Digital Immersion - what have I been up to?

I have made a screen recording to take you through how I use my class site to guide the learning for my students. This example is of a two week reading activity where I have tried to combine the Learn Create Share aspects of the task.

The Woolf Fisher research into the Manaiakalani Programme identified the need for extended reading in order for students to engage cognitively in their learning. My university study this year reiterated this, as well as the value of extended discussion to promote acceleration in learning.

Example of Student Work on Striving to Succeed

Healthy Eating Commoncraft Movie

Banana Vs Lollipop from Team 3 PES on Vimeo.

Example of Student Work on Health Eating

Example of Student Work on the Commonwealth Games

What is the research telling us as teachers?

Digital Immersion - Term 3 Reflection

Where is my teaching heading?

Here is a diagram that shows how "follow-up work" can either be substituted into a digital format, augmented, modified or redefined using the affordences of technology:

My aim is to set tasks that redefine the previous model of "follow-up work". My students need to be synthesizing information from a range of sources, discussing, debating, critiquing and justifying their opinions. They need to be able to search for information, judge whether it is a quality source they are using, and paraphrase the key ideas. They need to be able to present this information in a creative way that would not have been possible in the analogue world.

The Plan of Attack

So sometimes we like to be a little old fashioned and write things on paper...

Here is our brainstorm about how we plan to ensure more of our students are cognitively engaged and using their higher order thinking skills in reading.

Commoncraft Movie

Promoting Extended Reading and Learning from Team 4 Pes on Vimeo.

Digital Immersion

Yesterday I spent the day with a group of teachers at the Manaiakalani Digital Immersion PD. We discussed some of the findings of the research that is being conducted by Dr. Rebecca Jesson, Professor Stuart McNaughton, and Dr Aaron Wilson at the Woolf Fisher Research Centre at the University of Auckland.

One of the most important outcomes of the research was the need for teachers to put devices to their best use - for students to learn to synthesize information from a variety of sources, and create a DLO that reflects this sythesis of information, not simply to create a digital worksheet.

Rebecca Jesson's hypothesis is: The learn-create-share cycle generates opportunities to learn from texts and across texts and to explain/reflect/demonstrate that learning, through creation (Rebecca Jesson).

We discussed in a small group about how we could see this happening. The discussion was honest, motivated, realistic, and above all, passionate. We agreed on a trial concept, which I will outline shortly, that we felt passionate about teaching and that addressed some of the concerns raised in the reserach.

There is no time like the present.

For a long time, I have intended to begin a professional blog. I have blogged before about travel, and now I administer a group of 8 and 9 year old bloggers at Pt England School, Auckland, where I teach.

Yet, there is something both empowering and intimidating about sharing ones own professional thoughts, successes and invariably failures. It leaves you open to a wide audience of critics - and this is why I have come to the conclusion that I need to commit my ideas and trials to a blog. There is nothing more powerful that receiving professional feedback from your colleagues, and this is often quite hard to elicit within the busy schedules of school life.

The title for this blog comes from a thought that is so often in the back of my head when I am thinking about all the things I would like to do both professionally and personally. My word for the week is "efficient" and it is something that I hope to work on so that I have more time and energy to put into the things that I am passionate about.