DFI Session 5: Collaborate Sites

Connecting with Manaiakalani

Making teaching and learning visible. Visibility to our parents and whanau is hugely important. When learners and parents understand how their learners are doing at school, they are more likely to be successful in school. 
Back in the day; teachers did not share what the children were learning. Children who were successful were able to read the teachers mind. 

Learners deserve to have visibility over their learning!

No surprises - makes learners successful!

Hapara dashboard is enabling this visibility for learners and teachers. Teachers can access all of their learners documents. Parents can access all of their child’s learning.

Have a look at some Google class on air lessons where teachers have recorded their lessons. We have access to the teachers planning and all of the children's documents, as well as the teachers reflections on that lesson.

Reflection: How can I reflect on my own teaching and learning by videoing lessons?

Making our teaching as inquiry visible allows other teachers to learn from this.

Video of Will.I.am when he visited Pt England School. Because he grew up in a low decile type area, whenever he visits a new place he likes to visit an area of need. Before he visited NZ he was able to find kids on Manaiakalani via Google search.

Multi modal learning

We need to engage our learners from the beginning. We want our kids to be actively involved, life long learner. Initially the technology itself does engage them BUT the novelty does wear off. Tamaki college student Nathaniel Tuia does a stellar job of presenting this funny and engaging film that played at The Warehouse Supplier Awards dinner 2013. The charity recipient was Variety’s Laptops for Learning programme. The film tells us why it’s essential to get technology into the hands of poorer kiwi kids and inspires the audience to give generously. Using multiple texts and modes with learn, create, share.

A video that explains this.

Reflection: 

How am I engaging ALL my learners? Do I often think of myself as a learner as the default for what learning works? 

How are my lessons multi modal? 

How are my lessons multi textual? 

Universal design for learning: 

Video on some points to consider when planning my lessons. 

An example of some multi modal and multi textual planning:

The idea of multi-modal learning is that learners can access the learning however they want. Of course there is a place for teacher direction but the need to choose how they are getting the information.

Reflection: My lessons at the moment might offer learners different mediums BUT it is still directed for when they access it.

Google Sites:

We are in the process of creating a multi-modal, multi textual Google site for our term 2 concept of 'community'.