DFI Day six - enabling access - sites

From last time:

• Adding audio files that read the site out is helpful. Online voice recorder and a chrome extension specifically for slides - this is a work in progress and something I am implementing as my new normal
• Hapara parent portal - we have a lot of apps/mediums already. at this stage we want to know what it looks like as a parent and we are yet to see it, because we haven't had time to look! But it is certainly a part of our intention
• Challenging how visible we are as a kura, digitally - Wānanga teacher sites were not actually visible to our community. We have addressed this  however, the consistency between sites is very varies, even though there are really good guidelines and examples from our Wānanga leaders, Anna and Raewyn. 
• Promoting google class OnAir to staff as a resource - yet to happen beyond an email sent out. It is a start. A prompt to have our staff consider how visible our amazing aspects of our own practice are and what we can do about making them more so.
• Can each of our learning experiences be slotted into the multi-modal text database format? Should this be something of a requirement for any major teaching sequences? It certainly helps strongly address high leverage practices put forward by Woolf Fisher. Again, that is something our e-learning team need to take to the table and extrapolate out for staff as a model of practice (we have no staff meeting slots this term... that's a possibility to be changed). This one I have yet to consider HOW it happens.
  

Dorothy's session today and my thoughts going forward:

Connected - today's theme is connected from the Manaiakalani kaupapa. 

Today was more around how we enable access and inspire connection/connected practice to happen. Technical aspects as well as pedagogical aspects were discussed as well as more discussion around the origins of the Manaiakalani Trust and how that formation led to where we are right now.

Origins: Back in 2006 the network that was formed through Manaiakalani was diverse. This became, and is a strength. Most of us are at our best when we are connected with other people. We strengthen our own school by making connections outside of it as well as within it. Siloed practice just doesn't have a place in modern education. We know there are pockets of it remaining in our MLE school however. I wonder if there always will be or if there is still yet a way of pushing that out? Shared kaupapa is only possible when everyone has made the commitment to make our mahi visible. 

Technical: The Limit the links - document is a live document and has recently been updated. This is something we have discussed in staff. Sometimes it's really hard to keep it down to three clicks. However, if we are earnest about trying to, and it sometimes varies from that, it has to be better for our learners in the long run than not having made a statement about how many clicks teachers allow to evolve on their sites. 

Technical: RSS = real simple syndication. RSS grabs each blog post and puts it out there as a tweet to the rest of the world. Egalitarian in nature not popularity based - the most recent post is what is at the top. I have some questions about this as all of our rangatahi coming through are now on primary school based blogs, not HHS ones, so the feed is distorted and does not reflect High School blogging in Uru Mānuka particularly any more. Dave Winter then sent us the secondary RSS feed. It is all of the high schools across NZ involved in a cluster. 

Pedagogical: Connect - AKO - we connect when we use the ako/learn concept - we aim to make sure we know (or begin that process) prior knowledge of our students and we activate a shared vision to learn. At least our best practice versions of ourselves do this. I wonder if I know if that happens across our staff, or if I just presume that it does because I want it to? 

Pedagogical: Connected learners share. A connection needs both parties to share. Give and take. It cannot just be digital however, face to face opportunities are also a significant aspect. That is why a great deal of what we do is done in face to face meetings rather than solely relying on google meets and digital connections. 

Ways we as clusters have been working to connect lately:

- Tuhi mai tuhi atu. This is across cluster blogging connections. It is not something Hornby High School has put a lot into as of yet. I personally feel we are another year away from this with the changes in our curriculum (Wānanga time, Hurumanu across years 7 - 9, soon to be 7 - 11) and our new build previously. 

- Connections of high school teachers across clusters is being specifically addressed through Secondary Connects. Need to find the agenda for this one! Katie Tozer seems to have it somewhere. 

- Te reo Māori advisor - Mikaere, travels throughout NZ to visit our cluster schools to work on Te ao digitally.  I believe Mikaere has had some connection with our HoD Maori and Immersion Te reo Māori teacher, though the visibility of this is not clear. 

- There was a deliberate drive to forge connections from our end as teachers and as leaders with our audiences (staff and students) that was a necessity during lock down. 

Ways we can continue to push connecting:
Google plus has now become Currents. We need to investigate that. Using groups succinctly in school email so that we are more streamlined and knowing that LCS is a structure that we can apply to all processes of our school, including andragogically.

When we talk about Connected; We cannot cherry pick from the kaupapa about what we are going to use, connected doesn't work without visibility.

Hapara hot tips.
Student dashboard. More recent mobile friendly but not an app, definitely aimed at college kids. I think it is possibly more useful to environments that use workspace in an integrated manner? Surely using drive in an organised manner is just as useful. However, the information presented was interesting.

Summing this session up:

As an elearning leader; there was a lot that challenged my current thinking as well as plenty that reinforced my current thinking about how we do things. I do take for granted that many aspects are happening in the classrooms, which is given really when one only has two hours per week to be an elearning leader in the timetable; one of those hours is a meeting about why/what/how to do e-learning leadership. There is some irony in that. I continue to be aware of how much to push onto teachers, while still retaining visibility and encouraging connectedness in that role. 

As an HoD Visual Arts/teacher: I have moments of 'spot-on' teaching that are not visible. I want them to be visible and will often go home and recreate these moments as rewindable learning. Sometimes I wish it would all just happen without the level of work I put in. 

As Year 12 Dean: I work to keep what we do visible pastorally as much as I do with my teaching. Our slide shows for each community time are well planned and up on my site for that purpose. Our form teachers are often given tasks to call home to encourage the collaboration and connection when I feel like it's not actually happening like it could be, usually due to the fact that we are all extremely busy, so that is not a criticism, but it is an active step I take. When we eventually have Wānanga time across our school this is something that will happen with much greater ease. 

Mahi for this week:

EVALUATING EACH OTHER'S SITES AND MAKING SOME GOALS MOVING FORWARDS:

This was good, as it meant that we connected professionally within the room kanohi ki te kanohi. When I saw that another professional went everywhere I didn't want a learner to go it occurred to me that there was a way I had visually prioritised my pages and layout that was getting in the way of people seeing the good stuff I was most proud of first. 

Streamlining my site - removing redundant pages and renaming ones that seem confusing. I have also changed how my menu's up the top work - instead of it being a stepped drop down to find the classes and all other random categories across the top, I have reversed that; prioritising my classes over the random stuff visually. I also enjoyed helping others on the course too and the fact that allowed for me to connect on a professional level as well, beyond HHS.

How do we make our Wānanga teacher sites visible? They are not right now, it's a gap to be filled. I can fix that (and did) 

The Wānanga leaders had already made the google drawing, so this was not an arduous task. Hopefully, it was something I have done that means they do not have to do it. I have transferred ownership to Raewyn and Anna is an editor so that it can be updated as required. 

I have procured two chromebooks form the loan pool for relievers and although had a scheduled date and time to work with a fusion technician, they were too busy for me last week. Never mind! It is still a work in progress and I can continue to place tickets for it a step at a time. at this point it is not about setting our relief digitally on a google calendar (though that is exactly where I want to head) just making sure our mainstay relievers have sites access to the teacher's they are covering for. 

Next steps for myself:

Multi-modal encouragement and support - I need to sit down with Katie and we need a better plan around this. 

Secondary twitter feed - It is worth having this embedded into everyone's sites as it means that blogging is at the forefront somewhat. If it is what every child sees when they open a teachers site and they then see someone they know, then it raises the importance of it. 

I would like to get four students to screen-castify four teacher's sites and explain how they work/critique them. They must be willing volunteers on both ends for this to work! I can see this working as extremely good promotional material up on facebook too! it makes our learning process really visible to our community and beyond too. 

Making sure the reliever chromebooks get implemented. 

Encouraging our staff to be more visible with good practice - by promoting google class onair, and putting something of a thought challenge out there for staff to consider how we can celebrate our own spot-on moments, I do feel this is something that has the potential to accelerate. 

Aside from all of this we are also re-emphasising how our staff keep themselves safe online which goes beyond school and into our personal arenas. We are in the unenviable position of again having to reaffirm that we don't connect with students via social media and we do make sure any profiles we have on social media (not just facebook either!) are locked down. This aspect is possibly where we have to be aware that the practice and learning we do with colleagues needs to be more than pedagogical; its andragogical - steeped in adult learning theory which means the 'telling' you to do it aspect needs to be the buying into it by staff in the first place so they aren't needing to be told, they are self-reflecting enough that they do the  right thing. 

The end.