Today thankfully wasn't as cold as it has been in the past few weeks however I had come prepared with extra layers (and a blanket just in case)!
Clarelle, from Pt England School, joined us as guest coach today. It was great to have her with us with all her valuable advice. We of course started the day hanging out with Dorothy. Today's focus was around visibility.
Visible Teaching removes the surprise element, time up front and the learning rewindable for afterwards but also in advance. - Accessible - online, shared visibly to anyone with the link, removing password barriers. Available - everything the learner needs is present - no scrambling to share material, activities etc at the last minute. Advance - BEFORE it is needed, before the deadlines. No stress needed!! ( ... and we all need less stress in our lives!)
The learning journey being visible to the learner but also to whanau and colleagues has taken away the 'secretness' and hidden agendas which led to a lack of engagement. Maniakalani want it to be about success for all particularly as in previous years success was only for those that were able to get inside the teachers mind and work out what the teacher needed or wanted. An unfair education system! It may not have been set up that way but in general that was the outcome, visibility changes that.
Therefore, if the default is visible, the question should be, “What genuinely needs to be invisible or private?” In general we came up with the following: Bio data, health concerns, disciplinary matters, some assessment data… But NOT the day to day functioning and progression of the teaching and learning journey.
Thanks Dorothy, we really do appreciate your time and wisdom each week.
The remainder of the day was spent looking at some class sites, looking at what worked and what didn't. We then got the opportunity to share and look closely at our own sites. Boy was this valuable! Things we thought were visible weren't. It also meant that in looking at what some of our colleagues are doing it created oodles of inspiration to 'zhuzh' up our site. We are extremely thankful for the time that we then got to do exactly that. It's obviously a work in process but we are started ... Something as simple as sorting out all our folders so that they have the right sharing rites is extremely satisfying, extremely satisfying!
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