Sharing my practice

This year I have been lucky to work closely with Karen Belt this year and watch her sharing her practice on Google Class OnAir. This week we been planning how we will create our very own Class OnAir lesson.

Thinking about how I will do this today have been a challenging and exciting experience. I want my lesson to be exciting for the learner and of course use the digital affordance effectively to support critical thinking and learning.

Today my focus was getting my site ready for my context and beginning to plan the writing lesson that I will teach next week. Diving back into HTML and site had it challenges but borrowing Karen's HTML. I also found that I could draw on past design ideas to build my site. Also having the past Google Class OnAir lessons to explore has supported me to think about which elements are important to capture and share in my video.

I am excited film this lesson and share it for other teachers to see and for me to see and reflect on as my practice continues to develop.

Connecting at digital immersion

This year we have connected with other beginning teachers each term. Today was our last digital immersion meeting with other beginning teachers.

Our focus today is around Visibility enables accelerated shift, this is important for our priority learners. For priority learners one years progress in a year is just getting older not moving forward.

We need to engage learners in the learners process is central acceleration. Hooking learners into learning, so that they are engaged with the curriculum. Engagement supports learners and teachers to have a productive and supportive learning experience.

How do our learners connect with their learning?
Everyone in the world is an individual. We all have a way that we learn new information. It might be that we learn best by talking to others, by listening, by exploring, by watching and so much more. This is why it is so important to provide multimodal learning experiences so that all learner can connect in a way that works for them.

Multiple texts
Learners can access text written for adults, written or for scientists. This takes away the ceiling for learners, they link these difficult texts to easier text and use their search knowledge to unpack ideas. They can build a wider understanding of a topic and see an idea from a range of perspectives. When teaching learners to do engage with multiple texts, start with a scaffolded text (one learners can connect with), then complimentary  text to build knowledge and tension texts, then learner can self select texts to continue to build knowledge.

Here are some examples of multimodal  and multi textual ideas.
Click the image to view the presentation to see some amazing multimodal resources.

Today we created a multimodal site to promote critical thinking and engaging with a range of texts. For this task I focused on extending the science learning of one of my top reading group. The focus of this site is DNA and how DNA is used to solve crimes. 

This was and interesting topic to find resources for and I am still looking for the best materials. 

Here is am image of how far my site has gotten so far. 

As I continue to develop my skills in teaching multi textually my aim is to provided more options and opportunities to explorations. This will support learners to extend their ideas have ownership.  

Sketch-noting Toolkit

Sketch-noting is something I have come to very much enjoy and have found beneficial to making the learning process visible. This made it the perfect thing to share with other teachers in the cluster. The great thing about sketch-noting is that it is flexible and n be done in multiple ways from paper, to google draw, to buying and using specific iPad apps. Presenting this toolkit with Danni was a great way to share these ideas with other teachers.

Hour of Code

Coding is another language. It is a way of telling a computer what to do, say and create. Earlier in the year we explored basic HTML coding in google site. I really enjoyed this coding and at the time became to question more and more how I could make this a part of my classroom program.

Hour of Code
Today we explored the hour of code a world wide movement to promote the learning of coding. Each of the sessions uses simple building builds and you code the program to do certain actions.

Behind each block is the Java coding script which you can look at. You can also choose to code in this Java script. 

Today I coded with MineCraft on the hour of code using the blocks. It took me a while to get use to it but once I did it was lots of fun. 

I also choose to do try doing using Java script this was a whole new challenge as if the script isn't right it won't work. I do however find that once I was use to it coding in script was just as straight forward in this program as coding with the blocks, this was help by the drop downs when writing. 

Here is an example or my Java script writing to complete tasks. 

I am excited to do more coding and introduce coding to my learners as I believe it is a great skill and can be intergraded with maths and literacy. 

Future focused Eduaction

What will the future hold?
This is a question that is always at the front of our minds as educators. The best things we can do is know as much as we can about the changes that are occurring in education and the world.

In New Zealand there are plan for future focused education and we as educators need to consider.
Some of these ideas of how the digital nature of these changes are outlined within the Towards Digital Fluency document published by the Ministry of Education.

Link

These educational ideas focus on supporting all learners to be at home in a digital world. 

Link

The document of the right is the education plan for 2025. This discusses learners choosing their path and connecting digitally. 

So what will a digital world look like in in the future. Today at our digital immersion day we discuss some of the new ideas in education. We talked about how fast the world is changing and the role that digital technologies play.

If I think back to my school the technology we used may have been computer that was very slow that we used for research or to create spreadsheets or type up stories. When I wanted to used the internet at home I had to use dial up and no one else could use the phone or internet. The first cell phone was a block had buttons you had to press multiple times.

BUT now you can program robots, enter a virtual relativity, be driven by a self driving car and so much more. Even with all these exciting things happening now the world continues to change and new things are entering our everyday lives all the time.

What will happen next?
We as teacher do not know exactly what the next 'Thing' will be however we do know that digital fluency will continue to be important. We can also know that jobs in technology are on the raise and that coding skills are value for our learners future.

As I think about my future as a teacher I think about how I will teach in a future focused way, always looking forward and staying current in my knowledge of the world, technology and teaching.

There is no point in teaching for the past when our learners will only see the future.