Reflection Week 9

Reflection 

Week 9

Cohort 2

Dorothy spoke this morning about ubiquitous learning - learning anywhere, anytime, anyway (on any device) and "learning from anyone". The availability of digital technologies and tools makes this possible. This is increasingly the way 21st-century learners engage with their learning and making sense of the world around them. We have a good percentage of students who use their Chromebooks responsibly at home for learning purposes. These students are usually self-directed, they have a good understanding of the implications of the Kawa of Care and they enjoy great parent support. Unfortunately, we have been struggling with a group of students who find it difficult to manage their own learning at home on devices and whose parents are uninvolved. 

Rewindable learning opportunities contribute to the process of ubiquitous learning.  It allows students to revisit learning content in their own time. We should not underestimate the power of rewindable knowledge for the individual. This is precisely what I will be doing with the content we covered during the DFI. 

Thank you very much to all the facilitators for their time and hard work during the DFI.  

Nga manaakitanga

Casper

Reflection Week 8

Reflection

Week 8

Cohort 2

I found the session with Dorothy on an empowered kaupapa interesting this morning. The Manaiakalani kaupapa is not only about empowering students, but also empowering teachers. The whole approach encourages reciprocal teaching and learning (ako) in a digital as well as bicultural environment. 

I like the statement that technology is not just a tool for learning and teaching. It needs to be used to empower our learners. 

Our own Kokatahu-Kowhitirangi School curriculum is a future-focused curriculum with the aim to empower our students for the future in all its different aspects. We focus on teaching the following learning behaviours needed for the future: reflectiveness, reciprocity (ako), resilience and resourcefulness. This aligns well with the Manaiakalani approach. 

Developing computational thinking forms part of this future-focused curriculum. We have only started on this journey with one Beebot and 13 Sphero robots. Our approach will be to integrate it as far as we possibly can with the other core and non-core curriculum areas. 

It is really important for teachers to develop their own digital fluency and capabilities and to adapt to teaching this new curriculum area. If we expect our students to be digitally fluent, we need to be digitally fluent teachers as well or at least resilient and resourceful problem solvers. 

A digitally fluent person can decide when and why to use specific digital technologies to achieve a specific task or solve problems. A digitally capable person can create their own digital technologies solution. Both of these are important as part of the digital technologies curriculum. 

Nga mihi

Casper

Reflection Week 7

Reflection Week 7
Cohort 2

Quite a frustrating start this morning with the grid view on Google Meet not working. It took me about half an hour to solve the problem and unfortunately I missed some of Dorothy's presentation on Hapara Dashboard. However, we all know that when we use digital technologies, we need to be problem solvers, we need to persevere and we need to be resilient - that is what we expect from our students and we need to set the example in that regard.
The session on "Explain Everything" was great. This tool can be used in many different ways for students to create digital learning objects. It can actually be used across the school for different age levels, but you do need an iPad for it. Trying to use it on a Chromebook doesn't work that well.
An emphasis on the Cyber Smart curriculum is really important, especially when you make ubiquitous learning possible by sending Chromebooks home. All the Manaikalani and outreach schools have their own core values, but these are linked or underpinned by the Smart Values. See video below:

Reflection Week 3

Reflection Week 3 Cohort 2

Tuesday 19th May 2020

Great sessions today as well. 

I really enjoyed it and I suppose it is because the emphasis was on "Create". Dorothy is right, this aspect of our pedagogy is very important. "Create" is basically the link between "Learn" and "Share". It is a simple pedagogy that can be understood by everyone, including our tamariki: Students "Create" to demonstrate what they have been learning and then "Share" it with the world out there. 

I'm quite interested in using YouTube Live to stream our Assemblies/Huis. I have a wide-angle webcam that I can use for this purpose. I just need to find a way to share it out and to get out parent community connected. In other words, our parents are not in our domain and that might be tricky. I emailed Kent in this regard. There might also be issues with privacy and we need to keep this within our parent community only. 

We use Google Drawings quite often in creating images for publishing on our Class Sites as well as on Google Slides. It is also a great place to use and apply your creative skills and to engage students. Below is my attempt at using Google Draw. 

Using Google Draw

Thank you to the facilitators for all your efforts. 

Nga mihi

Casper

Week 2 Blog Post Cohort 1

Blog

Reflection Cohort 1 

One of the things I realised today was that the Māori term "Ako" (Learn) doesn't only mean "Learn", but also "Teach". That makes a lot of sense and it brings balance to this pedagogical approach. 

I think one of the ultimate goals of using digital technologies with the pedagogy of LCS, is to make it possible for our students to become independent and self-directed learners - in other words, to participate fully in the process of ubiquitous learning and doing it in a responsible and effective way. To develop good ubiquitous learning skills is probably one of our biggest challenges. 

Some of the very useful things I learnt today that I can use with my students and specifically for administrative purposes in my role as principal: 

• Linking Google Keep with Calendar. Keep it on the side and take notes. It is helping me to get more organised. 
• Learning new ways to use Google mail, like setting a date to send the email. 
• I also found using shortcuts in Google Calendar helpful. 
• "Toby mini" is a great way to organise all my tabs. I usually have a lot open and it helps me to organise my workflow better. 
• Setting up Google Hangouts from Google Calendar. I will need more time on this!
• Also, using the Task Button underneath the Google Keep button to create tasks in Goggle Calendar. 

Thank you for a great day!