Digital Learning

Digital Learning Report 2022

Children in the school have had the opportunity to be part of the creative digital learning programme, with the Year 2 - 6 children going to the Creative Space weekly and the year 7&8 classes continuing digital creativity projects throughout the year . The Creative Space programme and the Maker Space programme share a timetable where classes receive both digital learning lessons in the Creative Space and time in the Maker Space for a one hour block each week. The Creative Space programme is based around SiSoMo (Sight, Sound, Motion). Time in Creative Space supports teachers by enabling them to have their CRT release time. This year, due to the ongoing impact of Covid 19 particularly with student absences, the Creative Space and Maker Space programmes have had to remain flexible to support children at many different capability levels.

Students

Students across the school (and Manaiakalani) have this year moved onto using Edublogs, a new blogging platform. This transition has been successful with children adapting well and teachers troubleshooting along the way.

New Entrant and Year one children have learned important basic skills for using their iPads for learning. Some of these children are able to save their work and blog from their iPads with support. Year one students who started in 2021 have been able to utilise the learning on their iPads from lockdown last year to support their development of being digitally literate. They continue to use the digital tool, Explain Everything as their main tool for sharing their learning on their iPad.

In Creative Space, the Year Two students began the year by using their iPads to take photographs of their friends showing different emotions and then learned how to edit the photographs using the Apple photo-editing tools. In term 2, the year two students learned basic coding skills by creating a character (sprite) and then programming the sprite to dance in an online coding website, Scratch. In term 3, the year two students developed their digital drawing skills by creating digital artwork for our Artworks exhibition using an online website, Photopea. Focussing on the digital drawing supported development on the children’s fine motor skills and supported their digital fluency development by translating knowledge across different drawing programmes. In term 4, the year two students continued to develop their digital drawing skills using Photopea, then learned how to remove backgrounds of photos to include photos in their drawing creations.

In term 1, the year three students used their iPads while the year four students used digital cameras to learn how to take photographs. The year threes then learned how to edit the photographs using the Apple photo-editing tools on their iPads while the year fours used the Apple photo-editing tools on the iMacs in Creative Space to learn how to edit the photographs. They then used iMovie to put their favourite photographs together into a movie. For the year 4 students, this was their first time using the digital cameras however they were able to transfer their knowledge learning from photography on iPads in 2021. In term 2, the year three and four students used coding software programme, Scratch, to learn basic digital drawing and computational thinking. Their task was to create a lego-man sprite and make it dance. In term 3, the year three and four students developed their digital drawing skills, using Photopea, with a focus on adding detail. They were given a line from a song and had to interpret the line through art. In term 4, the year three and four students strengthened their digital drawing skills with a focus on detail. They then learned how to used Photopea to remove backgrounds of photos and embed them into their artwork.

The Year five and six students used a number of digital tools to showcase their learning around term inquiries. In term 1, they used digital cameras to take photographs to show our many school korero. They learned to use gridlines to create well produced photos. Some children even learned how to use their cameras in manual mode to alter the lighting. They continued to build on their knowledge about perspective, subject placement, focus and the elements of a camera. They then learned how to edit their photographs using the Apple photo-editing tools on the iMacs in Creative Space. In term 2, the year five and six students used Scratch to learn computational thinking/computer programming. They created a birds-eye view of the school and had the task of programming a character (sprite) to move around the school to show different locations. In term 3, the year five and six students used Garageband to create music which could be used to showcase either a piece of art (painting, digital art, dance, song, drama). They used a combination of loops found in garageband as well as created their own unique sounds, beats and melodies. In term 4, the year five and six students were introduced to the programme, Photopea, to learn how to create Gifs. They were tasked to create a Gif to show a change in emotion.

The tasks have included sections designed to develop children’s higher order thinking skills. The main aim for our senior children is that by the end of Year Six they will be empowered to select the digital learning tools best suited to complete a given task. Many students in year five and six are learning to be videographers, photographers, editors and producers of movies.

The Year Seven and Eight team continue to select the digital learning tools that best suit a given task. Many students are competent videographers, editors and producers of movies and support in the process of creating the Pt England Network News.

We have coped remarkably well to achieve what we have in Creative Space this year. In term 1, we ran Creative Space our of Room 17 due to a concern of ventilation in the Creative Space. We held most of our classes outside. Photography was a fantastic medium to be able to do this and it allowed the Creative Space programme to continue successfully.

A group of keen year 4 to 8 children often utilise their lunchtimes to continue creative tasks in the Creative Space. This provides an opportunity for like-minded children to collaborate, share ideas and explore in a relaxed, quiet and safe environment.

Blogging

Every class in the school (from Year 0 - 8) has their own class blog. Every student from Year 0-8 also has their own individual student edublog which they begin to learn how to use from Year 1. By the end of Year 2, most children are able to independently blog their learning. There is an expectation that the children share their learning on their individual blog. Children are also encouraged to comment on other’s blogs and to reply to comments written on their blog. Blogging allows the students to share their work in a meaningful and real way. It is a way that their friends, teachers, whānau and the wider community can celebrate their work which is highly motivating for our tāmariki. This feedback and feed forward process is invaluable. Many students have also benefited from participating in the Manaiakalani Summer Learning Journey and registrations have now been opened for this summer’s programme. Data from Woolf Fisher Research proves that blogging over the school holidays helps to maintain or improve literacy levels for students who participate.

Film Festival

All students across the school were able to contribute successfully to the annual Manaiakalani Film Festival on Tuesday 8th November 2022. We had 27 movies submitted from Pt England School this year. This is a huge credit to all of our teachers who made this happen. It was fantastic to be able to celebrate the children and their movies by taking the whole school to Hoyts Sylvia Park for the day-time viewings for the first time in 2 years.

Our movies were once again a wonderful and varied selection. This year, many of our movies showcased the learning our children are getting through Mitey, the Mental Health education programme we have begun implementing across the school from this year.

iPads

The implementation of the ipad programme has continued across the Junior School and has continued to result in increased success for our learners. The maintenance of ipads has been managed by Kent Somerville.

Chromebooks

All year 4 to 8 classes have their own chrome books and all are operating successfully as 1:1 classes. Maintenance of chromebooks and loan books has been managed by Shaniah McCarry, Ana Va’afusuaga and Leigh Flavelle this year.

Staff PD

Throughout the year there has continued to be a variety of PD opportunities for teachers to develop and improve their digital skills. Reception class teacher, Deb Shirley, has been involved in MIT (Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher) which is sponsored by KPMG. COL (Communities of learning) has seen many of our teachers share their skills and knowledge with other teachers within school in our community, in person as well as via blogs. Manaiakalani Online toolkit sessions have been hugely successful, particularly in a year where we have relied on online learning to connect.

Manaiakalani PD has revolved around the Learn-Create-Share pedagogy. These meetings encourage teachers to share their practice with the wider Manaiakalani community and often consider how digital technologies can enhance learning for our children.

Finally the teachers have met in collaborative inquiry groups to discuss their teaching as inquiry progress for the year. These inquiries are recorded on individual teacher blogs.

We held Pt England film festival toolkits to support teachers with their movie creations. These toolkits included Storyboarding, Camera angles and gear, Music and Special effects.

We have Matt Goodwin from Manaiakalani coming in to support a number of our teachers in their classrooms with the cybersmart curriculum.

PENN

The production of PENN (Pt England News Network) sits with a team of keen Year 5 to 8 students. The children are competent in the planning, presenting, videography and photography of the daily news programme. The system for classes contributing items once a term has continued. The focus of the news is the celebration of learning as well as the communication of events, and can be accessed daily from the home page of the Pt England School website. This continues to be a powerful motivator for our students to share what they are learning and creating.

Considerations as we move forward:

• Continue to strive for equitable access to digital learning opportunities for every child in every class.

• The year 1 digital competency programme and what this looks like going forward is essential.

• Maintain high standards of movie production by all teachers and provide continued support from the Creative Space for this. We should continue to strive in making movie-making authentic, with students being creators of content.

• Strive to and improve in making clearer links between learn, create and share in a purposeful way for children at all year levels.

• Keeping up with the commenting/feedback with the rate our students are producing posts, especially in the senior school. We should be encouraging this from both the school end as well as from home by whānau.

• Continuing to build a rounded digital create programme to support children in a range of digitally creative opportunities with strong progressions and assessment for the appropriate age and stage of development.

• Continuing to develop the Pt England Network News (PENN) to the point where children are producing, filming, presenting and editing the news, mostly independently. Using roles in the PENN crew to support children to build confidence, develop oral language capabilities and be given opportunities to lead.

The Creative Space has continued to evolve this year. A solid selection of programmes are now being used to support digital creativity. The main ones being iMovie, Garageband, Photopea and Scratch. Learn-Create-Share continues to be strongly present throughout 2022 in many aspects of school life.

Hannah West

Digital Learning/Extension Teacher

November 2022