Te Hinaki

Haven't blogged for a while, however have recently been on the steering committee that is implementing affordable devices for students in the Horowhenua region.  This is based on the Maniakalani trust, the students will pay in the region of $4 per week for three years to have a learning device to use at school.  Currently we are at the stage where Boards of Trustees are looking at the Memorandum of Understanding that they will have to sign if they want to be a part of the scheme. Next week we meet with Boards and Principals from all the schools to explain what we expect to happen next. It's unlikely that the trust will be able to finance enough devices for every student that requires one in the first roll out, so some decisions will have to be made by the trust about who will have access first.  I've surveyed our staff, who seem to have a slight preference for Year 10's to be our first students to go fully digital, so that next year in Year 11 they will have the devices to use for internal assessments at NCEA level 1.  My initial thinking around this is that it is a good idea, given that nearly all internal assessments are being completed on Google Docs.

In other developments since last year we now have a trial digital class at Year 9- not sure how much work is being done digitally, and I'm also concerned that the pedagogy isn't changing yet- sure we might be getting better engagement in lessons, but unless there's a greater shift in how we teach will this improve academic achievement. More on this later!

Gathering teacher voice

Over a week since my last entry, I went to Rotorua last week with the Year 13 Geo/Tourism students last Monday and Tuesday, evidenced here Rotorua Sky Swing and it's taken a few days to recover!

The next step for the BeLT team has been to create a Google form to gather information from the teachers to determine if their is a barrier created by teachers not being provided with their own device (laptop) by the Board of Trustees. Some members of our team believe that it's unrealistic to be expected to provide your own equipment now considered necessary for their job.  Personally it hasn't been an issue for me, I've always used my home PC, Netbook, or tablet to complete school work when needed, and I'm not fan of being responsible for equipment that's not mine- but that's just me. It will be interesting to see the results as last year  Senior Management did ask who would want a Tela laptop if the Board were paying and no-one responded.  It's probably important to also remember that departments will have to trim budgets elsewhere if money is directed into paying lease payments, something for me to remind HOD's at next weeks meeting.

#pehutod

Awesome day today.  We ran a series of workshops on various ways to use Google in the classroom.  I've just been looking at the evaluation form I created in the fourth session when I facilitated 'forms'. As 71% thought the day was 'very useful' I'm calling the day a success.  The last part of the day required the creation of a presentation of what had been learnt during the day.  This had to be shared with me- my inbox has been inundated with great stuff.  I was really pleased to have had all the Teacher Aides participate in the day as well, it's good to have everyone on board.  Google basics and Google forms were the most popular workshops. There's a big lesson for me in all of this, as I often forget that others are less confident than I am about clicking anything until something works. Giving people time to explore what is available will hopefully yield rewards as more will be willing to trial teaching using digital technology.  The next barrier for us will be how we achieve a 1:1 student to device ratio in a decile 2 school.  How we create equitable learning opportunities will be a question I'll be asking our local MP post the upcoming Government election.

Learning to Shadow Coach

Today I spent the day with two facilitators (Polly and Margaret) from Waikato University learning how to use the observation sheet, code observations and then follow up with shadow coaching.  It was great stuff, really made me reflect on my own teaching practice.  I immediately thought about minor changes I could make with my class to help improve their engagement and I'm looking forward to trialling and evaluating the effectiveness of these in the coming weeks. So grateful to the other teachers involved,  it awesome working with them,  I'm hoping that being involved in this will keep improving the learning community we've been building.  I also went to the Social Sciences meeting after school, we're involved in another initiative that's looking at raising student achievement through improved literacy (always features as a barrier to achievement in self review), focussing on using the inquiry model. More great things happening there.  Finally I touched base with Sarah, who had picked up completing final preparation for tomorrow's teacher only day, it's looking good, and I'm looking forward to tomorrow!

Perserverance -It's One of Our Values

Years ago when we were  implementing the new New Zealand Curriculum we identified 7 values that we wanted to teach  the students, perserverance  is one of them. Sometimes my own ability to persevere is tested.  The Belt team have been planning our teacher only day, however the ongoing problem of opening a google plus account with our school email hasn't been solved. Apparently it is about the @waiopehu.ac.nz accounts not being registered as for users 13+ years old. The frustration comes from not being able to do anything about this as the network support company are the only ones who seem to know what we have to do, and we only have them at school for a few hours twice a week.  However we will persevere and hopefully this will get sorted tomorrow. On the positive side we do now know that @waiopehu.ac.nz is a GAFE account so we are busy creating google sites, why didn't I know about these years ago?

The day we went to Otaki College

Had a great couple of hours down at Otaki College today.  They've been part of a trust that is providing the financial backing for students to buy their Chromebooks for a down payment of $45 and the $4 per week for 3 years.  For this they get an extended warranty, insurance, Hapara dashboard and access to a spare machine should theirs need repair. This has been modelled on the Manaiakalani Trust in Auckland.  The trust in Otaki is rolling out Chromebooks to all the schools in the area.
We went to see 2 of their year 7/8 classes that are digital.  I was so impressed by how quickly the teachers have become so adept at working in a digital space.  The students were fully engaged in their learning.  It was awesome to see the way the teachers plan their students work on Google sites, this allows the pupils to better manage their learning and also means when the students are away they can connect and keep up.  I also realised the importance of having access to a Google apps for education account to be able to create Google sites.  Just waiting to hear back from our network support as they set up our Gmail accounts, to find out if the schools domain name is a Google educators one. Once that's sorted we should ready to rock.

After school 3 of the Belt team got stuck into planning our Teacher Only Day for next Friday- after attempting to create a timetable that suits all and discovering this was impossible, Katie created a google form which will do the job of getting everyone sorted into workshops, brilliant!

Visit to Rangitikei College

Today the Belt team took a day trip to Marton to visit Rangitikei College ( I love visiting other schools). We went to learn how they are using blended elearning and Chromebooks. Not the best day for a road trip, we nearly left the road, but contrary to popular opinion it wasn't due to my driving, rather the blustery weather. It was great to see another school at a similar stage as we are with their blended elearning, although they may have a slight edge on us with their use of google docs, as in the 5 classes we saw none of the students were using pen and paper. Their class sets of Chromebooks were in high demand, mixed in with some of the students having their BYOD equipment with them.  Great to see personalised learning through the use of technology taking place in classes. We also saw google classroom and Hapara dashboard in action, and I'm keen to see how google classroom develops.  It was also inspiring to see how a standard classroom had been adapted to feel more like a modern learning environment.  The transformation had taken place by removing the majority of the desks, installing a couch and coffee table (retro chic) and roughly 10 beanbags. It was encouraging to hear how quickly the switch to google docs had taken place once the devices were available to use.  Huge thanks to Jeff King (Deputy Principal) and the teachers we visited for letting us come to learn from you.