Digital Fluency Intensive Week 6: Enabling Access

To sum up today's session, it would be - Whanaungatanga. Brenee Brown's Vulnerability.  Connection. 

As always, Dorothy started a session with a food-for-thought.   She discussed the importance of forming a partnership and whanaungatanga with other schools. We usually come together to compete, e.g. sports, but when do we come together to connect? For me, when we network and connect with other schools: 

• We get an opportunity to give back and contribute to our sector
• We reflect on our kura's practice 
• We get an opportunity to problem-solve a problem (Collaborate. My definition of collaboration, as one of my past student puts it, "you get one idea from this person, another idea from this person and then it forms and squishes like a mega idea that no one can think of. Super idea.") 
• Reassurance - it is sometimes reassuring to hear people go through the same experiences as you do. 

This brings me to my next thought. What brings us together? What do we have in common?  Ultimately, wanting the best for our tamariki, but as a cluster, we have a shared language that ties us together. It's a bit like our Leaner Profile and our Values at school - we have a shared language, but this may look different in each classroom. A classroom has its own culture, especially if the tamariki co-construct it with the teacher. However, we are all connected by a shared language. 

The other point that was brought up was how difficult it is to make connections when it's not visible, and the other person doesn't "give back or offer information".  It made me think of why don't people share, and it reminded me of Brenee Brown's vulnerability.  People tend to not share due to uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure to them. Sometimes we have to be brave to share and develop trust.    BRAVING!

I also liked the PLD structure below: 

This is my takeaway and something we can adapt to in our kura. 

I also enjoyed the structure of us exploring the sites and focusing on 3 goals. I told Phil that I overwhelmed the teachers with what needs to go on the site that they are unsure if they are on the right path. 

So the old site looks like this: 

It now looks like this currently: https://sites.google.com/newwindsor.school.nz/nwsdistancelearning . It's a work in progress but getting there!!!!

Few things I want to finish off: 

• Change the room links to class sites 
• Shuffle the navigation site, so there is a flow 
• When parents land on the home page, they don't have to scroll down to get the class links - create a separate family page so all helpful links.