Visibility

Day 6 of DFI. Today's focus was enabling access. A key word I have come away with from today is visibility.

Dorothy Burt speaks of the Manaiakalani pedagogy in terms of what our students create being visible around the world. She speaks of how the significance of visible teaching and learning and how this has become an art, even a business. As I work in a collaborative space, I am increasingly exposed to sharing what I do with more than just the students. There are other teachers watching and learning together, especially when we are in close proximity to a colleague taking a reading or maths group. The way in which we share our planning digitally also changes the facts that we are now more visible to those we work with. The question: Can you see me? is one that we can reflect on.

Making the whole journey visible is a game changer, according to Dorothy Burt. Manaiakalani pedagogy relates to student's learning journeys being visible to other learners and significantly to our whanau. Previously we have keep some of our students learning journeys invisible to them. For too long success has gone to the child who can return responses teacher may have expected.  Recently in school, focus has been around on success criteria and this has creatively opened up the learning journey and made it more visible. We can take this a great deal further.

If the default is visible we need to consider what needs to be private as there is definitely information that should remain private. Personal information, health, some disciplinary information and some assessment data. This is paramount for me when it comes to protecting the privacy of student's in my care.

Today we viewed a wide variety of sites. This provided me with great ideas and different ways to creatively share things like learning intentions, tasks, reading material and clips. When you begin making a site it's important that considerations are given to audience, purpose, key areas of learning, colours, themes.

When it comes to sites ,Clarelle, our guest speaker from Pt England School, talked about having a behavioural focus for students first then a cognitive one. This resonated with me and will be something I will endeavour to include when considering future sites.

When creating learning tasks for students, I often relate to the SAMAR model. In terms of this model we are not always going to be at the redefinition stage. I think it is important to ensure the learning task is purposeful regardless of the stage. I believe the learn, create, share model generally keeps us on track and that as long as our focus is moving forward regardless of the pace, at least we are moving in the right direction.