Nathan Mikare-Wallis PD

Last week I attended the Nathan Wallis PD around brain development with the purpose of finding out more about how the brain works and learns in the early years.

The following are my notes of what I personally felt important during the day.

Nathan Wallis 29.07.2020

 

50% genes

50% interaction with your environment in the first 1000 days of your life.

This means by around age 2.5 - 3 your brain has decided what kind of brain it is going to need for the rest of its life.

 

70% of your genes are transcription genes they can change based on how you are raised in the first 1000 days of your life.

 

First 1000 days starts at conception, NOT birth.

 

Kanohi to kanohi interactions are the most complex thing your brain does.

 

The language in the first 1000 days need to also come with an emotionally tuned connection for the best possible outcomes.

 

In the first year it is only the 1-1 dyadic relationship that matters to the child. This is why the words heard from sibling don’t make up for the words heard from the 1 person who is the most important in their life.

For the words to count the baby needs to be emotionally in tune to be able to receive them.

 

In our country the younger you are the less tax payer money is spent on you. Most money is spent in 16-18 years olds and most of this is on punitive responses and resources.

 

After the age of 8 it is impossible to tell which child learnt the basics earlier than another.

 

Risk and Resilience

Risk is all the stuff that leads to negative outcomes,  if you have enough risk factors you are more likely to end up on the negative side of things later in life; not speaking native language, being separated from extended family, etc.

 

The opposite of these are resilience factors which counteract these e.g having grandparents regularly involved etc

 

More people have anxiety and depression in this generation due to the way in which we have added extra risk factors by the way society now is.  E.g more children are now in ECE than are at home with a family member, many more now do not have grandparents who don’t work and are also regularly engaged etc etc. Kids now are starting more in the middle when they begin so are less resilient and are more affected by the risk factors that occur.

 

The number one factor of how well a child performs in class is the relationship with the teacher, having a teacher for more than one year give a step towards resilience.

 

HOW CAN WE TRY TO EMBED AND VALUE PRACTISES WHICH WILL KEEP TEACHER STUDENT RELATIONSHIP FROM ONE YEAR TO ANOTHER WITHOUT KEEPING STUDENTS WITH THE SAME TEACHER.

- tuakana teina

- shared class experiences

- build language development

- music

 

 

The worst age to experience trauma is age 11.  This a vulnerable age due to puberty and all the other changes that occurring.

 

Nuro sequential Model

We have 4 brains inside our head:

- largest in called brain 4

 

To know if a function occurs in the frontal cortex of the brain (brain4) ask can the dog do it?

Brains develop bottom to top.  Brain number 4 is not fully developed until adulthood (mid-late 20s (average 27)). (Woman usually 18-24, Male usually 22-32).

This controls your emotions, empathy, consequences, reading, writing, school activities etc.

(Animals do have a smaller frontal cortex but nothing like in a human.)

 

#1 impact of how fast kids mature and hit milestone is gender (girls before boys)

2nd is birth order - first born or NOT first born.

 

The implication for this are that first born girl will usually be at the top of the bell curve while a not first born by will usually be at the bottom of the bel curve.

 

BOYS WHO ARE NOT THE FIRST BORN OFTEN HAVE DEVELOPMENTALLY INAPPROPRIATE EXPECTATIONS PLACED ON THEM ESPECIALLY WITHIN THE EDUCATION SETTING.

 

 - how do we or can we consider this within the school setting.

 

Brain #1 is your brain stem = survival brain (flight, fright or freeze - includes anger and fear)

# 2 cerebellum = movement

Brain 1 & 2 = reptile.

3# emotional brain limbic system - mammals have this. (includes happiness, excitement etc.).

#4 is the thinking and learning brain.

 

4 develops LAST you have to build #s 1, 2 & 3 PROPERLY to be able to access brain #4.

 

First 6 months of life are about survival. (attachment)

Next year is mostly about movement.

18mths-2year emotional brain comes online (tantrums etc. with no self regulation as the frontal cortex is not yet online).

They NEED to be SHWON how to calm down (maybe 100times) is they are to learn it themselves, being shut in a room for time out is not helping them develop the ability to calm down.

 

In adolescence brain #4 is essentially shut down for renovations and they move backwards into brain #3.

 

To move to being an adult brain it doesn't mean the brain gets better it means the frontal cortex needs to move from being online 10% of the time to 90% of the time.

 

Adults are 90% - 10%

Teenagers are 10% - 90%

 

Emotive Brain (Limbic Brain)

Broken biscuit analogy with the 3 years olds demonstrates the feeling brain as opposed to the thinking brain.

This is the same brain as the teenager whose frontal cortex is 'closed for renovation'.

This brain is associated with dispositions NOT LEARNING.

Dispositions are your feelings and beliefs around a topic.

 

Ages 2-8 a child is developing their disposition around how they see themselves as a learner.  How clever they FEEL.

TO predict the outcomes for the child you need to be able to understand how they feel about themselves as a learner.

Early literacy and numeracy do not lead to success POSITIVE DISPOSITIONS towards THEMSELVES AS A LEANER DO.

 

International research tell us that Resilience is developed between age 2 and 8 in a free play environment.  The key things during this that is developed is CREATIVITY.

 

From an academic and neuroscience point of view creativity is the biggest sign on intelligence. Traditional learning creates black and white thinkers who think there is only one right answer.

 

Statistically, each time you interrupt a child from creative free play to 'teach' them something that they are not ready for you are setting them up to have anxiety and depression as a teenager.  This is because the more free play they have under 7 the more creativity and problem solving they will do, this is then carried on to teenagers who are either resilient problems solvers who will keep trying or those who see things as black or white and give up.

 

Brain 1 and 4 operate like they on a balance scale as one increases, the other declines.  To really be using your cortex your brain needs to be calm.

Scared children CANNOT LEARN ANYTHING.

 

At present we come to the mat for roll call and circle time.  Do we put roll call and circle time to 9:45 and just let them play through until then as a way to further calm and engage the students into the day?

 

Go to mindfulness activities at ANY time of the day when it may be needed to help students move out of their brainstem and into the cortex.

Neuroplasticity is reduced by.....

Caffeine

Alcohol

Tobacco

Sugar

 

Nature vs Nurture is not an accurate statement.

It's not Nature interact with nurture which is the key as to if things are positive or negative.

 

Humans have receptors for things that humans have been having for thousands and thousands of years.

Humans have receptors for alcohol, caffeine, tobacco, marijuana.

They DO NOT have receptors for refined sugar as we have only been having this for around 300 years.

 

Sugar documentary talks about how it affects the brain.

 

 

Marijuana and Alcohol - effects on the teenage brain.

 

Correlation does not mean causation.

This means that just because 2 things happen at the same time or are evident in the same research this does NOT mean one of these things causes the other.

 

2 solid things we know from a research point of view that marijuana negatively affects the brain and this only happens under 18 years of age (no damage after 18 years of age (maturation of front cortex in this instance does not apply, it is 18 years of age for everyone)

 - can trigger schizophrenia due to the THC when the brain is under construction.

- on auberge people who smoke marijuana under that age of 18 lose an average of 8 IQ points it depends on your genomes how much THC your body can take so it could be triggered after one exposure or may require more.

 

P seems to leave holes in the frontal cortex which do not seems to be able to be repaired.  The study's however have not been going on long enough yet to know for sure.

 

Alcohol damage occurs 18-21 years (depending on the individual).

- can reduce your hippocampus (working memory) stops it growing to full capacity and this is stunted from the first time you have alcohol. (Needs to be more than 1 unit per hour).

 

- Frontal cortex is compromised by taking on alcohol under the age of 18-21.

 

Self-Control

An individual’s ability to be able to use Self-control is the number one thing which measures how successful your child will be.

Marshmallow experiment.

 

Don't confuse self-regulation and self-control

Self-regulation is the way you regulate or calm yourself to be able to show self-control.

E.g in the marshmallow experiment kids covered their eyes or turned their chairs (self-regulation) in order to not eat the marshmallow (self-control).

 

With teenager you want to try and get them to use their frontal cortex so rather than the 'brick-wall' shut up and do as your told approach get them involved in the decision making and negotiation.

Appropriate levels of choice e.g it's cold outside green jersey or blue jersey (2 years)

Curfew negotiation (teenagers) help to build their self control and regulation.

They need to be able to practice this will support from good parenting.

 

Statistics tell us that Brick Wall parenting causes the most problems for children later in life.

 

What do you need to calm (and heal) the brain in order of importance according to the literature and research:

 

(think I have missed something here)

1. Dyadic Relationship

2. Water and Kai

3. Autonomy

4. Predictability (karaka)

5.  Sensory Pathways

6. Touch

7. Kaumatua

8. Karakia

 

Vabel tone - the amount of time it will take an individual to calm down after being in the brain stem.

This depends on your experiences as a 0-2 year old and how fast your caregiver came and helped or settled you between the ages of 0-2.

 

Yoga has been proven as the one way to improve the vabel tone - to increase how quickly your can calm back down.  Yoga has been proven to be more effective in developing calming than anger management courses.

 

Teenager and kids need back bone parenting.  Firm boundaries with negotiation within this.

 

General parenting styles - its normal to go through all three.

Jellyfish style -----------------------------back bone style --------------------------Brick wall style

 

Your brain is experience expectant of things happening to trigger 'normal' brain development. A dyadic relationship is something your brain is expecting, if this doesn't happen the brain doesn't develop 'normally.'

 

A child with autism doesn't make eye contact as eye contact for them is like someone holding direct eye contact for WAAAYYY too long which triggers the amigdala system in the brain. (Very uncomfortable).

Brain number 1 = dyad.  A dyad is required to calm brain #1.

 

Brain number 2 = movement.

Rhythmic patterning is required to calm brain #2.  Most kids get this developed as babies being rocked.

 

Hammock / cocoon swing on deck?

 

If kids arrive at school with A rhythmic pattern e.g from an abusive home etc, a waiata to start the day can be enough to re-set their rhythmic pattern, this will last for around 45 mins then they will need another reset.

 

Brain # 4 to engage neuroplasticity you need to b able to engage executive functions, these are improvable.

4 main executive Function to improve overall intelligence:

- Working Memory - this is like mentally juggling balls in the air, how many things can you  

                                     keep in your memory at one time. e.g remember these numbers

                                     add Kim's Game and Memory to Purposeful Play

- Self Control

-Metacognition - thinking about thinking

- Cognitive flexibility - the ability to go between left and right brain activities or multi       

                                        tasking.

 

Humans in general mainly work in and use the left side of their brain.

 

Kai meets the needs of all 4 brains.

 

To learn we need:

1. safety

2. Rhythm (rituals, welcome, waiata, make connections etc.)

3. Emotional Validation (establish relationship)

4. Learning

 

Autism

There is no definitive answer about autism.

We know that it had something to do with all the following things....

1. testosterone - it appears the more testosterone the higher the chance of autism, this can 

    be the parents testosterone not just how much testosterone the child has.

2. the pruning of the brain which often occurs at age 3 as the brain starts to speciaise  

    doesn't happen so there are too many neural pathways going on, too much complexity  

    stays in the brain. This is why the develop set rituals and NEED predictability as there is 

    too much going on.

3. microflora in your stomach 40-60% of people with autism have digestion issues.

4. possible lack of oxytocin at an unknown key development point.

 

 

As we get to age 3 the brain begin to prune and specials and cut away the parts which have not been deemed important in the first part of our life.  e.g if a child has never experienced empathy then empathy is at risk of being 'pruned'.

 

Dyslexia

The dyslexic brain achieves the same thing but it takes twice as long.  It relates to lateralization.  Often children with dyslexia are very capable adults as they have worked so hard getting 'there' their brains are very 'work fit' but they need lots of support to get there and stay positive on the journey.

 

Screen time

We KNOW that the amount of screen time you have in childhood increases the chance of having anxiety and depression as teenagers.

To counteract this children need to have at least 2hours regular device / screen free time each day.

 

Technology only aides education when it is used in addition to face to face learning.

 

ADHD

Science doesn’t know much about ADHD.

Slight change in the temporal lobes of the brain.

It is thought that ADHD has as much to do with the environment as it does with genetics.

Originally cal 'absent father syndrome'

Pukeko Purposeful Play Writing Opportunities

As I am reading through the WLA text 'Play Matters' I have realised that I want to and need to add more opportunities for writing invitation into the Purposeful play sessions.  I have been thinking that I wasn't happy that the writing space was big enough but also aware of not wanting to dominate the learning space with too many tables.

I have reflected on this for a few days and searched in the stored furniture to find a new table for our writing space to enable me to add another space for writing and allow more exciting writing invitations to be out on display during Purposeful Play sessions instead of tucked away in tote trays.

I am also considering the new ways in which I can extend the current play invitations and make these a more appealing option for the students.

I have purchased more enveloped so that students can put their 'mail' into the class mailbox and have also found some NZ stamp images and will model to the students how to correctly address and envelope to be sent and add a stamp.

I have created small 'cards' so that cards can also be created as another writing option alongside the letter templates and a range of interesting paper for drawing, writing and list making with boarders to colour etc.

I will continue to monitor and add to the writing tools available to ensure a range of quality and interesting tools are available.

Story Hui Term 3 Week 1

Target students story hui.

Actions and where to next are the same as we are only beginning this week.

Seesaw / EE Reflections and Discussion

I have had a good discussion with Jessie today around Seesaw and EE and have also sought the thoughts of the blogger / teacher behind Mrs Priestly ICT in regard to both platforms.

Our discussion brought out the following points:

Jessie has found it difficult to use Explain Everything over the past year and it seems to be quite tricky for the kids to use independently with lots of steps for them to go through to download tasks, save then upload them etc, takes many steps which ends up being a time consuming job for the teacher.

I haven't used it yet as it has only just been put onto our ipads the week of lockdown.

With the new Explain Everything upgrade it also seems that many of the previously made activities may no longer be supported by the new platform.

We are not writing it off yet but we have decided that we want to shelve it for now.

We have discussed what we would want to purpose of EE (or any other tool) to be within the classroom and we both agree that we want the focus of our classrooms to be Play Based, hand on creativity as opposed to computer generated creativity which means we don't really see the point in spending lots of time teaching students how to duplicate circles etc when they could be making physical hands on sets and taking a photo and adding a voice recording of their explanation of of their learning just as easily.

We want the digital tool to support the kids in sharing their learning and understandings in an easy and collaborative way.

Seesaw seems to be a platform that can do many of the same things as EE (EE has many more bells and whistles but we don't think our age groups would really make that much use of them) Students can easily access their activities, they are all saved in their own folder and it can be shared with whanau at the push of a button.

As Seesaw is a free platform there are also LOTS of wonderful easily accessible and ready made free or low cost resources that we can tap into without spending hours re-creating these.

The down side to Seesaw is that 'what happens on Seesaw stays on Seesaw', so that we cannot share Seesaw posts to Blogger, however we will still be committed to making one class blog post per week and getting the Blogger process and language into the kids for as they move through the school.

Another of our stumbling blocks is that we have never been able to see Explain Everything in action in a classroom.  Although we have been excited and motivated after the PD session that was now long ago and even trying to navigate it ourselves at home during the past wee while at home, we have both found it very frustrating and non-user friendly.

Moving forward what we would like to do is:

1. Shelve EE for the time being.  Find out from Donna if anyone in the north is using this well within their schools that we could visit to see how it actually works within the classroom (also an interesting point that most local schools are in fact using Seesaw and are very happy with this).  

2. From when we go back to school and probably for the rest of this year (unless we can find someone to visit) we will implement Seesaw into our classrooms and set this up with our parents.  We will give this a good go and see if it meets our needs and find out what our parent community think of it.

At the end of the day we are trying to really reflect on the PURPOSE of why we want to introduce such a platform and we also want this to be easy and user friendly for both the students and ourselves to navigate and use.  At the moment we think that SEESAW can better meet these needs.  If we put EE into many tasks across that day our students may become proficient in using it independently but we don't actually want to do this, we are happy with many aspects of our programme and don't want to throw them out to put EE in.just so that kids will be able to use the platform.

Junior Manaiakalani Distance Learning Catch Up #2

Today was the second junior teacher catch up with the other Manaiakalani cluster schools.
There was some sharing and questions around what we have been doing, what is working well and current challenges we are facing.
Here is the slide deck we used.

Explain Everything Self PD

I am re-delving into the world of Explain Everything now that we have licenses for all our ipads and would like to try and begin using this with the class once we return to school.

This clip shows how one NZ teacher uses EE to help assess letter ID and HFWs as well as develop handwriting and writing skills.
These activities can also help the students to independently practise these things.

Junior Far North Manaiakalani Teachers Session

Today I took part in a shared session with manaiakalani teachers from around Northland to share ideas, tips, tricks and experiences on distance learning so far and what we were doing.  It was great to connect and hear about and see what others are doing.

Mana Potential

Session run by Angeline at the Kahi Ako AP DP hui Thursday 5th September.

Mana potential gives a universal language without assumption.
It does not require the 'back story' until the person is ready and/or willing to share it.

At the core of everyday is the skill set that sits inside of you that you bring.
Papatunanuku always gives us our strength, these are the supports and strategies you identify for yourself to support you.

The only questions which needs to be asked is "is there anything I can do for you right now?"

I felt a lot of professionalism, knowledge and mana from Angeline.
I believe that this would be a programme which would resonate with our students and could be something worth investigating further.
Need to look at how much time and impact it would have.

Understanding the korero around the colours also is powerful in itself.

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 9: Review

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

• ANYWHERE
• ANYTIME
• ANY PACE

Summer Learning Journey is an opportunity for students to blog over summer and the data shows that these students don't get the 'summer slide'.

Ubiquitous learning allows students to continue their learning outside of the school day or if they are away or unwell.

The power of rewindable learning.

"If its worth teaching, it's worth capturing."

"If its worth learning, it's worth capturing."

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?
Today the main portion of time aside from this morning on ubiquitous learning was spent sitting the Google for Educators Level 1 Exam.
So happy to say that I PASSED which has increased my confidence - yay!

Thank you to Venessa and Kerry for leading us through this DFI, an extremely worthwhile experience.

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!

Reflecting on Blog Posts

During our Staff Meeting last night with Donna something that stuck with me is that I do not yet know enough about the format that the students Blog Posts should take to ensure the most is made of them so that the learning is the greatest and the acceleration observed through Manaiakalani research can be made.

I need to look at good examples of the sections required and make time to specifically teach this to the students at the beginning of Term 2.  I will look at Venessa's students blogs initially.

TITLE

WALT

LEARNING THAT OCCURRED (written and an image or work sample if possible DLO)

REFLECTION (this can be about the learning or the posting - any part of the full learning cycle that occurred).

ADD LABELS

ACTIVELY COMMENT ON OTHER PEOPLE'S BLOGS (Using the Manaiakalani Process).

Venessa shared these with me which will be very helpful.  Thanks Venessa!

UM Quality Blog Post Rubric

Manaiakalani Outreach Quality Blog Post Rubric

Quality Blog Post Rubric 

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 4 SHARE

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

The important of AUTHENTIC AUDIENCE and how this can give so much more purpose to the learning.

With a digital audience people are they because they are choosing to listen to you or view your work. 

Sharing creates a real reason for students to actually finish their work as it is going to be published online as opposed to just being shut inside a book.

This however is not only and ending.  Often in the process of SHARING new learning begins.  If people engage in what you have shared they will often provide though feedforward and feedback a spark for a new challenge or line of learning.

Multimodal = having different opportunities for students to engage with the leaning around one topic of theme.   Eg read the book / listen to the story online / watch it as a video.

Multitextual: using a variety of different text written for different purposes or audiences and being able to make meaning from these.

How can I use digital technology to reach all my learners in the way that will work best for them.

Same content displayed or received in different ways.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?  It was worthwhile having a go at creating a multimodal site and thinking about all the bits and pieces that can be put into such a tool to support learners across a range of levels and abilities.

It was also great to find out more about Google Keep and the many ways in which this can be used to simplify things.  I look forward to sorting out my array of 'sticky notes' that currently cover my desktop!

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?  
The creation of multimodal sites is something that I would like to use next term.
Here is the one I created today on Gardening
https://sites.google.com/mangonui.school.nz/gardening/home

Creating and embedding playlists from Youtube into my site.  This was further developed from last week.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?
The use of keep notes and how this can work together with Docs and Calendar will also help my personal life as it will help with reducing doubling up and searching for things.

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.

STPs - Standard for the Teaching Profession