DFI#2 Going With The Flow

Today the tips and tricks just kept on coming! 

How to get the best out of our Gmail and calendar, Meet, Keep, and taming the tabs. 

I felt I already had my head around most of the basic having been really well trained by the late - and wonderful - @madmacnz (Carol Kendall) back in 2009 as a first time principal in a ‘Google’ school. Working with talented teachers like Elizabeth Kazmierczak (@rawhitibythesea) also keeps me on the right path. However, I notoriously have far too many tabs open at one time, which causes considerable angst if my computer shuts down and I can’t remember what I had open and why. I have now had a play around with One Tab and have also found that pinning the tabs is really effective for me. I have also sorted my bookmarks bar, removing the text and using just the icons saving so much room. 

 Having lived on Meet during the Level 3 and 4 COVID restrictions, and then not using it since it took me a moment to get my head back around the details – an excellent example of ‘if you don’t use it you lose it’. 

This was my first attempt at recording a meeting.

 

  

 I enjoyed chatting with Iain for this exercise – always great to connect with other principals to compare notes, and probably a good thing that we did not record our entire conversation! 

 The Manaiakalani kaupapa focus for the day was Learn – Ako. 

Dorothy posed the following questions: what does learning look like in your school? What does our school believe are the processes that lead to good learning? This took me back to some work we had started as a staff at the beginning of the school year, pre-Covid, on our annual staff retreat. We spent 2 days together as a team reviewing the shared beliefs about teaching and learning that were (hastily) determined 5 years ago when the three schools first merged. As part of this exercise we also asked ourselves the question – if these are the things that we believe about teaching and learning, what would we expect to see all of our teachers doing? The influence of our (at that stage) 2 years involvement in the Manaiakalani Outreach Programme was evident throughout the ensuing conversation. Dorothy reminded me on Friday to go back to our guiding document the NZ Curriculum and check out the teacher actions that promote student learning, as well as the Woolf Fisher high leverage practices. I am now going to revisit this work with the leadership team.

At Rāwhiti we have a vision for all children to Rise Above the Ordinary. As learners we want children to be Resourceful, Imaginative, Successful, and Engaged (our RISE learner capabilities). The Manaiakalani kaupapa has seen Rāwhiti move from the analog to a world, has increased teacher effectiveness and has accelerated learning outcomes for our children.