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!!!

DFI Day 1

Dorothy Burt kicked off our day with a recap of the kaupapa and pedagogy of Manaiakalani. It was a great reaffirmation of why we do what we do; why we are challenging the way that things are done; and why there is a responsibility to up our game. The rationale is a no-brainer. The data is there to show that it works. The misunderstandings that prevailed by naysayers, such as "it's a digital thing" or "it's a senior school thing", are hopefully drifting to the wayside now.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

Google Groups

Streamlining communication.
A really easy way to go in and see all emails sent & received within that group, without all the others interspersed. Labels can be added to the emails, e.g. "agenda", making it easier to navigate looking for the right message.
For a parent group, there's no need to BCC like you do in contacts, as all addresses are automatically hidden. Parents would receive the email in the usual way. There's no confusing system for them to navigate, however, if they wanted to they could navigate into groups to see what has been sent through the group.

Underestimating Docs

For so long, we have sent the message to kids of not defaulting to a Doc. To use a Google Drawing or Slide or something more creative. It's been easy to forget that Docs can be a little more creative than just typing up minutes for meetings.

Chrome 

• Cleaning up User Profiles in Chrome.
• Tweaking the bookmarks bar to make it more streamlined and user-friendly.
• Tips and tricks for getting the most out of your omnibox.
• Jumping between tabs quickly.

Google

• Organising your drive and the way things are filed.
• Sharing Folders and Documents in a more effective way, particularly when there is shared ownership.

Chrome Extensions

I've added a number of new useful add-ons and chrome extensions to use within the classroom. 

• Doc to Form
• Word cloud generator
• Draftback
• eZnotifications
• ChangeCase
• Easy Accents
• Docu Tube
• so many more...

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?  

Voice typing

I've been a passionate advocate for defaulting to voice typing for a while now, due to its ability to take out the barriers that handwriting or typing might bring. Voice typing has also shown to be improving speaking and oral language. Getting kids to read out loud, then compare the voice typed page to the page that they have read from, and asking "Why do you think it is different?". With some children, it is improving the clarity of their speech as well as their annunciation.

Insert Lifehack... Throw away Coffee cups, with the bottom removed!!! These can be used for the ākonga to speak through (aiming at their device) to minimise the impact of noise for the other learners within the learning space.

Writing prompts

We all love quick writes! The ability to create an opportunity to generate writing mileage as well as get kids excited about writing just by writing... well here's a new tool to use! The Most Dangerous writing prompt generator On the site, you have the option to "Free Write" . or be given a writing prompt. You then just start typing. It requires you to keep typing or the timing bar first changes colour, and then your print disappears, with the banned "You Failed" appearing on the screen. It challenges you to write continuously for 5 minutes. If you "fail", then there is the option of downloading what you've already done, so that it's not entirely lost forever. Obviously, for some kids it just won't work... but for those that may thrive on the challenge of being able to continuously write then it could be a great option.

remove.bg

A quick new tool to remove background for an image = remove.bg in the omnibar.

 

I could see this being great for kids to place an image of themselves in another place when writing about it. 

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

The Underline is dead!

If you're using underlining, you're showing your age! If there is a line under it, there's an assumption (particularly for our learners) that there is a link to click. They will click and complain that it doesn't work, rather than reading through. It is a policy of assent for their way of being.

So many quick keys and streamlined ways of doing things!

Let the Digital Fluency Intensive Journey begin

 After opening my blog to copy the link I realised just how long it has been, and how remiss I have been since I last published a blog post!

Two terms have passed this year and what a year it has been so far! Term 2 went by in a whirl, with the benefit of having a Grad School intern to enable a lot of extra testing and teaching to take place.  I have experienced some of the highs and lows in my teaching career. 

A highlight has been our school Multicultural day, seeing a student get up and sing his beloved Fijian National Anthem, with Mum brought to tears. So proud. I've seen akonga get stuck in and become excited about learning. They've really leapt on board with the transition to digital learning and grasped the benefits it brings.

My low was the loss of a student. One of the kindest gentlest souls I have ever had the pleasure to meet. A child who naturally leapt in and helped, evading being seen to be doing it and not seeking praise. His massive smile, beautiful singing voice, and killer Fortnite dance moves will not be forgotten. A child that just wanted to be at school.

Looking ahead towards the beginning of term 3, I can't help but feel I'm hitting the reset button. I've spent a fairly selfish two weeks of non-contact time, just recharging and ensuring a bit of self-care. 

This term I am excited to be taking part in the Digital Fluency Intensive. I see it as a fantastic opportunity to both up my game as well as share my learning within my Kura.

Leadership Matrix

As a School Leader, the Teaching As Inquiry emphasis for 2019 is on Leadership. Here are two key readings to kick things off, redefining the school as a Professional Learning Community.

From The Leadership Dimension Matrix - 2017

The Leadership BES 1 identifies five dimensions of leadership that have been synthesized by drawing together bodies of research evidence to explain what works and why to improve valued education outcomes. From this we have constructed a matrix of four stages, progressive for each of the five dimensions that allow leaders to identify their learning needs and to measure progress over time. 

There are three capabilities that are woven through the dimensions, namely, knowledge of effective pedagogy, analyse and solving complex problems and building relational trust. These capabilities are not described in this matrix but are essential elements of good leadership. 

The term ‘leader’ is used in the broader sense of the word. A leader may be the principal, a leader in charge of curriculum, or anyone with leadership responsibility within the school. 

The matrices are designed to measure the kinds of knowledge, skills and dispositions implied by the dimensions of effective leadership.

Looking at Dimension 4, I have self-assessed where I believe I'm at, in terms of Leading learning and development.

I have identified the bottom aspect as my area of Teaching Inquiry for this year: "Understands collective responsibility and accountability and how to foster it.

2018 Term 4 Uru Manuka SLAM

My Inquiry focus has been:

“How might explicit teaching of Critical Literacy accelerate writing progress?”

What did I do? By having multi-level groups, akonga were able to discuss their ideas, without being limited by their decoding ability. (This was helped by speech to text, The Read Write App etc). This meant learners were able to discuss ideas and challenge others thinking, in ways, they're often not able to do when limited by colour wheel text ability.

Key Reference

‘Wide & deep but with a narrow focus’... explained

By Aaron Wilson & Rebecca Jesson from the Woolf Fisher Research Centre

• Why Multiple texts -More reading requires synthesis and comparison
• It provides a scaffold for developing transferable reading knowledge.

A lot of the groundwork was in the reading aspect of literacy, however, due to the synthesis and comparison, they were able to record their discussion ideas in the form of writing.

What’s next? Explicitly teaching critical thinking and critical literacy. The akonga need to be better at differentiating between fact and bias as well as considering the reliability of the source.