedback was becoming phenomenal. We need to be very mindful of where our microphone is located in relation to our device. One example was with the earbuds. Wearing one, with the other dangling, caused huge feedback. Also, the microphone being too close while holding up the laptop.

Please don't be brutal with our recording... It was the first time for all!!!