Orientation 2022 - Connecting with Manaiakalani

Orientation 2022 took place on 25th January 2022. The Orientation day is an opportunity for teachers new to our cluster schools to connect with the kaupapa and pedagogy of The Manaiakalani Programme.

Schools are invited to send teachers for this PLD opportunity so they can experience the Learn Create Share pedagogy as they learn about the Manaiakalani Programme. This is a collegial space where they can access support and develop a deeper understanding of The Manaiakalani Programme and what it offers them as a teacher in a school in our Tairāwhiti cluster and especially as a teacher in a 1:1 digital environment.

Details of your Orientation Day can be found on our cluster site here.

The participants will create an online profile which brings together learning about being Cybersmart, learning about digital tools and then sharing their creations. 

Their online profiles are included in this presentation. 2021 profiles from participants are included as well.

Tract Newsletter

 

Passion and Project Based Learning

Passion is contagious yet personal. By osmosis, seeing others' passions brings out your own.

 

Your passion gives you a reason to keep learning -- even when things get difficult. This month, students in Lynnie, Diane and Jane’s classes from Kapakapanui School followed their passions together by completing How Artists Use Color Psychology when Creating Logos as a group. I was so impressed by the quality of the projects and the unique individuality of each creation!

 

 

 

 

View More Awesome Projects

When Kids Teach, They Learn, Grow and Get EXCITED

Aristotle once said teaching is the highest form of understanding. As students translate their passions into creating their own video lessons, they not only increase their subject matter comprehension but they also build self-confidence, creativity, technology, and communication skills. Starting this month, all students can teach their classmates on Tract and work toward earning Creator Partner status.

Students created lessons on Minecraft mods, Creating your first game on Roblox, Solving the Rubik's Cube, Sketching using scale, How to Be The Best Rugby Player, and more! One standout student -- Leytonh -- even earned Affiliate Creator status after publishing 5 learning paths with excellent school engagement and quality.

 

Congratulations to Leytonh and his teachers Barry & Kaitlyn at Gisborne Intermediate. Be on the lookout for his new lessons!

 

 

Inside The Movie Sonic The Hedgehog

Created by Leytonh

 

 

Sketching With Scale

Created by gayesham

World Teacher Day

We celebrated World Teacher Day on October 5th by giving out DOUBLE COINS for students who showed their appreciation! Anne’s classroom from Woodlands Elementary made it very clear that she is a 1 in a BILLION teacher with some heartfelt messages and creative displays of thanks!

 

 

Students Give Back

This month students gave back in a BIG way, donating 128 meals, planting 10 trees, protecting coastline, and helping kids go to school, cope with cancer, and heal from abuse.

 

Our biggest giver this month was Gisborne Intermediate -- as many of the students chose to spend their hard-earned coins from the Oh My Gourd contest on others. Leading the way was tflamwell from Olivia’s class who donated 8 meals.

 

These micro-donations add up, and allow each student to own the decision to give back, gain awareness of the UN sustainable development goals, and start thinking about these important world problems. I’ve heard countless stories of dinner table and classroom conversations that started from 1 simple action.

 

 

Gisborne Intermediate enjoyed their Spooktacular Tract-sponsored pizza party after winning this month's Oh My Gourd! Award contest

Product Updates

We released a new Class Hub and Navigation experience that makes browsing Tract and finding what you’re looking for much easier! You’ll notice all the main navigation routes are on the top bar, and a secondary navigation when you click in to find nested information.

 

The “Classroom” tile is replaced by “Teach” in the top navigation and here you can see all your classes and student work. We now support adding co-teachers and editing classroom names. Students can also now find their classmates in their avatar profile dropdown menu.

 

 

We exposed the Learning Path builder (aka course creator) to all students. Now, students can start their journey as a Creator by clicking “Create” in the top navigation. This provides an entry point for students who do not need the structured support of our #CreatorAcademy and just want to start teaching!

 

 

What's On Deck For Next Month?

If you thought October was FUN, wait until you hear about what’s cooking for next month:

1. Bigger, Better Creator Academy
2. Fun New Product Updates
3. Our Biggest Contest Yet...

Not Yet Started On Tract?

Get started in under 5 minutes by following our new Getting Started Guide!

Orientation & Connecting with Manaiakalani

This year we held our Orientation day with teachers who are new to our cluster. The Manaiakalani Orientation contributes to a programme of professional learning that supports our people to confidently connect with the goals of our education programme, including raising educational outcomes for our young people through effective teaching in future focused communities of learning.

Today's participants worked within the Learn Create Share pedagogy to connect with the kaupapa of The Manaiakalani Programme Outreach.

 

To experience the Learn Create Share pedagogy our participants explored online profiles and the Cybersmart thinking of how to advertise ourselves positively online. 

 

 They created their own online profile using a range of tools. Here are their profiles shared in a slide deck. Take a peek and please leave a comment. 

History in the Making

Do you feel like history is being written right before our eyes? I do. Everyday there is a significant development in every way. And while I am deeply ensconced in isolation and working at supporting teachers to deliver online learning, I am staying in touch with (official) sources of information.
My 3 go to's are...

• COVID-19 NZ Government site
• The Prime Minister's daily press conference 
• The Spinoff's COVID-19 page

So how is history written? I think we can write history. We don't need historians or academics to do it for us. And yes, I think they will publish books on this pandemic and the responses will be analysed ad infinitum, but I reckon we can write history just as well as them.

How? By documenting and curating our experiences and understandings we can write history.

Teachers are in a position that we have never been in before. We are having to deliver learning online - uncharted waters for everyone.

We need to write and write and write as this new reality unfolds. I entreated a group of teachers at a staff meeting last week to document what happens over the next 4 or more weeks. The group I was with all have professional learning blogs and this is the ideal platform for them to write, reflect and amplify their experience.

I have been motivated to write this blog post by another blogger - Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano aka:  Langwitches. Her blog post We are in the Midst of Making History really got me thinking about history and not leaving it to the academics to write. Her blog post has many questions that will prompt thinking. Let's get this down for posterity and chronicle our growth as educators, because I predict that out of this disruption will come change. 

So get writing...and be kind.

Why Blogs?

This question comes up all the time in our work as facilitators with The Manaiakalani Programme.

So why do we in the Manaiakalani Programme choose Blogger as the platform for Share | Tohatoha? 

Many years ago I visited Pt England School and saw the way blogging was used with learners. On return to my school I got stuck in and get students blogging. We followed a lot of the guidelines on Edublogs and joined in with their challenges. We also joined Quad Blogging and interacted with schools in USA and UK. It was fun especially when we had a competition to see who could get visitors to their blog form different countries and who could get the most visitors.

I read the Langwitches blog by Silvia Tolisano and she is a strong advocate of blogging. Not just blogging by learners but she advocates for teachers to blog FOR their students.

My main reason for learners to blog is the way a whole bunch of skills come together such as writing skills, reading skills, metacognition skills and reflection skills to name a few.

Image from Langwitches

Sharing by blogging is core to what we do in The Manaiakalani Programme. We have systems and processes to develop blogging with teachers and students and are able to provision this legally, systematically, and securely under the GSuite owned by each school's BoT so they can share with purpose.

So why should we blog?  I firmly believe that blogging gives the quietest learners a voice, a place to document their learning and to connect with others.

Amplifying our Practice - Getting from others

As we plan for our term 1 staff meetings with a Learn | Ako focus, I am reflecting on offerings from  other educators on the WWW as they amplify their practice.

We live in a digital landscape which makes sharing and requesting very easy. With digital resources we can share and help each other.

When you learn, teach. When you get, give - Maya Angelou

There is a plethora of sites with digital offerings right across the curriculum spectrum. But oh! how do you sift through offerings such as "50 of the Best Chrome Extensions for Teachers". I really don't have time to sift through these.

I do like lists like this on in a Sheet from Eric Curts where you can use the control + F  function to search the Sheet and get to what you want.

Locally we have a Facebook group to share stuff that we find useful. Join us and share the good stuff you have. We also have a Google + community for out Tairāwhiti cluster to share good stuff.

I have a long list of educators around the world that I glean all kinds of information from. This ranges from global education issues to specific Google sites that provide information about Google Apps. I subscribe to their blogs, follow them on Twitter and listen to podcasts and ma thankful for the material they provide for us all to use. Who do you follow or subscribe to?

Once you tame your twitter feed this is a a place to go to. Hashtags help sort the material. List of edu #hashtags are available as a place to start. I use TweetDeck to help organise Twitter Feeds. I would be lost with out this.

Once we discover a source of material we then need to Cybersmart and use our critical thinking and literacies to determine whether the material is useful, reliable and/or applicable to our context.

One found you will then need a curation tool so you can find it when you need it. I use Google Keep, OneTab Chrome extension, Toby Mini Chrome extension and Bookmarks in Chrome mainly.

In our term 1 staff meetings we have been exploring Manaiakalani Class on Air episodes. If you want to see real teachers in action in real classrooms then this is the pace for you to go. The teachers document an extended plan which allows you to get inside their head and see how they have planned and reflected on lessons they teach and video for us to watch and learn from. This Sheet lists all episodes. Hint: use the tabs at the bottom to explore categories and control+F to find specific search terms. This shared resource really does amplify teaching practice.

Capturing those Voices & Moments

As we have held our staff meetings this term and used Screencastify and Flipgrid to capture and share teacher's instructions on video, it is amazing how anxious and reluctant teachers are in making a video using their voice to give instructions. Teachers need to get used to using their voice outside the classroom walls. AI and voice recognition is a growing area of technology. Here is a blog post about voice recognition with summaries from a variety of experts.

In our staff meetings we have got teachers to make a Screencastify tutorial on how to use Google Voice Search. They then shared their tutorial on a Flipgrid (embedded below).

Screencastify is an efficient tool that teachers should be harnessing to use in their class. Teachers can quickly make tutorials to support student learning. Students can use Screencastify to record proof of their learning. More junior classes can use it to read and check for fluency.

There are many sites that give teachers ideas on how to use Screencastify. Here is a starter list from Matt Miller of "Ditch That textbook" fame and his post about using Flipgrid in the class

Flipgrid is a tool that can capture voices in the classroom quickly and efficiently. It also enables replying.  This would hook students in.

Connecting with Chch

Towards the end of Term 2 a group of the Tairāwhiti Outreach team travelled to Christchurch to connect with Kelsey (Facilitator), Hornby Primary and the the Uru Mānuka cluster. The key vision of the expedition (Besides Jo and Paul heading to the Trustees Hui the day following) was to connect and learn from a cluster in their second phase of the Manaiakalani Outreach Programme.

While there they were able to attend a sense making session to see what the Manaiakalani Outreach journey looks like 5 years down the track. It was amazing to see how cohesive and collaborative the school leaders were who were attending. A collaborative approach was taking towards solving 'Our Problems' as a cluster - identifying the need based on cluster data. Very inspirational!

GizzyBytes 2.0

An opportunity to connect

This event was inspired by a conversation with a teacher who found that sometime the best take-aways from PL opportunities is the connections made and ideas discussed with other attendees. So with that purpose in mind... this adventure set off with an open agenda of creating an opportunity to connect educators and enable opportunities to collaborate with local educators. Simple idea with an effective outcome.

Feedback from teachers and people who attended was very positive and those who were able to make it there utilised the opportunity to connect with others, ask questions, challenge assumptions and to create further opportunities to get together with each other. We have lots of educators who are interested in connecting with each other in Tairāwhiti!

Making connections across schools 

There were many teachers from schools across our cluster wanting to connect. Below is the table showing those who signed up and endeavoured to make it to the experience.

Coffee, food and an epic venue

Gisborne Boys High Catering teacher, Josef Reiter and his helper William, a student at Boys High served great coffee and hot chocolate as well as putting on a fabulous spread for teachers. A wonderful effort as the boys who created the spread back at school needed to be convinced to make the food that they would not be around to eat!

Teachers won and got to enjoy the food. Great for busy teachers who haven't managed lunch. The Waikanae SLS club was a wonderful venue, even on a cloudy day. Please contact Clara if you are looking for an awesome space that includes wifi, catering facilities and an epic view! Contact the club now :)

Thanks to Connext Trust for sponsoring the food and venue.

Google Innovators

Newly minted Google Innovators shared their pitches of the projects they are working on. Two passionate local teachers, Rachel Duckworth and Amie Williams showed us what they are planning to support our Tairāwhiti learners and beyond.