Student Subject Sites

• Visually showcasing student work (according to a project or assessment) for the purpose of parent conferences, career conversations
• Job interviews or tertiary interviews/scholarship opportunities whereby students need to showcase their work according to a specific industry
• External moderation by including evidence of work according to specific assessments or standards

The following is an example of a Level 3 DigiTech Subject Site created by Leroy Pohatu in 2016. Click on the image to navigate to the portfolio, and view his work.

Student Blogs

• Students connecting with authentic audiences on particular topics which can be categorised using labels
• Students reflecting on their learning, and sharing their reflections with blog readers
• Students using their reflections and viewer comments to progress forward with next steps in the learning process
• Live feed and total views can be included in the blogs, alongside other gadgets, that enables feedback to be displayed on blog views etc.

Google+ Communities

Portfolio - The Main Landing Pad

Integrating the ‘Share’ Process together

I came across Mr Simon Swinton (new to teaching and to Tamaki College), teaching his Senior Maths class in T2.  As he was winding down the lesson, he was discussing student progress with a group of young men from his class using the VTaL tracking sheets and class task lists.



Here's what Ben Pulupaki had to say about the feedback:

Tracking Sheets [Class Task Lists] - Features and Attributes

• The information that the tracking sheet is reporting on eg. learning activities, specific criteria etc
• The clarity of the information in the Tracking Sheets [Class Task Lists]
• The frequency by which the Tracking Sheets [Class Task Lists] are updated
• The frequency by which the Tracking Sheets [Class Task Lists] are referred to throughout lessons
• The accessibility of the Tracking Sheets [Class Task Lists] to students as well as the teacher
• How the information in the Tracking Sheets [Class Task Lists] eg. visual feedback, is being used to enable students to progress onto the next tasks

Tracking Sheets [Class Task Lists] and Colour Codes

Tracking Sheets [Class Task Lists] and other Teaching Strategies

Junior Tracking Sheets [Class Task Lists] for DigiTech

Tracking Sheets [Class Task Lists] and Hyperlinks (also included in Calendar Events, and Project Instructions)

Senior Tracking Sheets [Class Task Lists] for DigiTech

Senior DigiTech Class 2017 - Student Standard Checklists

Tracking Sheets [Class Task Lists] and Student - Teacher Conversations

Tracking Sheets [Class Task Lists] and Student Collaboration

Tracking Sheets [Class Task Lists] and Mixed Ability Levels

Tracking Sheets [Class Task Lists] - What’s Important?

Tracking Sheets [Class Task Lists] - Tips and Tricks

• As mentioned, I hyperlink learning activities into the sheets.  
• I upload a Student Number into the sheets and email these numbers through to the students.  This keeps the student information anonymous to anyone who doesn’t know the student.
• Each week I make a duplicate of the sheet eg. Week 1, Week 2 etc.  This enables progress to be monitored over a particular timeframe.  If a student hasn’t progressed from Week 1 to Week 3, then some pretty interesting discussions need to be had with that student!

The 2017 Manaiakalani Hui was a great forum to participate in, and share ideas and strategies around teaching and learning for staff and students within our schools.

It goes without saying, that so many of us, who are either directly, or indirectly connected to the learners in our community, want the very best for our students.  The discussions around the 'hows', the 'whys', the backward reflecting and the forward projecting is where a lot of the rich and meaningful conversations come from.  Within our own teaching environments, it is easy to feel overwhelmed somedays when the challenges seem so great.  However, connecting with colleagues within our community of learning on a day such as this, is a timely way of expressing, appreciating and celebrating all of the positive initiatives that are contributing to outcomes for our students.

It was wonderful to see the student ambassadors share part of their learning journey from the Manaiakalani schools.  So much enthusiasm and insight shared by all of the students; an absolute delight to watch.  Extremely grateful to take in the knowledge shared by my fellow 2017 SPARK MIT colleagues, Sandy, Dorothy, Angela and Troy, as well as inquiry displays from my fellow CoL teachers.

I appreciated the opportunity to share my vision and latest inquiry updates around VTaL, and what the VTaL framework means to me, in terms of breaking down barriers and access to learning for students in our community, with the potential for the framework to be utilised on a much wider scale.

Some of the 'Impact stories' that I had, included discussions with the following attendees at the Hui:

• Pat Snedden around the logistics of shifting culture, belief and capability across an entire cohort of people.  Student feedback is what has driven the majority of changes in my own practice, as well as the development of the VTaL framework.  Whilst the student feedback has at times been particularly frank about which subjects utilise digital tools such as sites, calendars etc the most, I have not generally used this feedback to create shift, other than with staff in my own department.  This lead to a particularly interesting conversation around responding to student voice.
• Maria Krausse from Core Education, about the collective impact and logistics around students commenting within Google+ communities.   In the past I had set up Google+ communities for each class, whereby students within classes would share and comment on work.  However, at the end of that year, the students would move into another class, and so, it made more sense for me to set up Year Level Communities, to promote the longevity and usefulness of the resources that students were uploading and sharing.  As discussed in a previous blog post, I've found that students posting and commenting within a community, enables other students to view the resources from many sources (their peers) on a particular category all at once.  This is especially useful when developing exemplars relating to NCEA levels, as our students do not necessarily connect with the NZQA exemplars online.  What I'd like to investigate is students blogging to their own blogs, and sharing the blog post to the Year Level Google+ Community, to see if that enables ownership of the original post, as well as community sharing according to particular topics.
• Gina Harduar and Christine Mitchell about the overall purpose and function of the VTaL Visible Teaching and Learning Framework, it's potential and benefits to learners so far.  I was able to show Christine a short video of students from Glenbrae School using VTaL at the end of last year.  The benefit of this is being able to show that although VTaL was set up in a secondary school context, essentially, it is a series of digital tools and components that enables work flow to take place in a range of educational settings; including primary schools.

A big thanks to those who touched base with me throughout the day to talk about VTaL and other challenges within education.  Hugely inspiring discussions and exciting times ahead for us all.




https://sites.google.com/a/manaiakalani.org/annualhui/home

A Strategy - Commenting to Boost Motivation

The Process - Using a Google+ Community to Comment

The Challenge

DigiTech Google+ Communities

Student Voice

Kori-Lee - Year 11 DigiTech Student

Tauhogofulu Haffeiki and Gustavo Pohatu - Year 12 DigiTech Students

Filipe Alipate, Cruz Putu-King and Jaydenzel Pitolua - Year 12 and Year 13 DigiTech Students

The following is a snapshot of the notes relating to my inquiry process.  In order to make sense of the inquiry, it is important to know what the challenges are, and the desired outcome from the inquiry.

Achievement Challenge 1

Raise Māori student achievement through the development of cultural visibility and responsive practices across the pathway as measured against National Standards and agreed targets for reading Years 1-10 and NCEA years 11-13.

The Challenge for Learners

The Holy Grail

The Inquiry