My target group of learners for my Inquiry 2020 will be my Year 11 NCEA Level 1 class. I intend inquiring 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.

Student Progress

Student Progress as at 21 May 2020 - The First Day Back Onsite for the Whole School

Student Progress as at 20 May 2020

Student Progress as at 12 May 2020

Student Progress as at 11 May 2020

Student Progress as at 8 May 2020

Student Progress as at 6 May 2020

Student Progress as at 1 May 2020

Student Progress as at 29 April 2020

Student Progress as at 24 April 2020

Student Progress as at 22 April 2020

Student Progress as at 20 April 2020

Student Progress as at 17 April 2020

My target group of learners for my Inquiry 2020 will be my Year 11 NCEA Level 1 class. I intend inquiring 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.

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In a previous blog post, BP4 : Evidence - Year 11 DigiTech Students Learning from Sharing in Google+ Community I outlined the following Next Steps:

Next Steps

The next steps that I will explore with the information in this survey, is to have the learners read through this post, and see if they have a greater or better understanding of why I have set the Year 11 DigiTech Google+ community up, in terms of supporting their individual and specific learning journeys.  I hope that this will provide me with a greater insight into whether this is supporting student learning and if so, how it is supporting student learning.

I also hope that when learners see that I am inquiring into their learning, they may have a greater input into communicating in more detail what they feel their learning needs are, and how may be better achieved through my inquiry this year.

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Deep dive into the 'How' and 'Why'  

In order to enable students to dive deeper into the 'how' and 'why' of using the Year 11 DigiTech Google+ Community, I decided to chunk questions down in order to break down the inquiry process for the students.  I also intended doing this before showing the learners my blog post (mentioned in this blog intro), so as to not influence the students' responses to the questions.

There happened to be one learner who joined the Google Hangout Meet for this lesson.  Here is the link to the Questions I had ready for this process Blog: Questions that relate to the Year 11 DigiTech Google+ community.

And, the Question Chunking process went as follows:

1. I post a question into the hangout chat
2. The student writes their answer to the question into a google doc
3. We repeat this process for all questions
4. The student shares the google doc to me
5. While we are both in the google doc, I highlight sections of the paragraph that are irrelevant
6. I copy and paste the paragraph so that the original paragraph remains untouched, but still includes the highlighted sections
7. The student edits anything referring to Yes or No etc
8. I go through MY blog post with the learner (mentioned in this blog intro) by reading the blog post
9. I talk to the learner about my blog post, to clarify anything about the blog post that the learner may not have understood
10. I talk to the learner about the questions that I posted into the chat function of the hangout and had asked him to respond to in the google doc
11. I talk to the learner about whether he realises that his combined answers are actually an effective comment to my blog post
12. The learner copies and pastes his paragraph into my blog comments and publishes his comment

The following image is the google doc that my learner used to enter his answers to the questions that formed the blog post comment.




He was completely blown away that the paragraph that he had written, actually combined to be an effective blog comment, to a blog post that I had written about his class.  Further to this, his response showed that he viewed the use of the Year 11 Google+ Community as positive for his learning, making statements such as "it's helpful because you can see how other students do the work" "I like sharing my work into the Year 11 DigiTEch Google+ Community because I like to help other students out" "I don't share my work into the Year 11 DigiTEch Google+ Community because I've been asked to share my work but because I like to help" "I share my work into the Year 11 DigiTEch Google+ Community not only because it makes me feel proud but because it's helping other students" and "It gives me a greater understanding of the work that I have completed and shared".

Although this process only included the response from one learner, it is still one more set of evidence that I have from Student Voice that I didn't have before.  I was also enlightened to see that this particular learner doesn't feel a sense of obligation to post into the Year 11 DigiTech Google+ Community, but actually sees the benefit of using the tool and also enjoys it!

Over the years the Techies have always participated in Team Dinners out, and this year was no exception.  It's just one of those out of work things that we do every now and again to touch base on a social basis, no different to how work colleagues socialise in other work environments.  About halfway through the middle of Term 1, we went for our first dinner outing for the year.  Little did we know, that would be a last major social interaction in a face-to-face capacity for Techies with the Covid19 crisis looming.

However ... that didn't stop the Techies ....

During Alert Level 4 and Alert Level 3, the Techies participated in a range of social gatherings online.  This included the Techie Masterchef Challenge, Isolation Egg Hunt, and May the 4th be with the Techies.  The invitation was shared out to staff, and whoever wanted to participate, could.  There were no expectations.

On the first day back to school, Monday 18th May, the Techies met in Lemoncello during Department meeting time after Staff Briefing, to celebrate coming back together again, and also to reflect back on and have a laugh at some of our online shenanigans during the Lockdown period.  These can be viewed in the slide deck that follows.



It has been great seeing the Techies support each other through these crazy times.  Having a laugh doesn't change that we're all experiencing incredible changes in our home environments as well as our work environments, both online and offline due to the Covid19 pandemic.  But having a really good laugh together has really helped!

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My target group of learners for my Inquiry 2020 will be my Year 11 NCEA Level 1 class. I intend inquiring 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.

Using Hangout Chat to conduct a Questionnaire

Findings from the Questionnaire

Ms Anderson: The following are some questions that relate to the Year 11 DigiTech Google+ community.

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Question 1

The following shows that all students who participated in the questionnaire are using the Year 11 DigiTech Google+ community.

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Question 2

The following shows that 4/5 students see the value in the posts that they are sharing into the community, although it is not yet established what that value looks like in terms of impacting their learning.  However, it is positive to see that the learners see value in the sharing process.  Student 1, (one of the five students) 'kinda' saw the value in the work that they were sharing into the community.

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Question 3

The three students  (Student 3, Student 1 and Student 2) who all explained why they saw value in sharing into the Google+ community, all showed different reasons to each other.
Student 3 talked about the "value to students who may need more detailed examples".  However, Student 3 didn't specifically include or see themselves as being one of those students.
Student 1 clearly explained that sharing the work into the community is helpful towards their learning, although they didn't go into detail as to why it is helpful.
Student 2 talked about the value of sharing into the community in terms of how sharing can help others.

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Question 4

The following question was included to determine whether students felt as though using the community helped the learners to understand how to do tasks.  Two of the students (Student 5 and Student 1) responded YES.  Three students (Student 4, Student 3, and Student 2) all responded NO.  This give some insight into whether learners believe that sharing is of benefit to themselves, to others, or to themselves and others.

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Question 5

All of the students responded YES to sharing their own work into the Google+ community.  What hasn't been established is whether they like sharing their work, whether they do it just because it has been asked of them, whether they share the work because it makes them feel proud  to share their work, or any other reason that they may share their work.

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Question 6

The following responses show, that by the learners having to update their posts into the community to describe the work that they had shared, in addition to including a post title and the link to the work itself, the process of updating their posts gave three of the students (Student 1, Student 4 and Student 2) a greater understanding.  However, the learners didn't explain what this process gave them a greater understanding of.  I intend delving deeper into the rationale behind this response to see what learners are gaining a greater understanding of, to see how the title, and description as well as the link, is or is not adding value to their learning.  Two learners (Student 4 and Student 5) were unsure of the impact of this process, and one learner (Student 3) outright stated that there was no impact on their understanding of the work through this process.

From a teaching perspective, the purpose of including a title to the posts is so that the posts can be easily searched for within the community, if learners want to find a similar task to the one that they are currently working on.  The purpose of including a description into the post is to explain what the post is about.  In writing the description, the learner also demonstrates that they have understood what the post is about by having to articulate the description of the task.  Thus, reinforcing their understanding of the work.  Finally, the purpose of including a link to the task, is because the task that is shared, has been marked by myself, returned to the learner, and is a model that demonstrates the required standard for that particular activity.

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Next Steps

The next steps that I will explore with the information in this survey, is to have the learners read through this post, and see if they have a greater or better understanding of why I have set the Year 11 Level Google+ community up, in terms of supporting their individual and specific learning journeys.  I hope that this will provide me with a greater insight into whether this is supporting student learning and if so, how it is supporting student learning.

I also hope that when learners see that I am inquiring into their learning, they may have a greater input into communicating in more detail what they feel their learning needs are, and how they may be better achieved through my inquiry this year.

BP3 : Finding Ways to Capture Evidence from my target group of learners in my Year 11 Class