I am a Manaiakalani School Facilitator based in the Far North. As an outreach facilitator I work in professional learning and development (PLD) to support teachers and leaders to become highly effective teachers through learning, creating, and sharing of students work. Through the promotion of a digital learning environment , digital fluency, and literacy. A key focus is to accelerate learning living local and learning global.
Wednesday, 29 May 2024
Brisk AI
Thursday, 23 May 2024
Craig Hansen AI Workshop
What a great presentation from Dr Craig Hansen at the secondary connect. He went over Brisk AI and teachaide.
Brisk is ahead of others with the chrome extension and just being able to click the extension and direct it from there. It is very simple to use and create from. It also works very nicely with the google apps and tools.
Define who you are (e.g., a grade five science teacher).
Specify what you want the AI to create (e.g., a 30-minute lesson plan on the water cycle).
Describe how you want the information presented (e.g., structured text table, lesson plan with headings and bullet points).
For more information on Prompt engineering visit Anthropic
This is the link to the secondary connect with a recording of the presentation and other usefull links and guides.
Monday, 22 April 2024
Generative AI for Educators Course
Completed the Google Generative AI for Educators Course. It was good to go over all the types of AI systems and the history behind AI. Then moving onto how AI can be a unique teaching assistant for educators
It covered the instructional strategies prompts using the acronim PARTS- Persona-role, Aim-objective, Recipients-audience, Theme-style tone Structure-formate of output.
We also unpacked the Limitations unfair bias, Hallucinations and unreliable info, academic integrity cheating and privacy and security.
It also introduced adapting output and how to incorporate shots and request chain-of-thought outputs.
They shared a good PDF glossary, responsibility check list, and prompt library.
It was great to explore with AI and learn about the types and how to utilise them as an educator.
These are some other great resources they shared.
Google for Education’s AI for Education site details the benefits of AI for educators and provides information about using AI responsibly and ethically.
Visit ai.google.com to explore more about AI development, its applications in various fields, and open access to research and tools.
And here are some additional resources to get you started with AI in your practice:
The Day of AI website, dayofai.org, promotes a global initiative empowering educators and students to navigate AI through curriculum packages and professional development opportunities. Use this resource to help your students be productive and responsible users of AI.
Experience AI, experience-ai.org/en, offers free resources and challenges to introduce AI and ML concepts to students ages 11-14 in an engaging and interactive way.
Thursday, 18 April 2024
Highlights and workspace and AI...Oh My!
Wednesday, 3 April 2024
Google Kupu
Tuesday, 12 March 2024
Term 1 Toolkit Battling Multiplication Facts
Another great toolkit 36 educators from accross the cluster attended. It was fantastic to have Fiona Fox as my wingman and also her great expertise and input into the workshop was very valuable. I enjoyed attending the maths summits and workshops available online to see what the latest research and experts from around the world are saying about the learning of the multiplication facts. It was great to share the new Te Mātaiaho refreshed curriculum phases and I know that... I know how to... and I can do for Mathematics. Donna Golightly had put them all together on a google sheet. I emailed her to check it was OK to share with the teachers. This I found easy to follow and see the progressions across the phases much easier. We had the usual discussions and questions around rote learning and speed tests. I really enjoyed putting this together and learning what other countries and researchers are saying to support the learnig of multiplication. I tried to support the research with lots of great resources, web sites, and online manipulatives to support the teaching in the classroom. It may have taken along time to put together but it was a great learning experience.
Wednesday, 28 February 2024
2024 Virtual Math Summit
It was great to attend some of the workshops at the 2024 Virtural Math Summit. I watched
Juli Dixon
Multiplication Fact Fluency:
A School-Wide Solution (3rd-5th)
How can students achieve a deep understanding of multiplication that allows them to develop fluency with their basic facts for multiplication that goes beyond recall to explain and justify their thinking? Experience the six tactics that make up the Fact Tactics(TM) Fluency Program designed to shift from drill-and-kill instruction to an approach that helps students make sense of multiplication while developing automaticity and procedural fluency.
Website: http://www.dnamath.com/
Facebook: Juli Dixon
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thestrokeofluck
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julidixonmath
It was good to listen and hear the same things being said like many of the other researchers like Jo Boaler. We should be teaching strategies, conceptual understanding and context. Then through practice they develop fluency. We want students to develop multiplicative thinking to support them with higher level maths. The fluency helps with less loads or processes when working out higher level problems that involve basic facts to suport the strategies.We do not learn through drill and kill or speed games and tests. As these develop maths anxiety and puts students off wanting to learn. This was also a good workshop to support my next toolkit I am doing around Multiplication facts.
Latrenda Knighten
Windows and Mirrors: Implementing Teaching Practices that Build Students’ Mathematical Identities
In a student-centered mathematics classroom, students should have the opportunity to see themselves as doers of mathematics (mirrors) as well as view real-world connections to mathematics (windows). Windows and mirrors in the mathematics classroom allow students to develop positive attitudes about mathematics and build strong mathematical identities. Attend this session to learn practical strategies for building and nurturing students’ mathematical identities.
Twitter https://twitter.com/LatrendaK
Term 3 Toolkit
Another popular and great toolkit. With the new mathematics and statistics curriculum being slowly rolled out to schools any maths PLD linke...

