EdTech Summit 2018 - Day One

What an awesome day at the EdTech Summit at Whangarei Girl's High School.  We were all wowed this morning with a keynote from Jim Sill called 'The Beginner in You'. 

There were lots of great sessions that followed. It was great to learn new ideas that I can use in my classroom.

Two things that really stood out from today for me and that I will use in my classroom next term are:
-Using google forms to create quizzes but breakout style and pick a path stories.
-The great learning apps available from the mathlearningcenter.org

I also went to a session on Scratch. I need to do a whole lot of playing in scratch (I have only used scratch jr) to learn more about this wonderful programme that will engage, inspire and challenge my learners.  Love the CS First Coding Club idea and the wonderful tutorial videos.

Looking forward to another day tomorrow.

Final Day at Spark HQ

We have had our final get together at Spark HQ for Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers. Lots of reflecting happened about our inquiries and our journey this year. It has been a great year - developing great friendships with amazing teachers in the other clusters while being challenged to think about our teaching and pedagogy.

As I reflect on my inquiry this year I first think about what has changed for me. I think I have further developed my leadership skills and am more confident to have difficult conversations with teachers. I have enjoyed watching teachers further develop in their collaborative spaces and make changes to meet the needs of their learners. Visible learning has been a great success - all planning is visible and children are using it to drive their learning. 

The following screencastify is of my presentation from ULearn. It explains what we have been doing in our school to accelerate progress for our learners.

Next time I blog I will be able to share the success of our year, for our learners!!!

Spark MIT Presentation

During the term 3 holidays the SPARK MIT grouped attended the ULearn Conference in Hamilton. All of the SPARK MIT Teachers presented their Inquiries in an ignite talk.
We had 6 minutes and 20 slides to present our inquiry.  After our presentation the audience had an opportunity to ask three questions beginning with WHAT? WHY? and HOW?

SPARK MIT 2017 @ ULearn 2017
Dot, Angela, Kelsey, Alicia, Troy, Hinerau, Sandy and Dorothy


Our Audience!!


Me presenting my Ignite about Collaboration, Visible Learning and Digital Tools

Everyone did an awesome job at their presentations. Thanks so much to SPARK and Manaiakalani for supporting us and providing us with this great opportunity to share our inquiries.

It was a very inspiring conference with lots of things to take away and think about.  I picked up some great ideas and great next steps for us moving forward in our collaborative space.

Here is a link to my notes I took from the Keynotes and Breakouts I attended.

Collaboration Framework

As part of the Innovation part of my Inquiry, I wanted to create a framework that teachers could use that related to Collaboration, Digital Tools and Visible Learning. I am about 96% happy with the framework BUT would love any feedback about what teachers/leaders/facilitators etc think.

Collaboration / Digital Tools / Visible Learning Framework

Below are a set of statements for you to think about your practice and where you sit within the context of working in a collaborative learning environment, being at home in the digital world and providing visible learning for your learners.

Term 3 - SPARK MIT

Another very thought provoking and successful day at Spark HQ for Term 3. It was great to re-connect with everyone again and listen to their journeys.

Our first task of the day was to think Fantasy - think about the Holy Grail. If everything in our inquiry was perfect what would it look like?

For my inquiry it would be:
Accelerated progress is happening for all learners. All teachers are working collaboratively - making use of digital tools to support the Learn Create Share Model, and visible teaching and learning evident (children using site for their learning - moving forward on their own). Blogging is a natural part of their learning.

We were then introduced to the SCAMPER Model. We had to use this model and apply a part or parts of it to our inquiry (Thinking Big Picture - we may choose to do it or not).

I chose to use:

Modify - Focus more on Digital Tools (Student Agency) now!

Put to another use - Cluster Sharing (Sharing our findings and what we are doing to make accelerated progress).

Next part of our day was discussing our Ignite Presentation that we will be giving at the ULearn Conference. 6 minutes - 20 Slides, 20 seconds per slide! using a great programme called keynote. Dorothy gave an example of this type of presentation. Such a great way to share the key parts of our inquiry. We also watched Karen Belt's keynote she gave last year through the eyes of a student. It was very clever!

Then it was our turn to start planning. Creating a table 20 rows x 2 columns to record our Image Ideas and Content thoughts. I was really pleased to get most of my thoughts and ideas down for my presentation and received great feedback and feed forward from Anne Sinclair.

Now I need to take time to rework / re-craft to make sure I am making the impact I want. And then it's writing my notes to match my thoughts and images.

Making Connections to other Inquiries

One of our tasks was to make connections to Inquiries of past Spark MIT Teachers. I have visited the Spark MIT site and read through many previous inquiries and well as watching their final presentations.

I found it quite difficult to make connections as my inquiry is focusing on the teachers and their practice rather than the students and their learning. But reading through the many inquiries what does resonate with my inquiry is the terms acceleration and achievement! I believe that my inquiry into collaboration, digital tools, and visible learning is a key success in accelerating progress for students, especially target students in literacy.

There are many ideas from some of these inquiries that the staff have used in their classrooms and have found them successful. Thanks to Lisa Tatum who was a Spark MIT teacher last year sharing with us.

Karen Belt
Matt Goodwin
Also
Kent Somerville

Making connections with this year's inquiries I can connect with Hinerau - where her focus is about making teaching and learning visible to raise student achievement. This was one part of my inquiry.

Data!!

Looking and discussing our data!

Recently we have held our Mid Year data discussions - with all the testing completed for Reporting.

We discussed our target learners and the progress they are making. It was great to listen to the progress that some of them are making and what the teachers have been doing that has contributed to this success. Teachers are making good use of the collaborative learning space to maximize the learning time. Reading progress continues to be a real success. 67% of our target readers have now met their target.  Feed in lessons are a real success for the priority learners. They are excited when they come to the lesson confident and ready to contribute to the group. Target student programmes are also very focused on their learning gaps.

Our school mid year data is very positive and is better than it was at the same time point last year. We had lots of discussion about why we think this. We think that collaboration has been a major factor in the success of our learners. The students are used to the learning environments and there is continuity. Teachers have identified what worked well last year and are building on this. All students in Year 3 - 6 are using the team sites to access their learning and less time for instruction is needed. Less whole class teaching and more group (both ability and mixed ability) teaching is happening.