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Animated Stories and Brief Development

In Semester 1 this year, the first class that I had was a mix of Year 7 students from Glenbrae School.  The focus of this Semester was to teach code sequences to develop Animated Stories in Scratch, and for students to undertake Brief Development associated with their DigiTech projects.

Student Blogs

If you click on the student photos below, you will be able to navigate to the student blog posts that students wrote which includes links and embedded animations for some of the work that they undertook in DigiTech this semester.

 Siosaia Liu  Mahoney Taula  Po Munu
Candice Fakahau  Maya Griffiths  Tumanako Kern-McLeod  Francesca Pome'e  Anita Folau  Kupid Haenga  Auro Junior Pepe  Mathew Tukuafu

Students Blogging, but what to blog?

Some of the students were already blogging reflections on what they were learning in Technology when they returned to school.

Before the students moved from my specialist subject into the next Technology subject, I specifically wanted the students to blog an overview of some of the tasks that they had completed, relating to Brief Development, as well as the outcome that they had developed; that being, an animated story.

It was easier for me to model to the students, what I wanted them to include in the blog post overview.  This would ensure that students linked and embedded tasks associated with Brief Development and their Animated Stories.  Therefore I broadcast a model blog post for the students to follow, as shown in the image below.

Students had the option of linking their completed tasks from their Google Drive to the text in the bulleted list, or, linking previous blog posts to the text in the bulleted list.



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Technology Literacy Resources

The following is School Goal 2 focussing on Literacy and Numeracy

School Goal 2 Literacy and Numeracy
That 80% of Year 9 & 10 students are reading at or above the expected Curriculum Level.
That 70% of Year 9 & 10 students are writing at or above the expected Curriculum Level.
That 70% of Year 9 & 10 students are achieving in Mathematics at or above the expected Curriculum Level.

That 90% of Year 11 students will achieve NCEA Literacy.

That 80% of Year 11 students will achieve NCEA Numeracy.

Technology Literacy Resources

The following are literacy resources that were used in a session with Marc Milford to implement literacy strategies in Technology around 'Language Writing Skills' and 'Language Features'.

The PD Tech resource that Marc focussed on for the Technology Department was 91044 Brief Development.  The reason I asked Marc to focus on Brief Development at NCEA Level 1, is because all Technology teachers from Year 7 through to Year 13 teach the Brief Development achievement objective, and three staff deliver the Brief Development NCEA standard to Level 1, Level 2 or Level 3.

PD Tech

Readings

AS91044 Exemplar - Low Excellence

91044-EXP-student1-001
91044-EXP-student1-002


Take Outs from our PD Session with Marc

The following are some take outs that I have from the PD Session with Marc:

  1. I need time to process the strategies that Marc has supplied us with in the Writing plan 2018 for Techies
  2. I would benefit from one on one time to identify specific literacy strategies to help with both my senior students as well as my junior students
  3. I'd like some more department time for us to collaborate on, and gain a shared understanding on some useful strategies for literacy issues within Technology
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Today's MIT @ KPMG session involved a lot of reflection about what I've inquired into so far, what the current state of the national looks like with regards to the tool that I am developing, and where to from here ...

Who does this Moonshot project involve?

Purpose: to identify my tribe/team/collaborators

  • Who am I collaborating with on this project?
  • Who are my team?
  • Who has a voice in this project?

Who are the Who?


  • Learners: exactly who
  • Colleagues: co-designers, collaborators, sounding boards etc
  • Experts: who is being invited to add expert opinion

Original Stakeholders


The original stakeholders (previously blogged) are outlined below:

  • Ann/Dorothy - Meet with at PD, gained feedback about tool design
  • App Developers - Meet with Dave/Korene Letele, and gained feedback about tool design
  • Financiers - No longer relevant as I don't need financial backing to develop the tool
  • Sue/Fusion - Not directly relevant to the development of this particular VTaL tool which is targeted towards Teachers and Teaching Practitioners
  • CORE Middle Leaders - Need to consult
  • SLT - Yet to have discussions
  • Teachers - Yet to have specific discussions
  • Families - Not directly relevant to the development of this particular VTaL took which is targeted towards Teachers and Teaching Practitioners

NEW Stakeholders


  • NEW stakeholders to the mix include:
  • NEW - Jim Sill, EdTech, referred me to Kimberley who has shown interest in attending my Sydney GAFE session
  • NEW - Wayne Poncia, Hapara
  • NEW - Andrew Corney SCT Tauranga Boys College
  • NEW - Kalisha Paketama, Frances Kolo, Tamaki College First Year Teachers

Content for the Tool - Stakeholder Feedback

What are the right questions to ask in order to determine appropriate content for the tool?  
How do I ask the questions, in a way that will get me the answers?

I think the scope for identifying appropriate questions can and will be determined from a number of sources.  I gained feedback from a Toolkit Session I ran on VTaL at the beginning of 2017 with staff either new to Tamaki College, or staff who were generally interested in VTaL.  It also makes sense to me to touch base with our newer staff, to find out from them what would be useful as beginning teachers.  Not to say that the feedback should be limited to these sources, but would hopefully help focus the next tier of stakeholder conversations.

Tool Design

Developing the tool itself isn't that difficult for me.  What I do need to consider carefully though is design features (colour schemes, functionality, aesthetics, layout etc).  There is no point in having robust content within the tool, if the way the tool functions and looks is terrible for the end users.  Ironically, this is a conversation I constantly have with my students as a Technology teacher.

There's also the fact that I quickly threw together an original prototype of the tool eg. an original VTaL Google site, when I first launched the VTaL Google+ community.  It dawned on me that the Google+ community was intended to enable users to share and communicate, which is vastly different to a site (even though there may be similar features).  Stakeholder feedback on the design of the original site would also be invaluable, in order to move forward.

Next Steps

It is clear to me that my team of collaborators and original stakeholders has evolved from the beginning of the this year, or even last year when I first started promoting VTaL.  Stakeholder feedback from my current and new stakeholder base on content for the tool, and tool design are what I need to focus on next.  This is likely to include not just the content of the tool eg. the site, but the templates of various VTaL components that I am likely to embed into the site.  A timely process, but also an important and necessary process, if the tool is to be effective for users!



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This morning during Staff Briefing, Russel Dunn, broadcast to staff his example of a NEW Google Subject Site.  As Student Blogs and Calendars are a huge focus, Russel showed how these could easily be linked or embedded into the NEW Google Site format.

The site structure that Russel demonstrated completely aligns with the way in which I have formatted and structured my own subject site Digital Technologies with Ms Anderson.  The following link is for another recent blog post that demonstrates how NEW Students are Navigating to Learning Information in my DigiTech Site.

VTaL - NEW Students Navigating in Learning Information in my DigiTech Site



Links to Student Blogs within our NEW Google Sites

Having Student Blogs linked within our Google Sites, enables easy access for users of our sites, whether they be students, teachers, parents etc, to locate individual student blogs.



Google Calendars embedded within our NEW Google Sites

Having Google Calendars embedded within our sites, with links to learning information within the calendars, enables learners to have access to their learning across all learning areas, according to timeframes and timelines.  In addition, the learning information within Google Calendars becomes a rewindable learning resource.


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On Tuesday, I had a new rotation of Year 9 students start in my class.  There are twenty students in the class and only one of the students I taught in Year 7 and Year 8.

After introducing myself, "Ms Anderson", I explained to the students that we would be accessing the learning information for DigiTech out of my Google Site.  I directed them to search for the main Tamaki College website, and then to click on Curriculum > Learning Areas.  

Then, this happened ....

Step 1 : Students navigated to the main Tamaki College Site



Step 2 : Students clicked on Technology > Ms Anderson


Step 3 : Students navigated to Ms Anderson


Step 4 : Students navigated to my subject site Digital Technologies with Ms Anderson


Step 5 : Students navigated to Year 9 > Year 9 Calendar


I was then able to ask the students to add the Year 9 DigiTech calendar to their own calendar, and proceed with the instructions for the lesson.  

The fact that students could easily and readily navigate to the learning information within my site, without ever having used my site before, was excellent feedback on the 'user-friendliness' and 'usefulness' of the site in terms of how I have organised the navigational features and content of the site.

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A few weeks into Term 1 of last year 2017, I had a student join my senior class from another school.  The student was completely new to learning in a digital environment.  In order to support this student to be able to access learning, I put together a short summary of instructions, so that the work flow and information flow would start making sense to this student; all of which is relatively intuitive for students who are familiar with Google Apps.

I was prompted to write this post after a discussion yesterday with a colleague, about informing students of how to access learning if they are not familiar with mode of learning already.

If you click on the section below, Learning in DigiTech, this will direct you to the document that I developed.  The instructions lead to my previous site, which also didn't include the use of Workspaces at the time.  However, the process of accessing the learning is still the same for my NEW Google Site Digital Technologies with Ms Anderson.


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The following post is a reflection on Department Goal 2.

Department Goal Idea 2

Reflections - 15mins Blogging in Dept Meetings


The way in which the goal has been executed within department meeting time is as follows:

  1. Blog Post Reflections - Staff blog their reflections on either a particular School Goal or Department Goal.  The focus is determined prior to blogging.  Staff publish their blog posts, and then share their post within the TC Techies Google+ Community under the category of School Goals or Technology Department Goals.  The sharing within the TC Techies G+ Community, is so that posts can be easily located by other members of the department on a common topic shared under a specific category label.
  2. Blog Comments - Staff locate each other's blog posts, read through, and then comment on the posts.
  3. Discussions - We then discuss what we've learnt from either our reflection and the comments on our reflections, or, what we've learnt from other people's reflections.

The process has enabled a level of connectedness whereby staff have a digital and rewindable portal of their reflections and comments, a sense of shared purpose through blogging on the same area of focus, and then another level of connectedness through the discussions.  This includes ideas around teaching and learning approaches or experiences that are the same as each other, as well as different as each other.  In addition, the digital feedback and discussion feedback often leads to ideas or takeouts, for issues that we may be experiencing in our own work area.

Initially, the department goal idea was to spend 15 minutes blogging.  However, when we undertook the blogging process within the department meeting for the first time, it became clear that 15 minutes probably wasn't going to cut it!  The blogging timeline probably takes us approximately 20-30 minutes, from the start of the blog post, publishing the blog post, and then sharing the post into the TC Techies Google+ Community.  Then we spend approximately 10-15 minutes commenting on each others posts, and another 10-15 minutes discussing what we'd learnt.

Although the time allocation is way beyond our initial expectation, the benefits of investing the time into this process far outweighs the extra time expended.  The 'Blog-Comment-Discuss' process provides a real sense of collegiality, whereby staff can feed into discussions (both digitally and face-to-face), as well as gain take-outs from the discussions.

The Blog-Comment-Discuss sessions have so far included:

School Goal 1 Maori Achievement
  • Goal 1 : Maori Achievement
  • Reflection on School Goal 1
  • Reflecting on School Goal 1
  • To Raise Maori Achievement and Cultural Visibility
  • VTaL : Mahi Tahi and Manaakitanga - Tuakana-Teina

School Goal 4 Attendance
  • School Goal 4 Attendance - That 60% of Students will have 90% Attendance

Technology Department Goal 1
  • Reflection of Term 1 Sharing Goal
  • VTaL : Reflection on Department Goal 1
  • Reflecting on Department Goal 1 Share
  • Department Goal 1 - Reflection on Share
  • Reflecting on Department Goal 1 - Share

School Goal 3 Transition

  • Reflecting on School Goal 3 in Term 1

















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About Me

Kia ora! I am the Head of Technology at Tāmaki College and also teach Digital Technologies.


My target group of learners for my Inquiry 2021 will be my Year 12 NCEA Level 2 class. This group of learners were my target group from my 2020 Inquiry. I would like to inquire into whether Academic Writing exemplars specific to Digital Technologies, in conjunction with the 'Explanation Writing' classroom display resources for Digital Technologies, based on SOLO taxonomy, could accelerate achievement in literacy in my subject.


My target group of learners for my Inquiry 2020 were my Year 11 NCEA Level 1 class. I inquired into the process of using the LearnCoach online programs (content) and VTaL Visible Teaching and Learning (workflow) to accelerate student achievement for Tamaki College students undertaking courses in Digital Technologies NCEA Levels 1, 2 and 3.


In 2019, my inquiry is to maximise pedagogical practices (relating to integrated education, and collaborative teaching and learning), to effectively shift student achievement, supported by digital platforms connected to visible teaching and learning.


My Inquiry in 2018, was to develop a VTaL Purpose-Built Innovative Tool, to enable all elements of the VTaL Framework to be accessible to teachers, in order to accelerate student achievement.


In 2017, my inquiry was based on raising student achievement and shifting teacher practice around effective pedagogical practices including Learn, Create and Share. This will be achieved through the development, implementation and monitoring of the Visible Teaching and Learning Framework.

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