As outlined in today's NZ Herald article, Covid19 Omicron outbreak: 15,540 new community cases, 952 in hospital, 2 deaths, Auckland covid cases are said to be "on a downward trend".  However, also stated in the article, "schools across the country are feeling the impact of the Omicron outbreak".  

What does this look like for "our" students?

Since the beginning of the 2022 school year, I have inquired into various aspects of Hybrid Teaching and Learning, and how this learning approach may be used to enable our learners to achieve.  As outlined from the list below, this has included inquiring into initial takes on Hybrid Teaching and Learning, Student Voice of Hybrid Teaching and Learning, what we've (Techies) learnt from Lockdowns, Understanding the variables to make it work, and the Hybrid Timetable.

At this stage of the pandemic, with Omicron as the main Covid19 variant, and also at this stage of the year, it is too soon to come to any conclusions about the long term impacts or benefits of Hybrid Teaching and Learning for learners, but also the long term impacts or benefits to educators; particularly educators who are in the classroom.

What is clear is that teaching and learning has evolved, and continues to evolve at a frenetic pace, in response to the Covid19 pandemic.  It will be interesting to see what student achievement looks like as assessment data becomes available.

• Students understanding the value of the hybrid model of learning for themselves and empathy for others.
• Buy-in from students in the classroom.
• Engagement from students learning from home.
• Staff capability to execute and apply online learning (possibly in real-time), and onsite learning both at the same time.
• Preparation of lesson resources in a digital context eg. lesson structure and flow, exemplars, demonstrations, resources to support content knowledge and understanding, resources to support the practical application of a subject
• Fluidly transitioning between onsite, offsite, online or a combination of all three, in a way that still allows effective teaching and learning to take place
• Timetable adaptations  
  

• are the offsite students working online during the lesson at the same time as students who are onsite?
• are the offsite students accessing the lesson information outside of the lesson time?
• are the onsite students accessing the lesson information outside of the lesson time?
• are recordings happening during the lesson and in real time, to capture the learning outcomes in class?
• are recordings being made either before or after the lesson to respond to learning outcomes associated with the lesson?
• are the recordings instructional? eg. The learning intention for the lesson is ... The following is a demonstration on how to .... etc
• are the recordings responsive? eg. In order to respond to your query on (x, y, z), let's look at/investigate/inquire into ... 
• are the recordings inclusive of a combination of instructional and responsive approaches to teaching and learning?
• are recordings being used at all?
• what combination of hybrid teaching is possible and most effective for classes of younger learners, senior students at the start of their NCEA journey or in their final year of NCEA Level 3?
• what combination of hybrid teaching is possible and most effective for large class sizes, louder classes etc?
• are the vast range of learning needs such as literacy, learning and behaviour, high ability etc still getting the same level of focus and depth, and how are these able to be met within the hybrid learning model?

taken from the Ministry of Education Hybrid Model 2022 pdf download

On our very first Teacher Only Day back at school, in one of our department meetings, I discussed one of the major changes to the teaching approaches needed to address the learning needs of students under the Red Traffic Light System.  That being, the ability to apply a hybrid approach to teaching and learning.  This was based on the experiences that my team underwent in the previous lockdowns for delivering Technology programs online to our contributing partner schools.  This, coupled with the work that we undertook as a department to ensure that the evidence-based learning captured in the end of year junior reports, accurately reflected and reported on the learning that students experienced in Auckland's extensive lockdown in 2021.

The following Ministry of Education Resource Guidance for School Leaders and Staff, refers to the 'flexibility for the learner/family/whānau', by having access to the learning resources eg. video recordings etc, at any time.  

However, the shift for my team into the Hybrid model, has also been influenced by the wider stakeholder needs (Primary Schools - teachers, students, whānau), and the teaching requirements that were needed to deliver our programs outside of our own secondary school environments.  There's nothing quite like a range of different stakeholder needs, numerous discussions negotiating the variables of our stakeholder partners, time restraints that transcend two different sectors (primary and secondary), and limited resources for at-home learning, to motivate the levels of change and adaptation by the Technology team to our teaching programs.  For this reason, the step into Hybrid learning is easily understood by the Technology department.  Not that this makes hybrid learning a piece of cake to execute (although cake would be nice), but more so that the level of understanding has enabled the team to continue making brave steps and brave choices in their teaching approach at the beginning of 2022.

And so, yet again, the Techies are embracing change.  That in itself is half of the battle won 🏆

With Year 7 and 8 Technology starting this week, we are offering a combination of the following to meet the different learning needs of our contributing primary school partners:

• Face to face learning for primary schools coming onsite
• Online learning for primary schools undertaking Technology at their own schools; including Steam Punk being delivered by our Hard Materials teacher, MBoT and Microbit Coding being delivered by our Robotics teachers, DVC online and Food Technology practical lessons being offered to primary schools on their school grounds via online teaching from our school

It's been a great start to Year 7 and 8 Technology so far this week.  We look forward to continuing for the rest of this week and beyond.

The following is Student Voice that I obtained from students in my 11DGT Class about the Hybrid strategy that I applied recording a series of Google Meet Recordings in the previous lesson, which you can read about in the link below. 

Hybrid Teaching and Learning | Take 01

Whilst the feedback is from the students were In-Class Onsite, it is still useful to learn the value that these students placed on the Hybrid Teaching Strategy using Google Meet Recordings, and also, that the students could see the benefit of the Hybrid Teaching Strategy to their own learning journey.

Also interesting to read how other schools across the globe are approaching the use of Hybrid Teaching Models with their learners Personalizing Learning through a Hybrid Model.