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 Staff Meeting

Today we had a staff meeting with Angelique to reflect on where we are currently at with Mana
Potential within our school and individual classrooms.

Key notes from this session to remind me for my own practise moving forward and the further explore..........

Possible Questions:

Who is your go to person for you learning today / right now?

Have a look around and see who is going to be your go to person today.

Where is going to be the best place for you to work today?

Who could be your go to person if I am busy?

Learn about the Atua / kaitiaki

Karakia to close the day - karakia does not have to be in Maori, the purpose is to thank people for the
day and wish them a good evening. 

E te atua maanaki mai…

What could we use that is also suitable for jehovahs?

Use a circle to begin and end the day and use the colours and do the colours line up in the middle for
the check in questions.

End of the day - tell your buddy one cool thing that happened for you today.

Colours for the end of the day.

You must be an active participant as well and line yourself up also.

When you state how you are feeling eg I’m in the purple, you need to also tell them I need to do this
and this for myself right now and I need you to do this for me.

Light blue is re-entry, restoration and repair.

Learning 

Yellow is engaged and challenged

Orange - its OK

Purple - I can do it but I don't love it, I might be bored, it might be too easy and Im cruising

Red i'm disengaged with my learning / I don't understand 

Blue - I make a new plan and am shown a new or different way so I can move into independence

Light Blue - I now know how and I can help someone else

Need the arrows

Talk with the students

What makes a good go to person in the classroom?

What would this person look like? Why would they be good?

What makes a good go to person in the Playground?

What makes a good go to person after school?

Dr Rangi Matamua  YouTube - check it out for Matariki

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3FQ-jyydF8   Matariki Presentation 2017

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCgbqWtNiAc   Planting Seeds Podcast

Look at Tuatara site for the Mana potential song.

Silent statements and the power of these to gauge the room:

Stand up and move if you had breakfast

Stand up and move if you had a good day

Stand up and move if you are wearing blue etc

Next steps:

I need to go back and look at the above videos and do some more work around the colours to get
these and the stories underpinning these clear in my mind before moving on with my class.

Manaiakalani Launch Day 2020 (TOD)

Dorothy Burt presentation

Key Messages for me:

• It is vital that students need a concurrent and  ongoing programmes supporting what is means to be a CyberSmart leaner.
• for 2020 the emphasis expands on from Recognise to AMPLIFY - we need to use the technology to amplify or turbocharge the learning.

• Manaiakalani is not about getting rid of or replacing the greatness of the past, it's about finding ways to bring the great things forward and amplify them further through the affordances of technology.

Leading the Digital Curriculum: Kerry Boyde-Preece and Monika Kern presentation

Decoded Digital Technology Outcomes for Learners



BREAKOUT 1: Using Explain Everything to Amplify and Turbo-charge learning. Presentation

(If the task is not shared it cannot be redefinition, its sits within modification.)