Dissertation Done & Dusted!

Throughout this year, as previously posted about, I have been completing research to write a dissertation. Simplistically, I was investigating the potential for blogging within Year 11 PE. On Monday afternoon I handed in my 32 page dissertation and it felt amazing! The past two years have been intense teaching full time and studying part time, but I'm glad to get through. I learnt a lot about myself, my practice and technology within the classroom. If anyone would like to read it, you can access it here!

The staff at school were encouraged to reflect on the Manaiakalani cluster-wide pedagogy Learn, Create, Share, as well as the core of the cluster. I decided to write my reflections based on one of learners from my study, as this has been at the forefront of my mind. The study demonstrated the potential blogging has in education, particularly in specialised disciplines like PE. The students became more reflective, their literacy (traditional and digital) increased and there was more peer to peer teaching. When implementing blogging within my teaching and learning in the future, I need to provide a structure for students, ensure they understand the purpose of the blogging, and encourage students to provide further feedback and feedforward as comments on blogposts for their peers (evident from my research and literature).

Overall, it has been really difficult reading dozens of academic articles, writing late at night and including a pedagogical tool I only knew about from writing my own posts! But, my inquiry/dissertation has shown me how powerful writing blogs can be for learners, so I hope to include in future classes. In 2018, I am interested to explore literacy in Health and PE as my inquiry. I have noticed many of our NCEA assessments are evidence towards literacy credits, but some of the students struggle to write. Although their content may be correct, sometimes I struggle to read the students' assessments as they have poor spelling or grammar, or a lack of paragraphs. Therefore, although one hurdle and challenge is over, I am looking forward to more challenges next year!

Observing Learn, Create, Share in Action

Today I observed Karen Ferguson (her blog here) and her Years 7&8 in Design and Visual Communications (DVC) class. I chose to observe Karen because she is a COL leader, is our Google go-to at school and is currently part of Google Class On Air. Therefore, Karen has experience with visible teaching and learning, and the Learn, Create, Share process. I feel I am still developing my confidence to incorporate the learn, create, share pedagogy into my practice, so this was the focus of my observation.

I asked three students the steps of accessing their learning from when they walk in the door, and what they thought about it. These were their responses;

• We go onto the rotation sheet because that has our tasks. I like because everything is in one place. I don’t have to go lots of places to find my files.
• We go here to see what we have to do, and what we have to do next. I like this because if I don’t know what I am doing, I can just go here to see what I am doing and then ask for help if I don’t understand
• Miss gives us instructions and examples of what we need to do. We can also see the rotation sheet and this shows us where we need to go and what we need to do. I like it because it’s easy for the teacher and us to see our work, and the teacher can see our blogs too.

The rotation sheet the students mention, is the tracking sheet of tasks (see picture below). Students access this Sheet to see what they are expected to complete, where they are up to and where they are heading, which is great accountability, and tracking of their learning. I have been attempting to use tracking sheets in my practice this year, particularly in Y11 (see Sheet here). These tracking sheets allow for differentiation within the class, which was evident in Karen's class today. The students were all working at different levels, on different tasks, in different parts of the room - it was incredible!

Reflecting after the lesson, I feel I am heading this way with my students slowly in Year 11, but definitely need to refer to the tracking sheet more often in class. Like the class I observed today, I probably need to include the expectation to access the tracking sheet at the start and/or end of every lesson, to continue with their tasks. I suppose with the nature of PE, this is a little different though. I also realised all of the students' links are open for anyone to view, but in my classes most of the students' creations are only visible by myself and the student. The students in today's observation were using their peers creations to support their learning journey, which I thought was incredibly powerful. Moving forward, I would like to encourage students to share more of their work with their peers, so they can learn from one another, rather than always learning from me! I hope that this may engage and motivate more learners in the classroom too, particularly the students who rely on me helping them individually.

Finally, I asked students to give me an example of when they have completed the Learn, Create, Share process in DVC;

• We learn about an idea or something, then we design and make it and then we share it - usually with our peers like a presentation, sometimes on our blog.
• Miss gives us a template to write our ideas on, and then we create our own. After we have finished creating it, we have to put onto our blogs for evidence to show that we have done it.
• We learnt about different types of clocks, and then based off of the different types of clocks we had to make our own. Once we drew and made our own clocks, we shared on our blogs with a description of what we did and our creations

Although I am trying hard to include the L,C,S pedagogy, I do not feel my students could articulate how this is evident in their class like the students did today. This is an end goal for me for next year. To do so, I need to make the process more obvious to the students, by referring to the process more often. Our balance and stability lessons (see Autymn's blog, and Isiah's blog to see further), were a great example of the process. The students learnt about a biomechanical principle, participated in a practical, created a resource to represent their learning and then shared on their blogs a synopsis of the learning process. However, I don't think students could yet explain this as Learn, Create, Share. Something to work on.

Overall, I enjoyed the observation, and think that having a specific focus meant I took away much more than if I didn't have a focus.

Yes, I Got Catfished!

The focus for Year 9 Health throughout Term 2, was Cybersmart and Social Media. As we are part of the Manaiakalani cluster, we are to continue to develop cybersmart learners - learners who make sensible, informed decisions online.  The current generation is drowning in online interaction and expectations; Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat to name the most common platforms. Therefore, we decided it was appropriate to focus our curriculum on exploring some of these platforms a little further, and how to be 'smart' when using them. Check out our planning/resources here.

We started with discussing digital footprints, and students created their own. See Isacc's and Jolise's alongside. Some were really surprised to see how much time they had spent on social media sites, or gaming, and how little time was spent on school tasks, or off of their devices altogether. Creating these footprints started discussions about the importance of what we leave online, and how our reputation online could affect our futures. Not only were the students taken aback, but this also encouraged me to reflect on what people can find out about me if they Google or Facebook me, and what I could possibly tidy up! The students started to discuss privacy, and how really, nothing online is private. Check out Tane-Leo's blogpost, which breaks down his thinking a little further. The important message throughout the unit was to stop and think before you click!

Students then created their own 5 tips to help keep a positive digital footprint (see below Liz's Slides, and Quros' Drawing). Creating these tips ignited some awesome discussions, including about catfishing - which was a topic we explored later on in the unit (after cyberbullying). One of the tasks students were given at the end of the cyberbullying lessons (which included how to help as a bystander), was to create their own Digizen. These express the individuals values and wishes online. Check out Pote and Marilyn's blogs, to see their Digizens and posts.

Catfishing was a topic which had the students the most engaged I had ever seen them. Especially after telling my story of being catfished. From reading through the students end of term feedback to me, many students commented on enjoying being in Health because I am open and give real-life scenarios about myself or people I know. I think this was one of those topics. Students came forward to me throughout these lessons and expressed they had been catfished before, or that they had catfished others, which frightened me as these students are only 12 or 13 years old. However, it also affirmed to me the importance of having open conversations with the students about these sort of topics, and what to do if they find themselves in situations like the kids in the videos at the end of the below Slides.

I really hope after this unit the students have left thinking about what they share, comment, look up online, and make smart decisions while engaging on social media platforms. Reflecting on the unit now, I think for next year it would be good to have more students input into what they would like to learn about related to being a cybersmart learner, particularly related to social media. We briefly talked about Snapchat and Snapchat maps, and how they cause possible safety risks for students, but I feel there were probably so many more questions and things which could be explored. I am excited to review the unit and adapt for next year! To finish the unit, students enjoyed playing the Google game Interland, which I highly recommend!

Tech & Teachers Go Hand in Hand

I am currently completing my second assignment for my Summer School course, which is somewhat interesting. Our task is to find a list of blogs and provide a summary of them,  choose three blogs to compare and contrast, and then determine which of the three I will follow and read regularly (justified and backed up with research). So, I have spent hours skimming through blogs the past few days, and not felt guilty about it as it was part of an assignment! For anyone interested, here is the list of blogs I put together, which I am interested in exploring further. Definitely not to say there aren't more, there are so many amazing educators blogging!

Amongst my scrolling through heaps of blogposts I wish I could engage with and respond to more, I found Lesson Planning for Technology Use in PE (PEGeek). I could not skim past this one easily! Although the layout suggested is incredibly simple, it has definitely taken time to develop, because it is really in depth. Although I would not complete a lesson plan this in depth for every single lesson, as it would be super time consuming, I think I would like to fill out a few throughout the year.

I really like how the plan really makes you think about why you are including technology, whether it is for the students or the teacher, and whether it is something new or something you are including just for the sake of it. I am wanting to include more technology within my practice, especially apps, but I am unsure how and what to include. Alongside the copious suggestions on the PEGeek blog about what apps to incorporate in PE, this lesson plan really encourages reflection as to why the technology is appropriate for the given task, because I think it is important to not just include technology just to include technology (this is Substitution on the SAMR model for sure!). 

Something I had not really considered whilst planning before, was how my lessons were developing students' 21st century skills. The lesson plan offered identifies four key skills students need to be developing in school, which align closely with the Manaiakalani pedagogy of Learn, Create, Share - they are Critical Thinking, Creating, Communication and Collaboration. Even though it seems pretty obvious we should be providing opportunities for students to develop these skills, I feel unless we actually step back and think about whether they are having opportunities (as the lesson plan encourages), then they probably aren't, at least not as often as they could be.

A final point about my liking of this lesson plan, is the idea of the hook, the engagement. Again, it seems so obvious to draw in the learners, to engage or hook them from the start, but I know I am guilty of not having this hook, and then attempting to reel them back in. I want to have more hooks this year! Which aligns closely with Manaiakalani - The Hook From Heaven.

Very excited to read through more posts, and find more gems like this one!

Affording Learning

Day 2 at Summer School was based around the concept of affordances of technology.

We started by brainstorming our ideas of what technology affords the classroom environment, given two minutes to list each idea on individual sticky notes. We then needed to group the affordances into alike ideas. This process was incredibly interesting because many 'groups' formed incredibly quickly, and some were considerably large (e.g. the affordance of creativity) and others were very small (e.g. assessment). Our understandings of affordance and how we are afforded by the devices our students are exposed to were gigantic!

Cope and Kalantzis (2015) represent their ideas of what technology affords teachers and learners with the below diagram, which we pulled apart in class today. In the Manaiakalani cluster, we are familiar with many of these ideas, particularly ubiquitous learning, multimodal meaning and recursive feedback. I would like to increase my students' ability to have access to their learning anywhere, anytime this year though, by the inclusion of blogging, as well as having greater accessibility to their learning.

I believe collectively our school and cluster are en route to familiarity and confidently addressing and including the other ideas, but specifically I am interested in the affordance of metacognition. Having the critical awareness of one's thoughts and understandings, and the ability to examine one's thoughts and understandings is complex, but an incredibly useful skill. I hope I provide my students with ample opportunities to have open-minds, to think about others ideas and opinions and then be able to challenge them and their own ideas and opinions in a positive, thought-provoking way. However, I do feel students need to be offered more time to actually think about their thinking, which is where rewind-ability and reversibility of knowledge and learning may come in.

Although there are clearly multiple affordances of technology, "there is nothing inherent in technology that automatically guarantees learning" (John & Sutherland, 2005). Thus, we need to remember technology is a tool for learning, not a replacement of it.

Mic Drop Take One

I made it to the end! Tomorrow is our final day of school for 2016, so we are getting ready to celebrate the success of the Juniors at prizegiving. As we jumped into our 2017 timetable early, I found little time to really think about and reflect on my first year as a teacher. So, when I was told one of our tasks was to create a short documentary of our first year as part of the MDTA, I was happy as this encouraged me to think about my strengths and weaknesses moving into second year.

I was also blessed to be interviewed by NZPEteacher, as his final podcast for 2016. The interview explored my experiences, highlights and challenges throughout my first year in a digital learning environment. Feel free to have a listen to the podcast, or watch my short documentary below!

A Day at The Movies

As posted earlier today was the annual Manaiakalani Film Festival! This provides the opportunity for all students and teachers in the Manaiakalani Film Festival to exhibit their movies on the big screens at Hoyts. 

We, the MDTA, spent the day as helping hands for the running of the day, mostly ushering students into their seats and ensuring all are ready to go on time, as there was no waiting - the show must go on!

The hype and buzz from the kids was amazing, and incredibly infectious! The students were so happy, excited, positive and proud of themselves and their peers, which was so lovely to see. I need to encourage more created from  TC!

I enjoyed having the opportunity to be involved with this day, not only to see the students, but also have a glimpse into what the other schools had created. I have already reflected on the day, and what I need to improve for next year. See the short films created here (about 100!), and my film here.

As the students in my film are on study leave for their exams, I did not expect them to come to the cinema and present their film. So, I asked two girls from my SOS class, and they did an amazing job! Check out their intro below. I was pleasantly surprised when the boys from my film showed up to watch though!

Looking forward to next year, especially as it is the 10 year celebration.

Film Festival Day

It feels like so long ago since this was filmed and created, but today is Manaiakalani Film Festival day! I am excited to see some of the other films that have been created throughout the cluster. Check out the fun afternoon we had, literally just dancing!

I would have loved to have had more time, as the editing is average and I am not 100% happy with the footage, but with an extremely busy timetable, I think this is a good first go. Bring on the challenge next year. If you would like to see more of the the films from the cluster, click here :)

To see more from Tamaki College check out TCTV which includes my film here.

Film On The Way

Manaiakalani host a film festival annually at the local cinemas, to play short films created in the cluster by teachers and students. As aforementioned, we are making a film as part of MDTA. There is no theme or idea we need to follow, it is completely open. 

Today we spent the day editing our footage from last week, then sharing with one another for feedback and feedforward. Although I didn't have much time last week, and was a little rushed, I am pleased with what I have so far. I am still working with the audio and final background images, which I hope to finish over the weekend.

I have learnt lots about movie making along the way, but my previous knowledge was definitely helpful and saved time learning about iMovie. Unfortunately a lot of the footage was outside of the green screen, which means a lot of zooming in, and parts with the floor/walls in the frame. Even though it looks a little shabby, and I wish I could do it all again, I need to accept I am short on time and need to complete my university assignment!

I had no clue how to use a green screen, but some simple tips are to ensure the material does not have any creases, as this would interrupt the background image, and also be sure all footage is inside the green screen - I have had to cut out so many parts I would have loved to include but the kids weren't near the green screen!

If I am to create another film in the future, I would want to plan further in advance, with more planning prior and use a little bit of in class time so I can work out what needs to be filmed again or any potential shots that could have been better. To do this though, would mean I would have to make links to the content covering in class, to not take away learning time.

To learn more about the Film Festival, and see previous entries, click here! :)

Film Festival Fun

Usually on Fridays we have our MDTA PLG, but this week we were given the day to film for our film festival. Annually, Manaiakalani schools gather together in a local cinema and display 3 minute films students across the cluster have created. One of our tasks for MDTA is to create one of these films to display on the big screen. 

Being in a secondary school has made this very difficult. We already have considerable time constraints, because we have a lot of content to get through in a short period of time and many of the students sometimes learn at a slow pace. My co-teachers and I really could not take time out of class to film, as we are far enough behind already, but I knew lunchtimes and/or after schools were unrealistic due to my own commitments, and the students' commitments. Therefore, I explained my idea to my 13PE class and said that Friday would be a whole day of filming unless their teachers requested them to be in class, and filming was completely optional - this was also so students did not feel obliged to participate if I filmed during PE. 

8 students agreed to take part initially, and they agreed to meet me at the start of Period 1, I hoped a couple more might show up. However, unfortunately no one came. I spent the first period ironing the green material which has been used as a green screen before, and then 2 boys arrived explaining most of the students needed to be in class until P3, and some of them were away. So I spent the morning pottering through my water safety unit. I was devastated when lunchtime came around the corner and I still hadn't had anyone. So I had no film. Nothing. Nada. I was heartbroken and stressed, which I expressed to one of the students who came in the morning briefly.

These four angels gave up two of their classes at the end of the day to film with me, and it was so much fun! They explained how they were grateful for what I do for them, and they understand how saddening and frustrating it is to fail or incomplete tasks. My heartbreaks disappeared and I was filled with joy. The kids continue to surprise me!

With limited time and resources, I decided the easiest and quickest idea I could work with is Dance Through The Ages. I know how much the kids love to dance, so I thought I would have more students interested, but nevertheless we smashed out my list of dances I wanted to get through.

I have now begun uploading the clips into iMovie, to start editing next week. Unfortunately, I am unsure how successful the green screen is going to be, because it wasn't as big as I imagined, the kids kept moving out of it, and the GoPro has a wide angle so I struggled to just have the green screen in the shot. But, with support from others, hopefully this works out! Watch this space...

I thanked the kids for coming and said I wanted to shout them lunch next week as remuneration and a thank you, and I received this email from one of them. I was blown away and tears came to my eyes. I am feeling super overwhelmed with the six million things I need to be doing, and this is just what I needed to get me through the next three weeks of term!

A Choice Hui

Today was the 5th annual hui for the Manaiakalani cluster, which was intriguing, innovating and inspirational for myself, my colleagues and my students.

Throughout the day we had a variety of speakers including children from the cluster, Spark MIT teachers, researchers from Woolf Fisher and Manaiakalani ambassadors.

Nicola Wells - MDTA alumni & Spark

Although each of the speakers had different thoughts, datum and provocations to highlight, there were common questions and take-aways for me from the day.

Russel Burt's statistics resonated with me - there are 47,000+ jobs in the tech sector. As teachers, we know we are preparing students for their future pathways, however we often do not know what we are preparing them for. To hear there are over 47,000 jobs in one sector, primarily in our community, is astounding. I began to ponder where our students will head, and realised the potential students have to be successful in the tech sector with a Manaiakalani background. Thus, I need to enhance students knowledge and skills to be ahead in the ever-changing technological world.

Rebecca, Aaron and Stuart from the Woolf Fisher Research Centre emphasised the need for an increase in literacy by inclusion of deep, critical texts to read and write about. Not only in English, but subject-wide. My challenge is to get involved with this proposal, and question how we can include texts in our HPE curriculum, particular at the Junior level that is primarily practical. Matt Goodwin encouraged me to think about the share component of Learn, Create, Share in a different light - moving away from Copy Paste from a Doc to share in an exciting light. I hope to include blogs in my teaching next year, to increase reading and writing literacy in exciting, innovative ways through the share component of the Manaiakalani pedagogy.

From here, I need to start thinking about student blogging and how this can be used efficiently in my classes and subject, not only for the Share component, but also to accelerate student learning.

Check out #manaiakalani for the Twitter feed from the hui!

Manaiakalani is COOL

With the recent announcement of potential online schooling for children in New Zealand, I have been reflecting on the community I work in. We are a 'Community of Online Learning', but not to the same extremity. Our learners still attend school.

The proposed plan would reduce face-to-face contact for students to develop their social skills, collaboration skills, ability to work with others, confidence to speak in front of others, and the list goes on. The Health and PE curriculum would disintegrate if learning was fully online. How would students apply knowledge of ball skills into authentic situations? How would teamwork, leadership and resilience be developed? Where would students go for questions about their bodies, gender, sexuality if their families are not open to talk about these things? 

Sure, the internet is resourceful and has a lot of answers - but not ALL of the answers.

I am for students immersed in online communities of learning, and developing skills and knowledge about the technological world, but I am not for school just being at home on a laptop.

For many of our students, school is also a safe haven, a place where they can be themselves - I do not want that to be taken away from them!

Kia Ora Manaiakalani

Today the MDTA trekked out around Tamaki getting to know the area and the schools we will be working in this year. Unfortunately I was unable to attend, as I was on leave in South East Asia! In addition, the week has included introductions into the cluster and the Trust.

After reading through the posts from my peers, it has become evident that we are in for some exciting times ahead! We will be lucky enough to have Fridays off to learn more about the Manaiakalani Trust, pedagogy and history, as well as digital immersion. On top of this we will be completing assignments and attending lectures towards our Honours.

For a further explanation about MDTA, check out Ashley's blog post.

Danni's blog post further elaborates on the orientation days I missed.

I enjoyed watching Steph's short film she created about the walk!

I am looking forward to meeting my tutor teacher, getting my timetable and especially getting to know the kids. Bring it on :)