Ara Institute of Canterbury - kick-off series PD #2 - embedding context successfully

 

The second of Ara Institute of Canterbury’s ‘kick-off’ series was presented this afternoon. The session follows on well, from the keynote from Wednesday with Melanie Taite-Pitama.

In today’s session, Heperi Harris focuses on “Whakatoikia te Matauranga -embedding kaupapa and matauranga maori into delivery – and how to make it meaningful”.

Heperi set the context, shared his experiences and used these to underpin his presentation.

Began with the context of education as a site of ‘struggle’. Then summarised the value of Maori succeeding as Maori; and the challenge of integrating the framework of Maori achievement.

Provided an historical overview of the struggle to attain equal status of Te Reo Maori to English in Aotearoa New Zealand. Improving the outcomes for Maori also leads to better outcomes across all of NZ society. Outlines the many challenges including unconscious bias which deeply influences teachers and leads to decisions being made based on stereotypes; low expectations of Maori; and then many challenges faced by Maori in a mono-cultural world – including personal, social, cultural and academic.

Treaty obligations and government funding/strategy requirements are only part of the need to achieve equity for all.

There is a need to support Maori as demographics indicate increase in Maori youth and an aging population of other NZers. Ara has high Maori participation in comparison to their %age of population in Canterbury. Completion rates are still lower.

What does success for Maori learners look like? High expectations, culturally responsive teaching (CRT), whanau (family/other supporters) engagement support Maori succeeding as Maori.

Stressed the importance of relationship building and enhancing students' sense of belonging - not only in physical spaces but also a sense of being part of the 'knowledge/curriculum' being presented and learnt. That Maori contribute and not always the 'done to' is an important concept to be integrated into all learning at Ara. 

 

PIPTA and CPIT allied staff workshops

Did two presentations today. Firstly, a short presentation at Lincoln University, on “harnessing technology to enhance trades learning: mlearning, eportfolios and web 2.0” to the Primary Industry Polytechnic Tutors Association (PIPTA) as part of their annual moderation and professional development days. Most of the tutors work in the agricultural, forestry and horticultural fields. I was interested in my interactions with this group of tutors as it is a group I have had few opportunities to make contact with. Also, good to meet tutors who teach in the dairy industry as one of the groups of apprentices participating in the ‘first year apprentices’ research project are apprentices on dairy farms. An industry characterised by very long hours of work exampled by 4am starts to 6 pm finish and working for at least 8 to 10 days before a couple of days off


Second presentation followed by a workshop, similar to one I presented about a month or so ago at Weltec for tutors from Weltec, Whiterea and Open Polytechnics, sponsored by Ako Aotearoa Central Hub. The focus for today’s presentation slightly different as it is to CPIT allied staff, a varied group of people working in administrative and technical support roles. The presentation introduced concepts of Web 2.0 including the rapid movement towards mobile and cloud computing.

Of interest is the increase, when compared to feedback from presentations from just two years ago, of most people’s general knowledge in using technology in both their work and non-work lives. Social networking is now no longer a total mystery to many people and sites like Youtube, Twitter and Facebook are now mentioned so often in general media, that the average person will have at least heard of these although never actually used them.

With each of the above groups, I did a general survey of how many people actually contributed to Web 2.0 sites. There is a 100% response and this may be due to the wider use of consumer focused web 2.0 sites like trademe (buying and selling online), seek (job hunting) and services like internet banking and shopping. Not as many were familiar with ‘cloud computing’ and the move towards ubiquitous computing. However, most had heard about the ipad and net tabs may be the hardware tool which will shift the general population towards un-tethered, cloud-based access to the internet.

Off to Teaching and Learning conference tomorrow where I will present a keynote and a follow-up workshop on ‘Belonging, becoming and being: Learning from narratives of apprentices and trades tutors’. The presentation is on how to leverage off the metaphors of belonging to a workplace, becoming and being to assist tutors to enhance earning opportunities for apprentices, pre-trade students and to help new trades tutors draw on trades skills to become good teachers.

Ascilite 2009 - day 1 - afternoon after lunch presentations

Attended four sessions after lunch around the web 2.0 in education.

First up, Iain Doherty and Pauline Cooper from University of Auckland on "educating educators in the purposeful use of web 2.0 tools for teaching and learning". A research study of worksops offered to university staff to see how effective these workshops are ib contributing to a change in teaching practice.

Next up Lynette Zeeng, Diane Robbie, Keith Markham Adams & Clive Hutchinson from Swinburne University of Technology presented on the implementation of web 2.0 for use by first year photography students across three universities. International students formed a part of the student cohort and the project had to create a global classroom which reqiured guidelines and planning.

Then Matt Bower, John Hedberg and andreas Kuswara used TPACK model to provide foundation learning design to think about use of web 2.0 in education. matt presented an overview via video conferencing and Andreas provided the connection and wrapup using prezi. A good summAry of the various approaches to teaching and learning from a elearning perspective.

Last session before afternoon tea from Ruth Weeks & Richard Seymour who have been using web 2.0 in a postgraduate programme. This involved the use of a wiki as not only a knowledge repository but also as an assessment tool which complemented learning outcomes of developing skills and perspectves to seek opportunity, take initiative, have ownership and curiosity.

Vodcasts in education

Last week, I attended a lunch time seminar at CPIT by Steve Tomsett from the Engineering section on using videos in teaching. Steve uses short video clips of lab work & experiments to archive for future reference as teaching resources.

On my bloglines this week, from Ideas & thoughs from an Edtech comes 10 videos on using technology in teaching by Dan Meyer. The videos are accessible via Dan’s blog or via vimeo.

The low costs of digital video recorders and easy access to moviemaker makes the process of video making accessible to anyone who has a story to tell. The videos put up by Dan Meyer, shows how a teacher is able to reflect on his teaching practice, using vernacular that is familiar to his students. Not sure how long it took to complete all of the videos. They are all short, around 2 to 3 minutes. This makes them watchable as they do not become boring. The videos also use various shooting angles, shots and include clips from other media (TV, movies, music). They provide a good guideline of the potential for vodcasts & its uses in capturing student learning. It is an approach that I will introduce to our staff education section as a way for us to make our teaching methods courses more interesting. We already take videos of tutors teaching for use in the teaching methods course. Providing tutors with the skills to edit their videos will provide a better forum for them to display their teaching plus embed crucial ICT skills and introduce the power of multimedia in capturing evidence of knowledge, skills and attitudes that we assess as part of teaching methods.