Wednesday 25 January 2017

Pushing beyond

While watching masterchef over the past couple of weeks, I start to see some similarities with what they are going through.

From going from their normal cooking through to developing creative and innovative dishes. Trying new things and seeing success and failure.

The challenges that they face, develop, build upon. How the judges help with feedback as they are going through.

The same can be said with the school that I am at.

We have the Innovate. Engage. Inspire.
Challenging is one word that is used a lot at school. Developing the collaboration with the teaching, the contexts, and the learning areas. One thing that comes to mind when I started was that there are no textbooks, not even class sets of english books, instead students can choose the book with help from the Innovate information librarians at the school. The blended learning opens students to do both offline and online work. Having the device available in the learning space allows students to not be stuck on a meaning, a word, or having to wait for the next part of their learning. Instead a student being able to see the learning objective and how it works with a rubric or learning design phase helps then to see what is next.

Feedback, one on one checkins with students, I see more and more importance with these, it is a student and teacher working together to develop the needs of the student in class. having the 80 minute lesson and the co-teacher in the room allows these to happen in a more natural way. Progress reports are not a surprise, we have a no surprises rule. The progress report at the end of term is around how the student has meet the learning objective of the term, rather than an achievement objective. The comment is to the student about how they went, and what their next steps are.
But feedback is not just teacher to student, it is also teacher to teacher. Working in an environment that is co-teacher, feedback is constant, what is working well, what didn't work. Even challenging each other to try new ideas are constant. I believe that we have developed better as teachers and the challenge is now where to from here, can we go back to the single space and teacher? But it doesn't stop there. It is also Senior Leadership coming and looking at the teaching and sharing feedback about what they saw, the good and the bad. But thats not all, the Principal also looks at what is going on in the spaces and contributes to the feedback.

The mystery box, Should learning be a mystery? Students use the booklets four times a year to develop the learning that engages them. Use what they they know and build on it.
The booklet allow students to see what contexts the modules and SPINs that have been created around the theme for the term. The role of the learning coach is to make sure that the students have curriculum coverage throughout each term, while also looking at the specific needs of the students in their hub..

Outside the classroom. Having the opportunity to use spaces outside a classroom, this allows students to be out in the community, be responsible citizens. I love using the spaces that we have in our community, the 80 minute lessons allow students to go out and capture the information that hey require for their work. This allows for individualism within contexts, allows students to be creative in what they develop and have ownership of their work.

Looking at the passion of the students
The development of the dispositions, rather than the focus being on a solely academic is a passion that I see more of the students working towards, it has a large importance in our school that the end of the year awards are around the Hobsonville habits rather than being solely on academic success. Having a student who is passionate on the learning that they are doing, many of our students do get their first selections in what context they want to learn.

How to deal with failure?
Sometimes things don't work.
Sometimes the groups that students put themselves in don't work well.
Sometimes students have to be told were to sit.
Sometimes students don't work well on devices.
It is having the confidence to deal with these situations, having open dialogue with the students and having mini chats to get the thinking going about what is going on.

Default State
How do we move from the default state, this has been something that has come up in early on me starting at the school, how do we move from the default state, away from what we have done previously or done again and again. The linking in with the co-teacher, and the themes of the terms and semester help make sure you don't. Making sure that the learning objective is being carried out. But it is also helped by the other parts of the planning.

HMW INNOVATE through personalised learning?

HMW ENGAGE through powerful partnerships?

HMW INSPIRE through deep challenge & inquiry?

Innovation
Each week they look at an innovate way to display or develop the food. How do we show innovation within our classroom, developing the next innovate and creative?

The staples and pantry
The staples of learning, the equipment that they need in every lesson, these have not changed much, Pen, Paper, Pencil, and Device. Though there is some normality of people being upset about students needing a device for lessons, at one point were people upset that they moved away from the pencil?
The fact is the staples in the kitchen continue to change, develop, so must ones learning.

The pantry allows students to access other material, resources, equipment that they may need. The same for our students through online environments.






Examples of information

I have been thinking about how I wish to develop digital information this year and have been thinking about understanding some of the concepts that I want students to understand.

I have decided to use khan academy to help with the in class work. https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-programming/sql Developing the students understanding of SQL, this will allow the students to develop understanding and projects through an online environment that doesn't matter what device that they use.

What I have to look at:

Teacher guidance

To support students to implement advanced procedures to produce a digital information outcome at level 7, teachers could:
  • provide an opportunity for students to learn and practice a range of advanced procedures in a database and at least one other software application 
  • provide a brief for a specified digital information outcome, or guide students to develop their own brief 
  • ensure students are aware of the requirement at this level to produce an outcome that integrates data from a database and at least one other application using dynamic linking 
  • ensure students apply design elements and formatting techniques accurately and independently as they develop digital information outcomes 
  • ensure students apply data integrity and testing procedures as they develop digital information outcomes 
  • ensure students understand their legal, ethical, and moral responsibilities when developing digital information outcomes in terms of the social implications of the outcome within an organisation and the wider community.
copied from http://seniorsecondary.tki.org.nz/Technology/Achievement-and-learning-objectives/Level-7/DTG-7-2

Here is the new todo API information that is moodle 3.2 dashboard, getting students to understand how data is stored in other applications will help them through their own developments.

Add a todo class (pretty please can we have an actual class rather than just stdClass)
  • Some properties of the class:
    • unique id (context id, component, area and item id?)
    • name - the name of the thing the todo relates to (e.g. activity name)
    • url - the url of the thing the todo relates to (e.g. view.php of the module)
    • user id - the id of the user this todo belong to
    • course id - the course if that the todo relates to
    • icon url - the icon for the todo (default to the module icon)
    • start date (optional) - when the todo starts
    • end date (optional) - when the todo must be actioned by
    • item count - how many associated items there are (e.g. 4 unread posts)
    • action name - display name of the todo (e.g. "submit assignment")
    • action url - url of the todo action (e.g. link to the assignment submission page)
    • action start date - a date after which the todo can be actioned (only display the action url after this date)
    • action state - Has this been actioned? Eg, The assignment was submitted.
  • Add an API class to provide access to todos (get todos for a user, get todos for a user grouped by course etc).
    • Retrieval of todos needs to suppose pagination (and pagination with filters, e.g. first 10 todos in the next 7 days, second 10 todos in the next 7 days).
Copied from https://docs.moodle.org/dev/My_course_overview_improvements

While the work does not need to be an API, it will help the students to think outside.

timetable 2017

Been a busy start to the year getting the timetable working in KAMAR. Since we have Foundation Years(9-10), Q1 (Year 11) and Q2 (Year 12) now running.

Here is a copy of what it looks like.
Blue are co-taught modules
Yellow are Floortimes
Red, Big Projects and Impact Projects
Orange, Pink and Purple are SPINS.




Saturday 7 January 2017

Indicators of progresson: Brief development - How Might We

The aim, to get brief development under way as soon as possible. Getting students to look at the How Might We and use aspects of Design Thinking (Stanford) to help them develop their understanding. This helps them to develop ideas at the beginning of the year, so skills and knowledge can be followed up to help them support their project, as I believe that each project will offer some difference.
Rather than focussing on the Achievement Standard, the focus for this will be on the curriculum achievement objective.

Getting students to think about opportunities, I will be using this resource that was shared through NZACDITT - Project Development

The presentation of this will be through the lean canvas.

Level 7 Technology, Brief Development.
This ay be followed up with planning for practice. This will require a field trip.

Achievement objective 

Students will:
Justify the nature of an intended outcome in relation to the issue to be resolved and justify specifications in terms of key stakeholder feedback and wider community considerations.

Teacher guidance

To support students to undertake brief development at level seven teachers could:
  • provide a context that offers a range of issues for students to explore
  • guide students to select an authentic issue within the context. An authentic issue is one which is connected to the context, and allows students to develop a brief for a need or opportunity that can be managed within the boundaries of their available resources.
  • support students to identify a need or opportunity relevant to the issue
  • support students to understand the physical and functional nature required of their outcome
  • support students to justify the nature of their outcome in terms of the issue it is addressing
  • support students to develop specifications and provide justifications for them drawing from stakeholder feedback, and wider community considerations such as the resources available to develop the outcome, ongoing maintenance of the outcome once implemented, sustainability of resources used to develop the outcome and the outcome itself, disposal of the developed outcome when past its use by date.

Indicators

Students can:
  • explore the context to select an issue
  • identify a need or opportunity relevant to their selected issue
  • establish a conceptual statement that justifies the nature of the outcome and why such an outcome should be developed with reference to the issue it is addressing
  • establish the specifications for an outcome using stakeholder feedback, and based on the nature of the outcome required to address the need or opportunity, consideration of the environment in which the outcome will be situated, and resources available
  • communicate specifications that allow an outcome to be evaluated as fit for purpose
  • justify the specifications in terms of stakeholder feedback, and the nature of the outcome required to address the need or opportunity, consideration of the environment in which the outcome will be situated, and resources available.

Planning for Practice, Level 7

Achievement objective 

Students will:
Critically analyse their own and others’ past and current planning and management practices in order to develop and employ project management practices that will ensure the effective development of an outcome to completion.

Teacher guidance

To support students to undertake planning for practice at level seven teachers could:
  • ensure that there is a brief against which planning to develop an outcome can occur
  • support students to critically analyse a range of planning tools and project management practices that have been used in past technological practice
  • support students to select and use planning tools to make effective planning decisions and establish and manage all resources (including time, money, stakeholder/s, materials, components, software, equipment, tools and/or hardware etc). Effective planning decisions enable the outcome produced to successfully meet the brief.
  • support students to select and use planning tools which will allow for the efficient recording of justifications for key planning decisions made.
  • support students to ensure appropriate resources are available (stakeholder/s, materials, components, software, equipment, tools and/or hardware) suitable for their outcome.

Indicators

Students can:
  • critically analyse existing planning tools and project management practices to inform the selection of planning tools appropriate for the technological practice to be undertaken, and for recording evidence to support any revisions to planning
  • use planning tools to set achievable goals, manage all resources, plan critical review points, and revise goal and resources as necessary to ensure the effective completion of an outcome
  • use planning tools to provide evidence for any revisions made at critical review points and justifies the appropriateness of planning tools used.