Walking Stories of Te Hiku TOD

First day of term 2 and the teachers in the Te Hiku Kahui Ako had a teacher only day. A first for our schools in the Far North, a ground breaking day for our students and teachers. The first hui lead by our iwi in Te Hiku for all schools. We had a  powhiri onto the Te Rangi Aniwaniwa kura by their students and kaiako. The first key note speaker was by Anahera Herbert Graves talking about the history of Te Tiriti and the Ngapuhi. The next speaker was Shane Jones who I have heard talk many times and new we would enjoy it. He is such a good story teller, with great history and humour. He told the story of Te Kāinga Ngāi Takoto the land we where on. We then had break out sessions run by the different iwi Te Aupouri, Ngāti Kuri, Te Rarawa, Ngāti Kahu, Ngāti Takoto. We heard the stories of each of the iwi. Then we had the Iwi panel answering questions.

This was a great day to have everyone together hearing the stories from all the iwi. We heard a lot of the what they want us as teachers to tell the students in the classrooms and the why, the only thing that is missing is the how and the resources to support the what? Who are the experts in our iwi, the story tellers the come in and correctly tell the stories. We need more books, songs, videos, podcasts for teachers to tell the stories. So our students can learn who they are and where they come from. They can learn their Whakapapa and about their turangawaewae. So they can locate themselves and where they belong, how they got here. The significance of their iwi stories is vital to understand who you are.

This was a fantastic start to the histories of Te Hiku, the stories of significance and connecting our tamariki. Faces where put to names and great people with amazing talents where show cased. I am looking forward to the follow up workshops, resources and Teacher Only days that will develop out of this.

Digital Fluency Intensive Coach term 1

I was lucky enough to be a coach for the online Digital Fluency Intensive for term 1. I managed to change my timetable to fit all my teachers in over 4 days. For the full 9 weeks I was a coach and had a bubble group of teachers I supported and guided and got to build a great relationship with over the 9 weeks. I had a mixture of male and female primary and secondary teachers with a varried level of knowledge of Google apps and Manaiakalani kaupapa. I pushed myself to take some of the sessions for the whole of DFI participants this was great to keep me upto date with all the changes and upgrades. Also the challenge to keep to the time limits. This took some practice as it is so easy to go over time and also a challenge to not rush and talk to fast. Our leader Vicki is so professional to work with and encourages and supports us to take sessions and offers time to go over the workshops if we need. Having the reflection time as facilitators after each day is great to disscuss, change and follow up emails to teachers or facilitators working in the schools to follow up. The feed back was great to read and nice to have some specific to myself "I loved my bubble group. I felt very fortunate to have a group of teachers that had a mix of genders (we have no male teachers at our kura), spread across Aotearoa, spread across year levels/experience. It was SO interesting to hear the experiences of everyday teaching life in all these different environments and Donna was an amazing facilitator that was able to share her knowledge of how Manaiakalani DFI might help us meet some of our personalised challenges/goals/expectations for learners." "Donna was an amazing bubble leader. Was always helping and finding ways to create good and thought provoking discussion." Next term I am able to be a coach again and am looking forward to my next bubble group and pushing myself more and taking some of the workshops I am not confident with to learn and extend myself. I feel confident to do this with such great facilitators and Vicki that will jump in an help at anytime.

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.