Workhop15

During the term three holidays 48 teachers throughout the country came to Hobsonville Point Secondary School for a two day NZACDITT workshop. 

The workshop started with a look at Hobsonville Point Schools, it provide an opportunity to see what a ILE looks like. Then a quick introduction to Hobsonville Point School, The Learning Design model and Hobsonville Habits(dispositions) provided a backdrop to how the next two days were going to play.

The first workshop went through external achievement standards, with the teachers working in groups to pull apart the external achievement standard,work out what was being asked for, what were the requirements for an achieved, merit and excellence. Then using the markers report and teachers guide worked through the development of a collaborative non examination external report. 

The workshop invited one of the digital technologies NZQA moderators to provide an insight into what is evidence. Working out what is evidence for assessment purposes helped look at different ideas for teachers to do digital internal moderation, as well as what is evidence for digital technologies internal assessments. How can we get the writing down. The ideas and feedback provided some good discussion and a challenge for change.

The Ministry of Education then filled us in on the RAMP review and asked for ideas on what Teaching and Learning Guides could look like for Digital Technologies in the future.

Day two saw the challenge of writing internal assessments. Through the NZQA moderator and NZACDITT president saw examples of assessments, and going through the process of an internal moderation on the assessment task. Using the internal moderation checklist provided teachers an opportunity to collaborate and discuss ideas on why the task passed or failed. Developing internal assessments that meet the requirements of the standard and the Know your students helped teachers collaboratively develop internal assessment tasks that provide opportunities for students using authentic contexts. This was a well received workshop and one that could be run within regions by the conference delegates.

The post it note wall was then actioned, providing some interesting discussion about student numbers, developing assessments, authentic contexts, and making noise to name a few. Through this we also talked about how much feedback can you give for externals to students as a teacher. 

I must say being the workshop convenor and bringing this to the embers was a challenge for me, however having a growth mindset and using the tools that I have seen through other NZACDITT events and hearing the feedback from the delegates that came, I am heartened to have such wonderful teachers teaching the subject. The passion and experience that you brought to the workshop helped make it a success. The beginning teachers in the room were full of praise about the tables that they sat at and hearing first hand about some of the positives and negatives of the strands. They have walked away with a amazing amount of knowledge, and so have you.

Some of the information that went out around the conference, I have heard through emails and conversations on the day that these were some of the best dispositions and that other conferences could do well looking at how to implement similar dispositions.

This workshop is not a sit down and listen workshop. This is about what you put in, it is about resilience, purposeful, reflective and compassion. This mirrors the Hobsonville Point Secondary School Habits (Dispositions) and it is about practicing what one preaches.

Resilience, working with others to co-construct external and internal work and assessments.

Purposeful, staying on task working through with others in the development of a co-constructed external assessment that will be sent away to the NZQA official markers who will provide feedback in a new pilot developed in conjunction with NZQA and NZACDITT around external feedback in the externals.

Reflective, being reflective in the changing nature of students knowledge and skills. Developing ideas for new programmes of learning based on thework that you do in the sessions.

Compassion, working with others to develop new assessments and listening to what they have to say. Challenging when needed, to clarify, but not to judge.

This workshop is geared to be about working out the answers to your questions together rather than hoping for that silver bullet solution. Because there is no silver bullet solution.

Again, thank you for the fantastic two days. Keep the lanyard in sight and think about what you can do for your region.

Challenge accepted

When I first came up with this SPIN I thought I would just go through and do the same old tasks in python that I had been doing with my students for the last couple of years. However, this place makes you want to challenge yourself.

That is what I have been doing over the past 10 weeks, challenging myself in what I am doing with my SPINs. In Term 1 I had a SPIN for programming where I used the programming language Scratch. This term I took it up a level to a text based programming language, called python. This is able to be freely downloaded and installed on the computers without having a licence which makes it work in our BYOD environment as well as being able to be installed on the school computers.

The challenge of programming is that sometimes it is just maths problems that get created and solved. I decided that I wanted to look at game development. Not your normal games of multiplayer environments in 3D. The simple games of Quizes, 8 Ball, Hangman, Paper Rock Scissors and High Low.

These are games which can be developed to increase in skill and ability. Perfect for a differentiated class. Why you might ask. The class that I teach is not just one year level. It is 4 year levels in one.
I have year 8, year 9, year 10, and year 11 in the same class. One thing is that we do not have the achievement standard to contend with. This is about the learning. Students come in with all levels of ability already, working the tasks into the different scaffolds helped. It meant that a student could still succeed. Working with groups of students around the class provided opportunities for support, most of the time it was a student asking before they tried the code themselves. They wanted the validation, yet the answer was almost always the same, "Have you tried it?"


A number of these ideas have come from other resources on the Internet, but being able to develop these and work them towards our students knowledge and understanding. Bringing in our schools Learning Design Model helps students understand the common language in our school as well as areas that they may need to look at and develop.

Using self assessment tools like SOLO taxonomy provides students with feedback and those next steps in their learning.

As I near the end of term, I reflect back at where we started with code being copied from the TV and whiteboard, through to now students planning, testing and developing work as an individual or peer programming. Through the use of other items such as playing cards for high low and working out what has to happen, and what steps are required. Through to playing hangman in class and working out the word, a list of letters tried and how many guesses left(which is interesting as some are as little as 8, where some have 16). Getting students to work out the planning through playing the games has helped immensely.

But one thing that still gets the students are the use of the less than and greater than signs (< >) in programs.
if num1 < num2 : # num1 is less than num2
if num1 > num2 : # num1 is greater than num2

Why is it so difficult?

SPIN

I am about to start another phase of teaching at HPSS. So far I have worked through a Small/Specialised Learning Module where I am working with an english teacher in the development of visual images for the english curriculum as well as meeting the requirements for digital technologies/technology. Through this module we are getting students to develop their own comics based upon a poem, short story or novel.

Today I also went through my first big projects sessions. This was amazing as the students worked through a brief development making sure that they met the questions and developed an understanding of stakeholders. I look at this and wish that I had been developing these ideas with the students at lower levels sooner. I think I have been so much thinking about skills and knowledge that what students really wanted to do was develop their own project, and have the guide on the side to assist them to develop the knowledge and concepts with their own work. I think back to the lessons that worked well and they were the lessons where students developed their own content. Students also worked through some planning about how they are going to see the next 6 weeks. A number of them were talking about meeting during a lunch time to keep on track with what they needed to do by the next big project session.


But, back to what I am doing tomorrow. SPIN and mytime. I have three SPINS tomorrow, one we are doing digital information, very much based around using Google Apps, developing knowledge of the applications and how it can be used to enhance their learning. Coding using scratch to work through a number of projects, very much based to develop the knowledge and skills to meet level 1 programming. The last is web development, in which we are going to look at develop a web site. I think the part I have to remember is that we only have 7 weeks.

mytime tomorrow is based around a photo orienteering exercise. I am looking at observational skills of the students and how much they know about the outside of our school. Which will be interesting as the building is very much designed to keep you in.