Presenting at Delving Deeper 3

It was an absolute pleasure, on May 10th, to collaboratively present at Delving Deeper 3 with my fellow School Leaders: Annabel McCormick (Wigram School) and Sharon Spragg (Yaldhurst Model School) along with out Outreach Co-ordinator, Kelsey Morgan.

The premise of our presentation was:

• Nature of the learning tasks 

• Use of digital technology 

• Feedback given 

• Time spent on task 

• Student Agency 

• Collaboration 

Using the pedagogical framework of Learn, Create, Share to support digital technology, leading to increased accelerated achievement. We have a strong connection to Auckland's Manaiakalani cluster as an outreach school. Learn tools and strategies that come from a research base and are proving to make difference.

The message that we wanted to get across to the educators who came to our presentation was a combination of changing the perception of Hornby Schools and students, as well as giving a glimpse of how and what we do to engage the students.

We had anticipated that our target audience might be some of the schools who have just joined the Manaiakalani Outreach community. We couldn't have been further from the truth. Surprisingly, our audience was predominantly high decile country schools.

We began by introducing ourselves individually, explaining who we are, where we're from and our role within our schools. I was able to add to this by explaining my own unique journey, about rationale behind changing schools but staying within the cluster

Kelsey Morgan explained a bit of background into the Manaiakalani Outreach Programme, from our joining way back in the beginning, through our successes and insight gleaned along the way up until now. She elaborated on our connection with MET and Woolf Fisher Research, which includes researching the data as well as in class observations to provide evidence of what practise is likely to increase student achievement. 

Specifically in class research looks at: 

I spoke about Uru Manuka Cluster evolving, teachers being willing to share, resource banks, open about sharing, visible, connected, ubiquitous, empowered, shared mindset, coherence across the schools in the cluster:

I vividly remember a time, not so long ago... four yeas perhaps, where teachers still guarded resources and ideas like a prized family recipe. When hui's occurred with neighbouring schools, people clustered with their kura, perhaps sparing a chat with the odd familiar face.
Fast forward to now. Uru Manuka Cluster has evolved into a place where we openly mx at gatherings. We default towards sharing DLO's (Digital Learning Objects) and teacher created resources and banks to make them more readily available to the wider Manaiakalani Network.
The School Leaders and Principals work extremely hard to ensure there is a shared mindset and coherence across the schools in our cluster, while still maintaining autonomy for each kura.
Both groups meet regularly, working to a set agenda of goals, effectively in a think tank like manner.
Our learning is visible online, therefore rewindable. It is ubiquitous, allowing student access at anytime and anyplace. We are empowering our akonga through agency.
A number of initiatives have driven the way forward in information sharing. We began with toolkits - small tech how to sessions which teachers were expected to sign up to and attend. These were run by teachers from within the cluster. Often they spawned into fabulous sharing and discussion sessions where ideas bounced around the room.
Teachers would meet to collaborate, building upon ideas and began to develop relationships whereby they spread their network broader to be able to glean ideas from the wider cluster.
The growing connections haven't been limited to our teachers. Among the Uru Manuka initiatives undertaken in recent years, have been a student summit, where akonga from within our cluster led toolkits, teaching digital skills from promoting useful apps and extensions to learning how to use robotics. Year 7/8 students, with support from Sport Canterbury, organised and ran a Ki-o-rahi tournament. Teams consisted of year 5-8 students and it was a fabulous festival atmosphere. Another avenue to develop the relationships between our akonga.

Kelsey Morgan explained Learn Create Share from a Manaiakalani Perspective.

What it actually is, along with how it is used to support digital technology in classes through blogging.
Affordances of technology - engagement, cognitive challenge, scaffolding, visibility.

I reiterated my SLAM, from the Uru Manuka Mini-conference at the beginning of the year.

Annabel shared her SLAM, from the Uru Manuka Cluster.

Sharon Spragg shared a glimpse of what a typical students day might look like. A student starts their day by checking out their class site for their work. Work is directed to areas, they read / watch and follow the instructions.

Teachers pull out groups and work with them - sometimes on a device and sometimes not.

The independent work is about collaboration, rewindable learning, engagement in whatever it is they are learning.

(Students that are high flyers - can fly high, those that have areas of struggle have the scaffolding that they need to be successful with their work.)

• Commenting on blogs
• Blog posts
• Learning

Links you may find useful:

Uru Mānuka website - www.urumanuka.org.nz

Manaiakalani website - www.manaiakalani.org

“Creative skills help students become better problem solvers, communicators and collaborators.”

Everyone Can Create Apple 2018

Hornby Cluster

Hornby Cluster Schools Get Together

Today the Hornby Cluster Schools gathered at Hornby High to hear Pat Sneddon, the chairperson of Manaiakalani speak and share the story of the Manaiakalani journey.  

Brief explanation of what Manaiakalani is:

In 2007 our initial cluster of schools wanted to find a way to engage the children in our mostly Decile 1A community in their learning. Digital Learning proved to be the ‘hook’ to guide our whole community to better educational outcomes.

Some of the crowd ready to get into it.

Pat began with sharing how the Manaikalani Journey began and took us through to where it is now and where it is going.  He shared stories about the Tamaki area and how the need for liberation of the low income learner emerged. One concept from stories of the time was around Rangatiratanga, taking charge of your own circumstances.  The tangi of Te Arikinui Dame Te Ātairangikaahu led to thinking about how we can be as good at educating the living, as we are at burying the dead?

The Tamaki Transformation Programme which included  Glen Innes, Panmure and Pt England, identified that the infrastructure had many issues and the area had a number of things that were not right.  A group was put together made up of government, community groups etc. who looked at infrastructure and what was working well. 

In 2009, Principal of Pt England School and Manaiakalani Convenor Russel Burt, invited Pat to visit his school.  He was greeted by children who then told him about their learning. They shared about how they were beginning to learn digitally.  It seemed too good to be true as the learning taking place was astounding.

Some reasons for everybody not being involved at the time, included issues such as cost of retraining teachers from an analogue to a digital world and finance.  Pat's response was if I get it for you would you come?  He did, they came and here we are.

Pat shared this video from Russell Burt which looks at moving from subsistent living to capital building by design.   Move out of subsistence to capital building.  This is significant as this is part of the purpose and goal for Manaiakalani schools.

Stuart McNaughton and Wolf Fischer Research-significant research has and continues to take place within Manaiakalani and outreach cluster schools.  Click here to read research findings to date.

We are part of five clusters across the country.  These include schools in the West Coast, Papakura, Mt Roskill and Kaikohe. Thirty eight schools across New Zealand are currently on the journey to use digital technology to accelerate learning for their students.  

We need to know what we are trying to achieve with being part of this outreach.  

Collaboration across schools and boards is essential.  Some things that have been put in place such as wireless in homes, could not have been done without collectivity.  

Within this process, opportunities for creativity and collaboration are abundant.  Positive for teachers to be able to learn from each other.  Learning is visible.  

Initiatives to support and develop teacher capabilities:

*innovative teacher

*digital teacher academy  

This process is built on this structure:

Whanaungatanga-Relationships

Kaupapa-Purpose

Putea-Resources

Where to next?  Outreach+ is the outreach programme being made available to all New Zealand decile 1-2 schools.  Our performance as leaders and teachers counts.  We need to be able to prove the case that what we are doing is working and we are achieving our goals. 

Key focus: 

What happens to and for the learner?

We can't do this alone...so we collaborate.

Hornby Cluster Schools...a positive start and well into this new journey.

Hornby Cluster Toolkits

Hornby Cluster Toolkits

As part of our professional learning and development as a cluster, Mark Maddren who is our Manaiakalani Outreach Programme go to guy, organises teachers from within our cluster to run toolkits.  These sessions go for one hour and are to support our learning which impacts on and improves learning for our children.  

I have attended these in the past and have always admired those who share what they are doing.  As with all professional development, you come away with ideas you know will benefit your students and you as a teacher.

This term, Mark suggested that somebody could share some learning from the recent Google Summit.  I was a little reluctant as I thought what might be new and exciting learning for me, could be old news for other people.  

After some thought and discussion, I decided to look at it as a time for me to share some of the things I have been able to use and out in place since returning to school post summit.  Although this helped me to have a clear picture of what I was to be sharing, I was still worried that attendees might be bored and walk out thinking that was a waste of time.

After a couple of 'Where is my dongle?' moments, we were able to start with our group of teachers and Principal from Gilberthorpe, Templeton and Hornby Primary.  

The presentation included some tools to support learning, some to make our own online lives easier and some things just for fun.  

Have a look here to see what we covered:

The learning for me here, is that often we think we don't have anything worthy to share or we doubt ourselves about what we know and do.  I am still pondering on this as far as my own self belief etc goes, but I am glad to have had the opportunity to share things that I am passionate about and am motivated and excited about this journey.

Hornby Cluster eLeaders Workshop

Hornby Cluster eLeader Workshop

August 2015

The Hornby Cluster of Schools eLeaders met to share what we have all been doing and look at learning successes within each of our schools.  Literacy was a specific learning area that we looked at.  The day was made up of these three components~

Story Hui~ 

We were introduced to the Story Hui process of sharing.  For this task we used a success story in literacy.  As one person shared verbally, another member of the group drew pictures to visualise the initial evidence, the inquiry and the evidence of progress.  This structure allows group members to ask questions to seek clarification and for the story teller to identify next step ideas.At Gilberthorpe, we will be using the Story Hui process in our next staff meeting to share our Teaching as Inquiry.This is a link to the Story Hui site which has detailed explanations of the benefits of this process and how it is implemented.

Story Hui

Effective Feedback~

Garry Taylor took us through a session about providing effective feedback and what this could look like.  The main points that I took from this session were:

~Feedback should make students think

~It needs to be descriptive not evaluative

~We need to eliminate judgemental feedback

Feedback should be goal referenced

~The first comment should be in relation to what is being learned

~Feedback needs to be timely

~90% of feedback is oral

~Giving feedback is a skill that needs to be taught

~There needs to be evidence in relation to the goal...what is being done well, needs improving, criteria needs to be used

~Feedback should offer guidance on ways to close the gap. It needs to be specific, actionable and have the scope for being good to being better

~We don't want to give too much feedback...too much is overwhelming so prioritise, 2:1 2 positives & 1 other

~The learner needs time to act on feedback and the opportunity to respond. This should take place during the task, not at end,

~There is a place for evaluative feedback. Descriptive feedback is not appropriate on the final published product. Commenting on blogs etc should not have feedback about punctuation etc as this feedback should take place before public sharing.

~There are opportunities for technology to transform feedback. At Gilberthorpe School we have been exploring these and are looking forward to trying recorded audio and video feedback.

Learning Tools~

In the afternoon we had a session of looking at different tools that we could use in our schools.  One iPad app that we looked at was Aurasma.  This app allows users to create a trigger so that when the iPad hovers over the trigger, a previously created clip appears.We thought that we would try using this during our end of term Celebrations of Learning.  Whanau can wander around learning spaces, hover the iPad over a trigger and their child can pop up in a video and share their learning.  Another way for us to all Learn, Create and Share.Here is some more information about Aurasma:

Aurasma

Nga mihi nui ki a koutou~ Lee-Anne