After this, the Chef Executive of the Trust, Jenny Oxley, made a presentation. This began with the visit of the Hawaiian waka in 2015, which was a hugely important day for the cluster as the visitors spent time in Pt England school sharing the learning with students and teachers.
Next, the cluster was explained via key labels and themes, eg decile 1a, geographical location, 2500 children, 13 schools, kura kaupapa, Catholic, and a special school and the paramount importance of equity. Links to the cluster include twitter.com/clusternz and manaiakalani.org. Followed by the members of the team, the trust (to provide more resources than the schools had access to), and the many commercial and philanthropic partners.
1. Acceleration: children talking about their learning and using technology as a tool.
2. Whanau engagement: parents invest by paying for their children's device. The Trust makes this affordable via micro-financing.
3. Research: investigation of the effect of the programme on student achievement.
There are 5 Outreach clusters of about 40 schools throughout NZ, of which Kootuitui ki Papakura is one, being supported by the Manaiakalani vision, structure and pedagogy. There is also another group of schools that has taken onboard different versions of the programme.
Next came the goals of the programme followed by the background from the beginnings and the shift in student achievement. The opportunities for teachers were discussed in relation to the digital teacher academy, the innovative teacher programme, the professional learning groups, the toolkit sessions, the GEG groups, the annual GAFE Summit, the Google ClassOnair, the annual hui, f2f opportunities and the relationship with Auckland University. The Trust is thinking about establishing a housing trust which could benefit teachers as well as whanau.
Participants were told about the cybersmart curriculum, the use of Blogger as the platform for sharing learning, and shown the circular model which combines LCS and the principles- visibility, ubiquity, connectivity and empowerment. There was quite a lot of discussion around the principle of visibility for both teachers and students. Once a student goes digital, parents can be disadvantaged if they don't have access because the opportunity to view bookwork may have disappeared.
Dave Winter, Outreach Delivery Manager said, "Privatisation restricts the opportunity to improve. Visibility and Kawa of Care sessions also reestablish the relationship between parents and schools, as schools may have been unpleasant experiences for them in their childhood."
GAFE, Google sites, Google+ Communities and Hapara were discussed and how they operate together. Also, how the work may be referenced to SAMR and technology is implemented into teaching and learning. Everything in Manaiakalani has Creative Commons so can be copied and repurposed.
Next, it was time for school visits. I meet Fiona Grant, the Lead Facilitator, at Kura Kaupapa Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa o Puau. The children were working on their digital footprint and public/private. The resources are in their class folder and there was plenty of discussion.Everyone met back together again for the afternoon session. We listened to 3 teachers about their digital 1:1 teaching-learning environment.
The first was a year 4 teacher from Pt England School, Room 11, where she'd been for 15 years through the journey. She was in her 6th year 1:1 with both ipads and chromebooks. The approach was to chose a student and follow their learning through the class site. The 'Teacher Notes' were on the site accessible to the teachers and management, not to the students. The student had watched the videos, done a writing task, resolved comments by the teacher, loaded the learning to his blog and by 9.30pm his parents had commented on his blog post. The average child posted about 1-2 times a week. The teacher put folders on her site which contain photos and pictures she has taken through the day.
The second teacher was a junior teacher in Room 19 at Pt England who used ipads with Explain Everything in her class. She started by working through the tools and then followed up with rewindable reading activities which took the whole lesson eliminating the need for a reading rotation. All activities had audio instruction so that the children didn't have to continuously come up to the teacher. Writing was still done in a book with a pencil, but
augmented with an ipad and stylus.
Lastly, we met a teacher from the high school who is a
participant in the Google ClassOn Air. She talked about applications with the SAMR model and that the ClassOn Air lessons are potentially to be used with training teachers while at training college. Discussions are continuing with Auckland University Teacher Education Department.
This was a very enjoyable and interesting day. It confirmed the journey that Kootuitui ki Papakura are on. I could understand the presentations, the class facilitation and the teacher presentations due to my learning over the last 6 months. Even though our cluster is much younger than Manaiakalani in its digital enablement journey, it is still a work in progress that we are all collectively on. Thanks Jenny, Dave, Fiona, student and teacher presenters.
