3. EXPLAIN: Reflections & Tweaks and reasons for them

Explain the reflections and tweaks you have made along the way and the reasons why you made these changes. Share your evidence for these decisions.

Through the initial data collection (cybersmart quiz) and research, I found the need for children to be taught interpersonal skills, critical thinking, and the connection between them, in a digital environment. These skills needed to be measurable through the data which I collected throughout the year.

1. What did not work and why?

I found that there was difficulty creating the movies in class due to background noise.

What did I do differently?
As a result, I have supported children more by utilising times when other children in our shared space are out of class and when I am on release. I have also ensured that during filming, the children are utilising external microphones rather than just the internal microphone on the camera/iPad.

2. What did not work and why?

Some groups are having trouble with the process of collaborative planning. There is a real difference in the ability of different groups to successfully plan as a group. This shows a need to focus on the key competencies of managing self, relating to others and participating and contributing. Through observation, I have noted that this inability/difficulty to plan by some groups appears to correlate with an inability/difficulty to be able to explain their understanding and demonstrate strong interpersonal skills and critical thinking when online. I created rubrics to measure the interpersonal skills and  levels of critical thinking when collaboratively planning, in their cybersmart clips and then finally when writing a blog comment. Here are the rubrics I used:

The data found can be seen in the graph below:

I also found an interesting correlation between the children's reading and writing levels and their ability to think critically and use interpersonal skills. You can see in the graphs below that those children with higher reading levels tend to be more able to write a blog comment with a high level of interpersonal skill and critical thinking AND those children with higher writing levels tend to be more able to write a blog comment with a high level of interpersonal skill and critical thinking.

What have I been doing differently?

We create a whole class brainstorm before we move off into our groups so all the children are scaffolded and explicitly taught about the topic. That way, all children have some ideas to get them started. It is really important to ensure children have been grouped in a way that ensures their group mates can support each other. I will continue to reorganise groups to ensure all children get the most out of the learning experiences.

3. What did not work and why?

It has been a challenge to get a completed cybersmart clip per group for each topic we look at. The process of completing the cybersmart clips includes a class brainstorm, group planning, rehearsing, filming, editing and then sharing of the movie on blogs. This has the potential of being a long process, particularly when children are out of class for a variety of reasons. 

What have I been doing differently?
I have been having to be give the children much longer for cybersmart learning per week than I would previously have given. Once this process gets to the editing stage, the learning moves from cybersmart learning to the technical process of completing the movie so it can be shared. I am confident that this process will become quicker as the children become more used to it.