Tohatoha

This week we turbocharged our Share | Tohotoha pedagogy and invited educators from across The Manaiakalani Network to connect and share in our Term 3 Manaiakalani Staff Meeting. With registrations upwards of 500,  harnessing the affordances of technology and our network of connected learning communities across Aotearoa resulted in an awesome display of connected learners sharing.

He aha te kai o te Rangatira, He kōreo, he kōrero, he kōrero

The session was designed to be conversational with small groups formed in response to curriculum level and Teaching as Inquiry topics. This was an opportunity to connect and share strategies with educators who have been focussing on similar achievement challenges. We shared conversation starters and each group met online for 45 min.

We believe sharing is fundamentally about people making connections. Early feedback - the opportunities to connect with teachers and school leaders, specifically to hear how schools are approaching their unique contexts, was valued.

This week's DFI also focused on share and how our young people are harnessing their class and individual blogs to connect with an authentic audience across our network of schools. We were reminded that sharing is also an opportunity to understand the importance of completing a task... an important life skill...

PLUS seek feedback on progress (being ready to share at any stage of the learning process) and the opportunities this can attract when sharing online... (versus cultivating celebrity status in a social media soaked world. I've written about this in the past...

How are you "harnessing your ecosystems?" How are you scaling up your connectivity and attracting the people and resources you need to find your potential?

Enjoyed the Dealing with Data sessions which provided inspiration for stepping up my sheets game with Data Validation and Conditional formatting to manage our Summer Learning Journey project. Learning how to harness the extension Autocrat has definitely been a bonus (thanks Dave Winter).

Using Google Forms as a Writing Frame has been a great place to start and further conversations in our DFI bubble today helped me to think about further opportunities to personalise learning (thanks Herman and Lars)

Google Maps have always been a favourite. If you're new to using Maps with your learners start here with one of our Summer Learning Journey activities.

Hanga

Thinking about creativity today and reminded how being creative also encourages collaboration and problem solving. 

I have shared on the Blogger platform for many years. In 2022 our young people moved to edublogs to share their learning. 

Creating a media gallery is a smart, image formatting feature in edublogs and a time saver. 

I was able to set this up while editing, however the formatting would not save when published. 

A problem shared and thanks to Lars from my DFI Bubble a solution!

This requires activating the CSS plugin and updating with the following:

.gallery > figure { width: auto; }

Getting creative with Google Slides and Drawing

I demonstrated today how to create an interactive poster to share in a blog post.

While Google Drawing is a great go to App to create a poster or graphic any hyperlinked content will not be clickable in a blog post.  Google Drawing Resources

An option is to create an interactive poster using a Google Slide.

Example: Using a Google Slide, embedded in a blog post, enables hyperlinks to remain active.

This option includes removing the Google Slide navigation bar.

Examples and instruction links here

Note to self:

Read: Elwyn Richardson and the early world of creative education in New Zealand' by Margaret MacDonald. Recommended Robin Sutton What a gift - being creative in selling the 'creativity' message

Rent: The HeART of the Matter

Ako

The Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy recognises effective practice in any learning environment AND the digital learning environment.  Why is this important?

The last two years have highlighted how critical this has been for learning and effective practice in any context.

We know for learning to accelerate, our learners need to be able to access learning beyond a physical location and time (McNaughton 2018). This has meant new tools for learning and a new pedagogy to support learning outside of school.

In Term 1 this year we were challenged again with schools open and learners either onsite or learning from home.  Listening to a podcast earlier this year, and the following from Derek Wenmoth resonated for me...

"All schools are now being challenged to consider -  “What happens when we need to think about learners/teachers and the learning/teaching independent of the location/place? How do we make participation in learning accessible when not determined by physical location”  

For our schools the Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy (Learn, Create Share) is how this happens. 

For teaching and learning beyond the physical classroom and traditional school day, including harnessing tools for ubiquitous learning e.g.  Sites, Hāpara Workspace, Blogs, Being Cybersmart.

We have over many years harnessed our kaupapa to understand and explore how to harness the affordances of technology.  Our Learn pedagogy prioritises recognising effective practice in any learning environment PLUS the digital learning environment to amplify and turbo charge learning.

Our Learn pedagogy prioritises recognising effective practice 

Existing practices enabled us to move to distance learning and during this time our focus on Limit the Links - Kia iti ngā kuputoro has served us well. 

 

Decision making and actions were guided by our existing practices as a learning community. This includes, pedagogy, workflow and our understanding of how we design learning that is visible, accessible and rewindable.

If you can search for your school website … one link to rule them all!

Our kaupapa and pedagogy continues to provide a common understanding for learning design. There is value in thinking about this strategically -  as a school and a learning community. This enables coherence and consistency for learners and whānau to navigate and access learning.  For teachers it offers opportunities to transform the way our young people learn.

I valued the opportunity to share with Jemma today in our online DFI. We used Google Meet to create a screen recording of our conversation about a learner blog post and how the technology has been harnessed to both amplify and turbo charge learning.