VLOs: Valued Learning Outcomes

Kāhui Ako Achievement Challenge 5: Improve the achievement of students with additional needs in the learning areas of English/ key competency using symbols, languages and texts.

My Inquiry Problem/ Challenge: Children living in a digital world, where key competencies are essential, require ubiquitous access to cybersmart scaffolds and resources which are not currently available.

In our CoL meeting last week, Dr Aaron Wilson talked about valued learning outcomes. These are not always easy to measure but are things which we see as of value in our community (that is, at school and the wider world). When thinking about my inquiry into the cybersmart curriculum, I realised that a lot of the measures which I am going to be using are going to be based on valued learning outcomes. That is, I am not going to be able to use readily available data like PAT data, running records and e-asttle data which is often analysed for reading and writing.

Some generic valued learning outcomes which will be useful to explore in my inquiry:

- Progress

- Key competencies, in particular thinking; relating to others; understanding symbols, languages    and texts and managing self.

- Affective outcomes, particularly around attitudes and beliefs.

- Prior knowledge

Some more specific valued learning outcomes which will be useful to explore in my inquiry:

- Prior knowledge and common sense that children hold about relating to others online.

- Prior knowledge and common sense that children hold about managing themselves online.

- Being able to think critically if children find themselves in a different or new situation online.

- Being able to navigate through the digital world of the internet.

- Being able to respond in a kind and thoughtful way to others online.

- Being able to leave a clean digital footprint - i.e. how you portray yourself publicly.

Why do I judge this to be the most important and catalytic issue of learning for this group of learners this year?

Kāhui Ako Achievement Challenge 5: Improve the achievement of students with additional needs in the learning areas of English/ key competency using symbols, languages and texts.

My Inquiry Problem/ Challenge: Children living in a digital world, where key competencies are essential, require ubiquitous access to cybersmart scaffolds and resources which are not currently available.

Why do I judge this to be the most important and catalytic issue of learning for this group of learners this year?

We are teaching in an environment where our children are using digital tools to enhance their learning. Therefore it is important that we teach the critical thinking and problem solving which is essential for people to make smart decisions when online.

This is a catalytic issue of learning, not just for my group of learners this year, but for all schools which are now using digital platforms in learning.

What are New Zealand's educational views around cybersmart?

Kāhui Ako Achievement Challenge 5: Improve the achievement of students with additional needs in the learning areas of English/ key competency using symbols, languages and texts.

My Inquiry Problem/ Challenge: Children living in a digital world, where key competencies are essential, require ubiquitous access to cybersmart scaffolds and resources which are not currently available.

Research:

There is a New Zealand Ministry of Education digital citizenship document available online. According to this document, these are the essential skills which should come about by teaching digital citizenship:

- Being confident
- Digitally capable
- Critical thinking skills
- Being "literate in the languages, symbols and texts of digital technologies"
- Positive and meaningful relationships
- Honesty
- Integrity
- Ethical
- Respect of privacy
- Respect of freedom of speech
- A role model of these values
- Communication
- Collaboration
- Creative
- Connections
- Integration (online with offline)
- Participation
- Achieving goals

This large list emphasises the importance of teaching digital citizenship in the classroom. Being cybersmart is just one aspect of this larger model of digital citizenship:

Digital citizenship venn diagram [CC BY-NC-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode)] from netsafe.org.nz

Prototype

The final task we did at the MIT hui was to come up with our prototype - our first idea of what our tool/ resource might look like.

Here is my brain storming of this:

Challenge of student learning

Kāhui Ako Achievement Challenge 5: Improve the achievement of students with additional needs in the learning areas of English/ key competency using symbols, languages and texts.

Summarising the challenge of student learning I plan to focus on in this inquiry

Initial Challenge I posed:

There is already a wide collection of Manaiakalani Cybersmart resources which teachers can repurpose for their own classrooms, some of which I have used and repurposed over the last couple of years. These can be found on our team learning site. It is also important that there are cybersmart resources which allow children to be empowered in their learning. We now need a wider range of cybersmart resources which can be used by children, independent of the teacher, as supportive tools whilst learning across the curriculum. 

Having a number of visible, child-friendly cybersmart resources in one place would support learners to be more confident in making smart decisions whilst accessing a wider range of language, symbols and texts online. Here is an example of one I have created.

Updated challenge:

To better empower children in their learning by giving them the skills, tools and knowledge to act in a cybersmart way. Through this, we will better support our learners so they grow to understand the purpose and importance of making smart decisions when learning and/or working in a digital environment.

REFINED & REDEFINED CHALLENGE:

Children living in a digital world, where key competencies are essential, require ubiquitous access to cybersmart scaffolds and resources which are not currently available.

From previous blog post

Evidence I have to date:

I know this is a challenge based on observations of the children when teaching cybersmart in the classroom. There is a variation in what children are capable of online and of what they think is acceptable online. 

Some things stand out for me when exploring cybersmart resources which are being used in our various schools:

1. Classes with learning sites mostly have visible cybersmart resources available directly on their site OR have a place on the site ready to be populated with cybersmart resources.

2. Most of the cybersmart resources which I have seen are teacher-led tasks and often have originated from the Manaiakalani cybersmart curriculum.

3. More eye-capturing and engaging resources would be useful to make cybersmart learning ENGAGING & ENJOYABLE!

HMW (How might we) Task

Following the redefining of our problem, we were then sent off to provide feedback on our colleagues problems. We did this using post-it notes to leave questions to get them thinking. Here is my problem with the questions which were left:

We then had some time to reorganise the suggestions which we received. We could organise them however we liked so they made the most sense to us. I organised mine based on similar ideas.

WHO?

The next thing we set out to do was to explicitly say WHO was going to be important in supporting me in my inquiry. We created posters to brainstorm this. In this brainstorm, we were asked to leave a moonshot idea of someone (ANYONE) who we thought would be useful for our particular inquiry. I decided that my 'out-there' thought of who could be useful with my inquiry was Brahm Bout. We then had to cross out one person/group of people who we thought we probably not as necessary as the others.

Crazy 8s

In this activity at the MIT19 Hui, Anne began by leaving us with a provocation:

Every teacher is to get a house and car - what is the craziest thing that you could do to make this happen? 

We were then given a piece of paper to write down eight different thoughts of what could be done for our particular inquiry. We were encouraged to think BIG for this activity! Think of the impossible!

We then went around everyone's pieces of paper and put stickers on the ideas which resonated with us on our colleagues' work. Once we did this, we went back to leave one bigger sticker for our favourite idea. 

Here is my crazy 8 task:

Within school CoL: Intro to Inquiry

This year, I am going to be modelling the teaching as inquiry process as part of my role as a within school CoL teacher for Pt England School and Manaiakalani. I am fortunate to be part of MIT19 this year as well, which means I will be able to focus in on my chosen inquiry topic through two different roles. I have already attended a MIT19 two-day hui where we worked on refining our inquiry problems and began creating a prototype for a tool which we will use as part of our inquiry.

Here is the Manaiakalani Teaching as Inquiry Framework which we follow.

Over the last 5 weeks, my inquiry has been sitting in the LEARN section of the framework. As I begin creating a prototype and my idea of a tool begins to grown, I will be moving my thinking into the CREATE aspect of the framework. 

To begin thinking about my inquiry, I have looked at a number of inquiries from previous CoL teachers. This was a challenge due to the nature of my inquiry which I am undertaking this year. Below, I have posed my inquiry challenge and have followed this with several relevant links to previous CoL teacher inquiries:

Kāhui Ako Achievement Challenge 5: Improve the achievement of students with additional needs in the learning areas of English/ key competency using symbols, languages and texts.

My Inquiry Problem/ Challenge: Children living in a digital world, where key competencies are essential, require ubiquitous access to cybersmart scaffolds and resources which are not currently available.

Relevant previous CoL teacher inquiries:

Anita Unka (Stonefields School): Anita has explored the importance of creating a culture to empower learners to take ownership for their learning through student agency. This is relevant to my inquiry topic, where I want to be empowering children to be cybersmart citizens through use of child-friendly and rewindable resources. 

Clarelle Carruthers (Pt England School): Clarelle is looking at how to make teaching and learning more visible and rewindable. This is relevant to my inquiry topic, where I want to be giving children resources which can be accessed anywhere and at any time.

Refining and Redefining our problem

At the MIT19 hui, we spent some time refining and then redefining our problems. We began by participating in a role play where we were each given a role in a school community of parents. We were then shown our different inquiry problems and had to critique them from the points of view of our characters. This was an interesting way for us to critique our own work, thinking about how we can better define our problems which we are wanting to inquire into this year.

Following this, we were sent off to redefine our problem in a couple of sentences. Here is my redefined problem:

Children living in a digital world, where key competencies are essential, require ubiquitous access to scaffolds and resources which are not currently available. 

2019 Inquiry Proposal

Manaiakalani Kāhui Ako (Community of Learning) Achievement Challenge 5: To improve the achievement of students with additional needs in the learning areas of English/ Key Competency using language, symbols and texts.

My MIT19 Inquiry Problem: Children living in a digital world, where key competencies are essential, require ubiquitous access to cybersmart scaffolds and resources which are not currently available.

The following slides explain the beginning of my inquiry for 2019. This is a working document which has already been updated over the last couple of weeks. Slides 3-5 are updates to my inquiry problem as I have problem solved and taken part in discussions with my MIT19 colleagues.