2025 MIT - KPMG HUI #1

Phew! Our first visit to KPMG was an absolute highlight! Busy and packed with lots of mahi BUT we were well looked after! The day began with a chance for all of us to reconnect over breakfast at the Lawn Cafe before Justine Todd warmly welcomed us into the KPMG building. We had the pleasure of working in KPMG’s Rangiatea Infinity Room — a stunning and inspiring space that truly embodied the celestial essence of its name. It made for a fantastic day!

After introductions, we had a quick recap on our HMW's and worked through what has challenged or confronted our thinking and what has emerged to add clarity and confirmation to our thinking.

What has emerged to add clarity and confirmation to my thinking?	What has challenged or confronted my thinking?	What HMW statement am I currently confirming?
Although it affects students in the long run, really its a teacher issue and the project will support them in their planning and resourcing	Questioning whom the problem really belonged too.  Also stuck on how big and how far to go, where to start,  Wondering how to include new curriculum such as structured literacy when still in the PD phase .  Deep dive into whats already online	How might kaiako access Māori literacy content and add value to it?

Next, we started on the real nitty gritty stuff! 

 Prototyping is an essential step in the design thinking process. It includes a preliminary version of a product, service, or system. It involves testing and evaluating its effectiveness, challenging ideas and reshaping accordingly.

The main focus for today's hui was to make a start on the prototype planning phase working towards creating our first prototypes for testing and feedback. We looked at the Slidedeck Example MIT Prototype Planning and also worked through the following slides for our own MIT Prototype Planning that helped us identify potential features and solutions, narrowed in on assumptions and helped us work through the prototype planning phase.

        

In the first slide, we chose one of the ideas from our Crazy 8's and we worked on expanding on that idea. We had 8 boxes to brainstorm potential features and / or describe how different parts of the prototype will work.

My potential features included:

I appreciated this activity. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I tend to jump straight into the creation phase, thinking I know the best solution. The downside is that I often realise my solution isn't the best, get stuck and then abandon the project. This process has helped me slow down and consider all possible solutions with the user at the centre of it all. It also gave me an idea as to how I could format the site - giving each kaupapa its own page and identifying content for each page.

The solution sketch was a follow on activity to the one above. We were asked to use a combination of images and text to create a simple sketch up to show how our solution will work. My final product was:

Following these activities, we were encouraged to stand up and share our potential features and sketch solution slides to the group.  Normally when talking in front of a group I get nervous and tounged-tied but it helped that our rōpū was small and intimate. This was a valuable opportunity to receive initial feedback on my prototype. I was given some excellent ideas to consider as well as important points to check before sharing my prototype with others outside our MIT group. I know that being encouraged to talk about my prototype and being questioned will prepare me for later down the track when I'm presenting my final prototype to large groups of people.

I was inspired by Dorothy’s idea of creating a challenge for Te Wiki o te Reo Māori and / or Matariki. The goal is to get a wide range of people to contribute towards reading texts and submitting them to the site.  To encourage participation, we would create two submission portals: Te Taha Matatau for those confident in reading te reo Māori, and Te Tana Kei te Ako for those not so proficient at reading in te reo Māori. This approach would not only reduce my workload but also promote sharing, which is at the heart of the solution I’m working on. 

Another pertinent suggestion came from Matt during a later conversation where he suggested starting small and focusing on one kaupapa and making sure it is well developed before expanding and adding another subject area. I like this idea because it emphasises building a strong foundation before scaling up. This approach would allow me to focus on quality rather than quantity making it a more manageable process and easier to refine and improve before expanding.

Our next step in the prototype journey was to test our assumptions. We had to come up with 3 assumptions and ideas as to how we can test these assumptions. 

I found this task particularly helpful. It put me in the position of the 'user' of my prototype and forced me question why a kaiako would want to use the site. It implored me to consider how helpful the site would be kaikao and made me question WHY a kaiako would want to contribute to its effectiveness and usefulness by sharing their own planning and resources. Matt and I had a very insightful conversation about how difficult it is to get people to share - even when their is a monetary koha. We also talked about foot traffic and how difficult it is to sustain visitors returning regularly to a site long term which has given me a lot to consider and keep in mind. 

This activity actually made me a little worried and highlighted to me the need to test, test, test! It conscientised me to the importance of creating a prototype and asking people to try it out in order to gauge their opinions. By doing this, I can create a final product that is well suited to the needs of the user rather than going off my own assumptions which I will admit are not always right.

For the last activity of the day relating to prototyping , we worked on refining our assumptions about the prototype. We identified how we would test and we determined what data we would collect and how we would measure the success based on specific goals such as user satisfaction and resource effectiveness. 

My idea is to create a scaled-down version of my site with samples of planning templates and resources for teachers to use, test and give feedback via Google Forms. 

A great suggestion from Matt was to use Google Slides rather than creating a Google Site to share the initial prototype. Using this suggestion, I plan on creating two sets of slides - one with planning templates and the other with examples of resources for users to try and give feedback on.  

I plan on collecting both quantitative and qualitative data to assess the relevance and usefulness of the planning templates and resources. Testers will be asked to rate the planning templates and resources on a scale of 1-5 based on their usefulness. In addition, open-ended questions and suggestions will be gathered to gain further insights. The types of questions I plan on asking (via Google Forms) include:

What aspects of the sample planning did you find most valuable?  

What parts did you find least useful?

What you like to see added?

Would you use this planning template as part of your teaching and learning programme?

What resources did you engage with?

What aspects of the sample resources did you find most valuable?  

What did you find least useful?

Would you like to see anything added?

Would you use these sample resources as part of your teaching instruction?

I will also look into ways to track analytic data to monitor user engagement and interaction with the site  so I can see what users are going to the most and using.

The last item on the agenda today was a wero from Matt and Dorothy that encouraged the 2025 MIT cohort to work together to come up with a Cohort Logo Design that would be used to brand items such as drink bottles and t-shirts.  We were required to follow the ManaiaKalani branding, using their color palette and font guidelines.  As a group, we managed to come up with an initial sketch idea and a quick mock-up in Canva.  The next step is to work on the final creation via chat / email with the other members of the group, create a PNG / JPEG version and then share it back with Matt before 9pm Thursday April 3rd.

Today was another amazing session! It was a great opportunity to strengthen the relationships with each other, to see where everyone is at with their projects, to give and receive feedback, feedforward and encouragement.  The next step is to prepare the testing prototype and release it for testers to trial and provide feedback. The timeframe for this is really short so getting started sooner rather than later is the key!

2025 MIT - KICKSTART HUI

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” 
Sir Isaac Newton

As part of the ManaiaKalani Innovative Teacher 2025 squad, we started our year with a 3-day retreat in Kūaotunu in the Coromandel. 

Late Thursday afternoon, the 2025 MIT cohort arrived in Kūaotunu where we were warmly welcomed by Matt and Dorothy. After settling into our stunning accommodations, we kicked off the evening by enjoying a delicious dinner spread prepared by Jenny. It was the perfect opportunity to mingle and get to know one another in a relaxed, welcoming atmosphere before kicking off with the first session after dinner.

After dinner, we were straight into it. Dorothy began the retreat with an inspiring presentation on Manaiakalani: A Community of Innovators. 

In this presentation, Dorothy showcased the initiatives and achievements of intrepid innovators who contributed in the early days of ManaiaKalani such as Allanah King (whom I had the privilege to meet and hear talk at a conference  - so inspirational!), Tim from Mount Aspiring, and Derek, the founder of Core Education. We learned about how their endeavors in the early days helped Manaiakalani to prosper and achieve the success they have had over the years. Dorothy also shared with us some amazing impact stories regarding teachers who have really taken on being early adopters in the world of blogging and podcasting and are using it as a catalyst for educational success. The big takeaway messages from the presentation were the principles of purpose, passion, partnership, perseverance, and proof forming the foundation for addressing educational challenges, equity, access, and change.

And lastly, to wrap up the evening, we were treated with a message from the 2023 MIT crew, offering advice for the year ahead. The most important messages I took away from the video were...

• Staying open to new ideas
• Really refining and honing in on one focus
• Seeking feedback at every step of the journey
• Test, test, test!
• Start early
• Leaning on MIT peers for support.

Our Friday sessions introduced us to Design Thinking which is a way to solve problems using a human centered process that focuses on empathy and testing different solutions to find the best one.

The first activity helped familiarise us with the concept of design thinking. In this activity, we had to roleplay being parents with diverse backgrounds within the Kōautunu School community. The context was we were attending a school meeting with the principal and the chairperson of the BoT. At this hui, we were presented with a range of challenges that the kura was facing and we had to question what the kura was doing to address these issues and offer solutions. This exercise helped us to connect with the problems from a variety of perspectives and introduced us to the idea of empathising which would help us further on in the day. 

It wasn't until we got halfway through that I realised that these were in fact OUR challenges that we had put forward in our initial interviews to be a part of MIT 2025! I thought it was a powerful way to share everyone's focus challenges and to get people's initial reactions to the problems.

Next, we had to work in pairs to create a short skit that illustrated our own problem in action. This invoked empathy for the problem which helped deepen our understanding of the issue. I worked with Zana and we both prepared 2 short skits for each of our challenges. My skit featured two teachers—one in a kura Māori and the other in a mainstream kura. They meet and talk about their weekends. The teacher from the mainstream kura describes a relaxing weekend, while the kura Māori teacher is shocked, having spent the entire weekend preparing literacy lessons—finding readers, creating resources, and uploading online mahi. When she asks her colleague how she had time to relax, she learns her friend prepped everything during a lunch break using tools like Twinkl and online reading programs. The skit highlights the inequities between resources available to mainstream and kura Māori teachers and emphasises the extra time and effort kaiako Māori must invest in delivering high-quality lessons and resources.

The above roleplays helped shift our focus to the users and consider how they might be affected. The next step in the Design Process was to create an Empathy Map. 

The process for this step is to gather as much information as possible about the problem by understanding the context and viewing the issue from the perspective of the user. We were encouraged to empathise with each user’s experience by answering four key questions:

• What does the user do?
• What does the user say?
• What does the user think?
• What does the user feel?

For my empathy maps, I focused on te taha kaiako me te taha ākonga.

Moving on from the empathy map activity, we used the following statement to hone in and really start to define the problem. I found this activity helpful as it made me realise who the true owner of the problem was and made me pinpoint what the actual needs were. This was my end statement:

Next, we moved on to "How might we turn this problem into an opportunity. My end HMW statement focused on how might kaiako access this online literacy content and also share their existing content:

The final part of this activity we were given Post-It notes and asked to peruse others' sheets and think about opportunities connected to their project using sentence starters such as... "Have you thought...". "Could you...", "Is this an opportunity to...".  

There were some really great suggestions on mine, some of which I had already started to look into, and some I had not considered

For our last session of the day, we focused on IDEATE. The activity was the Crazy 8. Coming up with 8 ideas in a short time span. Using our How Might We statements, we had to come up with 8 solutions for our problem - no matter how crazy, far fetched or left field the ideas may be! I found this activity valuable, as I tend to be someone who quickly jumps to what I believe is the best solution, without fully considering other possibilities.

We revisited this activity the following day. We had to go around and read each others' Crazy 8's and leave little round coloured stickers on our options that we favoured.  As a final round we had to go back and leave one sticker on our favourite idea from each Crazy 8 presentation.  This meant we ended up with 1 or 2 clear favourite options.

Our last session of the retreat focused on creating a list of those in our support networks using the BAR thinking tool (Bigger, Add, Remove). We were asked to make an extensive list of support people including whānau, friends, work colleagues & connections and to consider others in networks such as ManaiaKalani, Kahui Ako, RTLB, tech companies, and so on. Lastly, we were asked to add someone we could only WISH was in our support list and someone CRAZY and then we were asked to narrow down our selection. I found this activity was helpful as it helped conscientise me to whom I have in my circle and helped me identify certain people I would go to for particular reasons such as my whānau to support my wairua and hinengaro, my hoa kaimahi for testing prototypes and testing ideas, my reo matatini guru's for support with literacy ideas and my tech people to support with all my tech-y problems.

What an amazing few days! I thought we got through so much! I appreciated being guided through this design process as usually I skip all this and go straight to the creating. It made me take a step back and really consider who the stakeholders are, their needs and its made me really think through all the solutions.

I look forward to seeing everyone real soon at the first KPMG hui!