Session Four: Dealing with Data

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy? 

Dorothy told us all about the SHARE component of Learn Create Share.  We are born to share, it's an instinct or compulsion.  We share - food, fishing stories, successes, failures, wins, joys, loss, tears, ideas, friends, achievements, vision, goals...

The invention of social media in 2005 allowed sharing and communication to become more accessible.  Things went viral - Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, YouTube, etc.

This was a great quote from Dorothy:

There is a magnetic attraction for our children to have an audience to share and this was then able to be used in education.  Before sharing had been constrained by time, place, people, etc.  Pre 2005 our audience was one another, the class, the school, and the local community.  Sharing in the digital age adds the ability to share globally.

Pre 2005 the audience was a compulsory audience.  After social media the audience became authentic - this is how we can share as connected learners.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional? 

A great Hapara hot tip from Gerhard on dragging a child to the top of the list so you can find them easily and monitor them.  In my team we use the group function to organise our 79 students.

The session on MyMaps was great - I can see it will be really helpful for things like measuring our cross country course around our grounds.  It would also be good to use at the start of the year as part of our Pepeha - where are you from unit.

Just this week I have learnt how to freeze columns and rows on spreadsheets, which has been awesome.  I have taught myself most of my spreadsheet skills so to learn some short cuts is helpful.  We use spreadsheets a lot as we use them for our planning templates, keeping track of our school wide PB4L reward tickets, and obviously assessment data.  Lots of useful hints and tips learnt with Gerhard - protecting sheets, getting the sparklines, cropping sheets, inserting check boxes, splitting names, and using a task tracker.  I love the idea of using a task tracker to track student blog posts or comments made on others blogs where they insert the hyperlink to the post or comment that they made.  I also will try the pixel art using spreadsheets to create art - the kids will love it, especially my gaming boys!

What did I learn that could be used with my learners? 

I have been using Google Forms in my programme during the Covid lockdown with a poem and comprehension activity.  Venessa has now shown me how to add the answer key and assign points for correct answers.  This will be a great time saver as previously I had to do that on the spreadsheet each time a child submitted their answers.  This one of the activities the students asked if they could continue to do now that we are back at school.

Here is the Google Form which I adapted today to make into a quiz with answer key and scoring.  Feel free to have a go at it!

Looking forward to trying the pixel art using Google spreadsheets to create art - the kids will love it, especially my gaming boys!

I love the notion of taking a screenshot of each student's blog overview stats for them to see.  This would be great at the moment after lockdown as the number of blog posts generally increased (for the majority of students.). Great ideas for how to do this and templates on these two links - a student and a teacher.  This would be great to do with our Year 6 students at the beginning of the school year as part of our Statistics Maths unit as they will have 2 full years of having their own blog and hopefully so good data on them.

I chose one of my Year 6 students and looked at their blog posts over the last 3 years.  Amazing to see the difference in lockdown.  This was a student who absolutely loved home learning, averaging 3 blog posts per day.




What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

I will use lots of the spreadsheet tips in my role as Club Secretary for the local rugby club - for our database and registrations.