Learn Create Share - Reflection 2

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy? 

...This is the question I like answering least of all at present, because I feel like a 'negative nancy'. But in a way, I feel it's important to say. If we don't have a dissenting voice, we will never have a discussion. 

Again, I understand the theory behind share, but I am wondering what we can do to help learners overcome their fear of sharing their creations in public. I am guessing a huge aspect is in tackling the negative responses that are often served up in response to them. And those fears are justified, because these things do happen. More frequently than any of us are comfortable admitting. We'd love to be in a  nice safe school-only bubble, but that's not the point of 'Share', nor is it feasible on the internet. Which is becoming an increasingly nasty place. 

Tackling negative feedback is one of the things that the big social media companies invest significant time and energy and money into. I listened to Maria's session on blog comments and how to guide students in creating positive comments, and I get the intent of teaching students this, but by high school, many of those lessons have fled the coop when the students' cerebral cortexes shut down for renovation. 

I've no doubt that many of my colleague's primary and intermediate students are capable of being lovely and positive and kind to each other in a teacher-led and structured way online. But for a significant number of my high schoolers? It's a struggle to get them to say anything positive in public, or sometimes anything at all. 

Remember that old phrase: 'If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all?' Let's just say I have come to appreciate the value of silence when it comes to some of my students commenting on each others' work. 

The feedback and interactions they do get are not always limited to blog comments. Verbal comments can be just as negative and just as harmful. Just in the last week, I reprimanded a bunch of boys in a Y10 class for looking up a peer's primary school blog and making fun of him for the posts he had shared on there. The boy was embarrased and sad to see his work being shared in such a negative and shaming way. While in class I can clamp down on this unwanted negative feedback, they're only with teachers for 5 hours a day, and these blogs are live for 24 hours a day. 

I liked what Dorothy said in her presentation about how Facebook/Twitter/Youtube etc exploded into popularity in the mid 2000s as a way of sharing. However some of that feels out of date; our students aren't using those tools for that. They're using them to access what OTHER people have shared (eg memes, posts by celebrities, videos by influencers), but the monetisation and advertisement focus of these channels has quenched rather than enhanced their willingness to share ('how can I compete with that...'?). While some young people are working wonders sharing content on Tik Tok, mine would rather learn the dances posted by other people than create their own to share. They're consumers of what's created in the public domain. They might be creators in private, but putting themselves out in the public domain to be judged is beyond many of them at present.

Lots of my students have their own lists of media that they like to keep up with, but very few contribute anything original in a wider sphere. And honestly, I get their fear. It's easy to back off from sharing anything about yourself online, especially anything you have put hard work and effort into, because the first impulse of so many vocal people online is to tear things down rather than boost things up. The maxim of 'Don't read the comments section' exists for a reason.

Even I, as an adult, am less and less likely to post anything original online in the face of negative feedback, trolling comments, abuse and backlash. In this, our students are savvy learners and they are well aware that posting anything that invites feedback invites negative feedback first, especially since our comments on blogs are live-posted rather than pre-moderated. 

These issues are far bigger than school blogging. Negative behaviour online is rife, not just among teenagers. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube all have massive issues with the negativity, trolling and insulting comments that are left by users in response to content - and all of this is modelling negative behaviour to teens which is far from desirable. 

Again, I'm not expecting a simple solution to any of this. But ignoring it as a prime concen would be artifical, and these factors need to be part of the conversation and consideration about pedagogy. Even if it just just a vent for frustrations, rather than pretending that they don't exist or matter.

DFI Week 4

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy? 

My answer for this became a big of a long rant, so I'm going to put my thoughts into a separate 'reflections' post. 

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

These two questions belong together today. Lots of what I did learn will impact my life both personally and professionally. 

I already had a good idea of how to use Google Forms, having designed and distributed Forms to collect student voice feedback on teaching in our Maths Department at GHS last year. That really honed my skills, but it was fun to make this wee example as a quick exercise. 

You can have a go with it here, if you like:

Using MyMaps to make a map layer. Encountered this a long time ago but haven't had time to go back until today. I had a go at making one and putting my places of importance on it. This could become part of a visual mihi for me...

    

 Lots of stuff for google sheets 

Having worked in admin in the past, and taught ICT in the UK, I already knew a lot of stuff, like conditional formatting, SUM/AVERAGE, formatting the cells/rows/columns, freezing the panes, text to columns, linking spreadsheets to slides... There was still much to learn this lesson though, which was fascinating. 

 Recording macros to save format templates - that would have saved me so much time in terms of conditional formatting. Now I can just set it up once, and then use the macro to create all those formats and conditions for me when I'm working on data for a new class/new year without having to start from scratch. 

 Pivot tables to pull out summaries - now I can see where some of SLT/HoDs get their summaries from. I think I could have a go with using this now. 

 'ImportRange' to pull data in from another spreadsheet. I can see that being useful for pulling together info from several student spreadsheets into one, shared and protected, class document.

Dave Winter's group had a whole host of tools which will be really useful for sheets, but I feel like I could do a whole masters degree in sheets and I would still never be an expert on it. 

 

 What did I learn that could be used with my learners, how could they use? 

The 'create a graph' activity was pitched at a slightly too low level for me. Teaching high school maths, including Bivariate and Multivariate data for students, I am used to not only creating graphs but teaching students how to use this tool for their assessments. 

It's just good to have this selection of tools available, even if they're not being used immediately.

DFI Week 3

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

I appreciate the importance of LCS, I really do, but I am having some issues and barriers with my students which are difficult to overcome. I'll make a separate blogpost about this under the 'reflections' label. This session was hugely focused on create - which I love, because I am creative, and I want my students to be creative too ... but the barrier we are having is at the 'share' stage. I don't know ... it's hard to get excited about things when I know that this fear factor is going to rear its head. I don't mean that it's hard to find the excitement ... that bit's easy ... it's more that the comedown is rough when it doesn't work out. 

This is the thing that I don't yet have the tools to deal with. Perhaps part of the fear factor is in MY head having had these experiences with students who demonstrate a negative mindset, and I need to keep trying and insisting in order to break through, but that sort of thing is hard, and it takes a toll on you personally and professionally. How do you keep putting 100% creativity into something and then watching the result fall flat and be treated with disrespect? I find that hard to deal with, let alone my students.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

I really wanted to learn more about Google Drawing - I used the template, but I wouldn't know how to put my own google drawings together, and I need that 'from scratch' tuition aspect to be able to be truly creative and flexible with the tool. What would I do when faced with a blank screen in Google Drawing? That bit still feels intimidating. Like ... putting the photo into the circle. That was great and easy to do as a 'replace image'. But how would I set that up on my own from scratch? How would I teach my learners to do that from scratch? That's the bit I need. 

I LOVED making the animations on google slides. I made a really simple one of Iron Man flying by pulling a banner saying 'Welcome to Maths'. I am starting to see how some of the tools can be used together - like the remove background website and google slides, which work really well together. I am going to try and embed Iron Man on my blog. All being well, you will see that on the post just here:

This was awesome to do, I loved it. I made another with a little spinning Mjolnir and Thor waiting to catch it to one side of the screen (have a look at the bottom to see him in action). I had a go at embedding it in google sites, which was simple to do, but the animation will only play quite slowly. It doesn't give you the option to make it play and faster than 1 frame per 2 seconds.

Is there something we could do about that? How sad that google blogs allows for the animation to play properly, but it doesn't allow for us to do it via sites.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?

I loved learning how to use GIFs more effectively in Google Slides. That was a good thing to know about. I use gifs in blogs, on social media, and I recently learned how to put them on Hapara, but this will improve my flexible use of google slides.

I really liked touching in the idea of making videos with greenscreen and making pod casts, but I still feel a bit overwhelmed when faced with the idea of actually trying to do it. I like the idea, I want to use it, but I'm standing on the edge of it going 'where the hell do I start' and that is the sort of feeling that makes busy teachers think 'You know what, I'll come back to that,' and we never do...

I wonder if I could get the kids to make a simple maths animation? We're doing geometry in year 9, I have a feeling they would enjoy that!

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

Anything that allows me to be creative is a win for my personal life too. And it does mean that I can put together some more interesting rewindable learning experiences for my students, which can be reused in later years - and that will cut down my workload in future years. I feel like the things I made even 3 years ago have 'gone out of date' compared to what I can do now. That is both disappointing, because I put so much effort into them when I first got to NZ, and also a sign of personal growth that my skills have improved since getting here. I am not standing still, there is so much more to learn.

Iron Man Flying By....

I really enjoyed using Google Slides to make this little animation of Iron Man flying across the screen!

Learn Create Share - Reflection 1

As well as recording the week by week learning, I'm going to put some more personal reflections here.. This isn't addressed to the DFI specifically, but it will include thoughts that come up in response to some of the material we are covering on the course about the pedagogy. I love the ethos, but I feel like I keep slamming into walls that aren't being addressed or even mentioned sometimes. And if I don't get it out of my head somewhere my head will explode. 

So here's my big question for today ...and I don't think there's an answer right now, because the answer is bigger than one teacher in one classroom. 

I love to create.

My students love to create.

However... so many of them are scared to share what they create. Or to be seen creating. 

How do I fix this?

Because there are a minority of students who spearhead efforts to destroy what other people create. And they are often the ones who DON'T create. Who choose to opt out, and put their efforts into tearing other efforts down.

With negativity. With crude comments. With graffiti. With sneering. With cynicism. In short ... with bullying. And while it's a minority that spearhead this, there are a sigificant number who follow behind them, giggling and egging on - because they are afraid of being the next target. 

And nobody is exempt from this. I make displays for my classroom, for my hallway, and it makes my heart sink to see them ripped, turned upside down, damaged, the letters of things rearranged when I'm not looking into negative and abusive comments. I'm not immune to the disappointment and it makes me feel like I don't want to bother creating any more if people aren't going to respect and appreciate it. So if I find that difficult, then I absolutely understand why my students are fragile and sensitive to it. 

That, at the moment, is my biggest barrier to overcome in terms of embedding Learn-Create-Share. The fear factor.

When my students make wonderful stuff and I say 'Let's show people ... let's put it on the wall... let's blog it... let's perform it in assembly... let's show the world what you did...' and their faces fall, and the names are scrubbed off to anonymise it, and the work disappears into their own folders, or bags, and is removed from view, and they're afraid... 

And I can't tell them they're wrong to be afraid because I see what happens to my own efforts. 

Even on a smaller level, when I invite people to share fantastic comments they've had in group discussions in class, or contribute ideas and facts that I know they know, and that are correct, and their eyes go wide, and they sink in their chairs, and their tears well up and the head shakes and they are silently begging you 'please don't put a spotlight on me' ... and you KNOW that they're developing competence and showing understanding and able to do things, but they don't want to SHOW that to anyone...

How do I fix this?

I follow the school processes.

I tackle the comments when I hear them.

I remove the graffiti, where I can.

I put my posters back the right way.

I try to encourage students and tell them that negative comments should be reported, and don't matter anyway.

I do my best. But I'm not always there and the work, once displayed, is on display constantly. 

What else do I do to fix this?

At the moment I have no idea. 

DFI Week 2

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

I need to rethink how I am using technology in my classroom with the students. I am one of those teachers who sits behind the screen and monitors what the students are doing rather than getting involve.d I mean, I do when they ask for help, but sometimes it feels like I never talk to any of my more able students. I spend all my time with the ones who need a lot of exta help to be able to function in the classroom.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?


Google Keep 

I didn't realise how versatile this tool was. It turns out I had used it once or twice when I first arrived in NZ in 2018. In all honesty anything that happened in the first six months of 2018 has long been lost in a fog of jetlag. It was good to discover this app again. I think that this is going to be really useful to me. Being able to record any image that I see and then use this app to pull up text or save me an awful lot of typing time. 

Some things that I'm excited about in terms of using Google Keep: 

• being able to take photographs and put them straight into notes 
• being able to edit photographs in Google photos and then use them in notes 
• being able to take pictures of my handwriting on the board and then turn it into text notes 
• being able to do all of this for Te Reo Māori - now that really is exciting 
• Being able to record voice notes and turn them into a postit note. 

I was wanted a dictaphone when I was a kid. They were far too expensive to buy it the time. So I just had to get a good at handwriting everything. But this is the sort of thing that could be really useful to me and ppta meetings as well as teaching. If I just summarise a little bits and pieces in voice notes and then I can type up the key bits afterwards. Or even I don't need to type of the keep it! the app can pull them out and turn them into text for me. This is really going to be a much better way of working smarter rather than working harder 

GMAIL Tricks and Tips 

I really like the idea of being able to set up different signatures for the different roles of my job. With taking on so many roles for the rest of the year such as trades and pb4l, not to mention the class teaching for several different year groups, and being a year 11 mental teacher, it would be really good to have different signatures for each one of those roles. I also really like the idea of being able to recall emails and messages when I send them to the wrong person! That shouldn't happen but if we’re honest it really does. 

Recording Google Meets 

It's good to know how to do this for myself. Up until recently this has been done by people who keep inviting me to meetings, rather than me having the time and effort to do my own meets and generate my own recordings. Now I know how to do this for myself. I am not comfortable setting up, hosting, recording and sharing material within my own meetings. This is a good thing to know. 

I also had a go at embedding videos into blogs: 

Google Read-Write 

I also had a go with speech to text using the Google Read-Write application on the chromebook. I couldn't get it to work on my laptop and then remembered that it's microsoft based, so it doesn't allow the apps to work in the same way. But having a chromebook still means I can make good use of it. 

What did I learn that could be used with my learners? 

I'm beginning to see how blogs could be used more in the classroom now, although I still think that recording videos and images would be far easier if our school chromebooks had a rear facing camera for students to use, so that they aren't reliant on cell phones or hard-to-book ipads (see comments in week 1). 

I am now confident that I can show my students how to:

* Use Google Keep

* Use Google Read-Write

* Post videos on a blog

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

A lot of what we're doing is stuff that I've touched upon before and knew that if only I had the *time* it would have a huge impact on my professional life. This is definitely impacting my capability in that now I have had time to practice a bit, I am more likely to use these tools one a more frequent basis. 

These all have huge implications for me as:

* A classroom teacher

* A tutor

* A Coordinator

* A secretary

* A branch chair

I was a little sad that I didn't manage to get to share my favourite song as well as my favourite place. So here's the video of that for anyone who stops by to see what I wrote today: 

"Never forget where you've come here from

Never pretend that it's all real

Someday soon

This will all be someone else's dream..."

The Ashton Memorial

Lancaster, UK

That's it from me. I'm off to think how I'm going to use some of this stuff during the coming week:

DFI Week 1

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

The biggest thing for me that stood out was the way of thinking about students using chromebooks being like a pen instead of a book.

I have always viewed Chromebooks as a 'book', using them as a 'pencil' has changed the way that I think of the student interaction with the technology, and will reframe a lot of my conversations with students about how they are utilising this technology in class.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

Little tips will make a big change for me, such as how to colour code folders in my Google Drive. I work in several different roles at school and being able to spot those folders at a glance will make a big change for me.

The tip about having initials at the front of documents to see who they belong to in tabs was great. I wonder if Hāpara can take that into account - they always append the student name to the documents, could they put initials at the front when students open their own copies? Not sure if that would mess with the filing system.

For me, this is very much about credit for my current knowledge and finding hints and tips to work smarter rather than work harder.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?

For me, a lot of the useful skills were for making resources FOR my learners. I need to readjust my thinking to how THEY can use it in the classroom.

I make a lot of websites, resources, worksheets, documents, slides etc for students to access, but the 'create' side of the pedagogy is very much rooted in me rather than in them. I'm not entirely happy with this, but the technology that we use does have some barriers.

As a maths teacher, we still work on paper to record workings - writing on paper, or whiteboards, to allow for flexibility in using mathematical symbols and language which are often autocorrected or hidden in 'symbol' menus online. It would be great if students could photograph these and then write about their work, but the truth is our technology isn't up to the job yet. Or at least, not the versions we have at GHS.

Chromebooks are a great tool, but one of the things they lack (for my point of view) which ipads/smartphones do really well these days is a back facing camera. It's really difficult for our students to record their work as video, or photograph, when the only camera on the device faces them rather than what they're looking at.

Yes we could use cell phones, but...

* Our school are trying to cut back cell phone use

* Not every student has one...

* Those that do don't have data...

* ... and student wifi is only available at break/lunchtime for phones

Every student has a chromebook and it is frustrating to have this as a barrier, when other technology has solved the issue.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

I am already confident in using this sort of technology but any resource or tool which saves me time or increases the professionality of my work will be very useful.

Highlights from today:

Remove.bg Making transparent images. Love it

'Replace Image' to find similar sized ones. Some needed resetting and resizing, but it did prevent images being pasted so large that they obliterated the page.

Using a table to insert images into docs. Very simple but effective. Hadn't thought of using it that way.

Removing margins to maximise digital file space.

Changing the colour of folders in Drive

Encountering so many extensions for adding to Chrome. And my school's technician has unblocked all the links so I can now install them all!

Document made with inserted images today