Te Mātaiaho The refreshed New Zealand Curriculum

 

I attended the MOE webinar on Te Mātaiaho The refreshed New Zealand Curriulum on Thursday 23 March. I attended one when it first came out and it was good to hear it again and some of the changes they have made since than. I think it is about time Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the local comunity, iwi and inclusive of all ākonga is better embeded into school curriculums and strategic plans. The story behind the develoment of whakapapa of Te Mātaiaho is very beautiful and good to hear from Dr Wayne Ngata himself and how it is the foundation of the Te Mātaiaho and the meaning of the 7 curriculum components. I need to spend some time going over it again and watching the video again. I also need to go to the web site and look at the resources they have available. It will be good when more resources and progressions are out over the year to put the components together and understant the Whakapapa through to the ākonga in the classroom. It will be good to unpack the new phases of learning and progression out comes and steps. The progression out come describes what ākonga should Understand, Know and Do at each phase of learning. Which fits very nicely with the Learn, create and share pedegogy of Manaiakalani.

Introducing Google Screencast for ChromeOS

Started introducing this app to the students this week. Such a game changer and so easy to use. 

We needed to change the keyboard to English USA which was simple enough. It also would only work on chromebooks with 103 version or later. The great part of using google screencast app is they save to the drive and are not limited. We have always used the screencasitify extension which was a great app but it is limited to 10 a month and only limited to 5 minutes. The activity we did today with the students was to record the great chicken coup designs they had made on Tinkercad and show all the component's on the design and explain them while recording the design in tinkercad and show the 3D design and zoom in to each component. The students gave good feedback on the activity and the app. If they where working in a group they had to have verbal input from everyone in the group in the recording. 

They did need to remember to check the sharing permissions on the recordings are set to anyone with the link can view as some we could not see on their blog posts. I will be using this resource more in the create side of my pedagogy. To gather student voice and create rewindable resources.  

Online Toolkit Term 1 2023

 Term 1 toolkit I decided to introduce digital escape rooms. I had created one as part of the summer Learning Journey activities and thought I would turn it into a toolkit. I already had the videos I had created for the SLJ so could repurpose them and teach the teachers in the toolkit. I put it as a beginners and after the toolkit I should have had it as an intermediate level. So teachers struggled with some of the technology tools.  Especially the google form validation process. I had created a digital escape room for the kawa of care, I have trialed it with a year 7 class and they enjoyed it and gave me positive feedback. It was great to have the teachers share and email me some of their escape rooms. It is a great creative learning digital process for learning that can be integrated into any curriculum area.  For our digital proficient students we could also add digital escape rooms as part of the Hanga.

 

ChatGPT Artificial Intelligence.

This has been at the forefront of the media with lots of controversy and panic. As a team we had OMG Tech come to one of our Friday Meetings and introduce us to it and discuss the pros and cons of ChatGPT.We also had lots of readings shared with us. All I can say is mind blowing and what a time saver. I can see so much time being saved and ideas for starting points for lots of work. I also had the opportunity to introduce it to the Te Hiku cluster at the term one AKO staff meeting. I was surprised that no one had tried it and the only comments made about it was from teachers doing University papers. They where told form the university that it was a bad thing and to stay away from it and not to use it. After introducing it and watching some videos I gave the teachers some time to experiment with it. There was lots of Wows and shock on how it can be such a time saver for teachers. I also head of a teacher using in a class with the students this week. I can not wait to the next update and other new AI introduction's and improvements.    The one things we must remember is it is not 100% correct. It will also never replace the classroom teacher. Some other great resources and readings Ditch that text book.  OMG Tech,  Adapt to ChatGPT with Art.

 

Relationship Building

It is so important to bulid relationships with the students in your classrooms. I may only be in the classes for 1 hour a week but the students see me in the school and other classes. They also see me in the community. So this year I made a google drawing to introdcue myself with my Pepeha and photos and information about myself. Connections where made with many students also coming from the some iwi and having very simular pepeha. But over all my cat was the winner on the day. As I vist each week I am often asked how my cat Tutu is.