Online Teaching & Learning: It's not all bad!

I cannot believe we've already been online teaching for 5 weeks (and home for nearly 7). But to be honest, despite missing the kids, I have really enjoyed the experience. I've got a newfound appreciation for face to face learning though, that's for sure! And I have absolutely hated staring at a screen answering myriad emails.

There have been so many positives of at home teaching though. I thought I would post some of the highlights for me during this period so far.

Creating rewindable video content for students

Setting at home challenges for my Ako class and watching the videos they've created 'together'

Students engaging/commenting in the chat box of Google Meet during video calls 
(I honestly think this learning environment has given the opportunity for more students to have a 'voice' than when we are in a standard classroom setting, it has been great to have people share, who usually don't speak!)

Seeing the creations from my Topic class (integrated)

 

Lino-it brainstorms with my Year 11s

A shared Google Slides resource my Year 12s all contributed to


Having 1:1 chats with my Year 13s about their internal 
(They were more organised than when we have these chats in class, as they feared awkward silences!)

As much as I'm looking forward to getting back to school, back into routine and back to connecting with colleagues and students, I've tried to take the positives out of online teaching. Hopefully only one more week to go, but I'm quite happy not having a commute and enjoy having an extra couple of hours sleep each morning!

Graduating from the MDTA

Last Thursday night the MDTA celebrated the end of our two year digital teaching and learning programme. Over the two years I have learnt a lot about myself, my practice and technology. I feel I am ahead of other beginning teachers, due to being included in the MDTA. I hope I never have to teach in a full paper school again!

I felt underprepared for technology in HPE after finishing my Bachelor of PE. We had a couple of courses including some e-learning tools, but I feel they only just scraped the surface. The MDTA increased my confidence with the integration of technology and I have developed skills which I believe will be useful for future classes I have. 

Our graduation was based in the Google Headquarters in the CBD, with wine flowing and a beautiful view. I enjoyed spending the time to thank my mentor, principal and the Manaiakalani Education Trust for my journey. Our cohort went out for dinner and watched the sunset as our final congrats and farewell to one another. Many are continuing in their current schools next year, some embarking on new journeys. I can't wait to see how we all further progress, and where we end up in the future.

Despite a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, I do think MDTA was effective for my development, and I am intrigued to follow future MDTA teachers! My blog is my pride, and without MDTA, I would not have my blog... so this is definitely what I am most thankful for!

Substances Have Been Explored

Throughout Term 2 in Year 10 Health, I taught an exploring substances unit for the first time. I enjoyed the unit, especially trying to include more technology into the learning activities. At the beginning of the unit, students completed a short Google Form with some key questions for me to gauge student understanding. The answers (which were collated in a Google Sheet) highlighted the topics students had gaps in their knowledge, so this is what I based my planning around. Please see my unit outline here. I also asked students to complete this Form at the end of the unit, to see student growth in understanding from the beginning of the unit (i.e. summative assessment).

I feel overall, that the unit was reasonably successful, however there are still many parts to adapt for next year to be even more successful. I feel proud of the unit I created, and the learning opportunities the students had, especially when there hasn't really been anything like this before! As I am more confident with the content and key ideas I would like students to take away, next year I will be able to differentiate between the classes, as this is my greatest weakness. Because I teach 6 classes, and the teaching is all new to me, there is very little differentiation between classes. As a result, some classes had in depth discussions, and completed more activities than other classes, and some classes felt rushed. With more thought into extension activities or how to cater for the lower literacy class for example, this may enable greater understanding and application of knowledge for students. I would also like to possibly focus on less, but more in depth, rather than scraping the surface.

Throughout the unit, there were lots of different activities, to try engage all learners. There were posit-it note activities, mix and matches, think, pair shares, student presentations, human continuums, online games, and research tasks. I tried to include a huge range of activities, so the students were learning in a different way each lesson. As a learner myself, even though I like to have routine and know what to expect when learning new things, I know I am most engaged when I am involved in different and new learning tasks. I found majority of students to be most engaged when they were in small groups, and able to discuss their ideas, and when they were off of their netbooks. I think that technology has an important place in education, especially in my classes, but there are times where the students like to step away from their screens, as their tasks are regularly on their computers in their other subjects. This is something I am actively thinking about for their current Sexuality and Relationships unit.

The most memorable activity from the unit was when we completed a Google Expedition inside the lungs. I first learnt about Google Expeditions (a free app) at the Google Conference earlier this year. Our lesson focus was about the effects of smoking tobacco on the body, one being the effect on the lungs. The Expedition begins with inhalation and travels from the trachea, through the bronchi to the alveoli in the lungs. As the guide of the expedition, the app gave lots of suggested questions to ask the students, which started some great discussions and encouraged students to think. I was surprised how interested the students were looking around; they were so engaged! After these lessons I had a look through the other various expeditions available and have found some which could be used in PE for anatomy, which I will definitely utilise next year! There are lots of expeditions available for all learning areas, so highly recommend others to look into it.

I am really enjoying teaching and leading Junior Health this year, even though it has been incredibly challenging trying to create engaging lessons. Next year will be great, as there will be foundation lessons to make better for future students. I am currently enjoying teaching a sexuality education unit, and am impressed by the response from the students so far. Bring on the next challenge, whatever that may be!

Giving Back to the PENZ Whānau

As previously posted, I attended a Health, PE, and Outdoor Ed conference last week. I stepped out of my comfort zone and decided to present twice this year! Before starting presentation prep, I realised that I had never created my pepeha, so this was my first step. A pepeha is how you introduce yourself, related to the community you identify as home and your ancestors, spoken in Māori.

I worked alongside Whaea Melba, our HOD of Māori to create my pepeha, which was an awesome learning journey. I found out a lot about the history of the land I grew up on and more about my whakapapa (genealogy), and became incredibly interested in my family connections to and with the land. Melba asked me to write out my pepeha on popsicle sticks, cut up each word and then match the words to practice putting my pepeha together. I enjoyed this task as I was physically moving the words into place and practising how to say the words at the same time. After a few weeks of practising, I was excited to finally present my pepeha at conference! 

My first presentation was with my friend and fellow HPE teacher, Mallory Bish. Mal and I moderate a Twitter chat (#NZBTchat) together, and have found Twitter to support our journeys as Beginning Teachers. See more about the chat here, and more about our BT journeys here. Unfortunately, our chats are very quiet currently, and we are struggling to recruit new BTs onto Twitter. So, we presented about the affordances of Twitter both professionally and personally in hope for newbies to join in. Please see our Google Slides presentation below, which also includes my pepeha. We also showed/taught the attendees two digital tools - Plickers (example here) and Lino-It (example here).

I really enjoyed creating this presentation and running the session with Mal, as we have grown as professionals as well as grown closer as friends (check out our costumes below for the conference dinner - the characters from the movie Up!). We were also incredibly blessed to have been awarded together the PENZ award for 'Outstanding New Professional'! I feel so proud of our achievement, and incredibly thankful. I was nominated for the award by Celia Fleck for sharing on my blog and Twitter alongside the moderation of #NZBTchat. Until last Sunday night, I had never actually met Celia before, we had just read each other's blogs and interacted via Twitter - again showing the power of Twitter! So I feel so blown away she nominated me for this award without even knowing me. Please see Celia's blog here.

Other people who have been incredibly supportive of Mal and I, and the development of the chat are Rachael, Carl, Susie, Alex, Hayden, Myles, Hanchen, Stuart, Andrew and Paul. These people have been there every step of the way, and without their help, challenges and critiques we would not have continued to moderate our chat, nor would we have presented at conference! All but one of these people we 'met' through Twitter!

My second presentation was more of a show and tell session of my visible teaching and learning, followed by a Q&A. I showed how my students access my site to see their learning resources, and how my planning is also available for teachers. I also demonstrated some ways to use GAFE applications within teaching and learning, and then answered questions the attendees had about anything I do and know. Finally, I showed how Blogger (and blogging generally) can be used for the learning journeys of teachers and students. Reflecting on the session really highlighted to me how much I do know, and how much I have learnt throughout the MDTA programme over the past 18 months! Shoutout to Dorothy for getting me to where I am today, and continuing to push me to have the greatest knowledge possible. I also found the GAFE conference last holidays to be incredibly useful for educators of any experience with Googley things.

I loved giving back to the HPE community, and hopefully the attendees took away something to reflect on, implement into their practice or experiment with!

Google, Google and More Google!

For the past two days I have been cramming lots of new information, tools and resources into my brain at the EdTechTeam Google Apps for Education Summit at Aorere College. The conference included 8 sessions, 2 keynotes, a demo slam session and ignite talks, all based around Google in some shape or form! I have left with lots of new ideas, and feeling mentally exhausted as the two days were jam packed. Overall I really enjoyed, and was thankful for the opportunity to attend - this post outlines the highlights for me across the two days.

As I have blogged about before, I think Twitter is so valuable as an educator. Throughout the conference we were tweeting regularly using the hashtag #edtechteam (this is used globally so will continue to grow). I have followed and been inspired by the work of Richard Wells and Stuart Kelly since joining Twitter, and I was really excited to have the opportunity to meet the two of them (see pictures). In addition to Twitter, the summit was a great opportunity to network, meet new people and put some faces to names. I feel I am always in my HPE world, so I liked stepping into the wider GAFE community.

My top session takeaways;

Kimberley Hall shared her A-Z list of Googley things. This session was incredibly fast paced, going through dozens of extensions and websites useful for educators. I left feeling bombarded, but have lots of new things to try out! My favourites include the Boomerang extension for gmail (allows you to resend and schedule emails to send), Autodraw (you draw pictures and it offers ready made pictures which look like yours), and Q&A in Slides (useful for when there is a need to 'chalk and talk' or when presenting - allows the audience to ask questions directly to you within the Google Slides).

Jeffery Heil discussed why educators should teach about failure, drawing on the work of Carol Dweck's growth vs fixed mindset. He explored the need for discussions in the classroom about how 'failure' should be recognised as positive for steps towards success. Jeffery also discussed the need for rubrics to encourage students to aim for mastery, not provide opportunities for students to aim achievement lower than needed/failure. This really made me think about the importance of having high expectations for my students, encouraging all to aim for Excellence. Unfortunately, many of my students have the 'Achieved will do' attitude he talked about, which is something I am hoping to change.

Angela Lee's session explored some Virtual Realities which can be used in the classroom, including Google Expedition. I am excited to try and use some of the VRs throughout the anatomy unit particularly, so students are able to 'look inside' the body'. Expeditions investigate multiple systems within the body such as the respiratory system (which could also be used in Health, as it discusses the impact smoking has on the lungs). Because anatomy involves a lot of rote learning, I am keen to include new and exciting ways to learn about the body, that isn't memory based. Some of the apps Angela suggested specifically related to the body include Anatomyou and Anatomy 4D (Augmented Reality). Very excited to have a play!

Following on from my interest in enhancing my culturally responsive pedagogy, including the need to increase my use of reo in the classroom, I attended Te Mihinga Komene's session. She suggested some ways of getting to know where we, and our students come from. We used Māori Maps to research our local maraes and find out further information. I feel there is so much more I need to know about myself and more about my students after this session. I love how she shared some ways to 'pimp our pepeha's' - because I am going to write mine this term! The HOD of Māori at school and I are going to create a digital version of my pepeha, because my students create them too. Throughout, I am likely to learn more of the language to include into my teaching and learning.

To conclude, however, many of the sessions I did not attend, and some I did attend, really highlighted how much I do know. Even though I am only second year, so have very little experience, I forget how far I have come since the beginning of 2016. The conference showed me that I know so much more than I thought I did, so maybe I could present something next year! I highly recommend the conference for educators from all fields and of any ability/confidence level.

I am excited to try out all of my new things, and possibly get my Level 2 if I find time...

Keeping Up With The Teacher Load

After losing some work because of restarting my computer, and forgetting some ideas I had for future lessons - Dorothy suggested I download Google Keep. The next morning I was listening to Carl's podcasts and he recommended for all teachers to have Google Keep. To be suggested the same application within 24 hours sold it to me!

And now I cannot imagine being without it!

Google Keep was created as a note taking service, to capture your thoughts, ideas, images, websites in one place; such as recipes you would like make, lesson ideas you want to jot down without losing the piece of paper, to do lists to cross off, links to come back to without bookmarking... The options are endless, which has been so great for me trying to juggle so many balls in the air. 

There are several features I am yet to experiment with additional features of Keep including labels, colour-coding, sharing notes and using my phone to add notes. These features will be great once I have more on my Keep, in order to organise and easily access notes of similar themes/ideas.

I have found Keep to be a useful place to jot things down for my future studies especially. I am going to be writing my dissertation next year, which is going to be a huge task to tackle. Keep has afforded me to keep an ongoing list of ideas I have as soon as they come to my head, rather than trying to remember everything next year. Similarly, if I see cool lesson plans online for topics/units I am not currently teaching, I can save them in Keep to come back to in the future, rather than try find the link again later.

If you are interested to download Google Keep - check it out on iTunes! Highly recommend.

Sharing What I See

This morning I have created my first screencast, focusing on my site in Year 9 Social Studies. A screencast is a useful way to communicate and share ideas, presentations and so on. For teachers, screencasting can be useful to share tools, lessons, units and activities other teachers have created for their learners. 

The main component of our screencast was to share with the world how we incorporate the Manaiakalani pedagogy of visible learning to create strong learner agency, through Learn, Create, Share. This is helpful for others to gain an understanding of the Manaiakalani framework, and demonstrates how it is embedded within classrooms. 

Other teachers from MDTA use their sites more frequently with their hubs, learning spaces, syndicates and so on, so if you want to learn more I would suggest visiting some of their blogs to watch their screencasts (see links on the left column of my blog).

I am busy this week developing my Water Safety unit for Term 4, and look forward to using my new knowledge of how to screencast through QuickTime Player, to share my creation. 

To learn more about screencasting, visit the Manaiakalani Digital Immersion site.

Google Class OnAir

For majority of our digital immersion Friday, the MDTA was privileged to explore the Manaiakalani Class OnAir site, created by five teachers in the cluster. One of the teachers, Matt Goodwin, joined us to discuss the process behind Class OnAir and provided us with opportunities to give feedback and feedforward for the overall site and the individual teachers.

Class OnAir is exactly what it sounds like, teachers sharing their classrooms and lessons online, for people around the world to watch. The teachers attach their lesson plans, evaluations and links to students' blogs onto their live lessons they have uploaded. The idea behind the creation of Class OnAir is to demonstrate the Learn, Create, Share pedagogy developed by Manaiakalani.

Upon reflection, I am unsure whether some of the lessons show a 100% true reflection of a classroom. There is no behaviour management, students all appear to have netbooks, and only a select few have been chosen to be filmed and write blogs. Although the OnAir depicts Learn, Create, Share beautifully, and these teachers are very brave to put themselves out there, possibly for the future the lessons may need to appear a little less fabricated. Unless of course, my lessons are a little messier than theirs, and they aren't fabricated at all! It is all well and good for me to make comments, but soon it will be me and my lessons being analysed, as we are completing a Class OnAir lesson next term! Watch this space...

Creativity and Critical Thinking

This week my co-teacher and I have begun a new unit in Year 9 Social Studies; Beliefs and Religions Around the World. I have attempted to be more engaged with the planning and teaching of this unit, now I have grounded my feet. I would not say I have been disengaged or avoiding this class, but I needed time to find my feet in the school, the subject, alongside Dot (co-teacher) and the class.

Believing in yourself and what is important to you

Rather than asking students to find definitions of what belief and religion is and write them down (then subsequently forgetting them a few minutes later), I thought we should be a little more creative with our lessons. Reading through my reflections, and considering my observations and understandings of the class, I concluded the students need less time listening, and more time completing activities and creating things they need to think about.

Important to push yourself, love one another

Thus, I have attempted the past two days to include more student centred teaching and learning. Yesterday students spent majority of the lesson participating in human continuums, as I like to call them. Students were given a statement, such as homework is important, and they had to place themselves along the continuum from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Students then had to explain why they put themselves where they did on the continuum. I think this was a great lesson to introduce beliefs, and to understand everyone has different beliefs. The key message the lesson was based around was there is no right or wrong belief, everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, thoughts and opinions. Additionally, students were able to open their thinking to consider others' ideas and beliefs, which may be different to their own. Following from that, in small groups students discussed what belief and religion may mean, and tried to distinguish the difference.

Believes he can be successful, would love to be an artist

Following on from yesterday, students' task this morning was to create a drawing. The drawing had two parts; one picture to represent what the students determine belief is, what is important and valuable to them, and a picture to represent what they think religion is. These are some of their creations, which was so exciting to see.

The students were really challenged to consider the difference between beliefs and religions, and they questioned their own. This lesson was a great opportunity for students to actually sit and think "What do I believe in? What do I think is important?". Following on from the drawings, we looked at different beliefs around the world and tied the beliefs to religions. Although the students aren't as respectful and well behaved as I would like them to be, their behaviour and attitudes in class have increased considerably, which makes for a much more enjoyable lesson. I feel like I am finally making some ground with these students, the subject and co-teaching in Social Studies.

Learn, Create, Share is a massive component of Manaiakalani, which I am attempting to incorporate into my teaching more often. Read more about Learn, Create, Share here!

 

Believes it is important to go to church, Understands religion as a group of people we believe in e.g. Christianity

Google Guru Take 1

Another box ticked today! Look forward to learning more and completing my Level 2 certificate in the future :) If you are interested in becoming Google Certified, visit here to learn more!

The Need to Motivate

Today's focus for our Professional Learning Group was to create a short Explainer video with a focus on our teaching inquiry.

Students' motivation is low in my Year 12 PE class in particular, and I am currently strategising how to improve this. Throughout my research and evidence gathering I have discovered a lack of motivation is a byproduct of a lack of self efficacy, a lack of self belief. 

Check out my basic Explainer Video... Bare in mind I am still learning! Please leave any suggestions/strategies you have for me to increase student motivation and self efficacy. I think this is linked closely with students' self esteem issues, as I discussed in my previous blog post.

HTML Coding Driving Me Crazy

Today the MDTA cohort started creating a Google site about current events happening around the globe. The aim of the site is to develop our critical thinking skills and the critical thinking of others - we are mostly targeting our learners.

Please visit our site

Each page has been created by a different student from MDTA, each with a different context and focus. All of the pages have been created as one or more individual lessons to teach our students to improve their literacy, critical thinking and some as a Social Sciences focus.

I am thoroughly enjoying manipulating HTML code and having a play around with my site. I can definitely see how people lose hours drowning in thousands of lines of code, because it is so intriguing. However, it is doing my head in a little!

I cannot wait to see how much further my coding skills develop in the future, and how my students' learning will be impacted. To see my current events site, click here.

6 Day Week

Picture located here

Today I lost half of my weekend to be at a block course at uni, however I really enjoyed the day.

The morning session was about unpacking some of the readings to get the most out of them we could. We were split into groups based on which reading we had read and then our task was to collaboratively summarise the article into one paragraph. From there we unpacked a reading we hadn't read and created a Digital Learning Object (DLO) to reflect/teach what the reading was about, using another groups summary as reference.

My group created the below Google Drawing as our DLO, to illustrate Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development. I visioned the ZPD similar to running. We can run on the flat on our own, we need assistance to run uphill, however for many of us rock climbing on our own is way out of our reach and we could fall. Thus, the blue character (myself) is the learner and the others are the teacher and the helping hands.

Our afternoon session intrigued me considerably. We discussed and debated the idea of knowledge and skill. Are knowledge and skill learnt individually, collectively or does one happen as a result of the other? I believe knowledge is learning and discovering new information, and skill is the opportunity to implement, analyse and build upon knowledge. However, I also think knowledge and skill develop as a result of one another both directly and indirectly. If you are interested in this debate, or wish to ponder further, consider reading Greeno, Collins and Resnick's discussion.

(Greeno, J., Collins, A., & Resnick, L. (1996). Cognition and Learning. In: D. Berliner & R. Calfee (Eds.), Handbook of Educational Psychology (15-46). New York: MacMillan.)

I appreciate my Fridays

Week 3 is now done and dusted.

To say I am exhausted doesn't even begin to explain how I am feeling.

After finishing school yesterday, I was so glad we had our MDTA learning today. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy teaching and I love being at school, but man, it's a nice break. Here's my beautiful cohort, I am privileged to be working with.

I am 100% a learner. I need to be learning something all the time. So 'Uni Fridays', as I am referring to them, are glorious. We are learning many new things every day.

This morning begun as a basic introduction to the history of Manaiakalani, how the Trust and the cluster (and us, the cohort!) got to be where we are now. The adventure and hours of work the staff and students, especially Dorothy Burt, have pushed through is incredible. Although I had a basic understanding of how Manaiakalani, and the MDTA, came to, I was still astounded by the groundwork that has been put in - and so many people don't even know about the incredible work that is happening!

After our history lesson though, my favourite part started - the digital learning. Today was a how to for Google Sheets and Google Forms. I knew more than I thought I did about Sheets, because I am quite comfortable with Microsoft Excel, but it was helpful to revise the basics as well as learn some simple tricks of the trade such as freezing and hiding columns/rows. I was mostly engaged when we were learning about Google Forms.

Each week we have to create something to reflect what we are still thinking about from our learning throughout the day. As you can see, I included my Form I created, and mentioned the key learning tips I gained from the session. Google Forms are going to become a major part of my classroom, to assess my students' learning formatively, diagnostically and summatively. This will benefit students, my co-teachers and myself to determine what knowledge they understand, and what needs to be revised. 

In addition, I think the use of Google Forms can be utilised for students to create their own revision sessions, rather than the teachers creating a Form. By creating their own Forms, students are revising knowledge themselves, because they need to provide the correct answers, and they are able to take ownership of something the students are working on. This directly increases student engagement and student-centered learning. Now I cannot wait to include Forms in my teaching, possibly Monday Period 1?

If you are interested, check out my first Google Form I created today!

Another Learning Curve

Today was another spanner in the works, to add to the ever-growing pile of spanners.

Uni. Take 2. Bring it on.

This time, however, I am at a postgraduate level, working in a Professional Learning Group (PLG) called the Manaiakalani Digital Teacher Academy (MDTA). I have been both nervous and excited about today and what the future has in store. Especially as I am a dinosaur when it comes to technology!

For this reason, I am counting my blessings today was a basic Google 101. Phew! I now know the simple things I need to know for efficient and effective use of the digital world within my classroom. Check my snazzy slide, explaining the basics I learnt today. May seem minimal to some, but for me it's a step towards expertise, which will come.

You are a star. They are stars. Be stars together. I believe every student shines in their own way, they just need the opportunity to shine, which is my job. I think many students in lower socio-economic areas particularly have low self confidence, thus do not allow their potential and ability to shine through. I know I am a star, so I need to show this to my students, to bring out the star in them. Without stars, there is no light in the dark, no light equals no learning. Together, the students and I can make light as we shine.

Do I demonstrate digital knowledge for and with the students? ... I should be! Today I had a lightbulb moment. How on Earth can I expect students to build upon their digital skills, if I cannot demonstrate new and exciting things myself? As aforementioned, I am totally behind the times, which is why I feel so privileged to have an opportunity to become a techno whizz, but this means I have a lot to learn to be on par with the students. Feeling sub par isn't all that dandy.

Is this yours to share? Unsure? Well, ask. Don't plagiarise. I was so excited to learn about the 'Research' tool that can be utilised in Google Docs (Can this magic tool be used in other apps? Can't wait to find out!), I wish I had've learnt about it years ago for University assignments. No excuses for my future papers now! Alongside this treasure, I learnt how to search for things that don't need referencing, which means students can use pictures for example, and not be breaching any copyright rules! This is genius. Pure gold.

There is so much to learn. So much more. Always. Although when I made the slide I was relating to Google apps specifically, this is appropriate for life holistically. I will definitely be discussing this with my Health students at some point, as I believe it is important to understand there is always more. If you want to learn more, ask. Extend your thinking further. Push yourself. Reach your limits. Learning is not confined to periods spent in a classroom, but confined to your open-mindedness and imagination.

Don't fall behind. YELL FOR HELP. Although this is going to be hard for me, I know it is crucial. For both my sanity and to ensure student learning is the best it possibly can be.

I am petrified, but also over the moon with this opportunity. Although I am feeling a little overwhelmed right now, it is all part of the challenge. Challenges aren't supposed to be easy, but they are supposed to be rewarding. This program is going to be incredibly rewarding once I cross the finish line.

Extrinsic motivation can go a long way, so seek it. How about here?