EduCampWhakatane

So yesterday Shelley Forster and I attended our first EduCamp here in Whakatane.  It was a great day!

Here are my thoughts about the day ...

• NZ teachers are amazing - we are definitely extremely passionate and highly motivated to provide the best teaching possible to increase the learning outcomes for our students!  I was blown away by the level of enthusiasm, commitment, collaboration, knowledge and awhi that all the presenters displayed today. Nga mihi nui ki a koutou katoa nga Kaiako ngakau pono!
• So many choices - Smackdown - wow the wealth of knowledge and possibilities is mind blowing! (see presentation below).  After listening to the 5min intros by each presenter I had to rethink - what is going to be most valuable for me right now?  So I chose to attend the Google Sites, Hapara and Bitstrips breakouts.  I found Google sites interesting perhaps not as valuable as I thought it would be purely because I have already 'self-taught' myself and set up my own class google site by 'tutuing' and using models of sites from several blogs and e-learning teachers that I am following - mainly Pt England School in Auckland and a few others from EdblogNZ.  It was interesting to see how other teachers use their sites and what they include in it as well.  Hapara - this I was very interested in as I've heard mixed comments about it.  The teacher that presented was very enthusiastic about it especially as she came on board at the same time that the latest updates did - namely 'interact' and 'workspace'.  Perhaps it was the speed of the presentation or because I started with Google Classroom but I'm not entirely convinced yet to give it a go.  I'm sure if I had more time to tutu with it I'd have a better understanding of its' pros and cons.  I have a few links to look at to help in this area.  I was the only one interested in Bitstrips so that was not presented but I will have a tutu with it sometime soon.  Shelley and I decided to work together to get our google sites up and running.  I was able to assist Shelley as best I could to get her site looking the way she wanted.
• Twitter - so I have steered clear of twitter thus far but today I was inspired to join up and became a tweep!  Anne-Marie Hyde @mrs_hyde  and Alex Le Long @ariaporo22 - a formidable pair shared their passion for Twitter.  How could I not give it a go!  Unfortunately the wifi was blocking twitter so I wasn't able to get started until I got home - needless to say but here's where I'm at now from 0-18 followers!  Very exciting!
  

The next challenge is to see if I can use it in class - Is Twitter excluded on our network?????  Here's hoping it's not because I'm keen to get involved in ...

So my buckets' filled with inspiration and possibilities - now my brain is fizzing with ideas - ooooh, What e-learning can we blend in to enhance our learning journey next term in Ti Kouka?

Here's the Smackdown presentation.  I will definitely be revisiting this presentation a lot to guide my planning and teaching for next term and to share with my other colleagues back at school.

Blogs of Inspiration

As a teacher I teach but I also learn. I am definitely a life long learner.

I read more now, than I ever have before!  There is always something to learn and my oh my - where would I be if I didn't have access to the internet!?????

As a learner and an educator I am always searching for guidance, examples, models, opinions, ideas and knowledge regarding all aspects of my teaching practice.  I am always reflecting on the effectiveness I what I am doing in regards to meeting the learning needs of my tamariki.  Now with 1:1 Chromebooks I know that I can't teach what I don't know so I just better find out what I don't know!  One key resource I have used to do this are teacher blogs.  Firstly from Pt England school and then using NZ Primary Teachers on facebook which has linked my all over the place!

Here is a list of blogs/websites that I have found very helpful in guiding my own learning and e-learning teaching practice:

www.edblognz.blogspot.co.nz/ 

allanahk.edublogs.org/

www.iseeteaching.com/ - (the birthplace of my blog)

sites.google.com/site/ggwg2011/chromebooks

thekingsthink.blogspot.co.nz/

peskarenbelt.blogspot.co.nz/

Google sites - inspiration -  sites.google.com/a/ptengland.school.nz/yr6-2015/home

E.R.O

So for the past few weeks we have been preparing for our Education Review Office visit this week.  All of our hard working Kaiako and Management team have been working even harder to ensure we showcase the amazing learning and teaching that happens here at James Street School everyday!

The thought of E.R.O visiting, without a doubt, causes stress - it's a given really however this visit was extremely positive.  This time round I had an added perspective of the process as a staff trustee on the B.O.T.

I was able to contribute my own korero and knowledge of our kura at the BOT meeting with the ERO team.  This was a great start to the review week.  As a trustee I was able to confidently answer and elaborate upon the questions and queries presented to us.  It was only an hour long meeting but we could have gone on and on about our school.  I believe that our Board communicate and collaborate effectively to meet the learning needs of all our tamariki.

At the staff meeting with the ERO review team we were able to confidently and quickly provide our thoughts and knowledge regarding the five main questions that were on their agenda.  Our staff are amazing!  We work extremely well together with professionalism, humour and manaakitanga at the heart of our collegial relationships.

As an experienced teacher having an ERO reviewer observing in class still provides some nerves but it also provides another set of eyes and ears to see and hear the learning that is happening in my class for my learners.  This time round the reviewer was accompanied by a member of the Senior Management Team.  This is a new initiative.  I was lucky to have Roz Dakin (Senior Syndicate leader and Deputy Principal) come in to 'showcase' my learners, their learning and my teaching.  As Roz releases me every second Friday while I teach Waiata and Kapa haka she has her own knowledge of our class to enable her to speak to all the learning.  Michelle Andrews was our reviewer.

While I taught my A.L.L group Roz and Michelle read through my planning and supporting documents.  The reviewers had requested that they be able to speak with a few children to discuss their learning - both in their written books, online with their Google Drive & Classroom work as well as their e-Portfolios.  I chose Rosemary and Ashlee to take on this task and they both were outstanding.  Michelle was very impressed with them.  They were 'overflowing' with all their korero about their learning!

Michelle later approached me to convey that she felt it was a privilege to be able to visit in my class. This was a lovely compliment especially because it came from an ERO reviewer!  She spoke highly of our use of e-learning and the level of knowledge and skills the children have achieved in such a short timeframe.  She had thought that we had been using Chromebooks/e-learning all year long and was amazed when I told her it had only been five weeks since we began with 1:1 Chromebooks.  This positive feedback is so pleasing to receive.  It definitely helped to 'fill my bucket' and the girls buckets' too.  I am very proud of my tamariki!  All the effort feels like it 'pays off' when it is recognised at this level.

Come Thursday lunchtime the BOT met with the ERO review team to hear the main points of their initial draft report.  I was looking forward to this meeting most of all as I would be hearing it straight from the reviewers.  Needless to say our overall report was very positive and as one of the reviewers said ... we should be very, very proud!

So in conclusion ... this week began with a degree of stress which turned in to pride, joy, happiness and of course relief that the week was over.

1:1 Chromebooks until the end of 2015!!!!!

I am soooooo soooooo soooooo excited now!  Our one to one chromebook usage was initially only planned to happen for the first four weeks of Term 3 BUT thanks to the I.C.T committee and my fantastic G.A.F.E learners we are now allowed to keep the chromebooks for the rest of the year!  My tamariki nearly blew the roof off our classroom when I told them we were keeping the chromebooks!
I am very thankful for this decision.  (I was quietly panicking - after establishing a collaborative, co-operative, engaging, learner driven learning environment with chromebooks how was I going to go back to not having them?!  Thank goodness I don't have to for the rest of the year!)

I am also very thankful to the other teachers in my syndicate who are very supportive of my class retaining the chromebooks.

Managing Self Key Competency

Our Key Competency focus for this term is Managing Self.

Usually the tamariki self-assess how well they demonstrate a variety of behaviours, skills and attitudes specific to Managing Self.  Because we have our Chromebooks I thought I'd give Google Forms a go.  So I transferred the list of behaviours to a google form.  I then shared the link with the tamariki as part of a Google Classroom assignment.  Each child completed the questionaire form.  Each child received a copy of their own results and I received a google sheet with the children's named data.  Google forms automatically collates the data and produces a graph to present the data.

It is my intention to have the tamariki re-do the questionaire form at the end of the term.  Hopefully when this new data is compared to the beginning of term data we will see an improvement.

It should be interesting!

Google Classroom!

Google Classroom - I'm loving it ... now!


So my initial thoughts of Google Classroom were not very good.  But now that I have inquired into the use of G.C, and have TUTU-ED with it, I am loving it!  The terminology is obviously America e.g. assignment, turn in etc. but the purpose/application of it is universal.  I have read that G.C is more applicable to secondary school level but once you start using it and think outside the box, it is easy to use it to differentiate the learning in your classroom.

I started off with simple whole class assignments but as I figured out the possibilities I now have several 'classes'/groups set up.  These include classes for each of my writing and reading groups. Whole class assignments for Te Reo Maori me ona Tikanga, Kaupapa Mahi, Key Competencies - Managing Self, Spelling, Cybersafety and Homework.

This has honestly been a break through.  Having the ability to set tasks, attach resources, monitor, view and keep track of the children's learning has been fantastic!  The tamariki are just so quick to pick it up.  Their understanding of how it all fits together is amazing - needless to say the majority 'just know what to do'.  The level of independence and knowledge seemed to double with each assignment they worked on.  I have several tamariki who now lead and tutor others including other teachers.

Google Classroom is incredibly empowering for all tamariki!  They know where and how to access their learning.  They know what they are learning and why. They are engaged and motivated!

As with all learning journeys, there are many paths to travel down with Google Classroom.  I've opened the door of the classroom a little wider and now the tamariki are pushing it open even more than I first expected!!!

1:1 CHROMEBOOKS HERE WE COME!

SOOOOO EXCITED!!!!!!

Today I found out that my class is going to trial 1:1 Chromebooks next term!!!!!

I am soooooooooo excited!  Can you tell?

Now my poor brain is thinking and wondering and exploding with all the ideas and possibilities that having 1:1 Chromebooks will enable!!!!!

Next term is going to be extremely exciting!  Knowing how engaging and motivating using Chromebooks and our Chromecast+T.V are ... the learning in Ti Kouka next term is going to be amazing!

Now where to begin!?

My Chromebook Adventure/The Tutu Within! - Part Two

Part two:

So what have we been learning in our classroom?

We have been ...

• adding users - this was a bit of a nightmare at first - each child had to be added to each chromebook.  This took time especially when they made a spelling mistake in the email or password.  Aue!

• using Google Docs to publish writing - editing and suggesting, making comments -this is highly valuable and readily accessible

• Sharing docs for e-learning websites

• using Google Slides to present research information about a mini-beast - this is huge - the possibilities are endless (the tamariki are so quick to learn and 'suss out' how to use the different tools to enhance and customise their slide presentation - I love that they are often showing me how to do something or a quick fix or a short cut!

• using our Google Chromecast to share children's learning, to display learning intentions, success criteria and learning tasks, to view websites, to view photos and videos.

Once I develop my own knowledge of all things Google, we will be able to continue to use our Chromebooks to engage, collaborate and enhance and possibly accelerate the learning in our class!

My Chromebook Adventure/The Tutu Within!

My Chromebook Adventure/The Tutu Within!

Straight from my brain to the page, no planning, just spewed onto the doc!  Enjoy!

Towards the end of Term 1, 2015 I received 4 new Acer Chromebooks.  I already had one so I was ecstatic that I now had 5 Chromebooks.  This was the start of a mountain high load of ideas and learning possibilities that my children and I would be able to be involved in.

So where do I start …

Basically I’m a tutu!  I have taken this opportunity on board and sought out information, videos, blogs, vln posts, facebook etc to find ideas/ways/methodologies/inspiration to use in implementing the use of these chromebooks.

My number one form of ‘Professional Development’ has been me!  I am enthusiastic about technology.  I have ‘tutued’ with Google Apps for Education in order to use it in my class.  I felt that this was a good start but the need for real P.D is definitely required to effectively use this technology in my class and to pass that learning on to my fellow chromebook colleagues.  With help from the I.C.T committee (Roz and Norah) I met with Rosemary Murphy from Allandale School to see how she uses Chromebooks in her Year 5 & 6 class.

Here are some points from the meeting we had with my added opinions

1:1 Chromebooks is definitely the way to go - I fully agree with this!  5 chromebooks for 22 children has been a struggle.  We are lucky that we were able to borrow chromebooks from other classes when we were doing our Mini-Beast slides.  We also used our black laptops which have Chrome as the internet browser.  It was amazing to be able to see the level of engagement of all the children who were actively preparing the slides.  This is the ultimate payoff of one-to-one devices.  Every child engaged in learning, researching and presenting information, checking spelling, looking up words, searching images, downloading images and even youtube videos - which I hadn’t even taught them how to do.  Our tamariki were collaborating and supporting one another in their learning.  They were sharing their work with each other, they were providing suggestions and praise for each other as well.  Leasing chromebooks is the best option.

Get a tv and a chromecast - I am very thank you that I now have a tv and a chromecast.  This will enable my children and I to share and collaborate together in real time when working in small groups for mainly writing to begin with but also maths and then reading.  The ability for children to instantly ‘cast’ their computer screen to the tv screen for other children to learn from or comment on will be thrilling and motivational.  This is still very new but I look forward to exploring the possibilities that this technology will provide.  Now that I have the tv in my class it will be used daily to enhance my childrens learning.  The chromecast was fairly inexpensive ($59.00) so I am very grateful to have this set up in my class. (Thanks to Matthew for attaching the tv to my teacher’s station)  Projectors are pretty ‘old school’ now.  They are expensive and tvs are getting cheaper and cheaper.  However at this time I still see myself using my projector especially for whole class activities such as presenting Slides and videos as well as GoNoodle stuff.

Apps - Rosemary shared a handful of core apps that she uses regularly with her class.  I will endeavour to try out/make use of these apps in due course.  For now my main focus is developing my childrens ability to navigate and use the core G.A.F.E apps.  I have taken an idea shared by a teacher on the NZ Teachers FB page and come up with a GAFE skills checklist and reward system which I have called G.A.F.E Star!  My children will be able to become a GAFE Star once they can competently demonstrate the listed skills for each GAFE app.  So far we have only looked/learnt about Google Docs, Google Slides and Google Drive.  My children are extremely motivated to learn all the skills and be the first to become google stars.  Suggested apps are WeVideo, Go Animate, StupeFlix, Blogger - all children have their own personal blog to record learner - I am keen to do this but this requires discussion with the I.C.T committee re-value/purpose etc (this may be an option for developing e-portfolios in the future if needed).  I was not sure about the permissions required to load apps onto our chromebooks but Rosemary said it should be straightforward.  Just download it on each chromebook.  We also discussed Admin permission.  Rosemary is her schools Administrator along with the Principal.  I am keen to look into this further and discuss how the admin tools can be used if at all for setting up class lots of folders etc.

Google Classroom/Hapara Teacher Dashboard - we discussed these options.  Rosemary has Hapara Teacher Dashboard but rarely uses it.  I asked about Google Classroom as now that I’ve seen it, it is not actually what I thought it was (obviously needed to do more research).  It would have it’s place but having attempted to use it, it seems that I can set the same sort of assignments/tasks purely by using a google doc and sharing it.  So at this stage I will stick with just ‘sharing’ docs/assignments/task etc with my children.

i-Pad - when I asked about making movies etc using the chromebooks Rosemary said it would be better if you had a class i-Pad as these were more convenient for capturing and editing video.  I have mentioned this to Ana in Ponga as they have i-Pads which we are able to use.  So later along the journey I will give this a go.

Point England School - Auckland - Rosemary highly recommended that a group of teachers from our school visit this school.  They are leaders in I.C.T implementation, use and enhanced learning.  Point England School is a decile 1 school with over 600 students (mainly Pacifica and Maori).  I have visited their school website and it is amazing to see the things that they are doing.  I am now following several of their teachers blogs as they record their I.C.T journey.

Pedagogy - as I have investigated and gotten carried away with all this ‘google, chromebook’ stuff and considered the direction I would like to take I have come across this word several times.  Yes I am a tutu, I want to use these technologies in my class.  I want my children to achieve success and develop pride in their abilities as GAFE stars but I am bugged by the fact that I am just doing it myself.  I do not know if I am really on the right track.  Is this use of technology really enhancing the learning of my children or is it just cool stuff and just tutuing.  What is my understanding of the Pedagogy that sits behind this technology?  What does our school believe?  If I think that one-to-one devices are the way to go is this supported in the schools pedagogy?  Will this be a barrier?  So as I continue along this learning journey I do need to slow down and ensure that what we are doing/learning in our class is grounded in pedagogy and is supported by the school.  All the research that I have come across so far clearly states that schools that are using I.C.T/Chromebooks/i-pads/tvs/chromecast and technology in general are enhancing their students learning because they have got the pedagogy and foundations set and firmly embedded across the school.  As the saying goes … when we’re all paddling our waka in the same direction we’ll get there faster … or maybe that’s just something I mixed up myself.☺

So where to next?
Continue being a tutu!
Keep in contact with the I.C.T committee via Roz- committee member and my Senior Teacher - re policy, resources etc
Investigate 'pedagogy' further
Plan to use technology - Teaching as Inquiry model for low writers - enhancing their writing by using Chromebooks instead of exercise book and pen.

Complete Part Two of this post ... What am I actually teaching and what are my tamariki learning?

New T.V!!!

Woo hoo!  I'm so excited.  Today we used our new 50 inch TV in class to enhance, motivate, capture and inspire my learners.  We all think we're pretty flash alright.

We are very grateful to have our new t.v which Mr Watson kindly installed for us last Friday afternoon.  He did a great job of securing it to the teacher's station.