A Principal Story and How She Battled With The Dreaded Covid

Throughout February and March I felt like John Snow, yelling out, 'Winter is Coming! Prepare Yourselves.' You will know what I mean if you watched GOT Series 5 to 8.

Well, we are at the end of the Battle (4th Week) and I feel as a Principal that I have accomplished a few things.

1. Always watch the COVID News Special. 

Why? I hear you ask. Ministry of Education is behind the 8 Ball.
One would think that MOE would email their bulletin out first to school leaders before 'Public Joe.' Sadly this is not the case. There have been a few times when we have watched the COVID News delivered by our glorious leader, where my mother asks... 'Did you know about this?' and all I could say is, 'Noooo, new to me.' (hence why it is called the news)

2. White middle-class Members of Parliament, really don't know what it is like to live in Tautoro. 

For me to get Unlimited Broadband, it will cost me $199 per month, not including set up costs. Plus the owner of the brand spanking new Farm Side satellite dish is not guaranteed to receive good reception. Ask my BOT, Chairperson. He spent 45 minutes in a BOT Google Hangout meeting, trying to decipher the conversations that the rest of the board was saying, due to Lagging. Here I thought he sat perfectly still.

TBC

Week 8 - Computational Thinking

Today is about putting it together; understanding our new Digital Curriculum so to implement digital technologies to empower our students' learning.

I have always understood the kaupapa around Learn-Create-Share and it annoys me, when I say to Principals of other school, 'Tautoro School is part of the Manaikalani Outreach Cluster.' ... and their response "Ohhhh, you're a chromebook school."

Pleeeaasssse GIVE ME STRENGTH, not to wrap my ##### chromebook around your #####    #####.

Know matter how I talk about the other kaupapa surrounding Manaiakalani e.g. pedagogy, building teacher capabilities, research based, student and whanau empowerment...(the list is endless), I know I've lost them when I see their eyes cloud over. BUT what erks me the most, the conversation always turns to their students' disengagement and absenteeism. DOH!!!

So we are here, sitting in the beautiful but cold (as the air conditioning unit has a mind of it's own) Waitangi, being exposed to digital technologies that will transform student learning journey's

Ok not quite the Russian artist that I found on YouTube but this is my first virtual masterpiece 'Flowers in a Blue Vase' Just imagine, where you can head with this, in Visual Arts... art history, paint techniques, art comparisons.

What have I learned today...? 'Don't limit a student's learning path, just because your path is shorter.'

Week 7 - DFI Media

Love working with Youtube!

Today I learned how to live stream and add to my blog and google site. Here is my first attempt using my phone and then downloading it into my youtube calendar.



If you look to your right I added an image using Google Draw, it's just another way to present mahi. Really good to do, as it helped me to remember how to crop a photo to the shape wanted. Hence the to extra images beside my photo.

The next learning was to create an animated google slide. On the last slide, I was able to embed an audio clip, which is pretty neat. I can see the students use their problem-solving skills for that task. By the way, not all of the DFI teachers could insert a sound bite, so I was a bit happy that I got to tutu around with this new feature on google slides.


Today I had a wee conversation with Zorina, about how my teaching pedagogy improved with the introduction of using digital tools and programs in my planning, under the protection of the Manaiakalani kaupapa.

If I had this knowledge and technology 20 years ago, man.... I would have been the BOMB teacher. Now I have my old students enrolling their precious tamariki and as a leader, I will make sure Tautoro School teachers, staff and students get the best learning from this way of delivering knowledge and skills.

WEEK 6

In week 6, I attended the Manaikalani Wananga in Auckland with our school Deputy Principal Mattie Paraha, so I missed out on attending DFI#6 at Paparore School. So this week I will share what I learnt at this hui as well as what I introduced to the senior classes when I was relieving.

On Friday 18th Oct I designed a unit that focused on quick fact and resource gathering using a google doc and my google map. But the main purpose was... completing work to a deadline.

Week 5 - Visible Learning

When Learning is Visible, our students experience success as they can see their learning journey.

Issues
What should be visible or not visible?

Visible - Making Connections	Not Visible
Google Learning Sites - Lesson Plans,	Bio data
Digital Learning Objects	Assessments
Rich Feedback and Feed Forwards
Blogs - Student learning.

This week we focused on Google Learning Site - a tool that supports student learning.
When analyzing several class google sites as a parent, I found quite a few sites had presentations that needed requesting to open and quite a few sites just consisted of DLOs.

Without the lesson plan, the students and parent would find the learning pathway confusing.

I am totally biased in this opinion but I thought Tautoro School Yr 7 and 8 Google site showed the learning pathway clearly. Great presentation Gaylene.

Our School Pedagogy Site, I created this site to hold important presentations and resources that would form decisions when teachers created google learning sites.

Week 4 - Collaborate Sites

A beautiful day in Paihia School today, thanks to Jane and her staff for providing a great setting for our Week 4 DFI.

So our mahi today was to create a multi-model document and create a google site in 5 mins.
Yeah... Right!

Hahaha this site took me 3 hours to get to this point - Title page, 4 subpages and 4 partially created multi-model pages.

I think I'm a bit rusty.

A Little bit of Homework

Well, Mattie and I practiced, videoing a Google Hangout. I still find this difficult to know which button to click, so to video the Hangout. Here is the second attempt of our video, as the first attempt wasn't recorded......Hmmmmm.