DFI Day 3 - Media Agenda

Today I participated in another worthwhile session of Manaiankalani's Digital Fluency Intensive.

Following on from last week's session on learn/Ako, today Dorothy spoke about the create/Hanga pedagogy of Maniakalani. One of the key messages that resonated with me again today was that we want our children to be 'creators of content, not merely consumers'. As Dorothy was speaking I thought back to my own experiences of primary school and the majority of my memories, unsurprisingly, are related to creating something or going somewhere. Two such creations I remember were building a brontosaurus out of chicken wire and paper māchē, and the joy of discovering I could use PVA to stick sand on a model I made of an island. Unfortunately, I can't remember any of the learning that went with these creative tasks other than the craft skills! Dorothy spoke of 'create' being a hook for learning and as teachers, we need to embed these create activities within authentic learning tasks so that the memories our children create are saturated in learning opportunities and/or that cement the learning that has already occurred. How lucky are the children at my old school, Kaniere Primary,  that they are apart of Manaiakalani outreach! It is also a reminder once again that being in the 'create' zone sometimes means 'doing less, better.' The best creations and authentic learning sometimes comes when students are given the time to create and not rushed on to the next piece of learning.

The next session looked at creating a Youtube channel and setting up playlists. The benefit of saving videos to a playlist is that this can be embedded within your class site for children to access without going directly on to Youtube. Several years ago I made a slideshow with videos of well-known pictures books being read aloud. It would be helpful to use a google playlist for this instead. I would also like to create an appropriate music playlist too for children to listen to while working.

Today's deep dive was by guest presenter Kent Somerville, Associate principal of Pt. England Primary School. He discussed different ways of live streaming via Youtube and Google Hangout meets. As a school, we tried our first live streaming of assembly during the lockdown. This got me thinking, would it be worthwhile streaming all of our assemblies or at the least filming them for our whanau to watch at a suitable time. We also have other events such as Manu Kōrero and Pacifica performances that would be wonderful to share to a wider audience. Now all I need to do is convince those that hold the purse strings to let me purchase a decent video camera!

The final session of the day was an opportunity to explore one of seven create tasks. Dorothy's session was focused on designing personal slide templates which brings joy to my creative soul! I was already familiar with the site https://www.slidescarnival.com/ but didn't know you could edit the masters. As I have found out not all the slides will allow changes. Below I have included the master slide and then the one I have edited using our school colours.

The last piece of the puzzle...from a large collection of puzzles!

My latest motivation at the gym has been to watch Ted Talks while pedaling madly on the exercycle. If you don't know about this resource yet, I strongly encourage you to check it out here. Today I watched a talk which hit close to home for me on a personal level. It was one of those, 'oh yeah, I get it! It all makes sense!' moments. This year has been filled with these moments in my professional life. My first post is a perfect example. It reminded me of putting all the pieces of a puzzle together; you can see a lot of the picture already but it's not until you stand back and look at the final finished puzzle you get to see the true picture. It's having a fair idea about something already and then having that moment when it all comes together.

Tomorrow I'm and traveling to Auckland with two colleagues for the 2015 U Learn conference. My hope is I will have lots of 'puzzles' coming together over the next three days. One of the workshops I have signed up for is title: 'Creativity in education is no longer an option, it's an absolute necessity'. I'm particularly keen for this workshop as it has been influenced by Sir Ken Robinson. Creativity is a key component of our learning model, 'learn, create, share'. One of the messages that has stood out for me from his talk  'changing education paradigms ' is that as teachers, we are preparing children for jobs that don't exist yet.

So, why are we so focused on teaching literacy and numeracy? Don't get me wrong, until someone can convince me otherwise I want my students to leave our school literate and numerate but what other skills do they need for their future? What's is going to be important for them to be a successful member of society and to reach their full potential? We are so lucky in New Zealand that we have a curriculum that has a vision which matches this and that education is not just about the 8 learning areas.

Recently I watched another Ted Talk by Sir Ken Robinson called, 'Do schools kill creativity?' This talk spoke volumes to me and was another one of those 'of course...' moments. What struck me while I drank in his word, is that in the background I could see the year, 2006! How did I not know more about this before now? and why wasn't this seen as more important in our education system?! 

I will admit I have definitely had moments where I have worried about not giving enough focus on literacy and numeracy but over the past few years it has become clear to me that skills such as creativity are equally as important. This is one of the skills that will prepare our students for reaching their full potential.