Session 9- The Final Day!

Today was our final DFI day. Before taking the exam we looked at our final 'Connect' with Maniakalani. On Ubiquitous learning. This takes place any time, anywhere and anyplace. Rewindable learning has supported this.  When I go back to school I will remember the power of rewindable learning and implement this with my learners. Technology is a powerful tool that removes barriers, previously inconceivable solutions to problems and opportunities for new ways of learning. If it is worth teaching, it’s worth capturing.

On reflection of this DFI course, the past 9 weeks has allowed me to

understand how things in the G suit work in order to enhance my workflow and my children’s’ learning through Learn Create Share. I enjoyed learning more about tools which my children and myself can use.

Google Hangouts are a great tool and they were very timely to learn about. It has been great being able to use them to continue this course throughout a global pandemic! I look forward to getting back into the classroom to try coding out. I have understood more about the Maniakalani pedagogy and how it started and has evolved.

I feel very privileged to have had the professional learning opportunity that this DFI has given me. Now time to use it!

Ps... See my new badges on my blog!

Digital Fluency Intensive Session 8- Computational Thinking

Second to last session today, oh how fast the time has gone. On our connect with Manaiaiakalanai we looked at the kaupapa word ‘empowered’. This word was once agency but having negative connotations in our communities it is now 'empowered'. 

Using digital tools are not just tools, it is transformative in the way that we learn in order for it to be empowered for our learners

Our Chalk n Talk was Intro into Computational Thinking- The new digital technologies curriculum (yrs 1-10)

Children become creative directors of their lives. Rather than passive consumers.

The technology strands above now have two more added to them that is being rolled out this year. They are Computational Thinking (programing; input/output etc, unplugged activities, understanding human behaviours and how we interact with technology) and Designing and Developing Digital Outcomes (DLO's etc..).

For Computational Thinking, it does not always s require using a computer. It is learning to think like a computer scientist. See progress outcomes below. It is a way we go about attacking problems, and different again to computer science which is an academic area.

We had some time to explore some resources available for us. I saw a link about 'algorithms' and how they can create something. https://studio.code.org/s/course1/stage/6/puzzle/1 This video shows school-aged children creating an algorithm with pictures and then testing it our to see if it works. This is something I could try with my learners as it is at their level.

We then had a deep dive into the future of Tech (in reference to the Jetsons)we looked at all of the technology inventions within the last year. After this we explored some coding sites. I had a go at this https://studio.code.org/s/aquatic/stage/1/puzzle/1 which allowed me to code and then watch my Minecraft person move. As well as these ones https://studio.code.org/flappy/1  https://lightbot.com/index.html and https://game.kodable.com/play?hc=1&type=home&user=vfwn3fm&showSpace=world as well as Scratch Junior which we have on our Ipads. I also had a look at some class on-air sites for some ideas of how to teach Scratch to my learners.
https://sites.google.com/manaiakalani.org/onair/teachers/2019-teachers/goodwin/5

For the create part of the day I had a look at Scratch on my computer. I think for my learners' skill level (and my own) Scratch Jnr might be a better avenue to go down!

Digital Fluency Intensive Session 7

Today our DFI was on Devices. After connecting with Kelsey and my team I started to update my blog by adding gadgets to make it funky- what do you think?

We had a Chalk and Talk with Fiona about Cyber Smart. She reiterated that it is important for learners to be at the centre of this Maniakalani Pedagogy. Cybersmart empowers learners to be smart in a digital environment.

2012 became a pilot year for Maniakalani. For it to be implemented Cybermart needed to be a whole school focus. Planning needs to be collaborative in order to identify Cybermart categories that are priorities for our schools and learners. It needs to involve planned and deliberate teaching, relevant and real scenarios as a part of an existing programme of learning. Fiona mentioned that as we as educators become more familiar with Cybersmart ideas then our learners can connect clearly with the too as opportunities for learning. 

After this, we had a ‘Deep Dive’ with Gehard around Hapara Teacher Dashboard. I am quite familiar with the Teacher Dashboard as we use it frequently. To monitor students on devices and to access students documents from their Google Drive. It is an incredible tool. I learned last year how to lock in students on to particular tabs (focus session) for those ones who needed it. 

Hapara Teacher Dashboard empowers visible teaching and learning. It is a powerful tool which allows us visibility into the learning of our students. We discussed all the tabs and how they help us. Everything within our student’s drive appears on our dashboard tab. It reminded me the students never actually have to manual share documents/slides to us, as long as they are put into the folders we can access it. As teachers, we need to teach children to put everything into approximate folders to help our workflow. There is also under the ‘sharing tab’ an unshared part where you can see documents that have not been put into folders. Could dedicate 10 mins before morning tea on a Friday- put up on the screen and say that whenever children have nothing in the ‘unshared tab’ they can go to morning tea. I learned that you can drag children (perhaps of concerns) up the top and this won’t affect anyone else’s view of the dashboard.

We had an explore session with Kelsey where we did a ‘Digital Dig’ around using a Chromebook. We even used a Chromebook simulator (so cool!). Chromebooks confuse me so this was great to learn all of the shortcuts. 

After this we discussed iPads. This was helpful to me with a year ¾ hub. Our year 3s are on the iPads and year 4s are on Chromebooks. I feel as though I know a lot more about the Chromebooks compared to iPads so this session was really helpful. We learned how to set them up for the next which we have done.

We looked at the app ‘Explain Everything’ which is an iPad app. This was great as it was something I wanted to know more about using with my year 3s. We learned how to create a whiteboard project and how children upload tasks to explain everything.

See my screen classify video below on a talk through the Manaiakalani iPad site.

Digital Fluency Intensive Session 6

Kia ora team. Today our DFI was around 'Enabling access' to our sites. In regard to Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy, we learned about the word connected and what it means for us. A community of learning that creates learning opportunities to connect.
We learned about an RSS feed and that it pulls out all of the blog posts from the children's blogs. Manaiakalani uses twitter to do this. A good way of providing reading and writing opportunities for students. This might be something I test out when school returns back to normal

Following this, we did a 'Deep Dive' on Google Sites and looked at the purpose of these.

Following this, we shared our class site in our groups with Kelsey and gave each person feedback on visual appeal and user experience for their site. I had three goals to complete in order to update our site. It is taking some time but I will post when I am completed. My online learning journey throughout this DFI is still going great, it is an awesome way to learn. I wonder if I will ever get sick of it? One thing I am going to try next week is something I found off another class blog which is a 'Guess Who' challenge with baby photos. Alongside this, I will create a google form where my children can guess who!

Digital Fluency Intensive Session 5

Today in regards to the manaiakalani kaupapa we discussed the visible learning and what this means for us as teachers. This wraps around the LCS pedagogy. We discussed that if our whanau/teachers/colleagues can't see our learning for any reason than it is not made visible to be able to be accessed. This might be due to password protections or privacy settings not making the learning visible.

 

Dorothy encouraged us to continue utilizing our professional blogs after our DFI journey has ended. This is something I will do as it is important to look back and reflect on. After this, we did a deep dive into multi-modal texts and how we can use this in our classes, alongside the use of Google Sites. I had heard of this before and attempted to implement it, but the tools I was given during this deep dive will allow me to further demonstrate my understanding of both multi-modal and multi-text. As teachers, it's our job to sell the love of our learning to our children. Our site homepage acts as our 'shop window' and it is that which engages or disengages our learners. It is important to take into account the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as not one size fits all and it's important to differentiate our learning. Whenever we get back to school I will definitely be creating on our google site a multimodal page. I started creating my own for our Inquiry this term to share to my colleagues.

https://sites.google.com/southhornby.school.nz/temuru-e-takineilearningcommun/home

Finally, we looked at some blog reaction buttons. I will have a play with these as they could be cool on our team blog! Until Next week....

Digital Fluency Intensive Session 4

Today on our 'online- lockdown DFI' our focus was 'Data' and how to best deal with it. We started off by looking at the share aspect of Maniakalani (tohatoha). We discussed the purpose of sharing with an authentic audience (the purpose- defined by people who choose to listen to you) and harnessing this to raise student achievement outcomes. We looked at how we have been sharing since time began and into the digital age and now from in our ‘lockdown bubble!’.

Sharing is all about getting quality face-to-face interaction whether that be digital or not. Dorothy shared with us why Maniakalani chose blogger as their sharing domain. This is because it technically represents where our young learners want to be on, not visually. You post, your comment, you have titles and follers and people who interact with you. Blogger is inside the google apps domain, therefore, can access and monitor this safely.  Children are not admin of their blogs they are authors- the BOT owns their blogs (legally).

We then had a 'Chalk n Talk' about Google forms. I had used these once or twice before but wasn't aware of how many different sorts of questioning options you could pick from. This would be perfect to use as we navigate towards online learning next week. I will be sharing my knowledge with my team about this. We made our own form (see below). I also learned that you can turn it into quiz mode and the form will self mark. I must remember when sharing and sending to take link from ‘send form’ not URL link as this will give children the opportunity to edit.

After this we looked at both Google 'My Maps' and Google Sheets 101. I had heard of both before but not really used them that often. Google 'My Maps' is a platform to allow us to track or plan journeys, measure distances or add place markers. It can be used to tell stories and record journeys. Sheets allows us to organise and edit data. We learned numerous tips and tricks for both. Google Sheets is a tool that that I can use in my personal life for budgeting and various other things.

Kelsey shared some blogging tips and the power of labels. This is something to remember for not only my hub and children's individual blogs but my own professional blog.

How has distance learning been so far you may ask? Well, the fact that I am able to wear comfy pants and slippers means it's going pretty good! It has been easy enough to follow and understand. The facilitation team have seamlessly interwoven what was planned during our face-to-face sessions to transfer it to our online 'google hangouts'. Its been one for the books that's for sure. I didn't think it would be this easy. Apart from internet connections, nothing else seems to be too much of an issue!

Digital Fluency Intensive Session 3

Well, what can we say, I guess we were well-prepped for our online teaching and learning from our last DFI course. Well-timed might I add! With schools closed due to C-19 our whole world was preparing to lockdown. This meant utilizing everything we knew from LCS to put learning into place for our tamariki. What a unique boat to be in! 

Today we joined another cohort to complete session three via Google Hangouts and if you were to ask me two weeks ago what this was I would have had no clue. We successfully managed to pop in and out of numerous Google Hangouts hosted by Dorothy and our facilitators. It was nice to. be learning again after feeling as though my brain had a break. We created work for our children to do prior to closure and keep in contact with them and their whanau over email to give feedback to completed work and check-in. On Monday we held a Google Hangout with 30 of our children who were able to join us. It was nice to hear their voices and see the smiley faces. They loved sharing what they have been up to during this unique time. 

We learned about the 'create' side of the Maniakalanai pedagogy. It’s all about the hook. Children need to create as they get older which will allow them to engage in their learning. It is often quite substantial in early childhood and may tend to drop off. Create is right at the heart of our pedagogy and young people. Create is in our roots. Play-based learning stems from developmental and is not a new thing. It is being brought to the forefront. Create is a doing word. Your body and multiple senses are involved in creating. I learned that we can not forget that it's not just the mind that is creating it is the whole entire body that it involves. Over time we have used modern technologies to engage in creativity and we empower learning by giving them choice. Creativity is one of the six C’s of education in the 21st century. 

Around workflow, we learned how media can help with many things. Something that I will use is the use of Youtube playlists, to set up groups of videos that my children can access on a particular topic. We were talked through the steps of how to do this and how to embed codes into sites or whatever way we wish to share with our children.  
I learned about pick-a-path stories with Kelsey, which I had heard of before but never really gotten into. They are very cool and I know that my learners will LOVE them. They are very engaging and interactive and can be used for just about any topic. I created one about Goldilocks and the three bears (see below). It is not completed yet but when it is I will add it to our hub site for the kids to have a go with! And if it's come up below then I learned how to successfully embed a slide!

I also learned more about Google Drawings and how you can create pictures for animations. As well as this we looked at creating animations on Google Slides. I know some of my children will love this kind of creating so I will definitely be taking this back into the classroom.

Until next time!

Digital Fluency Intensive Session 2

Kia ora!

Today was session two for our DFI course. I didn't think I could learn any more gobsmacking things than I did in session one but session two has proven me wrong! Today was great.

We learned lots about Google Hangouts (and how very appropriate they may be at the moment). We learned about the Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy, through the learn part (of LCS). Via Google Hangouts we discussed Learn (ako) and effective teaching to provide accelerated learning. We looked at the goals of the cluster. The summary I took was that whatever our children learn our teachers learn too. As teachers, we need to use this learning as we carry out our role in the classroom. We take the evidence we are presented (WF)and make deliberate and effective use from it.

The current gaps identified by WF research are stated below.

RECOGNISE

-What is effective practice?

AMPLIFY

-A professional blog, creating a site and sharing resources is amplifying by giving your thoughts to the world.

TURBOCHARGE

-Take new technologies and turbocharge the way we teach. New things that were never possible before (relates to SAMR model).

To improve our workflow and capability as teachers we looked at Google Hangouts.

These provide us with the ability to hold remote meetings, video calling and screen sharing. We discussed etiquette (feedback using headphones, group calling etc, make sure your mic is off). This tool will be useful if we need to teach from home and/or using in the class for learning purposes.

We looked at Google Keep which provides us with reminders like a notepad. You can even set reminders and bells! I will definitely be using the 'Grab image text' option on Google Keep to create cloze activities for reading with known texts!

To help with my personal life, we looked at calendars and Gmail (shortcuts and organisation). Things I will do are; add google site to my email signature. I also favourited my email inbox count. This saves me having to open to ‘check’ emails all the time.


I will also utilize the 'schedule send option'. We also looked at 'One Tab' and 'Toby Mini'. Both of these extensions save groups of tabs that you frequently open, another time saver! I think 'Toby Mini's more user friendly and in my opinion- is prettier.

Digital Fluency Intensive Session 1

Kia ora team,

Today we had our first DFI course with Dorothy and Kelsey from Manaiakalani. In my first year of teaching (years 4-6) I gathered a good understanding of Chromebooks and blogging. I was able to learn through Cybermsart with Kelsey ways to teach my students how to use their Chromebooks and their blogs. But I was looking forward to learning new things this year. This year I am teaching in a year 3/4 space where the year 3s are on the ipads and the year 4s are on the Chromebooks.

Take a look at my Screenshot below of everything that I learned on the first day. One thing that I believe has improved my digital fluency and confidence is the use of Google Groups. This allows to streamline our communication throughout the course. Emails from our group leaders and ourselves can be sent via email or posted in our DFI Google Group. This can easily be lost on an email thread especially if there are a large number of emails back and forth. By accessing the Google Group this will allow me to find what I had been missing to avoid confusion. Google Groups can be set up for colleagues, but not my students.

One thing I learned that will be useful for my learners is using the voice typing tool. This will allow me to engage my reluctant writers as this it allows children to record their voice and the text comes up on the doc. The children can then read it back to see if it makes sense and add changes or errors where necessary. As well as this when it comes to a lesson when children need to access a Google Doc, it is important to get them to label their docs with their initials and whatever it is. This makes it easier to look at tabs bar and at all names (e.g. LG Sandpit time). It would be worthwhile to use Hapara as children are doing this. Display it on TV giving positive praise of those who are doing this. Reward those who do it first. Don’t move on until Hapara is full.

I learned how to better organise my Google Drive which in turn will allow me to improve my workflow in my personal life. We did this by setting up user profiles, our bookmarks bar and learning some tips and tricks.

Hope you enjoyed reading. Until next time!