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It's the beginning of Term 3, so where to from here? ...

In our COL meeting, I had some particularly robust discussions with a fellow COL colleague Heather, around the slide decks and focus questions from both Russell and Rebecca.  In addition, we talked very broadly about wider implications of our learners and their whanau.  The implications in a learning sense within our school environments, as well as external factors that influence the value systems and societal structures that have both a direct and indirect impact on our learners and their lives.

The discussions were meaningful and extremely challenging.  Challenging in terms of the current climate.  Challenging in terms of current practices that I can change, as well as practices that I have no or limited influence over.  And so, part of my current reflections have included the following ...

  • What am I doing that is positively impacting on learning on a societal scale?  What can I do to positively impact on learning on a societal scale?
  • What am  I doing that is positively impacting on learning at a structural level?  What can I do to positively impact on learning at a structural level?
  • What am I doing that is positively impacting on learning at a student level?  What can I do to positively impact on learning at a student level?
  • What do I need to adapt or change?  What needs to remain the same?
Unraveling the various areas within my Inquiry, is enabling me to clarify the purpose of the different areas, and refocus each area to be meaningful, effective and collectively contribute back into a constructive and overarching goal that I have which is to accelerate achievement using visible teaching and learning; essentially VTaL!




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What’s the Big Idea for 2018

“Language in Abundance”, Language Acquisition, development, Transfer and sustaining across school levels and curriculum domains.


Language in abundance environments ‘drip’ with language availability
and attention, where noticing and relevant use of words allow for
deeper, wider, more specific and precise, context appropriate
language expression…leading to knowing at deeper and broader
levels. Dr. Jannie Van Hees

At the beginning of the year, when we first started discussing what the CoL focus would be for 2018, and with me already a year into my CoL inquiry, I was unsure as to how to connect "Language in Abundance"with my existing inquiry findings.   Not because what I was inquiring into was irrelevant to the concept of "Language in Abundance", but because my inquiry was and is focused around a framework; so essentially, a collective range of individual components and processes to enable accelerated achievement to take place.

My approach to addressing literacy for students within my inquiry process, focused more on the literacy associated with visibility and clarity of learning information for the students, as opposed to the literacy strategies for students.  This is reiterated in some of the Manaiakalani Inquiries presentation materials delivered by Rebecca Jesson, as shown in the image below "Are the instructions/ways to participate clear?"


Visibility and Clarity of Instructions

Some of the research materials that I'd been looking at with regards to visibility and clarity of learning information includes the following:

  • Instructions https://goo.gl/bqk4Ap
  • How to Write Clear Instructions https://goo.gl/StVytd
  • Making Learning Visible https://goo.gl/TjXUP5

In terms of 'Instructions', useful take-outs from this resource link includes the purpose of instructions, as well as the features of instructions:


In terms of writing clear instructions, this research link focussed on three key areas:

  1. Understanding the Task
  2. Writing Your Instructions
  3. Testing Your Instructions

This year I have been extensively trialing the use of Workspaces to communicate learning information to students, as well as collate evidence of student learning in order to provide students with both formative and summative feedback on learning tasks.  The trialing of the Workspaces is in comparison to the sole use of learning instructions that are embedded, linked and accessible to students via my Subject Google Site.

My next steps for further investigating the Literacy Lens of my Inquiry, is to identify the pros and cons of the use of Workspaces v my Subject Google Site, in terms of which resource (if either) is more effective in enabling visibility and clarity of instructions for students.


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The following are a few workshop highlights from the Sydney EdTech Conference that I recently attended.

Scratching the surface of capabilities


One of the workshops that I attended was run by Conny Mattimore, Deputy Principal of Rooty Hill School where the EdTech Conference was being held.  The workshop was about 'Scratching the surface of capabilities'.  We were shown examples of how digital tools were being used by students to demonstrate to their teachers various capabilities acquired through various learning tasks.  

I had the pleasure of working alongside one of the students, Vinuji Gallage, who worked through some Scratch activities with me.  The great thing about interacting with Vinuji, was watching how intuitively she was using the digital tools to demonstrate her ICT capabilities. The main motivator for Vinuji was the fact that she could see how what she was doing, was contributing to her overall grade scores.


Cultivating Growth Mindset

One of the sessions that really stretched my thinking, was the session run by Lindsay Wesner, Deep Dive : The Power of Possibility - Cultivating Growth Mindset in Your Classroom.

As well as Lindsay sharing her experiences as a classroom teacher, and her extensive range of resources with those of us who attended who session, the activity that had a lasting impact for me, was the bingo activity.  This activity required attendees to work in small groups of 2-3, to identify various tasks that we undertake as teaching practitioners, to enable our learners to develop a growth mindset.

Getting Creative with Google Sheets

The most constructive workshop that I attended that impacts directly on some of my current practices, was the workshop run by one of my colleagues Gerhard Vermeulen entitled Getting Creative with Google Sheets.  There are so many different functions within Google Sheets that I was unaware of.  One of those functions is the formula that allows the colours of individual cells within a worksheet to change, depending on the entry within the cell.  This is particularly useful with the VTaL Tracking Sheets that I use to enable students to track their own progress.  I am unsure whether the formula can be integrated into Hapara Gradesheets, which I'm also using as VTaL Tracking Sheets within Workspaces; however, it will just be a case of experimenting to see what works.











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I had the pleasure of attending the Sydney EdTech Conference with fellow MIT 2018 colleagues.  In addition to attending the conference and hearing from various presenters and participating in different workshops, it was also an opportunity to share some of my own practice with a completely new audience.


The focus of my workshop was VTaL Visible Teaching and Learning Tracking Sheets.  This was the same workshop that I had delivered at the Auckland EdTech Conference earlier in the year.  However, I expected that I would have a different audience and was interested to see how receptive the workshop participants would be.


As well as sharing the use of VTaL Tracking Sheets through my Digital Technologies Google Site, I was also interested to know how visible, my teaching and learning resources were to a new audience.  Fourteen of the workshop attendees participated in a Kahoot exercise at the conclusion of the workshop with the following responses to the Kahoot questions about VTaL during my session, after spending time navigating through my Digital Technologies Subject Google Site.

Q - What is the purpose of the Course Overview in the Digital Technologies site?
A - To have an overview of the learning over the year. 13/14 = 93%

Q - What is the purpose of the Year Level Calendars in the Digital Technologies site?
A - To share learning instructions for a particular day and time.  4/14 = 29%

Q - What is the purpose of the Communities in the Digital Technologies site?
A - Students sharing their work as exemplars for their peers.  13/14 = 93%

Q - What is the purpose of linking the Tracking Sheet or Grade Sheets in the Calendar posts?
A - Students can check their progress against current tasks.  12/14 = 86%

Q - What is the purpose of the embedding VTaL resources into sites, such as the DigiTech site?
A - To enable access to learning and to accelerate achievement. 10/14 = 71%

It was reassuring to learn that many of the workshop participants were able to navigate to various sections of my subject site, and also understood the purpose of many of the VTaL tools that are embedded in my site.  I also learnt and gained an appreciation for the similarities and differences of different tools that are used by many of our Australian colleagues.  One of those is the extensive use of Google Classroom, which is a tool that I am not currently using myself.

The EdTech Presentation feedback was generally pretty constructive, as shown below.






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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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