The challenge of making group experiences safer and richer (DMIC)

 After 2 terms of using DMIC tasks and groups with Year 9 once or twice a week......

 I notice:

DMIC aligns with mana ōrite mō te mātauranga Māori, and a way of working that we want to encourage with the kids for all subjects - getting students to find and use their voices, solve problems, listen to each other etc. I want this to be a priority in my practice

When it's working well it feels good:

• the kids in their groups talk and listen to each other, taking care to respect the norms of checking in with each other, articulating their thoughts and creating a shared piece of work, no put-downs/cheap shots/whinging about working with people they don't like
• most of the groups are engaged with the problem
• the kids are nice to K
• K is peaceful and being a helpful contributor
• D is calmer and quieter
• L is working with the others in his group (not solving it for the others)

The class's attention deepens during the share and connect (more curiosity, more investment in what is being said, a sense of a common problem/purpose that transcends cliques)

I still have these questions:

• What are the markers of success? (Of our DMIC teaching practice? Of the kids' mathematical improvement?)
• How do we tell how much the kids are getting out of it and how much richer it is than what they were doing last year?
• How do we slow the reins of the quick workers so that the slower ones get a chance to wrap their head around the problem? - the more capable mathematicians are in the habit of being competitive and individualistic
• There is such a wide range of capability - it is very easy for the capable kids to take over and the not so capable kids to go along for the ride.

When it is not working it does not feel good, especially when the group norms are overturned by bullies and jokers in some groups. 

I worry that there is then an amplified effect of negative interactions since kids who usually keep their distance from each other/stay silent to protect themselves will sometimes find themselves in a group without friends or allies.

• Do these times negate the positive times? Do they increase lack of confidence and participation?

Naturally the time of day, the strength of the problem, the amount of food, sleep and home/friend baggage on the day for all of us affect readiness and willingness.

The question remains how to support (accelerate) the development of:

• Relating to others
• Managing self
• Participating and contributing

And challenge idk and idc

DFI Day 9: Reflection

 Final Reflection:

A big thing to come out of the DFI for me:

The DFI has given me a real shot in the arm for my job - I am a hardworking kind of a teacher and I strive to plan good lessons (use a variety of tasks, hands on, opportunities for choice, opportunities to move around, opportunities for kids to teach each other [tuakana teina], trying to share the power, differentiated tasks, high expectations etc) - but I am sometimes left feeling a little defeated if there are lots of kids absent on the day, kids just not listening just 'cos' or something else is going on in life... etc. 

Obviously not all of my planning is amazing and not all of it is worth preserving BUT...

Having a place to keep good planning and resources a little bit alive on a class site and some evidence of the learning (ultimately on a class blog) helps to keep the motivation.

Screen castify for the rewindable learning is not as daunting or time consuming as I thought it might be...I am enjoying pointing out the rewindable learning content on the class site and pointing out the video with that 'famous teacher' explaining what to do

I can see the kids responding well too - and have been really stoked to see the kids wanting to head to the class site, hearing the kids say “it’s on that site she made for us” and seeing them keen to have a go with some of the 'getting to know and trying out the power of the chromebook' activities.

I anticipate that some of our assessment tasks will be more enjoyable to do if we use more of the tools at our disposal.

I am glad to say I am enjoying my own Learn - Create - Share process in the digital learning space right now!

What's next?

There are lots of opportunities I want to explore further - through the Toolkits, Class on Air and Teacher blogs and websites.

One of my struggles as a teacher is trying to turn around the low expectations that a sizable chunk of kids have -  of school, of themselves as students, of their own behaviour, of achievement and of their own potential ... I am looking for more tools and techniques for working on that....it may be a matter of improving my classroom management but I hear my colleagues talk about the same stuff in their classes. I would love to discover the secondary teachers in the Manaiakalani world who have managed to get these kids more hooked into their potential and having higher aspirations for themselves. 

I have a feeling that an authentic audience that includes peers and whanau and the kids realising that their digital competency is a legitimate skill could help bypass some of the 'meh' stuff.

And now I know that the kids will soon know all of this stuff already as they come through the primary schools in our new cluster I am just going to have to keep learning! 

DFI Day 8: Reflection

 What I learned that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy:

The definition of EMPOWERMENT as advancing rangatiratanga spoke to me quite a bit today. Apart from the social and moral imperative to work for equity  I think I like the idea of 'joy coming from empowering students to discover the treasure that lies within them'.

I love it when kids get quietly ambitious  - when they hook on to their potential and start striving a bit and enjoying the feeling of success as they start to experience it in their high school life, when they realise how capable they are and what they are capable of. 

Whatever else I do as a teacher - believing in this potential in each learner and being quick to spot it and point it out and celebrate it and nudge it and enjoy it (publically or more quietly depending on the student) puts me in a happier place with each learner and, I hope, promotes some self-belief and empowerment.

I am already seeing empowerment in the digital world growing in the learners in my class. Even showing the kids google drawing and setting tasks within their projects where they have to use it  has been fun (& engaging) for them and has allowed creative potential and success - these are the DLOs that they want to share and look at on the class site.

What I learned that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional: 

I will be adding the learning outcomes from the digital competencies curriculum into my department's planning - we attempt to integrate NZC learning outcomes (and big ideas) from all the core subject areas under themes in our department (but it hasn't included digital outcomes at all so far - even though it has started to include DLOs for learning and assessment)  

What I learned that could be used with my learners:

I will get the kids to play with coding - using some of the tutorials from today's DFI and think about applications beyond the playing (although the playing is also awesome on its own)

What I learned that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life:

I won't be so left behind in coding language conversations perhaps :)

I enjoyed my Minecraft Hour of Code - good little bit of problem solving and debugging and success - might have another play in my spare time.

Voila!

DFI Day 7: Reflection

What I learned that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy

Learning: Anytime, Anywhere, Any pace and Anyone -  is such a bold ambition and it is amazing how it has played out so positively in the Manaiakalani programme thanks to the unwavering commitment to equity, the power of the internet and the humble chromebook - very inspiring.

Once again - a reminder that removing barriers to learning is our job - there are always heaps of kids with heaps of reasons for being away from school or not being entirely ready for learning when they are at school... at one stage of my thinking about online platforms for learning I was afraid I would video record myself out of a job - or there would be no need for teachers in the future. I don't think I need to be afraid of that anymore - the teacher is still the person who knows and thinks about each student and finds ways to engage them ... that is ongoing and it involves customising and learning all the time as usual! - it definitely isn't "make a video and my work is done"

What I learned that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional

The phrase "if it's worth TEACHING it's worth capturing, if it's worth LEARNING it's worth capturing" is a good guide to focus my thinking about which bits to screencastify for our class site.

I will look into the 'be internet awesome' ideas and 'elevating the positive' - teenagers can be so jaded and a few are hooked into some conspiracy theories that must be scary to believe (and definitely scare the less worldly ones) 

I enjoyed playing with screencastify again - I have a few little videos to make in the next few days to add to our school science fair page.

What I learned that could be used with my learners  

Rewindable learning - I will also think about ways the kids can make screencastify videos as DLOs too.

Some of the digital dig tools need to be promoted with my troops. 

What I learned that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life

I have never actually collected many keyboard commands and shortcuts - but today I added some

I have never filtered my searches using tools under the search bar before today - now I know about them I will use them! 

screencastify -today's create DLO - I have a class session with Fiona from Manaiakalani next week in which we plan to introduce the idea of positive, thoughtful, helpful feedback about a DLO - we thought we could use one of mine as the starting place - so this is it

DFI Day 6: Reflection

1. What I learned that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy:

It makes sense that connect means kids with teachers, kids with kids, kids with whanau, teachers with whanau but today it was good to see (and emphasise) the importance of sharing practice and resources and ideas teacher to teacher, school to school, colleague to colleague ... 

Some teachers I have talked to over the years have felt that there is some element of competition or intellectual property rights where they teach so they haven't felt safe or welcome to share with each other or ask for help or resources... but I am convinced the more we share the healthier the profession is - I would hope that sharing and connection has an impact on teacher retention and confidence.

I really liked the whakatauki:

"Te mea nui rawa ia ko te noho tahi, whakawhanaunga, ko te whakawhitiwhiti whakaaro - the important thing is living together, making friends and exchanging ideas"

This whakatauki speaks to me of us all being in it together (not necessarily being spectacular all the time or getting it right all the time - but trying things out and embracing the principal of ako and whanaungatanga -  we are community too).

2. What I learned that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional:

• I am pleased to have mastered cool-looking buttons on sites!
• It was helpful to get the 3 click rule and other tips for appeal and functionality

3. What I learned that could be used with my learners: 

The site I worked on today is going live to kids tomorrow 

- I am bypassing google classroom and will be getting the kids to make a copy of a document (in preparation for when we are more fully Manaiakalani)

- I will also be getting some feedback from them over the next week to see how easy it has been for them to find stuff and how they think it looks.

-I would like to email parents the link too - see if anyone gets on to see what the kids are up to.

Since every student has a graduate portfolio site I think I can help them with tips to make their sites functional and appealing (some are still stuck on adding and inserting things too - so I am getting good practice at Sites101)

4. What I learned that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life:

I am not sure how today applies - as usual it's good to have my confidence grow a bit more so I can be a bit braver when encountering tech. issues or helping others with them.

  my site

Quite proud of my buttons 

DFI Day 5: Reflection

 1. What I learned that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy:

I liked Dorothy's analogy of trimming the maze to waist height so you can see where it goes and the steps you would have to take to get through it:

• more fun for those who get anxious in a maze
• clearer for those who don't know where to start
• shows the big picture for those who need that
• NO SURPRISES

This is equity in action. It is also social justice: when I was a student I could read the teacher's mind quite well (hence my educational success) - it feels like this mind-reading idea could easily be part of the discussion of middle-class pakeha privilege in the education system... and the mistaken idea that the teacher's world is the world.... (although for teachers' kids like me it was). It seems crazy that we are only recently honouring the diversity among our learners, making them partners in the process.

I am interested in the guts of marrying the imperative to support reading development with providing learning-access points via other forms of texts ... how much should we mind if kids don't access learning through the written word and reading skills?

2. What I learned that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional:

I really liked the different headings for multi-modal text - it seems that this could be a good checklist for UDL and differentiated resources on our department site ...which, when I can get to giving it some more attention, will be useful. 

There are some decisions to make as my school becomes a Manaiakalani school: about sites (or site pages) that will be bespoke for each class/teacher and which will be for the whole department to use ... and how we go between (I am thinking buttons).

I am looking forward to increased visibility for whanau and among colleagues too - too many places in our staff drive with restricted access etc. 

3. What I learned that could be used with my learners (and how):

I am looking forward to developing a class site in consultation with my learners ... they have all made graduate portfolio sites (which they are adding evidence to throughout the year) -this is a new thing for the school....so we (and they) are seeing what works and is easy to navigate and what is confusing.

Since we all have some prior knowledge to offer up but have not had a class site before we can make decisions together about navigation, what needs to be added/removed, what kind of instructions and supports would be useful etc.

4. What I learned that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life:

As usual, a bit more confidence (keyboard commands are cool)

Today's practice site: 

 https://sites.google.com/waitarahs.school.nz/artificialintelligence/home?authuser=0

DFI Day 4: Reflection

1. What I learned that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy:

I definitely need to share life stuff myself so I completely get why this is a foundation piece of Manaiakalani and being a human.

I also love giving feedback and feedforward to students. Those conversations -through comments as well as face to face- often yield rich learning, and understanding of what good looks like, as well as a keystone for students to develop more trust in me as someone who believes in them and cares about their success.

As a non-user of facebook and other social media platforms and as someone who has never blogged before it seems weird to be airing my reflections .. like publishing my diary ...

Having said this I really like seeing the blogs from kids at Manaiakalani schools through the DFI and have been moved by them. I would love to see the kids I teach feel confident to share their work and to feel that people would like to hear what they have to say. I would also love to see more finished work which the 'share' kaupapa includes.

2. What I learned that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional:

Learning my way round sheets has been gold. I have used sheets for keeping track of all sorts of data, often involving words which have gotten chopped off when printed and other formatting issues that I never got round to solving. Happily these issues are now over.

I have also enjoyed learning more about customising charts and conditional formatting - this will help my analysis of Year 9 data for Board Reports - which is a new responsibility for me in a new role at school.

Last week I had a real stuck & stink moment during the DFI when I felt so out of my depth and blocked that I wanted to give up. It made me reflect on what it's like to be an unconfident learner at school and how it is all tied up in self-belief. My self-belief about tech stuff has been quite low and I have built a little box for myself to sit in with that in mind - at home I let my partner handle backing-up, decisions about updating our gear, troubleshooting ... A pretty self-limiting mind-set I admit.... but it put me in the shoes of a handful of my maths students for a moment and reminded me to be very compassionate with the "I can't / won't do this" attitude.

Because of my increasing confidence and exposure to apps, tips and tricks I find myself able to participate in more conversations about apps, tips & tricks .. and more willing to step in when colleagues need help.

3. What I learned that could be used with my learners (and how):

I will definitely introduce the use and sheets and charts for the year 9 & 10 statistics units - NCEA uses them and I knew I needed to catch up myself in order to expose my juniors to these too...which I did today.

I like the idea of my maps too - I can definitely see the applications of this everywhere in social studies and within biology (e.g. showing transects, adding information/descriptions of different zones or areas of interest - like the riparian planting our school is doing)

4. What I learned that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life:

I am able to participate, understand, learn from and even initiate more conversations about computer/life-hacks!

The computer hack from my daughter in the weekend was to name my daily slides with yy/mm/dd so they are truly in order... I won't rename the ones I've already made but from now on I will!

She cottoned on to this tip to help keep the monthly newsletters she produces under control. So simple, so helpful!

Today's practice exercises below: