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:

DFI Day 3: Reflection

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

Kaupapa:

I loved watching the clip from The heART of the matter documentary - it took me back to my life as a Playcentre and homeschooling mum when I saw and believed every day that creativity was how learning happened. (It made me miss my mum too - she was a teacher who embraced this creativity is learning philosophy - I don't know if she ever saw the documentary ... but I know she would have loved it!)

I feel glad and reassured that a full spectrum of creative elements are embraced within the kaupapa because it is non-digital elements engage me most.

I also witness that digital elements totally engage many of my learners so it is good for me to be doing the DFI for them.

Pedagogy:

A takeaway for me today is to use the tech to make the 'teaching content' stuff efficient (and rewindable - so I don't necessarily need to repeat myself) and then dream up more creative ways for kids to show their learning - I do not teach NCEA - so I have plenty of freedom.

I recognise that 'bogged-down-by-curriculum-content-coverage' feeling that high school students and teachers get weighed down by.... this has got to stop!

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

I am relieved to learn about Youtube playlists - no more documents called 'links' scattered through my folders

I am keen to share the 'create' options with my team - since we all notice the lack of kids hooking in to what we are asking of them... baby steps since our school doesn't really know it is a Manaiakalani school yet...

The driving question for me as a teacher is always about high expectations (even while many learners seem to have low ones) - I secretly hope that the opportunities to get into new ways of 'doing school' with our chromebooks might bypass the default reluctance among some of the learners.... a clear slate

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

• I will start to use buttons in sites ...just cos they are cooler than hyperlinked words
• I want to talk to them about google draw and find out how much they already know - some will want to be unleashed when it comes to making presentations
• I want to find out how much they know about making animations using slides .. see if someone wants to teach me (because I was pretty lost today on that front)
• I like the idea of the kids using videos with voice overs to demonstrate learning - I can see this as a great task for kids to show their understanding of energy transfers and transformations in a chosen sport

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

Just knowing my way round google products helps

Here's my play with inserting audio:

DFI Day 2: Reflection

1. What increased my understanding of the Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy: The principle of Learn/Ako (RATE) is a great way of thinking about what we keep/throw out/modify/redefine in order to accelerate progress as we plan our learning programmes and change-up what we ask the kids to do and the learning experiences we offer to them.  

I see that the recognition phase of effective practice (within Ako/Learn) is a really helpful approach to gather in and use the diverse strengths of the team I work in and lead because there IS diversity and when a school implements change or innovation it can feel threatening or demotivating if it feels like everything we used to do isn't any good any more. Embracing this diversity reminds us all that there is more than one way of being effective ... we can learn from each other.

It is also great to have the imperative of effective teaching as the bottom line (because sometimes some of what we used to do isn't that good any more) .... and then amplify and turbocharge using the many tools and resources available from the digital world.

2. What I learned that could increase my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional: I can't believe I set up a google meet, I recorded a meeting AND embedded a video without the trouble I expected to have ... Bring on rewindable learning! 

I will also investigate google keep (and definitely the grab image text option ... no more retyping long quotes or extracts for me)

3. What I learned that could be used with my learners: I think all my learners already know how to embed things into other things - by the number of gifs that move before my eyes every time kids submit docs/slides/drawings or any time I open up their sites.

BUT me being able to embed video will help when it comes to options for rewindable learning ... this is definitely something that is missing from our Foundation Learning Site (which has WAY too much reading at the moment)

4. What I learned that could increase my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life: Now I know how to set up google meet I can be less of a passenger.

DFI Day 1: Reflection

 Day 1: It's been good to be shown new things and supported to find and try them .. Although I am not too afraid of 'asking google' how to do stuff - I don't know what I don't know so I am delighted the DFI is presenting road-tested and relevant apps and tools (with very patient coaches)

What did I learn that:

• increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?