Ubiquitous and Equity Opportunities

 Over the course of the DFI we have been able to appreciate the empowering potential of a ubiquitous learning pedagogy and how this addresses issues of inequity.   As educators we have been able to access  the analytics from Woolf Fisher and see clearly the positive impact of  Learn Create Share.  The challenge we experience, from my perspective,  is being able to communicate and establish a partnership with parents, caregivers and whanau to gain the greatest outcomes for our students.    In my school we have yet to establish that partnership.   There is a slow trickle of families making the  important decision to purchase a chrome book for their children however the onus remains with school to provide the majority of the devices.   We have committed everything possible over the past three years to provide devices, both school owned and leased.   We haven't yet been able to resource the Year 1-3 students with iPads.  This, perhaps, is where we need to focus our efforts.   If we can engage with parents of our junior children more effectively, then we may be able create a greater incentive for children in Year 4 to own their own devices. 

Perhaps part of the challenge is supporting parents to understand the process, and nature of learning in the 21 century.   In both internal and external surveys of our remote learning programmes,  it was evident that for some  parents  the  perception of learning it is teacher driven.   That it  involves completing tasks that are "marked" and that a list of suitable tasks ensure students will learn.    

Careers NZ lists the seven essential skills that employers look for: 

• positive attitude
• communication
• team work
• self management
• willingness to learn
• thinking skills
• resilience

It often comes as a surprise to parents that knowledge and skills about the specific features of work don't appear in this list.  If we consider the outcomes of Learn Create Share each of these seven essential skills feature in the learning process.  Using digital technology as a tool creates opportunities for developing all of these skills.  Maybe this is the message we need to engage in with our parents / whanau, along with showing how student decision making around learning is empowering .  The critical thinking developed as part of the Cyber smart curriculum, the ability to negotiate the sources of information on the web and be critical of their origins is strongly empowering.   For the generation of parents who were the last to learn in a more traditional way, the challenges of understanding these outcomes is something we need to find ways to address.  

Sadly, equity issues remain when we are unable to give all students access to a device that can support ubiquitous learning.   As well as educators, many principals are needing to become fund raisers, applying for grants, seeking sponsorship, trying to extract revenue from groups, organisations and the Ministry.  This isn't just a problem just for lower decile schools and communities.    As a decile 7 school we have been rejected by local organisations for funding because of a perception that as a higher decile school we don't have a need.   In a diverse community, where household income varies markedly, we  have very limited locally raised funds to supplement our operations funding.  We have the huge advantage of being part of Manaiakalani Outreach  however we have unrealised potential in both our staff and students, as we search for ways to address the financial issues that prevent us from providing equitable access to online learning.  

 

Feeling Creative and efficient

Today I have made use of a number of the tools I've learned over the past few weeks in the DFI.   For the last week of the term, I have planned a wellbeing week for staff to align with Mental Health Awareness week.   There will be a number of activities, with some optional that staff will need to register for.   Prior to the DFI this would probably have involved setting up a number of separate Google docs and using email to communicate the week's activities to staff. 

This photo shows part of a Google doc designed using tables, the color pick tool, Jamboard,  and links to documents in a folder with the correct sharing settings.  I have shared the document with a colleague who will add more links to the activities she has responsibility for.    Staff will be able to access all the information they need and register for activities all from this page. 

I felt confident in putting all the elements together and managed to do  this efficiently.    I had a clear purpose and a plan for how I wanted the document to look, and how it needed to be used.    Being very purpose-driven makes a big difference in how I approached the task.  I get frustrated with practice tasks when I don't have a real need.   When I've completed something I feel satisfied when it has a use. 

Over the course of the DFI I have altered the way I label emails, label, and file google docs, become more adept at ensuring sharing settings are correct, used forms more efficiently, and find myself using Google Keep for an increasing range of purposes, both personal and professional.   I've updated a professional learning site for staff and an thinking about other uses for sites.    I feel more efficient and organised - which I thought I was beforehand.  Great to learn new ways to improve on anything that saves time.    

Some of the tools and programmes don't yet meet a need for me.   However, sometime in the future, I may see a purpose for their use and it will be good to have the knowledge to draw on.  

  

 

The ethics of computational thinking

 I used to teach philosophy to Year 7-8 students and really enjoyed posing ethical issues for discussion.  Around 2017 driver-less vehicles were being trialed at Christchurch Airport and I used the dilemna of how the vehicles should be programmed.  Unlike the Moral Machine activity today, I avoided stereotyping the potential victims of an accident because I felt the demands on the students' emotional capacity would be too high.  There were so many home and caregiver variables such as children living with grandparents, children in foster care, children in impoverished situations that I wanted to avoid comments or discussions which might cause harm to these vulnerable young people.   My intention was rather to create opportunities for divergent thinking so that the students came up with all the variables that would need to be programmed into the car.   Victims were generalised as 'people' and in different sized groups.    The most mature response I heard across a number of classes was from a girl who had experienced a series of traumatic events and loss in her short life.  She said she would always choose to  be injured if it would save someone else, because she had been happy with her life.  

The black and white nature of most of the scenarios in the moral machine activity involving the driver-less car  activity offended me. No issue can be so succinctly black and white.   There would be few I would  want to raise in a debate with young people as the nature of any discussion would be  based on placing a higher value on some people's lives than others. In fact, I shudder to think how some adults might make these judgments.   I would certainly hope that the scientists programming the cars would not be basing their decisions on the popular vote, instead using the evidence from what we know about accidents - speed, visibility, road conditions, construction of vehicles.   In real time I think it would be just as impossible for a driver less car to bring about a different outcome to a person driven vehicle in situations where judgments would be made on the appearance of what was in front of the vehicle. 

Ethics is about firstly causing no harm, and secondly doing some good.   As technology rapidly expands there are so many ethical issues to consider.  We need to be mindful that decisions are not based on greed, intolerance or bias.  In the current pandemic situation we are fortunate that in New Zealand our medical system is coping with the demands of seriously ill people and limited technological resources such as ventilators.   Within medicine ethical issues have often been about  access to expensive treatments / drugs however the development of technology has created another layer of challenge.   In the process of preserving life I wonder what the personal cost is for the professionals making  impossible decisions? 

Empowering learners, as examples showed today, must also be linked to ethical practice and moral purpose. The Technology Curriculum, which includes the new digital technology components, cannot just be about the creation of products, systems and tools.   The impact on people must be  a part of the learning process.  The curriculum states - students also learn to consider ethics, legal requirements, protocols, codes of practice, and the needs of and potential impacts on stakeholders and the environment.  Compassion, tolerance, empathy, humanity - the Social Sciences - must be integral to teaching and learning programmes.   Juan Enriquez raises the question of "who teaches us right from wrong?"   In the rapidly changing technological world this is the challenge we all have a part in.

Empowering learners to be Cyber Smart

 There have been some warnings sent out from our local high schools this week about some disturbing content appearing on social media.   The content appears to be enticing kids in with  appealing images such as puppies,  and once in they are then  exposed to some very concerning images and video.

Some parents have made contact about this, naturally concerned.   It is a reminder that these types of  events can happen randomly and intermittently,   We won’t always be able to stop these things from happening or protect our children from ever seeing them, so it is  important that our young people know how to recognise this harmful type of content and, even more importantly, know how to deal with it.  The recent episodes of spam occurring on blogs is another example of this type of hazard.

In 1999 I was working as a Social Studies contract facilitator for the Ministry and my role was to help schools develop their long term plans based on the recently released Social Studies – the purple document that has since been superseded by the NZC.   One of the schools I worked with was a faith-based school where children were highly protected from the nastier side of life.   The teacher I was working with was very opposed to using current events as part of the learning programme mainly because he did not want the children exposed to events or opinions that were in conflict with the values of the school.   I, on the other hand,  have always believed that current events pose great opportunities for children and young people to develop understandings of others’ perspectives and beliefs regardless of whether or not you believe them.  Between us, we had some very strong debates about what each of our beliefs meant for the children’s learning, and over the year we worked together, we had this conversation repeatedly.

The point I felt very strongly about was that at some point the young people in this school would discover that people are not always well-intentioned and that they would need to be able to understand and hold their own moral ground in the face of opposition.    If we, as teachers, didn’t provide opportunities for them to discuss these issues and beliefs in a safe, guided way, we would not be preparing them for the time when they would have to cope with this independently.   As much as we treasure the innocence of our children and young people, they need to be prepared to face the realities of a changing world in an informed and confident way. I remember speaking very ‘passionately’ about this towards the end of the year.   At another meeting a few weeks later the teacher had reflected on our discussion and had changed his point of view.  He commented that it was the thought of not preparing the children to face these things that overrode his determination to protect them.

From the Maniakalani perspective, we now use the term “empowering” to describe the same things I had been talking about with this teacher.   In the same way, we decided that knowing about what was  valued, morally acceptable, and  what was not in their world view,  we set them up for success.  This is exactly what we are now faced with via online forums and platforms.   However we have much less control over when, and how, this exposure occurs.   So as educators, parents, and whanau, we need to take the same approach and ensure that our young people know what “good” and ‘appropriate “look like and give them the skills to deal with anything that is not.  And hope that consistent, and supportive responses, empower rather than harm our kids.

 

 

Creating professional looking sites

 Over the past couple of weeks, I have been updating/tweaking the format and content of the professional learning site I created for staff at the beginning of the year.  Some of the changes have been to make the ‘window’ into the site more visually appealing but the majority of the work so far has been to increase accessibility and efficiency.  I have been able to condense content by using buttons with direct links to resources or other sites, therefore, reducing the need to continuously scroll to find what you might be looking for.  I am hoping these changes will encourage staff to use the site more.

The challenge with tweaking/updating is that it can seem like work is being created unnecessarily especially when the changes involve the visual appeal of the site.   I was tempted to leave the site as it was and wait until 2021 to create a new one from scratch.  However one of the positive outcomes of the lockdown, and remote learning time, was that staff have become much more familiar with sites and it feels as though I would be doing them a disservice to leave a cumbersome site untouched.  As we only set up sites intermittently it was a good opportunity to practice, and hopefully, retain the knowledge of how to do things differently.  Having made the changes now, no doubt that will jog my memory when it is time to set up next year’s site. Possibly, there will be even newer ideas on how to construct one by then.   When I first starting setting up sites a few years ago it was not as easy as it is now.   The new Google format is so intuitive that it is far less time consuming and there are many more features.   There seem to be more developments popping up regularly and it's amazing how professional a site can look in a very short time.  

The themes are a little limiting unless you have time to custom headers for the pages.   I haven’t spent any time trying to do this as that does seem unnecessary at this stage.   I am, however, thinking about what I might need to collect as the year goes on eg. photos so that I have what I need for the beginning of the year.

We currently use a shared drive where a wide range of resources are collated, particularly procedures, templates, planning overviews, and other information that needs to be accessed.   I’m wondering how we could best combine both a site and the drive for a one-stop-shop.   For new staff, the drive may be a little messy to find what you are looking for.   For 2021 I think it would be  good to collaborate with staff who have responsibility for various resources on the shared drive  to see if we can improve our systems and make things more efficient for staff, either through links, or creating a table of contents on the site to aid navigation.  

The professional learning site is really purposeful, so for me that has been the motivation to keep working on it.  Other tools have been interesting to learn about, and to log away for future reference for when I have a real need.

10 years of change

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the 7.1 earthquake that began an unprecedented change in Christchurch impacting on any every aspect of our lives, including significant change for those of us in education.   You would expect that after 10 years, this anniversary event would not evoke such strong emotions of loss, change, and an even greater realisation that our lives are different.  We have a city centre that has been rebuilt in many places, new subdivisions, many new school buildings and relocations, and new houses.   Around every corner though there are still broken buildings, homes, streets and endless road cones.  We have come a long way, and yet there is still a long way to go.   

As educators, we returned to our schools early and re-established the routines for our students and communities.    We parked our personal situations each day to focus on our children and tried to maintain some semblance of order while the earth continued to shake and disrupt us.   We weren't described as essential workers; that terminology has only recently emerged, however that was the role we played.  Many schools became the life line for their communities  and pastoral care expanded well beyond just the children attending school each day.  It was an exhausting, emotionally challenging time of uncertainty, followed by even greater disruption a few months later when the smaller, but more devastating quake struck in February taking the lives of so many. 

Our communities came together to support each other, there were many acts of kindness and we used dark humour to boost our morale.   The YKYFCW  ( You know you're from Christchurch when ...) memes made us laugh.   We found a new word to describe our broken city, buildings and lives - "MUNTED".   It was a great word with no other explanation required if you lived here.   We grew really tired though of being called "resilient".  We didn't want to be resilient when the changes posed more and more challenges.  We just wanted normal.  For those of us in communities where schools were  relocated for years, merged or closed, we picked up the challenges and started forming new school cultures and environments, taking in our stride the grief of the community associated with the loss.  We separated ourselves from the political battles that went with school closures and focused positively on the opportunities for rebuilding our schools. We kept going somehow. 

Our fight and flight mechanisms have remained on a much higher alert level since 2010.   We see it in our children, our parents and communities, and we deal with the constant fallout of anxiety that brings aggression into our classrooms and playgrounds. Our pastoral systems are clogged  with children and adults needing support for mental health.  Today highlights all that we have been through and the hope that we had, that there would be some normality at some point, has been stretched to the limit with the terrorist event of 2019 and now the pandemic.  Perhaps that's why today seems so hard. 

In today's DFI Dorothy talked about the emergence of Manaikalani 10 years ago and the amazing development of this initiative that has become so effective in addressing equity issues and accelerating student achievement.   For those of us working in schools dramatically impacted by the quakes,  the  partnership with Manaiakalani has become so significant.  Our students have wonderful opportunities to grow and connect, to participate in new and engaging environments that support them to overcome the disadvantages they have been living with for most, if not all of their lives,  The professional learning for  our teachers, so generously funded by Manaiakalani, is transformative and so gratefully received.  I wonder if any of us had thought 10 years ago  about where both of these journeys would take us.  That they have both converged is a blessing.   

Nga mihi nui Manaiakalani.    

  

 

   

 

 

Being Fully present

I don't use Twitter and it isn't something that I have ever felt drawn to.   I think once, at a Google Summit quite a few years ago,  I joined and posted something inane in an attempt to win a prize. I didn't win anything, so having served a very limited purpose I then discarded it.   I  noticed that throughout the conference the audience seemed to be so engrossed in tapping away on their devices, mostly phones, furiously tweeting, that I wondered how they could be focusing on the presenter and the content.  It is common now to see similar things happening in different contexts - meetings where we do a quick Google search to clarify something, send a message, an email or invitation because something has jogged our memory, look up a reference or use the chat feature while someone communicates with us.  I do it - except for the chat feature. 

We all joke about our abilities to multi-task.  I think I'm pretty good at multi-tasking, honed through parenting four children, full time teaching and now as principal in a large school.   Why is it then, that I feel distracted by the chat line when I'm on a Hangout or Zoom?   It feels sometimes like the undercurrent talk that occurs in a live audience situation, mildly irritating and even disrespectful to the person presenting. 

 As we work through these unusual times, relying on media such as Hangouts and  Zoom for communicating, what is the impact on our cognitive functions as we combine listening and viewing,  with reading and writing through chat options simultaneously?  I wonder whether we are losing the ability to truly focus and listen. Can we be fully present, hear the whole messages and thought processes of those sharing, if we are dipping in and out of multiple conversations? 

I see similar practices in our use of social media like Facebook or other online media.   We flip from one focus to another, diverging from our  initial interest to follow other links or posts , until sometimes we forget what our first purpose was.   Dr Cal Newport describes this as "fragmented attention".   He  maintains it interferes with our productivity.   Our fragmented attention prevents us from fully engaging.    

In classrooms we use strategies to ensure that children's attention is fully focused on the teacher when information is shared or feedback is provided to promote learning, so that their attention is drawn away from their device at important times.  As adult learners it is our own self-management, rather than the direction of others, that impacts on our capacity to focus, to be fully present.  We develop habits that may not be helpful or reduce our productivity.   Are we really as proficient as we think we are?  Could we be kinder to ourselves by attending to less stimuli? 

I had an episode of fragmented concentration this week.  I arrived home from school in the early evening to find I had left half the house unlocked in the morning, the lights on and my dog inside. Fortunately my 10 year old dog hadn't left any puddles, or not that I've found, and was very grateful to get outside.  Perhaps my brain would benefit from more single focus activities. 

Unlearning to develop new skills

Wow! Following on from last week's blog and the need to know, today's DFI with a focus on work flow was of huge value. Improving my work flow, becoming as efficient as possible, is an ongoing goal. 

The challenge with being an adult learner is that when you are comfortable with doing something, and it appears to work well, eg. using a particular app, moving to a new app or way of working takes effort and initially slows your work flow. There's the old saying "If it ain't broke why fix it?" which can, if we let it, be a barrier to developing new practices and, with that perspective, becoming outdated. Featuring in this video is a brief explanation of how adult learning can require "unlearning" in order to learn something new. It's such a brief comment that it could be missed, but it resonated with me today as I contemplate changing the ways of working that I find  currently to be very useful. 

 

There are two apps on my phone that I use frequently: Notes and Reminders. I moved to Notes from Evernote a few years ago and use it for everything both professional and personal; shopping lists, recording meeting notes, links to online articles, collecting recipes. It has the ability to take and insert photos, can be used as a checklist, can be formatted for tables and has folders for organisation. It is really useful. However it can't be used for reminders which is why I use the Reminders app. So discovering Google Keep today means I could replace two apps with just one, with the additional advantage of being able to use it collaboratively. I am a creature of habit though, so I'm going to have to make a conscious effort to retrain myself to use Keep, to unlearn what I am comfortable doing.   For a while I'll need to accept that some things I want to refer to will mean switching between  Notes and Keep.   There might be a way to transfer the most important things eg. my notes for each weekly staff briefing meeting, from Notes to Keep.  I'm motivated to find out if it is possible.  It won't be hard to stop using Reminders though as I can simply start using Keep for these things.  

The additional advantage of Keep is the ability to use it collaboratively.   I'm thinking about how this might be of use professionally.  On the personal front I can already see lots of useful purposes. As adults we are motivated to be efficient so that we have more time for doing the things we value.  I wonder how many of our parents, caregivers and whanau would know about Keep and how they might use it to their advantage. I'll plan to include it in my next parent comms.  My sons, daughter-in-laws and their children all have busy lives with schedules for events and commitments written on notice boards on their fridges.   I''m sure Google Keep, with key information only a click away,  might solve some of the problems, and stresses that happen when busy people forget what's written on the fridge. It's certainly worth a try and whether it is doing away with the written diary, the chart on the fridge or moving from one app to another, the unlearning  will be worth it. 

Thanks to the DFI team today.  There were other work flow discoveries today which I'm sure will be equally as valuable. 

The need to know

I am reflecting today on the process of my learning rather than what I learnt; what challenged me and to what extent did I succeed?  

 Malcolm Knowles developed the theory of Andragogy which is defined as "the science of teaching adults" as opposed to the theory of Pedagogy which is focused on teaching children. 

 https://www.instructionaldesign.org/theories/andragogy/

Knowles' theory is centred around four assumptions:

1. Adults need to know why they need to learn something
2.  Adults need to learn experientially 
3. Adults approach learning as problem-solving
4. Adults learn best when the topic is of immediate value. 

In terms of problem-solving I have succeeded.   Throughout the day my laptop switched, at will, between my personal and professional gmail accounts creating problems and frustration.  The biggest issue was not being able to access my blog by which point I could have gladly thrown the laptop out the window!  As an adult though, I can make decisions about self-care, so after time out for a boxing session at the gym and a little bit of space,  I came back to the problem, persevered and solved it. I know how to avoid this experience next time.  Would this have been the same for a student in the classroom? Probably not, for a number of obvious reasons. I was motivated to persevere because the need to be able to blog had immediate value to me.  

Why is the DFI of value to me?   Why do I need to know this stuff?  As a principal I need to keep pace with my staff. I need to be prepared to adapt, learn, be challenged and apply my learning because this is what I expect of my staff.   Our learning is driven by the desire to enable our students to learn.  Overall I have a need to learn.   What was challenging though was that I didn't necessarily have an immediate need to change the organisation of my Google docs, or create a group, or use Voice to text.  Perhaps though the next time I create a doc I'll think differently about the title I use and the nature of the sharing permissions of the folder into which it is saved.   The thought of re-organising three years worth of folders and documents does not appeal however a gradual change of practice will inevitably refine and improve my system. 

There is a joy in learning something new, when a problem is solved and a need is met.  I had a moment of joy this afternoon.  Getting ready for the gym I pulled on my active wear pants, at least a year old, and discovered for the first time that they have two well-hidden pockets.   The discovery of the pockets means there are new options for me when I wear them.  There are things I can do differently that will be of value to me.   Had the attempts to blog not been so fraught I would not have felt the need to go to the gym and not made this useful discovery. 

I think this is a metaphor for the DFI process.  I don't know what I don't know yet and I'm sure there are going to be some unexpected discoveries, some new ways of to add value to my both my professional and personal practices.  I look forward to next week.    

A poster created using Google Docs