DFI #5 Visibility - 'Can you see it?'

"Can you see it?"
Todays session was focussed on the importance of 'Visibility' and the new and unique opportunity we now have in education to use technology to  allow ubiquitous access.

Prior to being visible there was a measure of how well you could 'read the teachers mind' and interpret what the teacher was expecting or where they were heading.
Technology has given us the ability to completely expose the learning and have no surprises. Implicit and critical  in this is that the learner must be at the centre of the learning and therefore every part of the learning process should be exposed to the learner.

We are lucky enough to have Hapara - 'making teaching and learning visible' as a management system to help ensure visibility for the teacher.

As part of the analysis of effective practise in Manaiakalani schools Stuart McNaughton wrote" Their use of class sites to make learning and teaching visible further supported student agency ..."

Applying Multi Modal Learning

As educators, our job is to strive to make learning engaging, and exciting for our students. In Manaiakalani we have termed this the Hook and know that hooking our learners in is essential. We need to keep asking  "Is what we are doing in class engaging?" ... Will it “hook” them into the learning and what we want them to experience?"  We need to be working to inspire our kids to go in and investigate further and using the affordances of technology allows us an enhanced ability to do this effectively. So we spent the rest of the afternoon looking at some great examples of sites and learning activities that have a range of multi modal texts and activities and then had a go at creating our own.

DFI#6 Enabling Access- Sites

2015 was when the Manaiakalani Cluster began to grow and included 5 new Clusters becoming The Manaiakalani Outreach Programme. This has continued to develop and grow to the point where today we are a connected network of around 22,000 learners and a huge group of educators from a diverse range of kura across the country. Over time meaningful relationships and a sense of belonging have continued to grow and develop.

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"If you are all paddling in the same direction, you have greater power, you are more efficient. There is an impact on the nature of teaching and learning because if the teacher and student each know what it is you’re meant to be focusing on you are more likely to reach your goals". - Dorothy Burt

There has grown a pedagogy and kaupapa -  visibility is a critical component to sharing and there has been huge development in the use of Google Sites over time to expose 'Learn. Create, Share' with kids, whanau and communities.

Clarelle Carruthers shared some insight into the rationale and purpose of effective sites and some tips and tricks when creating in new sites. What a long way we have come from the initial sites we set up 'back in the day'!

And after a few reminders about the importance of planning for simple navigation and being mindful of the audience, I went back to the drawing board.






The site I am developing is still a work in progress but is intended to share some of the components of pedagogy that we have adopted that work for our tamariki ...