Adobe Express - what is it?

 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1GWY9t1RKJv_7bgAvJFW6w-EodgRIEmNHNep4Sl-rZug/edit#slide=id.g2eefc5af337_0_48 fr We had the infamous Matt Goodwin present to us about 'adobe express' .. for our learners to create on a 'safe' platform. The features of 'Adobe Express' is: - video - presentation Student Creative Kit One interesting aspect of using AI platforms is: - the loss of our learners individual creativity and imagination. 'Adobe Podcast' -AI enhance, blocks out all the other noise, isolates it .. you can use it in the classroom. - not 3rd party - powered by adobe professional grade tools - worth to explore: video editing, animate slides, graphic (draw on it), Adobe STock -large library -no IP infringement How is it safe for kids? 'prompt' a cartoon battle between armies Comparision between 'canva vrs adobe' .. 'commanders of the code' - how do we navigate our learners to integrate 'AI'

2024 Teacher Only Day - Other workshops

The Manaiakalani Teacher Only Day workshops were fantastic! There were so many amazing options, but we could only pick two. I wish I could have attended a few more, as they were AI create workshops.

I'm hoping to find opportunities to use those creative teaching strategies in my classroom this term, or maybe next term.

In the meantime, I'd love to hear your ideas! What tools or resources have you found effective in helping students develop their creative skills?  Check out my few picks!

2024 Teacher Only Day - Workshop#2 "Creating your Pepeha via iMovie".

This second workshop was lead by Sandy & Latini - how to create your pepeha via iMovie.  link

 This was an informative workshop - we started off with the 'Lalaga' cards, questions that were designed to 'connect' or create talanoa/korero with your learners/colleagues.

However we had an interesting talanoa/korero with our learners who don't know their whakapapa/gafa/genealogy.  Alot of the learners parents aren't aware of their genealogy, an opportunity to ask family who are still present.  

We ran out of time to utilise 'iMovie', however there is a new feature on google slides, to record yourself.  I recorded my Pepeha using my DFI visual pepeha slides.  I had to change my pepeha and include both my parents details.  As I'm Samoan, we don't have associations of river and mountains, but we have 'villages' that our parents have been raised.  I didn't include it in this recording - but will definitely include this in the next one.

Teacher Only Day - Bring Lessons to Life with AI Animations

This morning, my first workshop was led by Manaiakalani Facilitator and Project Lead Matt Goodwin,  titled "Bring Lessons to Life with AI Animations."

Matt used three AI tools: Lalamu Studio, Meta's AI Research, and Adobe Express (Animate from Audio). Here are a couple of things to consider when using these sites with our learners:

Ethical Consideration:  Consider using photos or animations of our learners' faces online. Since this information is kept on-site, it's important to remind our learners about being Cybersmart. 

Free tiers and limitations:  These free sites have limitations on usage.  They may offer credits/vouchers or renew free credit monthly. Upgrading to "premium" features typically comes with a cost.

Lalamu via Canva: Text to lip sync animation. It works directly from Canva and works best with text for lip syncing. I used this site to insert one of my student's stories and chose a female avatar to read her story.

    It's an awesome tool to use, for our learners to hear and proofread their work.  One of the downside of this free AI tool, it doesn't include reading with punctuation. 

Meta's AI Research: allows users to create animations, by drawing a character, uploading it on the site and select what movements you'd like your character to consider eg: running, walking, facial expressions etc.  

Adobe Express (Animate from Audio)  Allows users to record their voice, but using an animation.  Quite catchy for our learners to use this for their play recordings?

     

Will definitely give this a go for our learners to 'create' from their lessons.  

2024 Term 2 Teacher Only Day

Talofa lava!

'Tautua i le alofa, manuia le lumana'i – Serve in love for a blessed future'.

is our theme for 2024. We were blessed with Panmure Bridge School's hospitality for our Teacher only Day this year. The sun was beaming on their school, unaware of the flood that had impacted some areas earlier. Their Kapa Haka group welcomed us warmly, and when finished, they formed a guard of honour for us to walk into the school hall. What a blessing!

We were honoured to have Dr Craig Hansen as our guest speaker. AI slides

He encouraged us to embrace AI and how to use it effectively in our practice.    

A couple of things that interested me:  Tokenism has a different coined as giving tokens - imagine how much money you've got.  Chat GPT 3.0 is slower & doesn't have live.  Large language models (LLMs) are a significant piece of the puzzle in Artificial Intelligence (AI). In Layman's terms:  LLMs are like super translators for computers, helping them understand us better. This lets them chat with us naturally, create new things, and even help improve AI itself!

AI sites that were recommended:  Eduaide.ai,  TeachAid, Diffit, Glasp

As AI is growing rapidly, policies are in the pipeline on it's use within our schools for Manaiakalani.  Check out my blog created through google slides.  Faafetai lava!

NZEI Pasifika Conference 2024

 "We should not be defined by the smallness of our islands, but by the greatness of our oceans". by Dr Epeli Hau'ofa.

This quote was the epitomy of the Pasifika Conference, 

During the school holidays, we registered for this 2024 Pasifika Conference.  This was my first time attending a Union conference for Pasifika professionals who work alongside our Pasifika learners within New Zealand.  

From the beginning of the conference till the end, lot of humour was used to dampen the blow of confronting statistics of our Pasifika learners.  Issues as equitably, racism, misunderstanding and colonisation with our learners within our western education structures.  

A few key note speakers shed light of how "forecasting our authenticity" by 'identity, language, digital spaces and 'va'.    

Even networking alongside other Pasifika practitioners of how they've been able to use 'identity, language, digital spaces and va for sustainability.

There was a lot of 'rich' workshops that dived deep in our multi-dimensional culture and how we no longer be a bystander and how can we make a difference.  Each speaker tells their story of how change can happen intentionally.

"Why does our cultural knowledge matter? ... "

* it's unique

* it's multi-dimensional

* it is necessary

"Find their stories, bring them to the classrooms .. "

Overall this workshop was enlightening, reminders of how we're to 'find our learners' stories and bring them to the classroom (fostering & cultivating an environment of learning).

Teacher Professional Development: Create with AI

Today, Dorothy Burt was our guest speaker for our teacher professional development on "Creating with AI."

She highlighted the main ideas of engagement with learning, which should always include the learner's behavioral, cognitive, social, and emotional engagement.

Part of my Masters of Contemporary Education paper, I looked at 'what is student engagement?'  Axelson and Flick (2010) noted that etymologically speaking, "engage" means to formally agree to something. Bowden et al., (2019) view student engagement as the "glue" or  important contexts such as student's home lives, school, peers, and community to student success.

Axelson and Flick (2010) describes three forms of engagement: behavioural, emotional, and cognitive engagement. Behavioural engagement is described as outward cues.  Often the lines are blurred with student engagement, the belief of teachers' overall teacher judgement can be based on a learner's behavioural engagement or just not understanding or the learner is bored.

Cognitive engagement is about the student's will, how they feel about themselves, their work, their skills, and the strategies they utilize to master their work (Davis et al., 2012). Students within my class work hard, but still seem unable to learn effectively. Cognitive engagement refers to the quality of students' engagement, whereas pure effort refers to the quantity of their engagement in class.

As a classroom teacher, I agree with both authors as all four types of engagement need to be considered in planning teaching and learning tasks for students.

Dorothy continues to encourage us, to embrace these multiple AI websites.  I haven't used any of these AI art, however will use it to support our writing prompts.  

  

create with AI

wonderful.ai

References:

Axel, R.D., & Flick, A. (2010).  Defining student engagement. Change: The magazine of higher learning, 43(1), 38-43.

Bolstad, R., Gilbert, J., McDowall, S., Bull, A., Boyd, S., & R Hipkins.  (2012).  Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching: A New Zealand perspective.  New Zealand Council for Educational Research.  Ministry of Education

Butler, D. L., & Cartier, S. C. (2004). Promoting effective task interpretation as an important work habit: A key to successful teaching and learning. Teachers college record, 106(9), 1729-1758.

Davis, H.A., Summers, J.J., & Miller, L.M. (2012).  What does it mean for students to be engaged?  An interpersonal approach to classroom management: Strategies for improving student engagement.  Corwin Press.  Pp 21-33.

Welcome back to 2023

 Welcome back to 2023!

Not a good start to the school yea
r with Auckland’s unexpected flooding (Hope everyone’s been keeping safe). However I hope you’ve all had a wonderful break and ready to get back into learning, growth, ownership and creating positive memories for 2023.

With the remembrance of Waitangi Day today, I have been looking forward to returning back to our classroom, no longer with covid-restrictions but with a refreshed lens to reinforce the 3P’s – Pātuitanga (partnership), Te whakamarumarutanga (protection) and Te whaiwāhitanga (participation) to empower our learners with mana (power).

“Keep it Real” is our PES yearly theme.  It encompasses ‘tika (fairness), pono (integrity) and aroha (compassion) with all three of these intertwined to create a school culture of support, caring and understanding (Cavanagh 2004).

With our ‘keep it real’ focus, we looking forward to seeing our learners grow confidently into their identity, taonga (treasures/resources), tikanga (customs),  and  rangatiratanga (self-deteremination) building with 21st Century skills ie:  critical thinking, creative, collaboration and communication.

I wonder what our learners will bring to our class?  I wonder if they’re ready?  Will keep you all posted.

Nga mihi nui

 

Reference:

Cavanagh, T (2004).  Criminalising our schools:  Effects on caring and nurturing teachers.  School of Education, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand.  

Manaiakalani Staff PD - Cybersmart

This afternoon, we had our Staff PD with Manaiakalani facilitator Fiona Grant reminding us of incorporating 'Being Cybersmart' ethos within our teaching practice.  Manaiakalani celebrates its 10 years + of implementing and growing 'CyberSmart' in a 'Learn, create, share' context.  Outstanding!

As our schools are evolving and interchanging with covid-19 disruptions and hybrid learning, still with 21st Century skills (critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and communication) alongside 'cyber-smart' learning, this practice at an early stage in our learners education journey, will help develop and manage themselves as effective digital citizens. 

Manaiakalani have outlined 10 'smart' goals to assist our learners to manage or grow themselves in student engagement and agency.  Some of the Cybersmart learning such as 'Smart learners, smart media, smart relationships etc' can stand alone or integrate.

Within my class context, we have a tendency to  reinforce keeping a 'smart learner & smart footprint', as well as 'smart surfing'.  This prompt reminds the learner that they're using their google surfing for educational purposes/research, as well as locating appropriate authentic websites that will provide a genuine answers for their work.  Next it will inform all our learners that they're not invisible onsite and creating a classroom environment for 'smart learners'.  

Cybersmart online platforms

We have the few learners who deter away from staying focus on their work online.  A positive from 'cybersmart learning' is our learners watch out for each other, and gently prompt the other learners to be on the 'right place' site.

Most of our learners have been given choice to research topics of their own accord.  They've started to write/record sites that they've used to find their information.  This is reinforced that all information onsite must be 'attributed' or referenced for others to use the site.  

As of next year - will incorporate Cybersmart learning in my planning and take a look at other cybersmart ideas that will grow our learners not just in the classroom but in their own context.  

I wonder what the next 10 years will look like for our Cybersmart learners?

Tohatoha Online Staff Meeting

Manaiakalani facilitated a 'Tohatoha' online Shared staff Meeting with approx 500 teachers across the country. Our group was facilitated by Christine (Team leader for Year 7&8 - Glen Taylor School), she shared her rich experiences used within her class and team and extended to one of our Teacher PD incorporating Culturally Responsive practice. It wasn't just 'ethnicity' teaching but 'student-led' learning.

Analysing Writing Data - what can I do?

It's that time of the year ... Report Writing! 

Today during our staff meeting we've been looking through Edpotential - a new platform to accessing data from Manaiakalani Cluster right through to our team 4 data.   This is our e-asTTle writing graph. 

From this data - as a team we looked at the following questions:

1. Can you see any trend/s we can be confident about?

• A general trend towards the norm, but not quite matching as high. MELAA had a huge shift up - what caused this? Who are the students? 
• Asian students are tracking above the norm
• Y5-Y6 Maori were below the PES norm and Pasifika data, but in Y6-7 they were above 

2. What do you think is going on?

• Summer drop off

• Focusing more heavily on writing when testing comes around, but not throughout the year

• Differences sometimes affected by students in the cohort

• Some of our bright students left at the end of the year e.g. Izyn, Israel Te Maro, Izzy and Isaiah etc

• During lockdown - most students did not select or do the writing task. Mostly focused on the reading and maths tasks. 

3. What are the most obvious challenges inhibiting our children’s progress? (stick to things we can control or make a difference to)

• Spelling

• Building specific vocabulary

• Punctuation - basics e.g. capital letters, full stops, commas, speech marks

• Organisation - clear orientation, body of text with events, conclusion. Linking ideas between and within paragraphs

4. What can we do that we are actually in charge of?

• Analyse data trends in PAT, STAR & easTTle data - where are the gaps?

• Start explanation writing sooner (or other genres) to support shift to that genre in Year 7

• Offering more opportunity for writing in class - particularly tasks which focus on engagement to encourage more buy-in from hesitant students

Using Tanya Mundy's MIT 'create writers' this has guided me to build their skills.

Since analysing my class data for this year, I've started this week for writing to include more 'basic' skills to help with how to use Capital letters. With nouns - what is a noun and why we need it to construct a simple sentence. 

As a warm up, we will be using 'Pobble 365' for 10 minutes, applying a skill in their writing eg: using speech marks, punctuation, organisation etc ... Will look at different genre's of writing to build our learner's repertoire writing. Watch this space - to see our learner's progress!

Post Covid - Inquiry 2022

Returning back to the classroom has caused mixed emotions fulled with anxieties as well as anticipation with both myself and our learners.  One thing I've noticed with this group of learners, is the cultural richness and capital they bring to our space.  However are a-lot more 'shyer' students.  

Not 100% sure if it's due to unfamiliar surroundings, beginning of the year or establishing the relationships of 'tauira' (both teacher and learner) or maybe the restrictions of covid.   

With Post covid it has caused our 'masks' to stay on (nose to chin), social distancing and almost silence within our classroom.  However to develop our learners to attain key elements of 21st Century skills: to be 'critical thinkers', 'collaborate with others', 'creative flair, problem solving' and clear communicators (AJ Rotherham, DT Willingham - American Educator, 2010).

Referring to the OECD "Ten Principles for Effective and Equitable Educational Recovery from COVID" it describes the recovery ecosystem:  the centre is the student with their families.  Our teachers play an instrumental part for our learners to achieve academic success.

As a professional educator how can I recover/develop towards effective & equitable education:

-  provide targeted support to meet student's learning, social and emotional needs

- co-design a robust digital learning infrastructure with teachers and stakeholders

- Encourage a collaborative culture of innovation

- Learning from national and international evidence. (OECD 2021).

 

MIT Hui Wananga 2021

Talofa lava!  Can't believe it, it finally arrived .. MIT Hui Wananga 2021! 

From applying for MIT to presenting in front of a live online audience .. nerve-racking!  Throughout the year, the whole inquiry process was thought-provoking & enriching especially as a Junior teacher. Unpacking the challenges we face in our classroom to the multiple solutions sought after, that best fits our learners. 

Even prior to presenting our pre-recorded video, upon reflection there were few key elements that I missed.  In saying that, long term I'm looking forward to post-MIT how to grow our emerging bilingual students to succeed in all areas of learning.  It won't be an easy feat but will try! 

  "E sui faiga ae tumau fa'avae" translates to "The form changes, but the underlying principles remain".

During the Hui, this Samoan proverb protrudes, as we live an evolving world given our perspectives, approaches & PCK alters still the foundation remains.  From the talanoa from Sir Pat Snedden, Dr Rebecca Jesson's & team, how do we give skills when they learn how to apply tomorrow and when we're not there.

Faafetai, faafetai, faafetai lava to Dorothy & Matthew through their mentorship & leadership & patience, through our MIT journey.  Jenny Oxley & team for behind the scenes, administering this to make it happen (& Uncle Bill).  

To our MIT cohort 2021 - "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed people can change the world.  Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has" quote by Margaret Mead.  History-makers!