BTS24 with GEG Aotearoa day

 I attended the BTS24 with GEG Aotearoa day online yesterday, would have been nice to be in the new gooogle office in Auckland. Would have gone down for the day but I am in Auckland next week with my son at Auckland hospital and couldn't afford 2 trips to Auckland. But we where lucky enough to be able to attend the great variety of informative workshops through google meets. They had a great variety of experts presenting great tools, Ideas and resources. 

I love the work of Donna Golightly and follow her on lots of social media platforms so I attended her workshops and got great ideas and resources. 

The top take away for me was the AI presentation looking at some of the AI tools available I have just completted the Level 3 of Magic school and am currently exploring Curipod which is one I had not heard of. 

Steve also gave a great presentation on whats new in google which keeps me up to date and also allows me to then share them with teachers. Having an orientation day planned next week with new teachers to our Te Hiku cluster I am adding some of the new tools and resources into my day. 

I love these days and always come away motivated and enthusiastic to try new things and explore new apps (AI tools). This is the link to the days workshops and recordings. A great rewindable tool we can go back to at any time. 

Meaningful feedback for continuous improvement in school.

 NZCER had a great webinar today by Professor Brent Duckor and Carrie Holmbry on Formative assessment. 

It was based around the book they have written on Feedback for continuous improvement in the classroom. 

They are based in San Jose State University in the centre for Innovation in applied education policy.

They acknowledged and recognised Hattie and Timperleys work in assessment. 

They had a framework which I liked: the the Focal points of Directionality-who is most responsible and who is the primary driver? The teacher, student, self driven or peer to peer. 

Configeruration -the spatial arrangement and interpersonal dynamics- coaching how to talk? Being positive and collaborative. 

Modality- non verbal, written and spoken. Blended both written and spoken. Digital a new schema. 

It is about building and creating dialogue, trust and resilience. Using concrete visible scaffolds to invite opportunities for self. 

1) setting the purpose

2)agree on goals

3) developing drafts 

4) planning next moves 

5) Evaluating the project.

We should focus on evidence and they use progress guides. 

Qualitative descriptors

Progress guide

My current draft demonstrates, a column on graded simple goals  and a column opposite Next steps are To improve my draft I will..... 1) 2).    This is the performance. Can invite conversations with peers, teacher and class for some examples and discuss ideas. 

I liked their reference to circling back. 

It is about communicating learning goals with visible processes. Engaging in multiple information exchanges(just in time, nudges, scaffolds)

Focusing on closing the gap.

Moment of pause to unpack the language. Using multi context. 

I totally agree that the students need to be part of the construction and have their say in the progress guide. I also like the clear guide that we can not assess everything we teach to this degree and depth we need to decide on which big idea we will assess. I can see the use of google forms to make this much easier to monitor and review with all the information appearing on a single sheet and using sheets to have individual students' progress guide being sent to its own sheet. It was a great reminder of formative assessment and the purpose and processes. I am thinking about how I can create a progress guide in my cybersmart lessons with the students. 

2024

 Happy New Year!

Just like they do every year, the holidays have gone by to quick and fast. I am feeling very refreshed and relaxed after a very lazy few weeks. Lovely to catch up with my daughter and have her home for a few days. Also all her friends came over for a yearly catch up and school reunion. A very fun night had by them all just like they did when they were tenagers. Liam, my son, is still on crutches and will be for another 4-5 months. Good news: the bone grafts are growing. He is off for another operation on the 25/1/2024 for more bone grafts being added to the hip. Bill, my partner is also back to work today and he also saw his heart specialist last week and got a good report. So all are healthy for the start of the year.

Had a great Christmas at the Fairburns hall with all the Whanau a great catch up in the pouring down rain and hot humid weather. 

This year my exciting adventures are having a new school starting, Pukenui which I am looking forward to. Being on the trial for the maths Intensive Program. Also the countdown is on for ISTE in Denver USA 22 weeks and 4 days till we fly out. I have got my ESTA visa waiver and got some travel items in the boxing down sales. I am so looking forward to the adventure. 

Back to work today, emails all checked and to do list has been written. Booked into a couple of webinars, google back to school, Apple back to school, Australian Virtual Maths summit and Formative assessment.

I have been looking at all the AI tools and what could be useful for our teachers and myself. I just completed the level 1 and 2 course for Magic school and looking forward to exploring this tool and may complete a toolkit on it.