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.

Tutor Group Changes?

Attended the Student Services (pastoral care) meeting after school.  Another potential change for next year was identified.  Currently we have vertical Tutor Groups-  in 4 houses.  There are roughly 28 students in each.  The proposal is to move to reduce the size of the Tutor group to 15, 3 students from each year level, and to rearrange or increase the amount of time spent in tutor time. The extra time would be spent with the teacher concentrating on their mentor role.  Currently we do identify those students who are at risk of not achieving NCEA level one and two, and staff self identify to mentor these students.  The tutor teachers don't currently have the time to fill the Mentor role and complete the administrative tasks they are required to do. We'd no longer need deans, but would still need house leaders to help organise students for house competitions.  I'm interested to find out how other staff members would feel about this change.

Visit from the NZQA School Relationships Manager

Today our SCRM came in to see how we were going with the recommendations made in the MNA (Managing National Assessment) report from earlier in the year, so I took the opportunity to ask her how we would be able to create a Assessment Statement for students if we move towards PBL.  It was reassuring to hear that you can make statements that offer a range of standards that you may be offering in a course, and due dates can include information along the lines of 'the due date will be during term 3, with the final date being indicated 3 weeks prior'.

After school the curriculum committee started having a discussion about our future curriculum.  We have decided that we will plan to trial PBL with the junior classes at the end of the year. What form that takes will be decided as we progress.  I'd quite like to be quite bold with this as I believe the key to improving engagement is relevant and authentic learning.  Self review continues to highlight student literacy levels as a barrier for achievement. My hunch is reading information you have a real desire to read will increase the ability to draw inferences and to comprehend, I feel an inquiry coming on.

We're also pushing ahead the Building On Success initiative.  Today I've confirmed the shadow coaches to be in school next Thursday. They'll use the culturally responsive and relational pedagogy observation tool (check list) with the team who will in turn be observing the teachers who opt to be a part of the initial roll out. It's all go, but I like the sense of urgency this is creating.

To round out today I also met with with Muaupoko Tribal Authority this afternoon to talk about where we will head with Te Kupenga our collaboration between the tribe, CYFS, school and the Police which aims to reduce offending, and improve educational outcomes for the students involved. The trial has had some success and I'm feeling positive that all parties involved are keen to keep working together, awesome!

Project Based Learning?

The 3 adventurers have returned from their 3 days in Auckland.  They have come back brimming with new ideas and enthusiasm for what they've seen at both Albany Senior and Hobson Point Secondary School.  One of the things both schools were doing was project based learning.  I'm hoping to have a discussion about this at our curriculum meeting tomorrow after school.  Usually we're looking at the mix of subjects we're offering to the senior school, and how we can create a balance of academic subjects and skills based courses (Catering, Technology Jewellery etc).  In general we talk about how we can create courses to engage students who aren't interested in going onto University. This conversation concerns me, as I feel as though we are reducing the curriculum level to make it achievable by students.  I'm reminded that if we keep doing the same thing we're going to get the same result.  I believe it's the time to investigate other options like Project Based Learning.  I mentioned it to my professional learning group after school.  That group seemed keen to look at a possible trial with the juniors towards the end of the year.  It will be interesting to hear what the curriculum committee have to say.

I've just got back from a Whanau Advisory Group meeting. Only a few parents there but we did have some good discussion about improving the relationship between school and whanau.  We have career interviews for all Year 11's towards the end of term, these capture about 85% of families.  Other attempts at building the home school relationship aren't as successful and this an area of ongoing work.  I think the key may be having a clear purpose for the meeting and this may be an area for a future investigation.

How ready are we?

After school yesterday I attended the Social Sciences department meeting, even though it was only a Social Studies meeting  (I know, I'm a sucker for punishment).  After being accused of derailing (I thought that was quite a harsh judgement) the meeting I was allowed the make a contribution.  So I asked if they thought they'd be able to utilise Chromebooks with one of their current junior classes if I manage to convince the board to buy a trial class set. (I'm only asking the Board as it's not budgeted spending)  The answer was a resounding YES.  I'm really pleased about this as it will add weight to my argument.  It also means that when we do decide to make devices compulsory they will be used. I've heard stories of other schools where the students have been required to purchase devices, but they simply haven't been extensively used at school.  As we're a relatively low decile (two) school I'd hate to have that happen here.

Meanwhile I've been reading my twitter (@reichy) feed all day to keep up with the happenings at the inaugural #edchatnz conference.  Feeling left out not being there, but having had 2 days out already this week I'm consoling myself with the idea of attending the Ulearn conference in the next school holidays.

The test Chromebooks are here.

Using one of the new Chrome books to write today, verdict so far-positive.  I find using the keyboard easier than the touch screen on my surface, and it's definitely quicker than my now ancient netbook. It's working better from home as there seems to be an issue with connecting to the school WiFi and with using my @waiopehu.ac.nz email address with Google accounts (even though it is a Gmail account).  Something I've booked in for our network support company to explain to me tomorrow.  Huge thanks to the rest of the BeLT team for getting the teacher only day organised in my absence over the last two days. Tomorrow I'm putting the sheet up for the teachers to book their workshops on. Am I being ambitious hoping their enthusiasm will be shown by everyone rushing to make their choices?

The Moral Imperative and Blended eLearning

Today was the second day planning for implementing Building On Success for the schools in the first roll out of the initiative.  Awesome day being challenged and reflecting on how to create a more culturally responsive and relational pedagogy.  I'm looking forward to using the observation tool and learning how to shadow coach in the not too distant future.  As always the opportunity to network with teacher's from other schools means we'll also be visiting Rangitikei College in a couple of weeks time to see how they're using their chrome books.

I've also been reflecting on the moral imperative that lies behind taking the next steps towards blended eLearning. In my opinion we need to be doing this work as it is our job to prepare students for their future. I think we need to question whether the way we teach now is the best way to be  giving students the skills they'll require for a future economy, where knowledge is free. No doubt some assumptions being made now may yet prove to be untrue, but is this an excuse to not taking some steps towards challenging changing the way we approach our classroom practice? 
I also believe that using digital Technology improves student engagement which will improve achievement which remains at the heart of why we do what we do.

Building on Success and Blended eLearning

Had a great day today at a Building On Success hui at Whakarongotai marae in Waikanae.  Most of the day we shared and collaborated with other schools, working on discursive re-positioning.  We touched on some thinking behind transformative leadership, and the moral imperative that sits behind closing the gap between Maori and non Maori achievement.
There are parallels with the work we are doing to with blended elearning, in particular some of the shifts that have to be made in thinking.  Some of the ideas that relate to both initiatives include the notion of moving from deficit theorizing to having agency, the need to deprivatise classrooms and build communities of practice, shifting from passive transmission to interactive and discursive pedagogy, and the shift from being an expert to having and developing expertise. We're all busy at school and at times the feeling of initiative-itis can overwhelm, so the overlap between these two spheres of work is heartening.

Quick after school meeting- on a Friday!

Having been so enthused but exhausted by yesterdays meeting, the BeLT (Blended eLearning Team) met again after school today to think a little bit more about our upcoming teacher only day.  We're going to run a series of workshops on things like creating a twitter account, creating a blog, Pinterest, and Google docs.  At the end of the day what's been created will have to be shared.  I'm hoping this will plant the seeds of collaboration and start to build stronger communities of learning at school.

Nick from Noel Leeming also called in to school today, so while he was in the bosses office I ordered 5 Chrome books so the BeLT team will have one each to use so we can investigate how they work on the school network. They'll probably arrive early next week while I'm at the Building On Success hue, we've gone with the Samsung model, will blog about them when we've formed an opinion.

Working on our Elearning Strategic Plan

Had a meeting after school with Mike from Core Education to start formalising our eLearning strategic plan.  As a group of 5 it was hard to keep on track. We  kept throwing ideas from one to another with them usually colliding mid air, and then bouncing off on a tangent. After 2 hours of ideas chaos we did manage to commit something to paper (just). 

We focussed mainly on how we will gather the information we'll need to make an informed decision about the hardware we'll recommend as our preferred device. As an outcome we all have tasks to complete in the next few weeks.  Awesome work Katy, Ant, Sarah and Scott I'm excited about the progress we made today.  I'm also glad of Mike reminding us that we have to be working on clarifying our rationale behind why we are doing this.  It's clear to me, improved engagement always improves outcomes, but we need to ensure that this is a commonly held belief.

Tracking Junior Data

Not related to eLearning, however I've had Jake (our achievement data guru) come to me with a proposal to start measuring our year 9 and 10 achievement against curriculum levels rather than the Not Achieved, Achieved, Merit, Excellence scale. I'm all for it. Currently we've developed a Junior Certificate which requires a grade from 1-6 to be awarded for each of the key competencies. From this we have generated an average score. The average is then being used to predict (based on previous year's results) how the students will achieve at level 1. The students receive feedback on what their score is, and feed forward about what they need to do to improve their average. It's deliberately unrelated to academic achievement in order to prevent students classifying themselves as underachievers and it becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.  However Jake thinks the Junior Certificate needs to be more directly related to achievement than it is currently.  I’m getting him to go to the Head of Department meeting on Monday to ask their opinion on this.  If it looks like too much work for all to undertake we’ll trial it with the departments that are happy to do it, and after reflection next year reassess whether it should be adopted for all departments.  As a first step the teachers are going to be asked to assess which curriculum level they believe the student is at.  We’ll look at this data to see if there is a correlation between that and the average grade from the Junior Certificate and work from there.

The Chromebooks Question

Had a great conversation with Megan from Otaki College (where I taught prior to Waiopehu) yesterday in regard to going to visit them. We're going to see what they're doing with the classes they have using Chromebooks.  Awesome to hear her being so enthusiastic about what she is doing with her year 7/8 class and I'm really looking forward to visiting them during week 4 of term to experience her passion first hand.

 I also spoke to the board at last night to seek approval to spend on a class set of Chromebooks, with the idea of using them with one of current junior classes.  We probably won't insist that year 9's must have a device until the begining of 2016.  Otaki College are also using a finance scheme where the students pay a deposit of $45 and then $4 a week for three years in order for their Chromebooks. I'm going to talk to Mike from Core Education tomorrow to see if we can get a similar scheme going here.  It would also be great if all schools in the town could come to a consensus on which device to go with so we could collaborate for training and PD. I know that the local Principals Association has been talking about it, so fingers crossed that may happen.

Some feedback from yesterday

Just some brief feedback from yesterday.  Despite there being some glazed eyes and blank faces at the meeting after school yesterday,  I have already recieved my first invite to a meeting (party invites would be more welcome), still it's gotta be a postive sign.
Little steps. 
I've also had another staff member come to me to say they think it's great we're going to look at some of the things we breifly touched on during our teacher only day.  Three staff are heading up to the #edchatnz conference next week- and I'm hoping they come back brimming with other ideas and enthusiasm for future focused education, and some things to present to the staff on that day also.  I'm not going as I have a two day hui Monday Tuesday for Building On Success.  I'll be learning to use the observation tool, which is then used to inform coaching teachers towards more culturally responsive personalised pedagogy, I'm really looking forward to it!

Post Staff Meeting Post

Well we ( Katie Peters and I) talked about the following-

• results of the e-learning survey- those who filled it in had us at the emerging level for most of the criteria. I was pleased with this- HOWEVER only 50% had completed the survey which may be statistically significant, but I have a hunch that those who didn't complete the survey may be those who are least e literate.  Yet again the recurring theme comes through in the feedback that if senior management 'are serious' about Digital Technology then there needs to be PD.  Not sure if I totally agree with this, it's my belief that if you really want to, you get on and do it- if what you're using isn't intuitive enough to use without a step by step instruction sheet, is it worth using? 

• Showed the google training website, showed the short video on google calendars, introduced the idea of becoming a google certified teacher.  Question from the floor: Will I get paid more if I do this extra work? I think  the reward comes from being at the front of the pack in this field. 

• Katie expertly demonstrated Doctopus, and Tweetdeck, and her inquiry blog-  Again I'm encouraging teachers to create twitter accounts to help them keep aware of some of the new initiatives in education currently. A few have already, the more the merrier.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
• Next steps. The tech lead team meet with Mike from Core education on Thursday to work on our strategic elearning plan.  Part of this will be using a teacher only day (22nd August) to undertake some differentiated staff PD on some of the things introduced today.  More on that after we meet.......