This is a record of my personal and professional journey as I move through the paradigm shift that is education today. I'm currently teaching 28 Year 5-6 kids, aged 9 to 11years. I'm in a single cell class after 10 years of collaborative teaching
Added to that, it's never a dull moment in The Raisin Family...
Today was a day like no other in my teaching career. I have huddled under a desk (Yes I had one then!) while my classroom was upended with an Earthquake. - It was only when allowed back near it, I realised the levels of damage as scanning the room for anything other than learners wasn't a priority at that moment in time.
Today Term two began with me rolling out of bed, past the jug to throw a coffee together and then hitting the couch. I set myself up with my laptop on the ottoman in front, a diffuser nearby sending a calming aroma throughout the house.
There was a slight panic as I attempted to email a link to parents through Hero, which we have literally just migrated to from Linc Ed. The migration has had a few glitches, included not transferring some emails across! As always when using a new tool, it's a little different from what you're used to. I couldn't find how to send it to just my class. A mayday call to my team had that sorted and I was away.
I waited...
I spent a little time commenting on the few blog posts that had been put up on individual blogs over the last week or so. Paperwork was caught up on. And I waited...
My big lesson for the day came with a screencastify to help one of my class members siblings get access to his blog. He should have had it bookmarked prior to the rāhui, however, somehow slipped through the cracks. After sending instructions via email... then messaging him step by step... I took a few moments to make a screencastify. This is were my lesson came in. You may have noted when I described the start of my day that at no point did I mention having a shower or getting dressed. I spent the day in my dressing gown with my hair looking like it hasn't been done in days (Maybe it hasn't...?)
In the interest of documenting this momentous occasion, I'll post it here... in a bid to remind me never to repeat this again!
My best friend today... something I have come to rely on quite a lot, is my daughters A4 school whiteboard. I'm using this for all sorts of things, from draft timetabling to scriptwriting and note-taking. I need this in my life right now!
My high for today was watching my daughter participating in the Les Mills Kids exercises on the Learning Channel (Sky Channel 502) today. It was great and she was right into it.
Her 11-year-old brother, on the other hand: "I'm having no part in that!"
To prepare for this Learning time we are posting a video each morning and outlining tasks for that day. Here's yesterday's video:
Tomorrow, I want to set a few challenges to grasp how much engagement I actually have. I want kids to email or message me. I've also scheduled a Google Meet to touch base with them. It'll be interesting to see how many touch base.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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...?
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".
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.
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.
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.
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!
