Accessing Digital Devices for Families & Whānau

A great day for the Uru Mānuka Cluster and Education Trust today! We received our first shipment of 90 chromebooks from the Noel Leeming Group (NLG). Parents ordered the Acer C732 chromebook through the Uru Mānuka Education Trust, thanks to the Manaiakalani Education Trust (MET) who have a business deal with NLG.

A big thank you to:
Mark Maddren (Te Ara Tūhura Eduction Programme Leader)
Kelsey Morgan (Uru Mānuka Education Programme Leader)
Fraser Allen (Fusion Networks)
John Becker (Hornby caretaker)

These people worked through the day enrolling each device into various schools' domains ready for learning next week.

To get to this stage involved lots of people collaborating and cooperating,  phones calls, emails and txt messages. This was a wonderful example of people and organisations coming together to overcome the digital divide in our communities. Therefore, we must acknowledge the following also;

• Uru Mānuka Trust and dedicated trustees
• Dave Winter - Manaiakalani Operations Manager
• Jenny Oxley - Manaiakalani General Manager
• Pat Snedden - Manaiakalani Chair
• Fusion Networks
• Noel Leeming Group

Today's experience has provided valuable learnings for us as we develop and refine our procedures and systems around device procurement.

Visible Teaching and Learning

Sky is in Year 3 and started at Hornby Primary at the beginning of the term. Sky is in a digital 1:1 (chromebook) Yr3-4class. For most children, this is the first time they have used a chromebook.

Yesterday she shared her Google slide Mini Country Study on the Phillipines with me. I left a comment and she replied soon after. My initial reaction was - how cool is this! Not so much the wonderful presentation she had done, but that she had responded to a comment on her work.

These are the things that were going around in my head at the time

• Learn Create Share, not only for Sky but myself. I learned what the Filipino name for pork was and how to say 'thank you'
• Sky was sharing her knowledge with an authentic audience
• Sky has created something no one else has ever done
• Empowerment for the learner
• Strengthened our relationship - she had a big smile on her face when I went to her room this morning
• This type of interaction would not have happened in an analogue classroom

This is fantastic - Learn Create Share and the affordances of digital technology is the best thing since sliced bread!! What a great way to end the week and head into the weekend!

Woolf Fisher Research Centre Feedback (WFRC)

Recently the Uru Mānuka Outreach Principals met with Dr Aaron Wilson, Dr Rebecca Jesson and Selena Meiklejohn-whiu from WFRC for our student questionnaire and classroom observations feedback.

Hornby Primary Student Questionnaire
Students who use a digital device for their learning participated in the questionnaire. The results were very positive, a summary is provided below

Using a digital device and learning in a digital environment

• has made my learning more interesting
• has made me a better learner, reader, writer and better at mathematics
• has made me more independent
• has helped my family know more about my learning

Classroom Observations

For the first 3 minutes of each interval, the teacher's' teaching actions were noted. For the second 3 minutes of each interval, the digital learning provisions were noted.

What is the teacher doing? What are the students doing? How are digital devices being used to support teaching and learning?

One of our achievement challenges is writing. After analysing the WFRC data we have begun to ask ourselves the following questions and identify if the following may have an impact on achievement:

• Providing experiences for children
• Authentic context for writing
• Individual blogs and blogging
• Providing feedback on blogs
• Multi modal approach - single texts/multiple texts
• Chn accessing a range of texts - are we restricting access? Chn are not reading widely as espoused
• Teacher dashboard on screen in class
• Critical questioning - Teaching by foci - why do you think McDonald’s advertise with …?
• Reduce navigating and organising time
• Nature of Task s
• Agentic learning - what do you give freedom over?
• Engagement - how do we engage chn that leads to improved learning outcomes?

For example, if teachers were to provide authentic learning contexts for children, opportunities for choice and more time to blog and comment on blogs, thus increasing the amount of time children spend writing, could this have a positive impact on achievement?

Below is a summary of a previous WFRC feedback session.

Our next step is to identify common hypotheses as a cluster and develop an action plan.

Lastly, a special thank you to WFRC for this wonderful opportunity. Having access to research and student achievement data is a luxury and also innovative. We have focussed on student data for a long time but have not always explicitly matched teacher practice to the equation - this provides us with a wonderful opportunity to transform our teaching and learning practice in order to make a positive difference for our learners!