Effective Mentoring with Phil Spriggs

I sat down to write a quick reflection on our workshop today but for some reason, my fingers had a mind of their own. They ended up writing an opening blog post for 2018 on oral language. Crazy.

So I've quickly recorded a couple take-aways from today's session, including my goal. Yes, if you listen to this you will see that I forgot my goal. However, I put that down to me not referring to my notes.

Connect Four - STOP.... sharing time!

Kia Orana. I am currently sitting amongst an amazing group of educators here at Waikowhai Primary School for our Ako Hiko Cluster meeting. Our task today is to connect four... yes, as in the game connect four but better!

Below you will see my 'Connect Four' game board. It's a simple, straightforward and easy way to collect evidence and build your presence online as a connected learning educator.

How to play
After participating in one of the tasks, you add a link to evidence of the task then shade in the box. Once you have 'connected four' you win, start your winning streak. By winning streak I mean that you 'connect four' and win. Then the OCD teacher in you makes you want to connect five, six... nine until you just want to complete the board.. or is that just me?

The world of 'sharing' 
Sharing online is like going for a swim at the beach. It's a place where you can easily sit back and admire the ocean of knowledge. Sometimes we get really comfortable and just sit there without getting in. Yet we are more than happy to help ourselves to the abundance of resources.

Personally, I walk into the ocean and go through stages of breathlessness and fear as the water rises. Prior to completely submerging I usually go through a split second of anger when people think splashing me will help me get in faster. In all honesty, the splashing works. Whether you're just the 'dip your toes in' kind of person or the 'fast walk and plunge' type, this game board is the splash you need to get yourself out there sharing your work.

It is a fantastic way share your learning online without that daunting feeling. Before you know it, sharing becomes second nature.

Thank you to Gerhard for sharing this with us today and thank you to Mark and the team for creating this board and giving me the splash I needed to get back into it.

Reflection sheet

Hello everyone. Haven't shared in a while.

This is a reflection sheet I have created to help students record evidence of any learning done using online learning tools eg Reading Eggspress, Prototec or Mathletics.

Feel free to use, ignore or give feedback

Have a happy week nine!

Spark MIT IGNITE presentations at uLearn16

uLearn16 provided an opportunity the Spark Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers to present their inquiries through an IGNITE style talk. Through these talks the audience heard our key ideas, data, reflections and where to next from each of the inquiries.

I highly recommend following the other amazing Spark MIT inquiries by following this link

Here is my IGNITE presentation from uLearn.

Technology isn’t just a tool

Karen Spencer delivered an inspiring and thought provoking keynote at uLearn16. It has definitely served as a springboard for my future wonderings and was a clever ‘key note’ to start my symphony.

“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail." - Abraham H Maslow

Karen spoke about Maslow’s Hammer and the implications it had for us as educators. That we need to understand that their is no quick fix to engaging, inspiring and motivating our learners. Viewing technology as ‘just a tool’ inhibits our ability to innovate or create opportunities for our students to succeed. Technology in this case is ‘Maslow’s Hammer’.

Viewing technology as a tool essentially leads to ‘quick fixes’. Let’s look at issues with inappropriate images. A quick fix would be to add a filtering system that removes inappropriate content. That would be great until the tags on the images change and they let a few slip through the filters. If that happens we can carefully select images for intended use and link them to a shared document. Except now the links have been updated and redirect us to the wrong sites.. and the cycle of ‘quick fixes’ continues.

John Couch referred to technology as an environment, not a tool. This is true for most of our learners who grew up with technology, it’s second nature to them. If we view technology as an environment we can do away with the quick fixes. Instead we can create ways to support and inform our learners. For example the Cybersmart curriculum empowers our learners to navigate through their environment with the smarts to keep safe.

Couch also mentioned that we should make sure classrooms are relevant, creative and challenging with an element of collaboration. We need to create creators not consumers. With this in mind we need to empower them with the skills to navigate, manipulate, innovate and create things that couldn’t be done without their natural environment. If we don’t, we may as well be teaching our learners to share their learning through morse code.




McRaney, D. (2012, March 27). Maslow's Hammer. Retrieved October 08, 2016, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/you-are-not-so-smart/201203/maslows-hammer

uLearn 16 wondering

I have just heard this...
Mindcraft is going to be one of the most powerful educational tools over the next year. 

My wondering is... is it the the game (Minecraft) that we should be using as part of learning?  I say this because I feel the game could be used incorrectly, out of context and end up with some learners purely playing a 'game'.

Should we be digging deeper and helping our learners understand how this game enables learning? Or should we be getting them to think about how they can create content on a similar platform to share their learning, teach and inspire others?

What are your thoughts?

LCS - how do your students use their 'share' skills?

I was lucky enough to attend the first EdChatNZ conference back in 2014. Thinking back.. I remember sitting with the secondary school students as they completed their work and hearing them talk about their learning. It was a day I will never forget because when I saw those students talking so freely about their learning, I realised they were doing something I wasn't practicing. I knew I had to put this into practice myself and really wanted to get my students to do the same. This became one of my long term goals.

Adding a little context...

Wednesday

Two of my students emailed the CatDoor Company to see if they could sponsor us to get a microchip cat door for our school cat (as it is so cold at night). On Wednesday they got a response from The CatDoor Company who have graciously given Dusky a microchip cat door, new glass window for installation and installation all for free.  

Friday

During second block one of my students had just finished presenting his learning conversation to his mum and myself (yes he was brave enough to discuss his goals etc while the rest of the class worked independently), when Grant (from The CatDoor Company) came into class to talk with him and another student. These two students beautifully handled the business proposal which they explained through learn, create, share. While this conversation was happening I had two other students sit down and join in while a few onlookers listened as they completed their work. Once the business proposal had been wrapped up, the students decided to share some of their learning.  More students lined up to share tasks they had completed, discuss the different learning tools they use and explain how they help them learn.  They had Grant's full attention for a solid fifty minutes.

This is when I stood back and realised that my students were sharing their work independently... no support from me... without me... wait, without me?  Did someone say student agency!?!

YAY! I had achieved my goal.  My learners were sharing their learning by choice.  They had their own motivations, tools and ability to share. My reflection: it was a transformation over time, not a change that happened.  Change is a quick switch that can be CTRL-Z'd just like that, whereas transformation is a process where skills and learning is built upon. That is how I achieved my goal. After seeing my students respond so well to having Grant in the class my new goal is to invite in more experts into the classroom.  Either through social media or in person.  I really need to give them more authentic learning experiences where they can utilise their 'share' skills and reflect on them for improvement.

Another time to reflect...

I mean, Another time opportunity to reflect..

My class responded well to using screencastify as a reflection tool. In this context I have defined 'reflection tool' as a tool that is used to record active refection as well as a tool to capture learning, which is then listened to and reflected upon. I have found that using screencastify seemed to reignite the enthusiasm around active reflection.  With this in mind I decided to enhance the opportunities to reflect by creating a QR Code Challenge.

This challenge included the use of GAFE tools such as google presentations, google spreadsheets, google drawing, screencastify and QR Codes.  There was also a slight hint of gamification as students had the opportunity to earn a digital badge upon completion of the challenge.

Where does reflection tie into this challenge?
The challenges were based on reflection.  Each challenge had a few bullet points or key ideas to reflect on.  These reflections were recorded using screencastify which was access via a QR code (also created by students).

Instead of reading about me babbling on about this task, have a look through the QR Code challenge I created.  Feel free to post any feedback or questions below.

Update
Here are two student blogs with their 'QR Code Master' badges displayed at the top
Raymond: hpsraymondt.blogspot.co.nz
Gargee: hpsgargeej.blogspot.co.nz 

A time to refect...

Throughout term one I encouraged student reflection using a range of approaches.  Some examples are reflection dice, socrative quick questions and the exit ticktets, learning conferences with my students, posing reflective questions during group work, think alouds etc.

However I felt that is was starting to become slightly monotonous.  More of a chore than an active state of critical thinking to improve learning outcomes. So what did I do?  I switched it up and turned to my new buddy Screencastify (sometimes pronounced Screencastifly - so cute!).  However, I didn't come up with this idea by myself.  It was one of my students who had decided to record himself reflecting on the self-assessment of his writing.  He said it 'helped him to feel good and that it would be evidence for Miss Fortes if she doesn't think that he has self-asssessed because some people just make it colourful and pretty but don't know why'

Cue in Screencastify.  We have started using screencastify to assist us as a reflective tool where they would record themselves reflecting on a particular task and paste it into their document.  This allowed them to revisit their reflections, gave me an insight to what they understood and still found tricky as well as helping others who weren't sure what to do.

Prior to recording their ideas the student's were asked to write their reflections.  The differentiated aspect to this task was that my students who struggled to type their ideas were only required to record them orally.  Yes to some 'typing and recording orally' may seem pointless, a double up and a waste of time. However writing their reflections helped them keep track of what they were saying.  As some students read out their reflections their auto response was to explain some vague points they had identified only from reading it aloud.  Boom!  Reflecting on learning whilst reflecting in the moment.

Here is a snippet of how it looked in a document.