DFI Session 7 Reflection

 Time to reflect and share with colleagues.

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

• Today we unpacked the meaning of “Ubiquitous Learning” where students are able to learn anytime, anywhere and anyplace. Manaiakalani promotes a strong emphasis on students, teachers and parents having all round access to learning because it's about the people and the whole community. This is not just a teach and student interaction but a wider community notion where everyone is in the loop of what is happening in school for our tamariki. I support this type of thinking because whanau engagement is a very important aspect of schooling. I believe that if the aiga is involved and supports the child's educational aspirations they are more likely to achieve greatness. We are not just about results. I mean don't get me wrong yes we have intended outcomes for our students but I value the importance of going through the journey where our people are there every step of the way! If this means getting our whanau up to speed with how our children are learning in the 21st century then so be it. We are all capable of change and amplifying our environment so that everyone has this shared understanding. 

• I totally agree that the devices we use with our students are not just seen as a tool but a tool that can turbo charge and amplify learning experiences for our students. An effective teacher would be able to utilise these tools to help engage our students in the content we tend to give through the same channels but if we are going to be agents of change this year we need to think of more innovative and creative ways to deliver content to our students.

• This leads me to how important it is to capture student learning! Taking every opportunity to video and take photos of learning conversations as well as hands on activities our children engage in. I have been thinking about how my class site looks and to me what's more important is the students' work that will be shared on our site and their blogs. 

• The nature of this whole experience is scary for some however its a way forward where we play a part in being agents of change. There is that stigma where teachers feel that sharing planning for everyone to see is scary because there is always that mindset where we think it aint good enough. I believe in sharing because it just makes our job a lot easier. Lets all see it as helping each other out especially when time is always an issue for us teachers. 

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

• Creating content on Hapara workspace is a very creative way to help students learn. I was thinking about what I create in the workspace so I thought about cyber safety and the importance of having guidelines in place so that students and teachers are actively being cyber smart in class. 

• I create videos and resources my students could go through to help them understand why we need to be cyber smart in this time and age. 

What did I learn that could be used with my learners, how could they use it? 

• I will definitely use the Cyber Smart workspace with my students especially because this is a crucial part of using digital technology. 

• I want my students to be cyber smart by being able to make the right decisions for themselves. We tend to make decisions based on taking a device away from the child however this does not solve the problem! We need to educate our learners about the dangers of posting, uploading, and commenting online this way they understand the dangers of not communicating appropriately online. 

• This is a very important part of using digital devices and believe if this is not implemented in class students shouldn’t be engaging in online learning. 

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

• Well the hapara tips and tricks have really helped support me with monitoring and making sure my students are doing what they should.

• We looked at ways we could use the ipad as well. Although my class does not have iPads, knowing about the way it can be used is awesome because I have an idea of how our junior students can engage in online learning using an ipad. 

DFI Session 6 Reflection

 Time to reflect and share with colleagues.

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

“The important thing is living together, making friends and exchanging ideas”. This statement has truth to it because when we think about ourselves as teachers we communicate, collaborate with our colleagues in order to make learning fun and engaging. This is how we as teachers stay connected. We bounce ideas off each other, share resources and come to a shared understanding so that we all have a common purpose or goal that our students will understand. We focused on the importance of staying connected not just teachers with teachers but also with students and families. This is one thing we strive to accomplish as teachers where we think of ways we can interact and engage with our whanau so that they too have the opportunity to connect with their children's education and aspirations in life. We are very familiar with the quote “it takes a village to raise a child”. It takes teachers, students, families, principals, board of trustees etc to have a massive impact on our students as learners. The importance of staying connected through teaching and learning and vision schools have is important. This is what drives our passions and our goals which is to help our students succeed in whatever career path they decide to choose. 

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

• Google sites have become my go to workspace where I am focusing on making it presentable but also easy to navigate. 

• I am trying my best to make it look professional but also student focused where their photos are on it. 

• At this point I am focusing on one learning and just trying to get this up and running moving away from google classroom and start working the site with my students. 

• Hapara is now working for me, I can see all the folders I need to have and will focus on working with my students to move their work into these folders. 

What did I learn that could be used with my learners, how could they use. 

• Organising their documents into the correct folders this will make it visible for me in Hapara but also more organised for teachers and students. 

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

• Working google sites and providing feedback to our peers brought about new ideas and ways to make my google more interactive and engaging for my students.

• I am now focusing on one curriculum area so that my students can engage with the content loaded on my site. 

• I have chosen to work my Literacy site for page so that I start using this as a live working document. This will mean my students will become familiar with how they will access their work moving forward. 

DFI Session 5 Reflection

 Time to reflect and share with colleagues.

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

• Session 5 touched on learning becoming visible. I believe this is what teachers aim to do is to make teaching and learning visible where students can see what is what they are learning about. Visible learning happens when learners are able to connect to the context of learning but also where they are able to connect with their peers. Students need to see what they are learning where there are no barriers in the way of them accessing what they need to learn. When I think about my teaching practice and how I make learning visible in my class I think about the resources I use and how this supports my students when trying to connect to the content. Although we try our best to make learning visible we also need to keep in mind that the learning also needs to be engaging. By providing engaging content delivery you will see behavioural engagement and cognitive engagement occur. 

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

• We had an awesome introduction to google sites where I learnt how to create multiple pages and buttons that will navigate the learning for my students. 

• Google draw is an awesome tool to use to create labels of my students that will help make my website more student focused.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners, how could they use

• Definitely going to get my students to be creative and create the buttons for our website using google draw. This way my students will feel that they have contributed to the creation of our class site. 

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

• Still in the early stages of making my google site fun, engaging and interactive for my students. Im am looking forward to the content my students are going to create and share on our site. 

DFI S4 Reflection

 Time to reflect and share with colleagues

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

This week's session we focused on the sharing aspect of the Manaiakalani pedagogy and discussed the effectiveness of sharing student learning. Based on my experience sharing is essential to learning because students need to understand the importance of sharing knowledge with others in their learning communities. This is the way we learn through sharing knowledge, experiences therefore helps us see learning from different perspectives. Although Manaiakalani promotes using digital technology to amplify learning experiences face to face interaction remains essential to learning. Just being in the presence of an audience shows the importance of face to face interactions; it's how we communicate on a deeper level with others. 

When I think back on last year and how I implemented PBL (project based learning) there was a lot of opportunity for my students to share what they learnt in each session. This gave them a sense of ownership and fulfillment being proud of what they created as a result sharing became more powerful.  Students also hesitate to share because of the fear of their work not being good enough. I guess it's like us teachers when we are all in a staff meeting we hesitate to share our knowledge because of the fear that it's not good enough. I guess it comes down to how well we create a learning environment that is inclusive and open to sharing no matter whether it links or far from linking to what we are talking about. Feeling comfortable to share is important. 

The question is how much of sharing happens in my classroom? Previous years probably not enough but as this year rolls out student input and output has to happen in order for students to critique and give feedback to each other. 

Learning can take place during learning, creating and sharing and capturing these moments and giving my students to share what they have learnt. Our School does DMIC and during this approach maths students are learning to solve problems, they are working together to create new ways of solving the problems and then sharing their thinking as a group. The Manaiakalani pedagogy is happening in my class and thinking about this on another scale is trying to capture this sharing digitally and sharing this on our class site. 

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

We learnt how spreadsheets work and how this could be used to help gather data for my students in my class. 

Learning about Google Maps is very helpful. This could be used for so many learning opportunities for my students. 

What did I learn that could be used with my learners, how could they use

My new learning made me think about collecting data using spreadsheets etc test scores, spelling scores

Taking a statistics approach and helping students gather data and form this in a chart for them to read. 

Using google maps to find distances, areas, measurement and just telling a story of their holiday trips. Great ways to engage our students in learning. 

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

Just using Spreadsheets as a working document for planning for my students and looking forward to embedding my spreadsheets to my classroom site. 

DFI S3 Reflection

 

Time to reflect and share with colleagues

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

Creativity is all about engagement. If students are engaged in learning creativity is guaranteed to happen because they are interested in what they are learning about. In any learning context we are creators of content not consumers of content. We all need the opportunity to bring our knowledge to fruition and creating something does the job. Creating involves a lot of skills like planning what the creation would look like whether it be hard materials or a digital presentation or video no matter what it is the process of planning has to be well prepared. This is skill in itself where ideas are shared and questions are asked to make sure everyone has a shared understanding. 

Creative skills help students become better problem solvers, communicators and collaborators. We as educators need to create opportunities for students to exercise their creativity. Students need to explore for themselves through research and hands on experiences which leads to students coming up with original ideas of their own. 

This would come down to the teacher and their expectations for learning. I know that reflecting on my practice there always needs to be an area of where creativity is explored with the students. This is something I look to improve in my practice moving forward. 

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

Learning about google drawing was awesome because you get to manipulate shapes, lines and images that we create for our students. 

Looking into animation was neat however needing more practice with this using slides. 

What did I learn that could be used with my learners, how could they use

I know that there are a lot of students who watch animation and this could be used in a learning context in my class to motivate and engage my students in reading and writing. 

They can use animation to tell a story. 

Using Google Draw to create their own profiles for the blog pages and modifying it where they are using the Pepehas as an introduction or writing personal goals for themselves.