Duration: 3:15
At Aorere College, all year nine students take a whole year’s course called Digital Innovation and Design as a core subject. This gives students a foundation in digital fluency, digital technologies, and design to use across all learning areas. DP Stuart Kelly outlines the school’s lenses of learning – Kia Ako – which help to bring the key competencies to life. Students and teachers explain how the Kia Ako framework benefits them and how it can be used in multiple ways across programmes of learning.
| Audio | Visual |
| Title slide: Kia Ako: Lenses of learning enabling e-Learning | |
| Stuart Kelly, Deputy principal Aorere Kia Ako came about because we didn’t feel that the NZC key competencies reflected our locality as much as it could have. | Aorere Kia Ako diagram: Lifelong learners is the overarching heading. Sub-topics (Ako): Critical thinking, digital connections, curiosity and creation, collaborative projects, interpersonal communication, culture. The AO way, attitude and organisation encompasses all of the ako. |
| So after consultation with the community and our staff, and also fundamentally our students, | Stuart speaking to Angela, a digital technology teacher seated in his office. |
| it is not an assessment context it is like lenses of learning. What is so flexible about it is that it enables you to | Stuart speaking to the camera. |
| have either have students learn in and through multiple Ako at once or maybe just one or two. | Aorere Kia Ako diagram, close up. School building sign, "The Aorere Way" – Attitude |
| And, at the foundation is two elements, what we call the AO Way which is attitude and organisation | Stuart speaking to the camera. |
| and then depending on the context, one to six Ako can be learned through and then we naturally arrive at the concept of the lifelong learner. In the department schemes they have to go through each Ako and say, | Closeup of Kia Ako diagram focusing on each item. |
| “How can I learn through these Ako in my subject?” And it doesn’t all have to be proportionate but what it does have to do is be visible when it’s fit for purpose. | Muzaffar Ali teaching a class of students. He takes the "Collaborative Projects" Ako card from wall and shows it to the class. |
| So, I think it’s a reflective tool for teachers but a really awesome learning framework for students. | Stuart speaking to the camera. |
| Rakshay, student To me Kia Ako is the six values the school abides by, I guess. | Rakshay in class at his laptop. |
| It helps because there is a lot of culture in the digital world, you need to use critical thinking a lot, | Rakshay speaking to the camera. |
| cooperation is a very big thing. At first in year nine I wasn’t too confident about talking to other people. | Three students building Lego, sitting at desk with laptops |
| It was really hard and year nine really helped with that, like, DIT and DTP really helped my confidence. | Rakshay speaking to the camera. |
| Muzaffar Ali, Digital Technology teacher As a teacher, I think Kia Ako is a framework that helps students and also teachers to | Rakshay at his desk, in class, smiling. Muzzaffar writing on the classroom white board |
| explicitly teach aspects of the Kia Ako programme. So that, each ako represents different ways of learning and also ways of teaching so you have that aspect of ako where the teacher is also learning as well as the students. | Muzaffar speaking to the camera. |
| And, so it’s great to have, you know, "Today class we are going to be talking about, or we’re going to be using the ako of curiosity and, | Muzaffar teaching students and holding a lego model. Students at their desks. |
| you know, and looking at how it all fits in to place with the other ako." And, you know, talking about innovation and culture and different aspects of the Ako programme. It creates an overview programme of the way the whole lesson could possibly go. | Muzaffar speaking to the camera. |
| Angela White, Digital Technology teacher Looking at Kia Ako in the year nine DID course, if we think about critical thinking, for example, students potentially need to able to | Angela teaching in class. |
| critique existing outcomes when they’re thinking about what they are going to create. | Image, closeup at the Critical Thinking part of the Ako diagram. |
| And then of course they have to be able to evaluate what they have made themselves and think critically about whether that’s going to be fit for purpose, or whether it needs further modification or adaptation. | Student typing on a laptop and writing their learning reflections. |
| The design process fits right across the Kia Ako because it is about understanding what maybe your target audience wants, looking at existing outcomes, thinking critically, | Angela speaking to the camera. |
| developing an outcome, being creative, maybe being curious about what people need. | Kia Ako cards displayed on the classroom wall. |
| I believe all of those could fit within a unit and within design thinking. | Angela speaking to the camera. |