Angela Hamilton Blog

After 9 weeks we have come to the end of our DFI journey. The first thing we talked about this morning after our initial touching base on what has been working well and what has not was the ubiquitous nature of learning in a digital world and how our learners are able to access their learning any place, any time and at any pace. This is positive for those who learn better in different environments and at different times or who may appreciate connecting with others outside the classroom. It is also beneficial for the students whānau to be able to access their child's learning in their home environment. The rewindable nature of the learning means that those students who have for whatever reason missed parts of the learning are able to access this themselves and catch up. We gave our feedback to Manaiakalani on how valuable the course has been for us. It feels good to do this and know the people that will be considering our thoughts and potentially acting on them. I have thorough...

.....except it's not, but being able to collate and make data work for us is important. First though we heard from Dorothy about the community in Manaiakalani and how empowerment/agency is so important for them. Socio-economic factors mean that the local community in Auckland have large parts of their lives that they have little or no control over, so being able to have ownership and to feel empowered is extremely important for them. This translates well to our local community. Following events in our city over the last nine years, there are aspects of life where our whanau feel powerless. The children may feel that the environment and outside agencies effect our lives without warning. The importance of the pedagogy of Manaiakalani including being visible, ubiquitous and connected means that the community have ownership over their education and feel empowered to engage and confident in their sharing to an audience that values them. This morning we looked at forms which I can se...

This morning we had a classic example of how while technology is amazing and allows us to do things that we have never been able to do before, sometimes being in the room is still the ultimate in connectivity. Dorothy talked to us about how being connected as a learning community (particularly the inter school networks which have been created, as well as that with school and whānau) makes us stronger in terms of learning and sharing. This was illustrated perfectly to me last week when I went home after DFI and attended Marc Gibson's Toolkit about Flexible Learning Groups. The ability of us all to contribute to common knowledge creates advantages for us as teaching professionals but more importantly, for our learners. Unfortunate technical issues, including a fire alarm at Point England School meant that Dorothy's contact with us this morning was limited, luckily Kent was able to pick up the presentation well! I haven't really had a lot of experience with You Tube oth...

Today was all about making our teaching and learning visible for our students and whānau. The importance of this is so that the students know what success for them will look like. The purpose of visible teaching is that there should be no surprises. Planning should be available, accessible and in advance. Unless information NEEDS to be kept private then everyone should be able to access it. Today was a valuable opportunity to revisit the class site that I have been working on. It is still under construction at this point as we do not have devices in the classroom that the children are able to use to access it. I have been adding things to it recently in order to familiarise myself with how we will make it happen when the time comes. My goals were to make the site more user friendly for my students by making the buttons a focus and to make sure the site was suitable for using with i-pads. I could do this thanks to using an i-pad from St Francis of Assisi to check on what I was ...

My reflection on the week that has been: I have revived my class blog which has been a bit quiet lately. Commented on blog posts of other students in our school. I have been planning with Sisomo in mind and putting more of it on slides. This week: We are teaching our students to be Cybersmart rather than cybersafe this is because "safe" can have negative connotations. What's more being cyber smart means that we know how to deal with potential issues rather than be guaranteed to avoid all issues always. This reminds me of listening to John Parsons from Simulate 2 Educate who tells educators and parents the same thing. We looked around a Hapara dashboard which I have used in a very limited way previously but it was great to see the different applications available for making available and unavailable sites for students at different times. You are able to check what sites students are currently on or have been on for the last 15 minutes. Because my students will be w...

I always enjoy joining the hangout with Dorothy first thing in the morning. Today she shared with us the importance of the Share step of Learn, Create, Share. Giving students an opportunity to share their learning and creativity with a genuine audience is such an important part of the process. I was particularly struck with the student voice around this and how their blog posts facilitate conversations and bonding with family about what they have been doing at school. from  https://sites.google.com/manaiakalani.org/dfi/connecting-with-manaiakalani/share-pedagogy Too often I ask my own children what they have done and school and get a grunt of "Nothing" in return. The beauty of a blog is that this can prompt rich conversation around what our children are creating as a result of their learning. I like the idea of both the presenter and the audience being genuine and how the global nature of blogging means that students can read blogs to see what students have been doing...

A focus to start off the day with why creativity is important to capture hearts and minds with a hook and inspire students creations. We looked back 60 years to the teaching and learning of Elwyn S Richardson. I have read this book previously but it reminded and inspired me to think more about the students ability to create while they are learning. The teacher becomes a facilitator of student led agency. While we are directing students in order to cover parts of the curriculum we will get a lot more engagement when students themselves are asking the questions and pursuing the answers. We heard about the concept of Sisomo (sight, sound and motion) and how the more we use all of these the wider our net will be cast in regards to capturing the hearts and minds of the students. They in turn should be able to learn, create and share in a multitude of different ways. The main take away message for me today was that the easiest way to engage, encourage and facilitate learning is to m...

Managing Workflow It was great to hear from everybody what they have made use of this week from our new learning last weekend and if there were any issues.  We all joined a Hangout with Dorothy and she gave us some useful information and reminders about the importance of: R ecognise effective practice A mplify this - recognise and sharing what is going on in classrooms with great learning happening T urbocharge - using technology to do things that we weren’t able to do before doing these things creates: E ffective Practice   We explored the Group Hangout and with a small number of people where everyone got to have a turn at presenting and speaking to the group. This was really beneficial to have a go so that we could troubleshoot issues and practice before "doing it for real". It was great during this exercise and a recorded Hangout discussion that we had at the other end of the day to reflect on how brand new stuff is scary and it's definitel...

Manaiakalani Kaupapa and Pedagogy It was valuable to learn today about the establishment and first years of Manaiakalani and how the Learn, Create, Share pedagogy was an integral part of the organisation prior to any focus on students having one to one devices. Knowing the importance of the pedagogy in creating engagement and successful learners without or with minimal technology involved makes me feel confident in how we having been establishing Learn, Create, Share and how introducing more use of technology will be a natural fit. In addition, understanding the importance of communication with our whānau during the journey was highlighted for me. New Learning to Improve Confidence, Capability and Workflow Professionally and Personally The link below shows a poster created using new functions to assist with navigating and creating in Google Docs. We also completed a Scavenger Hunt which gave me new knowledge and skills using the Explore Tool within Google D...