Digital Fluency Intensive 5 - Collaborative Teaching and Learning

Digital Fluency Intensive 5 - Collaborative teaching and learning.

Connecting with Manaiakalani : Visible Kaupapa

The use of google sites allows teaching and learning to be visible to all.  

Visible teaching - allows us as teachers to collaborate, share and develop each others practice.  

Class on Air is example of the generousity of the Manaiakalani Kaupapa.  This is a digital form of class observations which is accessible and rewindable.  It becomes a window into the practise of experienced and competent teachers which was invaluable to myself as a beginning teacher. Now as a fully registered teacher it allows me to check in on other teachers practise to refine my teaching style at any time and any where.  

Professional Blogs sharing our inquiry and other Professional developments and reflections is a way to ensure that what we discover is available for others to learn from and enact in their own classrooms.

Visible Learning - Through the medium of the internet we virtually invite whanau  into our classrooms. 

Based on Treaty Principles of partnership we are inviting our aiga, whanau and family to an unpacked version of their child's learning journey.  We are seeking to make it simple and understandable, so that they can "see where they are going".

Hapara Teacher dashboard - provides visibility of the childrens leaning to teachers.  This means that we can harness the research backed lever of feedback to assist learners to maximise their learning potential.

Class Sites - Through the school website open access is available to all my planned learning for each child.  The use of sites allows us as teachers to make learning goals and tasks available.

Class Blogs - I use this tool to provide a record of our learning and experiences.  I find the blog a great way to share those magic moments that occur in the classroom.  I especially like to record and share moments of creativity or play which are often not otherwise recorded in their learning journeys.

Multimodal learning 

There are at least four modes of learning.  

The NZ Curriculum (2007) tells us that an effective teaching pedagogy provides learners with multiple opportunities to engage with material, a number of times, in multiple ways.  Learning should be presented in a number of contexts and within many different tasks.  By providing content which covers all these modalities we are approaching a form of Universal design for learning - where we are able to create access to the curriculum for diverse learners.  We have the benefit of digital technologies to break down barriers to curriculum access e.g. Audio and video files which are rewindable.  Students can create using digital tools as well as traditional creative mediums.  

Kerry Boyde-Preece used the metaphor of a shop window.  Our sites need to be the shop window to the learning.  They need to provide motivation to draw our students in and make them excited for the learning journey.  This is Behavioural engagement.  But this is not enough WFRC work on T-shaped literacy is an example of multi-textual design.  As learning is not one size fits all, to be effective we need to personalise learning to the needs and levels of students.  

By providing multiple options for learners we are allowing them agency and ownership over their learning.  The ability to choose learning tasks empowers learners to be active decision makers and they therefore become equal partners with their teachers in the learning process.  I believe this is where the magic happens - as teachers we cannot force a student to learn.... we can only make it accessible to them at their level, and hope to excite them and motivate them to do so. 

This is an example of some learning which I designed for my learners during this years lockdown in term one. 

Connecting with digital technologies - Collaborate

Google sites is a readily available tool to support our goals of providing multimodal learning opportunities for our students.  

Today we had the opportunity to create a multimodal site from scratch.  We began by investigating the 

MultiText Database created by Angela Moala.  I felt quite jealous seeing the huge amount of resources available to teachers of older children.  

After collaborating to decide on themes and content relevant for the curriculum levels of our learners we designed a site which allowed our learners to engage in Multimodal and Multi textual learning.  Inspired by Kelseys work I chose to develop my site around the picture book 'Giraffes cant dance'.  By using picture books and providing learners with audio we are removing the barriers to comprehension for emergent learners.  My site is aimed at developing comprehension, inference and vocab and providing learners with a number of ways to encounter the theme of the story.

Click here to access the full site.