Create to Learn Staff Meeting

Staff Meeting held at Taipa Area School, Tuesday 28th May 2019.
Lead by Kerry Boyd-Preece

Learning happens when meaning is CREATED in the brain.

CREATE helps to engage students in the curriculum and with 21st learning technologies and to empower them to use their device to be creators of their own learning, not just consumers.

Give students something to do which demands thinking, learning then naturally results.

If students are actively involved in what they are creating (creating to learn) they will be utilising higher level thinking.

Learn Create Share is NOT linear.  Students may Share to Learn or Create to Learn.

Using maths and giving students a problem then the materials to solve this themselves is a good example of using create to learn.

We had a go at creating our own short movies.

DFI 8: Computational Thinking

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa today - specifically empowerment?

Being EMPOWERED - we want our young people to feel confident and EMPOWERED to drive their own learning.

How can we use technology to enhance learning and empower our students?

Decile 1 students on average have heard 30, 000, 000 LESS words spoken at school entry compare to those entering decile 10 schools.

To have a voice everyone needs to be empowered to be confident to use the technology as we move forward into an even more digital world e.g automated checkout, online voting etc.

EMPOWERMENT = Student Agency.
Agency is having the power or capacity to act and make choices. (NZC 2007)

http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-resources/NZC-Online-blog/Learner-agency

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

What did I learn that could be used with my learners? 

What is Computational Thinking?
What is the Digital Technologies Curriculum.

Computational Thinking is being able to give a set of instructions that a computer could follow so that they can become CREATORS of Digital Technology and not just users.
Coding is at the heart of Computational Thinking and the Digital Technologies Curriculum however this is not where is begins and ends.
Its about kids creating their own digital solutions to problems.


We had a chance to try out some of the technology.  Meg and I used a combination of StopMotion, GreenScreen App and iMovie to create a simple movie where the focus was on us using the software so we can take this back to use with our classes.  Here is the SHORT clip we created.
We even uploaded to Youtube!



Monika from the Waitangi Center told us about a free app called FLICK which allows files to be literally 'flicked' from one device to another e.g ipad to Chromebook.  This will be AMAZING for timesaving and frustration in being able to share video files especially.  I am looking forward to trying this out.

DFI 7: Dealing with Data

What did I learn that increased my understanding of being connected with Manaiakalani’s kaupapa and pedagogy?

When we are well connected we are all getting and giving the same messages.  

The possibility of visiting other Manaiakalani Schools in Auckland to see their Learn, Create, Share in action was discussed.  This sounds like something that would really great!

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?
In Google Sheets I really liked the tip about being able to 'freeze' a column or columns and then navigate across the rest of the columns.  This is great and something I was not aware of.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?  
Google Maps - although I was not able to try this out as I did not have access to MyMaps I can see this being used by my class as we investigate our family histories this term.  It would be cool to make one of these maps showing where all of our ancestors originally came from.

I am really enthusiastic about the ideas shared by Alicia Craig from Ohaewai School around using Google Forms.  She shared ideas such as a from for gathering students number knowledge and creating reading responses on Google Forms to help them prepare for online testing situations and make them familiar with such applications.  The thing that most inspired me was the BreakOut idea, I can see the kids being very engaged and motivated by this.  I have begun today creating my own BreakOut for my students later in the Term linked to our Topic and Reading.

I learnt a lot more today about what is possible in forms and began creating a simple example of how a pick-a-path type story might work.

Link to Pick a Path 

We also explored Google Sheets today.
As part of our learning around Google Sheets we created Charts which can be inserted into other Docs.  These can either be "published" and embedded or saved as an image.

 We then also completed a Blog Analysis Graph to show a students blogging history since they began.
 

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?
I learnt how and why to clear my cache!

DFI Session 5: Devices

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy? 

Notes from the themes explored today include.......

Being Cybersmart: empowering our learners as CONNECTED and CONFIDENT decision makers.

Slide extracts from DFI Session 5 Full Cybersmart Presentation

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?
What did I learn that could be used with my learners? 

HAPARA

More Key Tips:

Class Info gives you student emails etc.  From here you can go to Open Class Folder to see eveyones Folders e.g Inquiry.  These however don't have their names on them so you will see 24x Inquiry folders.

• You can also "Email the Class" from here.
• In the HIGHLIGHTS tab you can share links with individuals, groups or the whole class.

WORKSPACE

Works best when used for topics.

CHROMEBOOKS:

Teachers should use a student Chromebook for a period of time so they can experience what the learner can and can't do.

Digital Dig should be done at the beginning of each year to refresh and give opportunity to practise any new tips or shortcuts that have come out.  

iPADS:

Set up ONE slide deck and folders for each area and then just duplicate the slides.
This session from Khismira gave me a lot of information to share back to my Junior colleagues.

In this afternoon CREATE session we were asked to Select ONE of the Cybersmart areas and create a movie talking through one of the lesson templates provided.
I have done q few Screencastify now for my students to talk them through lessons and as I have said in a previous post I want to make the most of the Blog kaupapa from Manaiakalani for the benifit of my learners, especially in writing.  Therefore I have created a quick Screencastify of the Cybersmart lessons that I could sue with my students to help set this up in the first couple of weeks of Term 2.

I also learnt another trick, which was using the draw tool to highlight what you are talking about on the Screencastify.

TIP: To insert a Screencastify into Blogger.  

Open Screencastify you want to embed.  Open in a new window.  Click 3 dots and choose embed item.  Then use this code to embed as HTML in your Blogger.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

Nothing specific this week, however as I continue to get faster and more confident this reflects in my planning and prep time and its also getting easier which impacts on my personal life too!

Implementing Multi Modal Sites

Following our last DFI session I was reflecting on our Digital Pepeha work and created a Multi-Modal whakawhanaungatanga site for the students to access to be able to Learn about Pepeha and talking about Whanahu as well as creating and embedding Screencastify for each step of creating their digital pepeha within Google Slides.  I have found that this site has been an excellent tool for the students.  It has allowed those who were away to catch up and also those who have greater skills to zoom ahead at their own pace.  I also see the benefit of creating this as a new site as opposed to a page within my current learning site as I am then able to attach this to other places in the future without having to re-create it.

DFI Session 3

Today at DFI there was a whole lot of new learning to be had!

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Create within the Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?
The following points resonated with me within the LEARN (about Create) session.

You cannot create until your have first LEARNT and have something in your kete that you want to share with others.

Create = allowing our young people to be creative human beings as part of the learning process by using the affordances of technology to do things that they could not do without it and would not have been able to do in the past.

It is NOT simply creating a piece of writing on a doc or slide (which just replaces writing in a book).

It's choosing the BEST way of doing things, if pen and paper is the best way to do this then still do this!

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

Learning about the tools and tips today will enable me to be more confident and competent in using them and exploring these tools with the students in my class to allow them to respond to their learning in creative ways.

I continue to learn little time saving tips which will help me with my workflow such as that I can copy and paste straight from the snipping tool and I don't have up save and then upload.

The tip about how links can be added to specific parts of images or photos without the need for a text link was great.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?  

There were multiple things that I tried today which I would like to try out with my learners, this will however take time!

One thing we learnt how to do was create animations in Google Slides, here is my one.

Through animations I also tried out a digital Pepeha and worked on one which is our school pepeha and then also a single side about my own family with animation.

Pepeha is something we will be working on in the last few weeks of this term and I will definitely share and try out a digital version with my students.







I still need to learn about Youtube. How to create different channels and embed so that students only have access to the videos that I select for them and cannot access wider youtube.
What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?
The more we talk about it the more I feel that it would be worthwhile to explore having different 'people' set up on my computer so that I have a 'work' persona and a 'home' persona rather than having it all on one.