DFI - Media

Today’s sessions focused on Hanga, the Create component of the Learn | Create | Share pedagogy, and on digital media as ‘the hook’ to empowering student discovery, innovation and design (Kohl, 2008). In the first session, Dorothy provoked us to think about what creativity looks like for children in classrooms today. The historical clips from the documentary The Heart of the Matter underscored the creative experiences of children 60 years ago when aspects of Māori art such as kōwhaiwhai, kapa haka and waiata, and natural discovery, had a central place in mainstream classrooms. Fast forward to the 21st century when educational stakeholders and academics such as Michael Fullan have underscored the importance of the 6 C’s of deeper learning competencies and creativity as a fundamental aspect of expression and engagement. What kinds of opportunities are we giving students to embed creativity as an expression of their learning, not just digitally, but in all important tactile ways? It brought to mind Seymour Papert's idea of constructionism - that learning:

    "happens especially felicitously in a context where the learner is consciously engaged in         constructing a public entity, whether it's a sand castle on the beach or a theory of the                 universe.” (Papert, 1991b)

We got creative by first looking at film and video as the pre-eminent media of the 21st Century and YouTube as an iconic platform for user-generated content and channels. We created our own playlists and all important settings protocols. I can really see how playlists can be an efficient affordance for curating video sets for teaching in the classroom. TIP: Vicki suggested having a “watched” playlist which can help keep you on top of videos you play regularly for students (e.g. for brain breaks). We then did some deep dives with Kerry into a range of editing spaces (e.g. WeVideo; Screencastify; iMovie) and covered clever ideas for gear to afford students more professional approaches to film making. 

I especially enjoyed the create activities with Google Drawing and the session with Maria on Drag ‘n Drop tasks. TIP: Although a drag and drop can be used ‘on the line’ - as a substitution matching activity - it can be “stepped up” by getting students to do the design of the activity for their peers and as a means of formatively assessing understanding. I created a simple Growth Mindset drag and drop to use as a background reading task this week, before introducing Dweck's growth concepts to students.

DFI - Workflow Session

In today's DFI we focussed on workflow tools (e.g. Gmail; Meet; Calendar; Keep) and we had the opportunity to create a rewindable Google Meet video with a DFI colleague. In the video, we reviewed student blog posts featured in the Manaiakalani Mail Outs in 2020 and discussed the: teaching design, student responses to the task and any blog comments by others.

I found this session to be highly productive because the focus was on workflow affordances and the features that make Google tools highly integrative and promote efficiencies. I concur with Maria's perspective of workflow tools offering ways of enhancing both "professional and personal capacity". Early in the day, Dorothy increased our understanding and appreciation of the Ako element of the Manaiakalani pedagogy and thinking of the framework of the Manaiakalani programme in terms of an 'unfinished whare":

This visual metaphor was especially enlightening because - in Dorothy's words -  it acknowledges the nature of schools as independent Crown entities (whare) with their own 'feng shui'; where being part of the Manaiakalani Programme supports a coherent digital framework of three shared 'floorboards' - Ako, Hanga and Tohatoha (Learn | Create | Share). This coherence is important in leveraging collective strengths on two tracks: i) infrastructure access, and ii) effective digital teaching and learning for accelerated outcomes (i.e. pedagogy and practices).  

Although we covered quite a wide set of tools today, my workflow confidence and capability was particularly improved by the affordances of Google Keep and the Toby extension (as a way of accessing and tidying tabs). I look forward to spending time - and being deliberate - in setting up both. I can see how students would greatly benefit from bookmarking and pinning tab groups. Pinning tab folders will be HUGELY useful for facilitation, preparing for PLD sessions and lesson resources. Of course I can also see how all the tools we covered today could be used in our personal lives such as task lists, diarising tasks in calendars and saving retail pages we want to return to later!

DFI - What an Informative First Session!

Ngā mihi to all the coaches at our inaugural DFI session which was a fabulous day of learning, innovation and connecting! 

• Increased understanding - Our first day covering the 'Core Business', balanced deep dives into digital practice, with complementary 'play', exploration and tracing the rich history of Manaiakalani. I gained a much deeper appreciation of the stages of development in the Manaiakalani kaupapa over time and the significant part played by initial practitioners as educational 'visionaries'. As one of those key visionaries, I appreciated hearing first hand from Dorothy the principled thinking around goals of improving equity, engagement and improved outcomes for underserved learners.

• Learning that could improve confidence, capability or workflow - The session covered some really helpful ways for doing things smarter across all the core tools in the Google Suite. I gained more confidence in getting up to the play on new features (e.g. 'Smart Chips') and short cut keys. I really appreciated Vicki sharing some of those extra apps that she has found useful like remove.bg and triple click to select. My all time favourite short-cut would have to be shift-command+v (to paste without formatting).

• What could be used with my learners - I would be remiss if I didn't believe all we had leant today is not valuable for learners to know; particularly in helping them to become more empowered and self-regulated with the Google Suite as a range of complementary, connected tools. More particularly, a daily activity of voice recording and using docs to create an infographic to summarise learning will be approaches I will use more purposefully with my students this week.

• Improving confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life - The content we have covered today can be applied across home-school contexts and reminds me of what Dorothy emphasised about Manaiakalani leaners having seamless, ubiquitous access to devices and this kaupapa from home as well as school.

Cybersmart Challenge!

Today I was inspired by Charlize@Paihia School to take part in the Cybersmart Challenges. Ngā mihi Matt, Fiona and the innovation team for compiling such fabulous resources for developing Smart Learners! With my "Create" hat on, I was keen to get a feel for the multimodal and interactive design of the slide activities and Google drawings. The team have achieved real coherence across the visual and verbal design elements to support and enhance learning. I will certainly be adopting these styles and forms in my future designs to support literacy facilitation. What talented people we work with! 

Have you done the Cybersmart Challenges?