MIE Expert April call

I'm running a bit behind in writing up my notes for this call. Work seemed to take over in the last week or two and I haven't seemed to have the time, or just not felt like it!
Even though this is a Microsoft group, many of the resources and information are definitely relevant for those that are not Office365 kura. At my kura we have both Google and Office365, although not all of Office365 is available so we don't use Teams. I still use Excel, Powerpoint and Word more if I can - opting to sometimes copy and past into GoogleDocs after doing what I need to in Word. I also much prefer Powerpoint to Slides - the possibilities are definitely better in Powerpoint. I do miss being in a Microsoft school - especially at this time when I would have a OneNote all set up with work and Sharepoint all sorted, then working in Teams *sigh. Ah well.
These are my notes from the calls we had a couple of weeks ago.
The first thing I really liked was that there was a call buddy. While the presenters did their thing someone else was nominated to follow the questions in the chat, rather than the presenter having to do that as well. Great idea and really useful! A couple of links first:
Remote Learning with Minecraft
How to set up Virtual Breakout Rooms in Microsoft Teams

Learning From home - Nikkie Laing - Opaheke School (Yr1-8)
They have 1;1 in yr 5-8 so already capacity there. Teams was in place for staff communication and they had One Note for some. They managed to get all their devices out before school closed along with some paper packs. They are not doing new resources or new software and they spent the two days before lockdown upskilling staff in Teams.
Online learning for two days and they realised they had planned too much - they did it the way they used to operate but now there wasn't teacher support which made it different. Parents can't always support the way we think they can.
There was much discussion about some students drowning in work that they felt had to be done. It was reinforced that we have to be kind. Not only to one another but to our students.
Need to identify common goals:
consistency for parents
Streamlined curriculum
Options
Shared understandings for teacher, parents and students and need a Learning from Home portal
Checkin with parents by email or phone and refer back to the school website all the time
Checkin with teachers through teams but also 1 on 1 as well
Education Perfect - too much work Online lessons are overwhelming and teachers are shattered but students are more shattered. EP can have so much work in one lesson.
Notices each day - have dressups for fun. No pressure for people to be there.
Requires staff to be collaborative
We all liked Nikkie's infographics so much she agreed to do a separate session on how to make them - see later in this blog!

Powerpoint recordings - Rachel Chisnall
Use the zoom feature in PPT - nice feature for delivery
Relationships matter
What to maintain:
prior knowledge
what they are doing at home
within school structure
Think about who you are trying to reach
Plain sincere recording is better than all the bells and whistles
Be there for your students, don't try to make it perfect
Say something 100 times - it may be the first time they actually hear it
If putting a video in - cut a square out of the corner for your camera
Keep yourself safe - think about the background, what you are wearing, a solo space and prop up your laptop. It's Ok if family are in the background - we are only human if they walk past. Need that human connection
Keep videos short - 6-8 mins max. Think about the student experience as if you were watching it. Save it, then record on a copy of it
Recording bar:
Screen recording useful for small sections of YouTube clips
Forms can add an option to fill out at the end
Best if you have a dedicated mic rather than a computer mic - or you get the noise of keys typing
Once done, think about access. You can save as a video and add to a YouTube channel or add to stream in Office 365 or into OneNote. Export as an mp4 then use YouTube for less bandwidth
Examples of uses:
Introduction videos
Exam walkthroughs - different colours for A,M,E
Student feedback - can talk directly as feedback - put a picture into PPT and talk over.
Watch your language - Must/Could/Should - some are unable to do work and feel guilty
Weekly planner idea - see pic

Wellbeing in a crisis: Carmen Kenton 
crisis education not home schooling
Crisis education research
Homeschooling is very social but this isn't
Maslow's heirachy of needs
We need to share resources as well as have equity of access
Need to increase wellbeing - don't recreate what is happening in the classroom
Asynchronous learning - can they connect at a different time when you are not available? Can't always do it at the time you set.
Give choices - it gives them control in a time that is uncontrollable.
Carmen very kindly has offered her PPT for anyone  - it has great links and ideas.
More links:
Click happy photography competition
Online schooling vs remote learning
Survey staff and students to find out how they are finding things
Use TikTok as an editing tool - good at quick snippets
Juggling needs of high needs academic and lower ability - hard to do all.
Some students just want the stability of school
Need engagement of parents too - hard to get in touch. For some people, school is the safe space

Infographics - Nikki Laing 
https://www.showeet.com/ - spend some time here and just download lots of them
Good to get a message across - focus you to be precise
To turn background stuff off just R click - format background and hide background graphics
Pip Cleaves talks about branding
Adobe color
Extract theme - drop image of school banner and it extracts the colours.  et to bright/muted then it shows RGB and Hex codes on the colour wheel. Need these numbers
Go back to PPT - Design-Colours-own colour bar and create new theme. Can put more colours and put RGB in to use school colours
Works in Word as well - Design- colours
Adobe Color will extract the gradient as well - can use that too
Canva is another option - free Pro licence for teachers. Can use Hex codes in here as well

Noun Project - icons to use
Paint.net - free paint programme that can take background out - can also do in Canva

Haeata - Connections in week 1

I have been so excited about starting at Haeata Community Campus and was very keen to keep a diary of what I was thinking and what we have been doing and so I decided I would write a bit each day and publish at the end of the week. This is an amazing opportunity to be in at the beginning of a new school, and the process is very different from when you change schools at the end of a year. I have been lucky to be part of this new venture and I am finding it fascinating.

The day before...

After meeting with #ChchEd Educators @paulinehendog, @mattynicoll, @karyngra and @ginippi on Sunday afternoon, I had more questions than answers and the excitement started to build. We had a good discussion about uniform in schools and I found that I hadn't even given a thought as to whether there was a dress code for staff in my new school. I just assumed that I would wear what I normally would for teaching. It was good having Karyn there, so I did get to ask. Interestingly, she said it wasn't something that they had thought about. There are so many things that a new school has to think about, it has been interesting to see what the priorities are as another school had stipulated what they wanted their staff to wear. As Matt was also going to a new school this term, there was talk about the balance of getting to know staff, but also getting on with what we need to do for planning and I look forward to seeing how this pans out in our induction weeks. I am sure my social media accounts will be busy over the next few weeks as I learn new things and get more excited about meeting our students next year.

Day One

Some nerves this morning as I drove over to the old Burwood School site ready for our mihi whakatau. Great to meet with some new staff first thing and then we were welcomed to Haeata.  After our mihimihi Mana Whenua facilitator Corban Te Aika and Mel Taite (SLT) spent time to teach us the waiata that we would be mainly using. Our day was spent getting to know each other. We spent time in small groups, doing the usual icebreaker type activities and the SLT ran some excellent activities. We went outside and did a treasure hunt in teams - a great way to get to know a few of our colleagues and show our true colours (maybe I am a little competitive). There were lots of laughs and a lot of talking. We also got to see the new uniform, which looks really practical and low cost for families. Over lunch, a few of us decided that the getting to know people was quite exhausting. You are continually listening, talking, asking questions and trying to remember names and details. It really was a tiring day.
During the day we were encouraged to ask questions and a few came up over the day, checking if we can blog/tweet, uniform questions, dates and times as well as talking about going into our contributing schools. Many things are still in progress and will take more discussion over the coming weeks.

Day Two

I presented my digital korowai this morning and challenged myself to present something in a way I hadn't done before so did my first Office Mix and made it into a movie. It was good to push myself out of my comfort zone - something I feel we will all be doing over the next weeks. Each day a few of us are presenting about ourselves - a really great way to get to know one another and learn about some of the interests we have.

We then had a presentation and discussion around our values at Haeata. Andy, Cheryl and Haneta from the board talked us through what the school is based on and how the values came about in consultation with the community. There was discussion around PPP - Public Private Partnership which is what this school has been funded by. You can read more about that here.
We watched The Future of Learning and we had discussions around what this meant for us as a school. We watched it again and were encouraged to take notes in whatever way we wanted. Really interesting to see the range of ways people wanted to record their thoughts. My note-taking lives in OneNote and I love being able to write and draw and highlight as I note take. Being able to put pictures in and links is just the best. I would be hard pushed to find another tool that would do all of that!
After lunch we had a "Passion Unconference". This was the opportunity to experience learning about other staff member's passions. We were treated to workshops from playing cards to baking and writing Chinese characters to making Samoan ula lole. A great opportunity to learn more about others and also experience something a little different for ourselves.We were then split into groups and given a packet of pipecleaners and had to create something that was representative of learning at Haeata. Ours showed chaos, infinity, connectedness, strong foundations, collaboration and thinking outside the box.

Day Three

The day started with our karakia and himene (I have been learning a lot in regards to Tikanga Maori and Te Reo)and then moved into a session on Unschooling. We had a lot of opportunities to talk in pairs and small groups about our experiences and in one part to discuss failure and success and what the conditions were to make us meet these two things. Why do we try again and again and then give up? Or alternatively why do we try and try again and keep trying until we succeed? We came up with a lot of conditions that make these things happen. A really good way to see how we can support our learners to succeed. I realised for myself that I often don't risk take for fear of failure and things outside my comfort zone often don't even get attempted. We are all too quick to make excuses - not enough time, not interested and so on.
Andy Kai Fong talked about the cynefin framework by Dan Snowden (place of multiple belongings) and we looked at what each of these areas could look like in a school situation. I felt this resonated as I know I have been in all four quadrants over my teaching time.
We had some time in our hapori today which was good to get to know each other a little better. We played games (cards were a definite hit) and chatted about ourselves.
I had an interesting discussion with some staff at lunchtime around student well-being and was introduced to the Circle of Wellbeing and Achievement which Haeata is using when interviewing parents of new students. This has a really good framework to get to know students and plan goals and strategies to help with the transition into the school.
We had more digital korowai today and it has been great learning about our staff who have been very open in sharing information about their family and their teaching.
The afternoon was about our personal sites that had been set up for us which have our contracts and information and documentation about our reflections as well as space for working towards our Practicing Teaching Criteria.

Day Four

Our first session was on the principles today - Authentic, Connected, Culturally intelligent, Inclusive, Social, Open, Personalised. These are what Haeata is based upon and it was great to have time to learn about and unpack these. Firstly we had blank sheets of paper to write our ideas and unpack each principle. Then we gathered in groups and were given photos that we felt represented those principles and it was interesting to see how people interpreted those pictures and the different ways of thinking. We shared a story each that related to one of the principles and looked at how we would show success in that area. This was a good exercise in working out how we define success. It made me think more about what success is and how our students show that. In groups we also made a slide show with a quote, definition, song and slogan about one of the principles. This let us unpack them a little more as well as get to know more staff. I felt that the principles are all interconnected and felt good about how they would impact on our teaching and learning at Haeata.

Day Five

Today was a different day. We started with a shared breakfast and then had an Amazing Race. We were split into different groups yet again and sent off around Christchurch to find a range of items, build sandcastles and meet people in businesses. The highlights would have to be one of our team removing the required chicken feather from a dead chicken, pretending to be sheep on the side of the road, meeting some amazing people and convincing tourists to have their photo taken with us. We came back for a BBQ lunch then worked together on a presentation for the rest of the staff on our excursion.


This week has been like a huge week of professional development. My daughter thought it sounded like a school camp and in some ways it was. We had time to socialise, to connect with one another and learn about others as well as ourselves. We are very lucky to have this opportunity.  I certainly felt that my brain was about to explode a few times. However, it has been a very rewarding week and I know that I feel connected to staff and to this amazing new school, Haeata.