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.

DFI Week 1:Taking Care of Business

It was with much trepidation that I approached Day 1.

Eleven of my staff have already completed a DFI and I am one of a group of seven enrolled for Term 3. Although I love the idea of 9 days of professional learning aimed at improving my digital fluency and growing my understanding of the Manaiakalani pedagogy and kaupapa, I have a strong suspicion that I probably sit towards the remedial end of the group – so my involvement is definitely a case of ‘I am their leader, I must follow them quickly’!

The refresher on the Manaiakalani story was really worthwhile. I noted that the reasons that I chose to involve Rāwhiti School in the outreach programme – lack of engagement in learning and low levels of achievement in our low decile school – were the very same reasons that the programme was developed back in 2006. Some 14 years later we are still trying to motivate learners to engage with the curriculum, provide a model for 21st Century teaching and learning, and raise achievement outcomes. 

The new learnings came thick and fast - checking that my Chrome profile was as it should be, Google Groups as a tool, sorting my Google Docs and Google Drive, Voice to Text, and creating a document/poster that tells a story. 

While I was surprised at how much I did already know I certainly ended the day with plenty of new skills. The standouts for me that I can see having an impact on the way I work are:

• Sorting out my Google Drive: I may have got quite carried away with the colour coding of folders on the day but can see that there are plenty of places to improve the naming and filing of my documents for more effective retrieval.

• Google formatting tools: I was oblivious to a number of these and have determined to use the Table of Contents, Headings, and Titles to reformat my report to the Board of Trustees each month.

I have always admired others abilities in regards to creating attractive posters and flyers and I really enjoyed having the time to experiment and create something. 

It is actually this session that made me think the most. Earlier in the day during the session about using Google Groups, Dorothy made the comment that just because you can make a group does not necessarily mean that you should, and I am thinking that maybe the same applies to a lot of these skills. I loved making my poster and could have happily spent the rest of the afternoon titivating to my heart's content. However, in my role as principal,  am I the best person to be spending time formatting and creating posters at school? Perhaps what I do need to ensure is that the admin team, who I rely on for much of this type of thing, have an opportunity to upskill just as I am.

In the very first session for the day, when Dorothy was telling the Manaiakalani story, she mentioned that the teachers that were initially involved quite quickly reached a point where they were asking for more. And that was me at the end of Day 1. Knowing that all we have done so far is scratch the surface  I was left feeling like this ........