Bursts and bubbles 2022
Link to information about all of the Manaiakalani CoL inquiries here
The aspect of student learning my inquiry focused on this year was how to keep the students engaged and motivated to do the work both in school and working from home.
I identified this as my focus when I noticed that the students were not connecting with the work very much and the momentum was lost when they were not in the classroom. Work was standing unfinished and they were not coming online to work through things with me.
In the first half of the year, I approached this by making worked examples of everything that I expected the students to do. This went alongside short video how to’s and step by steps on Google. This was presented on the class site and the workspace.
This approach kind of worked. I had one student at the start of the year who did not attend at all but managed to complete the first standard by using the resources that I had made available. I also know that some of the other students were accessing the videos as I could see the views on YouTube where I have them hosted.
Where this completely fell down was having to rely on emails as the method of communication. The students just are not checking their emails. It was ok in the classroom as I could nag them to open their emails and the workspaces, but at home, they have to be able to do this without being pushed.
An idea to change this started about halfway through the year when I got some student voice about what they thought motivation was. I had an interesting conversation with a particularly unmotivated Y13 student about why he found TikTok so fascinating. He said he “learned new things” from it. I had not really had any experience of it before then and thought it was just dancing videos, so I decided to make an account and take a look. It turned out to be like the rest of the internet and full of good stuff, interesting stuff, dancing, animals and complete and utter piffle.
Just after that, I was on a PD listening to Subash Chander, from Ormiston Junior College. He was explaining how he used his YouTube channel to teach Maths and how his students used it in a “just in time” way, to learn things when they needed to.
This pushed an idea to the front of my mind that had been ticking there. I decided to give Social Media a go as a way to get information / tasks / help / how to’s, to the students.
I used TikTok as the format, but also posted the same videos on Instagram and YouTube. This gave multiple options, depending on what accounts the students had. The format was good as it limits you to 3 minutes so you can’t ramble on for too long on each video.
I have made content for my Y11 and Y13 DVC classes and my Y9 food class.
Student feedback on this has been interesting. One Y13 student in particular used a couple of the drawing videos in a “just in time” way as she watched them when she needed those particular skills.
Unfortunately, I have been relying on email still to let the students know there is a new video to watch. That has been a problem. A lot of them report to me that they did not know about the videos as they do not check their emails.
I have a plan going forward with this next year that involves marketing the social media accounts in other ways - posters around the room - stickers on the student folders - getting them to sign up en masse!!
Another problem I have had is that the students don’t use their real names on TikTok and Instagram so I don’t know if it is them that are viewing and liking the posts. Except for the cookie recipe. They come and ask me my account name for the cookie recipe.
Link to Inquiry 2022 on this blog
Link to TikTok Account
Link to Instagram Account
Link to YouTube Account
