LearnPath - araako

I have been busy doing some updates to a system that I am developing at school. LearnPath.



Or as the students know it as araako.com

Araako is a system to help students develop their understanding of the hub curriculum, their my being, my learning, my community.



























How can LearnPath show the following?



Students work through filling in different sections of araako through their profile.



Personality test, this is based on the https://www.16personalities.com/ personality test. This enables the student to put in what their personality type is. A way to remember then strengths. The personality types are one aspect we get students to look at how they learn, how they work with others. The different personality types of listed here. https://www.16personalities.com/personality-types

Short story. In some ways this adds a bit of humour to the area, having an opportunity to write something short provides opportunities for students to be creative.

Profile. Other social networks have it, why shouldn't this? The avatar needs to be changed to the community that they are in.

Habit that they are working on. The Hobsonville Habits allows students to select a habit that they are working towards, or a habit that they show strength in. This can be used in either way.

Goals, both personal and academic excellence.
Though, it could be nice rather than a graduate profile statement, to be a more learner focussed statement.

Academic Excellence Has developed the generic learning skills and the specific knowledge, skills and understandings that enable learners to excel in their chosen pathway.

Personal Excellence Has developed the personal values, dispositions and capabilities that enable the learners to lead a happy, healthy and successful life.

Developing understanding through the Hobsonville Habits, allowing students to delve deeper using the habit cards to understand and show strengths and weaknesses.



Personalising the header colour, allows the students to have some form of customising. These are limited to the materialisecss colours, available here http://materializecss.com/color.html


I have half developed a way for students to see what they have covered curriculum wise.
But this needs to have a bit more done to it, to show the learning objectives that have been covered.


Red - MODULES
Blue - SPINS

Developing a different way to look at the habits, all the habit indicators have been added to the system and it picks 5 at random that students are to develop some thinking around, wether it is for their own goals or around developing and understanding their learning.




Through one of the reflections to offer opportunities to develop SMART goals more, similar to what Amanda has done here https://amandargreenhalgh.wordpress.com/category/goals/

Through this I have been looking at other ways to pull apart goals.


While it provides opportunities for students to show aspects of the habits, one of the main things I design it to do it is to provide a way for students to do reflections.

The reflective nature of what they have learnt is the focus of a number of research papers.
http://www.ideaedu.org/Resources-Events/Teaching-Learning-Resources/Encouraged-students-to-reflect-on-and-evaluate-what-they-have-learned
https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/meaningful-reflection/


How can we provide opportunities for students to do this within hub. I have talked with students about blogger and other opportunities, however they wanted it behind a wall. Many are not yet at the stage where they feel comfortable posting online. Especially Year 9 and Yer 10 students.

What should go into a reflection?

digital information - habit tracking

Getting students to track how they are using there Hobsonville Habits within their learning.

Twitter is such an interesting tool to see how people are using digital technologies within their learning. To gather information and inquire into what is happening with that data.

It started with a tweet...

How Might We show this understanding with our collection of data.

Being able to get the students to enter the data. Making a simple easy to use interface. 

Each day students would be able to change the sliders to indicate their use/understanding/development of the habits.

You might ask about why there are two sliders for each, the top one is for students to enter, the bottom one is for the learning coach.

Once the data is entered, how to best show the patterns, at the moment this is available to the coach only, with future development for the students.

It is at the moment being thought about doing this is in slightly different way, being able to turn on and off habits to be able to show patterns over time.

Notes:

• Keen for some wellbeing/hauora aspects too... so we can keep an eye on that. Could be cool if as well as a ranking, that somehow/somewhere they justify with evidence so not token judgement?
• Complete this one. Perhaps a group of Coaches pilots it and iron out bugs and streamline usage ready for term 2 across school launch.

Learning Hub - edsketch or hubsketch

One thing that I have been working on this year is my ability to be a better hub coach. This is something that is next level form class tutor stuff.

I think I need this as a chart on my wall in the office,
Being a Learning Coach

What Learning Coaches do:   The Hub and our role as Coaches allows us to make  learning relevant, connected and personalised for ALL our learners. Never stop finding ways to get to know their learners. Develop sustainable connections with whanau / family. Warm – demanding relationships, built around learning conversations and high expectations. Track learners journey through dispositions (Hobsonville Habits) and build academic and personal excellence. Support students in telling their learning story through narratives, conferencing and IEM’s.   Grow learners to be inquirers and self-directed learners. Create structures and resources that ensure rigor, but allow for flexibility and personalisation. Negotiate / co-construct Learn Paths to ensure exposure, coverage and passion Never give up!

In some ways this is almost a check off of how to reflect about learning hub each week.

For the next two terms we will be inquiring about a habit, the first one being creative. But that is not this blogpost. This one is about ways of getting to know the learners.

Last year one of the teachers ran an edsketch https://stevemouldey.wordpress.com/2015/04/30/sketch-a-day-in-may/ in May, this was to promote creative thinking and sharing about what you are doing each day. This was reposted this year to do the same.

I continue to think about new ways to get my hub students to share ideas, sometimes they do not like talking in groups, the like the share with a peer and also the one on one checkin's with the hub coach. I am also looking at different methods of communication, rather than just the normal two. Talking and writing. Why not look at others ways of sharing ideas, visually.

Often in my notebook are drawings, sketches, shapes. Not just words. They provide a visual cue.

So, rather than linking in with the edsketch16, creating hubsketch. Every school day students will do as part of there checkin a sketch. I realise that it may not be a great sketch every day, but I think it does link in with what some other hubs are doing in the school. 30 day challenges. Could this become a 30 day challenge?

The scene:
I would like to encourage everyone to sketch something they have been reading, thinking about, trying out, observing, questioning, exploring, reflecting on, working on that day.

Sketches are great for that purpose, they don;t take any writing. The quality of the sketch doesn't matter, it's not our drawing talent we are showing, it is our ideas and thoughts.

If you are worried about what your sketches will look like, perhaps this task will help you develop more creative confidence over the month.

The best way to get started on a challenge like this is to not hesitate. Just start, sketch something that has been in your head over the holidays and share.

Just a thought

One of the ideas that this could support is the development of a students learning story, not everything has to be written.

Learning Hub - peace poppy project

One of the activities that looks to be part of our year now, is the peace poppy project. This is to support an installation at Hobsonville Point around anzac day. We have been asked to make around 300 poppies at school. This is a great initiate as it gets students talking to each other, as well as supporting each other in the development of their poppy.

Putting the poppies together.

http://www.peacepoppies.com/

What 2000 poppies look like.