MIT - Design Thinking: Evolution Session @ KPMG

Evolution is the gradual development of something, in this case, my Moonshot Proposal.

The goal of which has changed due to the changing environment in which we currently live.

I started with:

I would like to be able to encourage students to write interesting and detailed stories.

Which turned to:

Engaging Y5 boys with descriptive writing.

Now it is:

Engaging students with writing through Distance Learning

There have been many ideas to help inspire children during the lock down period and to help keep them entertained while unable to physically visit places. I suggested to a parent today their child might like to go to 'San Diego' and walk around the zoo. They could start with Google Earth to get a birds-eye view of San Diego and look around the city before zooming into the zoo.

Click on the Map to travel from Auckland to San Diego.

Then view this clip to see what it would be like to be on the tour through the zoo before looking at the live cams to investigate the zoo animals further.

There are 12 different live cams or videos from around the zoo and children could just focus on one or two to create a piece of writing. Then look at the animal's blog (some have videos, others pictures).

Many sites with live cam I noticed needed restrictions to be removed, which would hinder viewing from different places for students.

You could pick an animal from Auckland Zoo and check out the video and the same animal or a similar one at San Diego and compare environments/habitats and types of animals, such as the Burrowing Owl and Morepork, or the Elephants, or the two types of Baboons.

Along with these ideas, I have also been attempting to create my own Screencastify(s) helping students to make their writing more meaningful. But I keep starting over, still working out how I can edit and link different shots. However, here is the slide I intend to use to encourage the use of Onomatopoeia.

Distance Learning with Tui Whanau

Here it is, a perfect opportunity to practise distance learning.
                           Well, there has to be something positive from Covid19.

Today is our first official day for distance learning. I am excited to see who comes to Google Hangout and has a go with this different style. I can't say new as I have been using Tui's google site over the last two years to engage and help with digital learning. The new part for me is the hangouts. I have set a space in my kitchen (where the table is). I could go into the tiny office (but it is a mess) which I use for crafts, scrapbooking, painting, drawing and storing teaching stuff I have put away (actually I have multiple of these places, the office a bedroom and the attic) maybe now is a good time to sort to more and cull lots! 'But I might need it!!!'

First place to tidy will be the office, especially with everyone home. 2 teenage boys trying to study and attend hangouts and me trying to teach. One goes to his room one is in another bedroom. Hubby in lounge/kitchen cleaning oven (with no airflow, cough, cough, not Coronavirus).

Looking at myself in the Hangout I can see I still need to make some changes I love the art but the light is reflecting off it and into the camera, which I find distracting so I can imagine the students not wanting to look and pay attention too.

And seeing the light from the window and reflecting off the posters I have tidied the office some and now working in there. This has the benefit of no interruptions. Still not the tidiest of spaces but 'I need that!'

MIT - Design Thinking: Experimentation Session @ KPMG

Wow - we are in changing times. When we were going through this process and discussion we thought it was only a likely possibility that we would end up in Isolation with Distance Learning. This meant the ability to change our Moonshot Proposal to up the anti and develop it for Distance Learning.
Exciting Stuff

So we are experimenting with learning through Google Sites, Hangouts and Blogging as a way to see the end process. Click on the image below to see how we started.





My moonshot proposal is more general again - just focusing on writing with distance learning. Still very excited to be part of this.

DFI - Christchurch

DFI 2020

Christchurch

A great day thank you Christchurch beautiful and sunny. 

Everything ticked over nicely, running to time with the Facilitation of DFI Workflow. I even was reminded how to embed a video so a longer videos can be posted using embed code through the HTML page, to a post rather than having to ask students to make it shorter.

Step 1: Create your recording.

Step 2: Save recording to your drive.

Step 3: Open in the drive, click on 3 dots in the top right (on the black screen within the window playing with the movie clip.

Step 4: Click on open in a new window.

Step 5: click on the 3 dots at the top again for embed code.

Step 6: Click on embed code and prepared to copy and past it.

Step 7: Once embed code is copied, go to blog post HTML page and paste.

Hopefully, the final result ends up like this. It is so easy. Now I just have to remember it!!!!

DFI - West Coast

2020 DFI

West Coast

Always a lovely place to visit this time I had the pleasure of the flight from Christchurch to Hokitika being cancelled and the lovely 4-hour bus trip through Arthur's Pass. What a gorgeous view.

What is new in the world of Google Calendar, Gmail, Hangouts and Google Keep.

My new find is Dynamic Gmails, 

I have been using them for Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher when we did the 5 Whys for our Moonshot Proposal. It was an easy way to respond to the questions through Gmail, rather than having to open up the slides with the comments on the side which was rather small especially when trying to see the whole dialogue.

Looking forward to tomorrow and the flight in 30 minutes back to Christchurch

Tried putting my trip together in Google Earth - Voyageur here's how it simply looks. 
Click on image to view in Google Earth.

Google Earth - Toolkit

I am looking at ways to inspire boys to write.

Today we had a sports day with many of the local schools. There were three codes cricket softball and touch. After school, I was in a Google Earth Toolkit through Manaiakalani and thought if I revisit the day's events through this medium.

Link to Google Earth project about our Sports Day.

It will be interesting to see if this helps remind the students of their day and how it could stimulate writing.

MIT - Design Thinking: IDEATE Session

Crazy 8

For our proposal, we had to come up with 8 ideas for how we thought it could work. It was time to think outside the box. I like using images but we weren't allowed to just draw we had to give a brief or scenario. 

The final product had to be digital so reading to the students wasn't enough.  Finding a way children can have an experience inside the classroom was tricky and the idea for virtual trips come about. It is my shooting for the stars. I am excited because I am starting to see ways it might be able to happen.

I am aware, however, that Visual Reality cardboard box glasses only let one person view the phone. Looking at the image above, you can see my colleagues' preferences from all the dots and googly eyes. Then we talked about the most popular idea and how we could develop it. I am wishing we had a green screen a 360 go pro and many other tools to help.

MIT - Design Thinking: Connections & Resources

WHO?

Who does my Moonshot Project involve, from the base to the tip?
Who is helping me trial the ideas?
Who are my team?
Who has a voice in this project?
Who will it influence?

Just as I was running out of ideas, we were asked to use the BAR thinkers key.

What a great way to continue.

B - Bigger Think bigger

A - Add, Who else can I add (I even asked those around me to help)

R - Remove. This was not so hard as some people are just busy. I remove Manaiakalani because I felt I had doubled up, but I am thinking, there are so many facets to this maybe it should still be there. 

MIT - Design Thinking: Interpretation Session

How We Might turn this Problem into an Opportunity?

As a group, we had to move around and ask (using post-it notes) 'How might we...?' Making sure we use the word we as we are all in this together, that way we can help and pick each other's brains.

I found this process very interesting and felt relieved when I realised I wasn't alone.
It made me start to think of alternatives to engaging children, especially boys with writing.

MIT - Design Thinking: Empathy Session

Empathy for our Students

Role Play

Once again we joined our buddies from the 5 Whys task as they knew our focus the best and could help with the role play.

I nearly burst out laughing in the middle of mine. Sarah and I had organised that she would be the student writing the typical weekend story.

Such as: In the weekend I went to the pools. I got wet and then we had lunch. Then we went home.

As I walked around the group of teachers watching I took a bit of liberty and asked another teacher what she had written and she said

"In the weekend I..."

As I hadn't discussed the conversation with this teacher.

I said, "Keeping writing, we will come back to the beginning shortly."

Learning my lesson I carried on to 'my student' and asked again.

"In the weekend we went to the shops," Sarah said proudly.

I asked, "How did you get there?"

"We walked."

"Could you start the story with Walking to the shops.."

I think this happens as children often write about their weekend to help build up writing mileage and it is an easy beginning to help younger students focus. I believe we need to teach them other ways to start writing by using verbs, onomatopoeia, questions...

Without these deliberate acts of teaching, we are expecting students to read our minds and guess the criteria we are using to mark their work against.

Our focus is on WHO?

Who has the problem? Why is this a problem for them?

We had to think about the students what to help. Who are they? What characteristics, strengths, dispositions do these people have that you presume will contribute to this situation.

MIT - Tweaking the Moonshot Proposal for 2020

Modifying the Proposal

After the 'Board Meeting', we were given the opportunity to tweak or redefine our moonshot proposal.

The teacher who played 'the lawyer' was my first port of call. She had made an appropriate criticism about my proposal:

"I want to improve boys writing by helping them to write interesting and descriptive stories." (or thereabouts)

The valid point she made was she wanted her children to be able to write descriptively but not just imaginative stories. In fact, she qualified the comment with not everyone will write a book. I want them to be able to argue a point or share their point of view in detail.

As a writer, I knew I didn't want to repeat the same words so I originally changed the last word to stories from writing. But I could see her point and agreed stories was too specific for the proposal.

I also realised it is not just about what I want, but about what the students and parents want.

MIT - Design Thinking: Discovery Session

Role Play

The Board informed the Community of the Focus for the Strategic Plan

This was an interesting exercise. We had to pretend we were attending a meeting sharing the direction the school was heading. The Board Chairman was filling in for the Principal to explain the new direction with little information. We all had a different parental role, from immigrant, local hard-working single mothers to affluent lawyers and doctors who were unsure if this was the right place for their children and local tradespeople.

There was some polite but heated discussion as people tried to fulfil their roles in the community and gather information on the direction the school was heading.

 

 

Proposals for the direction of the school ranged from having a single focus to that of the whole school. Questions were asked regarding what teachers were doing in the class and how more able students were to achieve if their focus was only on the underachiever. As "the community", we tried not to blame others but when you thought you were doing the best for your child and you went through university and expected the same for your children you believed they were firmly grounded in the basics. So how were they being catered for?

Then there was the immigrant, who was quiet and didn't understand what the meeting was about. There was no consideration given to this person and why they didn't share their opinion. There was also the locals who worked multiple jobs to make ends meet who could be made to feel less regardless of ethnicity.

MIT - 5 Whys for Moonshot Proposal 2020

After creating our proposal for Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher we buddied up with another participant for the critical thinking stage of the proposal. Two heads critiquing are always better than one. We had to wait for each answer before asking the next question. Or we may find the question was answered. Trying to come up with 5 Why questions to help us dig deeper was challenging. One thing that made this process easier was using dynamic emails, as you could access the whole conversation in a larger form in Gmail, without having to open the link to the slide and scroll through the comments.

The 5 Whys

Is a repetitive interrogative process,used to explore the cause and effect relationship underling a particular problem. The method has no hard and fast rules about what lines of questions to explore, or how long to continue the search for additional root causes. Thus, even when the method is closely followed, the outcome still depends upon the knowledge and persistence of the people involved.

My problem is - Engaging Year 5 boys with writing.

My buddy, Sarah asked some interesting questions, which helped me to dig deeper and made me think about the proposal. Am I asking the right question? Is this really the problem I need to address?

In our area children and families often speak in broken English. When writing we expect full sentences and a more formal register to be used. So as teachers we are teaching sentence structure to encourage full sentence and the use of more formal language but it can still be a challenge. Reading is often modelled more frequently, and teachers try to teach writing using formulas like, 

 In the weekend or Last week...

 It could be a hindrance to their creativity. However, without structured sentences (and sometimes with) the meaning of what they are trying to say can be lost. I was trying to read a piece of work yesterday and misinterpreted words partly because of spelling and partly because of the way the sentence was written. Personally, when including dialogue I love to have it written like they'd say it at home adding personal voice to the piece. We often use models from books which isn't necessary formal register but the structure is more formal. Especially as students learn the difference and understand as they get older, how to construct a sentence and the way they talk at school is different from how they talk at home.

 Our literacy is based on our inquiry so if we are investigating a scientific phenomenon, then we might look at reports on that area. Personally, I like to encourage students to write using imagination during this time too where they have to pretend they are in the spacecraft visiting the planet (or some such). I wondered if teachers find teaching this sort of writing (report/ transactional) easier as there is a formula to the writing. Whereas the narrative is slightly less, although is you through in a problem growth of character, twist and the final solution you can write a narrative using a formula. Maybe it is because it can be so personal and we don't want to judge the content we find this type of writing more challenging to teach.

I do believe some students struggle to use their imagination. There are many possible reasons for this it can be harder to teach. "Close your eyes and imagine," if it is not something they do often, they won't get it. Life has changed and although students may roam streets they are not playing up trees, making huts, dressing up and meeting a range of people (sometimes this may happen through experiences at school). Personally have read a lot and being exposed to different experiences throughout a long life these experience make it easier. Students are being encourage to read a wider range but this doesn't happen until they can read fluently. (Which is fine) And their life experiences can be limited, as they can spend numerous hours in front of the Xbox, PlayStation etc, hindering the opportunities to use and stimulate their imagination at times.

I do believe it is a skill that can help in many situations. By using their imagination they could be the next great inventor creator of a vaccine or just a way to survive what life throws our/their way. They may even become a teacher and by using their imagination inspire the next generation. Not all through writing, however. But by learning to explore their imagination and develop the detail they are more likely to be prepared to think outside the box and be creative.

MIT - Moonshot Proposal for 2020

I want to create a proposal around writing but was unsure how to start until we were given the template for the Moonshot Proposal. I love the name because we encourage students to aim high so they may fall amongst the stars.

We have had to discuss the proposal with a buddy and look at a challenge to achievement we would like to reduce or eliminate. I am looking forward to developing this from a teacher's and a writer's perspective.

Culturally Responsive Practice - Priority Learners

As a school, we are looking at the teachers being the priority learners because we need to learn how to best educate, teach, facilitate in our learning spaces. By being the priority learner we can learn ways to help change our practice so we are responsive to our students. We have been asking a few questions to get things started.

What does a priority learner look like?

 

What do we do to engage our students?