Sunday 29 November 2015

MindLab Assessment 1 - Video - Planning

Have been pondering and pondering about this. Am pretty happy with my topic choice but still procrastinating.

When I first looked into the assessment I didn't realise it was so heavily weighted on reflecting on practice and that you'd need to source advice and direction from different articles to further inform your practice. It makes sense though because having a stronger evidence based plan is better than just making it up as you go which is what I've been doing - with a little help from Lichtman and the folks around NZ and the world on Twitter...

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The assessment is:

DCL Assessment 1

Identify, justify and plan a digital and collaborative learning innovation applied to a specific area of your practice.

Description
Create a cohesive video presentation where you critically reflect on your practice and propose and justify a plan to address an area for improvement.

An innovation can be a combination of many types of tool, the ways you use them, new collaborative practice(s) etc.

Remember to consider the perspectives of different stakeholders.

Assessment breakdown

20% Identify and analyse the area for improvement based on a critical reflection of your practice

30% Explain and justify what you hope to achieve by addressing this issue, using supporting evidence (e.g. research literature, policies/guidelines, current practice, quantitative/qualitative data etc.)

30% Propose a plan for a digital and collaborative innovation and explain how it addresses the identified area for improvement

10% Use and present suitably referenced source material, including peer reviewed journals

10% Deliver and present content effectively, considering structure, narrative and language

Individual Submission

Video presentation of 6-8 minutes in duration

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As always I've procrastinated. I've been busy with school and stressed but this course is what I needed. To jumpstart me. And so instead of just doing a halfway good job - I really need to push myself. So - here we go.

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Identify and analyse the area for improvement based on a critical reflection of your practice

At present, the main area that I seem to be struggling with and the area that I want to improve the most is leadership with developing and sharing elearning skills. As a self-professed innovator who is always trying out new things, I think it's critical that I learn how to best share with my colleagues these innovations and develop stronger leadership skills in myself.

By doing this I'll be stronger in my own practice as a teacher because I'll have even more confidence when it comes to sharing with my students. Learning new elearning tools is similar for both students and adults - because there is still that nervous thinking that they can't do it. With enough encouragement and self-belief, anything is possible.

As a 27 year old female, I've talked about this before previously here, I feel like I'm not taken that seriously. As if I'm just another innovative new thing fly to swat away. I want to be taken seriously. It's why I've looked into the Google Certified Teacher Training and why I chose to get so involved with educamps and the MindLab. I want to learn how to best be the person I want to become. I've been on a hunt to find more inspirational and strong leaders for me to learn from. This year I've found quite a few which has been great for me.

The last area is elearning. It is everything and nothing without strong and confident teachers. By upskilling the teachers I work with we'll be able to create a stronger collaborative network and they'll try new things. At the end of the day - that's all I'm hoping for. Because if it works, it will have a massive (hopefully positive) impact on our students who will benefit from becoming more digitally competent for a world we can't even dream of yet.

By doing this, I hope to also offer elearning upskilling sessions to students who may also need help and encouragement. Eventually the tech angels programme I've been planning will take off and students will be helping each other too.

By creating a strong elearning framework of workshops and one-on-one sessions, hopefully I'll have a wide reach and create a snowball effect where teachers and students work together to learn from each other.

Explain and justify what you hope to achieve by addressing this issue, using supporting evidence (e.g. research literature, policies/guidelines, current practice, quantitative/qualitative data etc.)

The main challenge is to reduce resistance to new things. By developing more confidence in staff, I'm hoping that resistance to change will decrease dramatically. There are many pockets of early adopters and staff who are willing to try new things at our school but they are often clouded by restrictions placed on us as a school and previous safety guidelines that have now become irrelevant as we need to move forward into the 21st Century.

I want our school to keep being the school of choice in Rotorua and by increasing collaboration, confidence and competency in things elearning, we may have a chance. Many of our feeder schools are already using elearning to enhance their students learning and our new students will be coming to our school excited and with their devices in hand. My worry is that if we don't make a change and soon, students will choose other schools rather than us based on our inability to move forward to where our incoming and current students already are.

By addressing this issue, I hope that as a school we will have more confidence to try new things. We'll be able to identify key areas of focus that need improving more quickly and be less self-conscious about these issues. Our whole school will begin to adapt a growth mindset and push themselves to continuously be better.

I will need to keep reading the books by Grant Lichtman and Eric Sheninger. I will find some more effective, albeit shorter articles and videos to keep inspiring me. I will keep Sir Keith Robinson in the back of my mind and keep moving forward to find a better system than an industrial model. I will keep working with the CLA (Connected Learning Advisory) and the team at Ngā Pumanawa e Waru to develop a stronger plan to provide clear and focussed needs-based workshops and sessions for staff and students.

I've done a survey with staff already on their needs and have asked when workshops would work best for them all. Unfortunately the year is nearly over and my plans will have to wait for next year.

I will keep in mind the school values and targets - where this framework will no doubt help to achieve those aspirational guidelines.

Using SAMR and TPaCK as baseline structures and the eLP framework by Core - I'll have more direction.

Propose a plan for a digital and collaborative innovation and explain how it addresses the identified area for improvement

At present I've created a six month framework of what we need to do to get to where we need to be to begin the process of rolling out BYOD... or at the very least more elearning.

Embed doc here:

The main focus for this assessment and my own role in it will be leading and facilitating the upskilling of the staff to create more confidence. This has both the collaborative and digital aspects within it and hopefully will work well.

Workshops have been organised by me with the staff in mind and particular areas that we need to move towards. In particular: growth mindsets, collaboration, reflecting on our practice, sharing our learning and especially learning how to use the GAFE platform.

By collaborating with staff, encouraging them to share their risk taking and each new tool they've tried - we'll be making headway to becoming more collaborative and digitally competent as a school.

By increasing staff confidence around using technology to enhance their student's learning - not just to substitute their paper or books - but as stronger tools for learning, we'll be able to create stronger and more digitally confident teachers and students. They will become more innovative and try new things. They will share their ideas and their learning and become more reciprocal. Tuakana/teina relationships will happen more and more.

Use and present suitably referenced source material, including peer reviewed journals

At present I have found quite a few articles through Google Scholar and the Unitec library. I need to find more though. Am a hoarder of information and once I've found the best material I put everything back where I found it.

Deliver and present content effectively, considering structure, narrative and language

As always when I make a video - I worry I come across as Fobby... and when I read through my posts like this or think... I know I'm not. It's just how I speak sometimes and I think in future I need to go to toastmasters to fully fix my speaking issues. Some sort of brain issue that happened a few years ago - possibly to do with a concussion or two.

Anyway - having this post now - it's all broken down a bit more which is great. I'll be able to explain things a lot more clearly and reference different things I've already created and used in the video.

I've already begun thinking about the tools I'll use to create the video:
- Screencastify
- Whiteboard Collaborate
- Explain Everything
- Google Slides
- Google Sites - WHHS eLearning Hub
- Maybe even some StopMotion Animation!

Will need a few pictures:

- Me presenting with phone in hand...
- MindLab logo
- NPeW logo
- Next Foundation for thanks with scholarship to do MindLab
- School Staff
- ELearning Team photo
- NPeW and Heights eLearning team photo
- ELPF
- SAMR and TPaCK models
- Self-Filled in Rubric... cheeky??
- Twitter profile pic and G+ Communities

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That's the planning that's been rolling around in my head for a while. Hopefully now that it's written down I can begin to make some headway with it.

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