uLearn Day Three: Brad Waid Breakout

From Shakespeare to Star Wars - Coding and storytelling tools

We are in an age where we can use technology to connect with the stories that we tell.

We have a rich history of storytelling - it served a purpose of lessons learned and passing down messages. Brad spoke about using tools beyond their intended purpose to transform learning for students. He talked about how the tool is a medium to show understanding.

These are the apps that he spoke about -

• Puppet Pals
• Shadow Puppert Edu
• Toontastic (pic on phone) built in music for the story climax etc.
• Story bird
• Zimmer Twins!
• Chatter Pix - Look at Jen Jones @hellojenjones
• Write comics
• Marvel Comics
• Touch cast studio
• Book Creator
• Canva
• Word Swag
• Adobe Spark
• Action Movie FX

Augmented reality

• Chromville
• Quiver
• Crayola color alive
• Atlas Trac Labs - programming robots

Coding (young to old)

• Kodable
• Light bot
• Scratch
• Tynker
• Pixel press floors - WOW! Use it - the best free one out there - first draw then play
• Bloxels
• Code.org

To take this further I would love to work with Bloxels or Pixel Press floors to help support and create learning opportunities in coding for students. It was great to see some other apps and tools that support story telling. 

A Problem Shared is a Problem Halved!

Over the past few months I have been looking and thinking about different ways to create a shared resource for Numeracy. I am sure that teachers all over NZ are creating very awesome online google resources for Numeracy! So let's make our jobs easier and SHARE!!! 

I started with a Stage 4 blog - being a visual learner myself it helps me to be able to see the resource... but this is harder to get others buy in and adding to! The whole purpose is to get a resource that can help spread the work load... 

I found some interesting links by looking at Rowena Clemence's 2016 Inquiry. Her inquiry was looking into sheets for students to have exemplar's of what is expected at each level. This is kind of similar, apart from it would be having a range of resources on the same subject. 

It really made sense after looking at Angela Moala's 2017 Inquiry and speaking with her, Mark Maddren and Dorothy Burt over emails that a sheet would be the best way to go. So I changed it up and made a copy of the already created Multi-text data base for explain everythings, and multimodal readings! Thank you in advance for helping with the set up of this document Angela! You can see these in the Share Databases Drawing (Give 1 Get 1) on this Leaders of Learning Website! 

I have embed it below! Let me know what you think! 

Positive Progress in Numeracy!!!

Seems like a long time since I last posted, boy a lot of things have happened! 

As most educators know the middle of the year is reporting time. A good chance to reflect on where the students are and how much progress they have made in the first two terms. 

First of all I would like to share the things that I believe made the difference for these learners: 
- Create and Share (students were encouraged to create and share their learning in numeracy on to their blogs). This led to higher engagement and therefore positive results. 
- Tracking - using sheets to track student progress meant that it was easy to see when a student needed extra support or when they could move on. This is also what I used to determine what stage they were working at. 

At the beginning of Term Three I took on the role of Uru Mānuka Programme Leader. This means that I am no longer in with these students teaching them Numeracy... I am hoping that the positive progress that they have made in the beginning of the year continues! These students are making nearly a year worth of progress in a couple of terms... Some students moving from Early Stage 4 to the middle to end of Stage 5 which is really exciting! 

The hypothesis that: "Students who use learn, create, share in Numeracy will see their work as purposeful, therefore will be more engaged and achievement will increase, is proving quite accurate! 
This of course links to Karen Belt's 2016 Inquiry into "Using an authentic audience to enhance the motivation and writing mileage for learners in my classroom." I was trying to make connections across subjects and I think I have found some great beginnings of this. 

Stage 4 Numeracy Blog

I have been trying to think of a way to share the resources I have created in an easy to find system that can be used by a range of people. The first thing I did was try a website - but I struggled to make it work effectively and look nice! So... 

I have started working on a blog to share my resources for stage four. I thought a blog would be easier to navigate with the labels and the search function. 

I haven't made resources for all of the knowledge or strategy yet - but this is the intention. I am trying to think about Learn Create and Share with each resource - I have done this better on some than on others. 

The students are enjoying working through the activities and are engaged in making screencastifys! I am really enjoying the positive progress they are making through having a purpose and an audience for their work! 

Here is what I have so far! 

http://gpsstage4.blogspot.co.nz/

Enjoy! Feel free to share/copy 

- Kelsey