DFI 8 - Computational Thinking

Today was that final session before the external recognition day. Dorothy shared the final part of the Manaiakalani kaupapa - Empowered. The word empower is more relatable to people than Agency. It's about giving our learners choice and taking control of their learning. As a teacher of a low decile school we need to be aware of where our learners are at when they enter school and provide lots of opportunities to develop their language. They need to have conversations that involved 5 interactions- backwards and forwards. We can build this into blogging by encouraging a threaded conversation - making sure our learners respond to comments that are left on their blog.

The future of technology is a scary thought. I mean Sophie the human robot and an app to assess skin cancer - what is next. There are definitely some incredible apps and tools being created to change our lives but we need to assess these carefully.  We can not assume that machines are going to behave morally. 

I often wonder - What is teaching going to look like in 20 years time? given what it looks like now for our learners. 

Today involved lots of exploring of coding apps and sites to cover the digital technologies curriculum. Lots of these we are already using in our school. We have created a learning matrix, using the progress outcomes, for our students for the two digital technology areas. 

For the CREATE task today I decided to use Gamefroot and created my Pepeha. There were lots of little issues that I encountered along the way and this is something that I will need to be aware of if I use it with the students. Some students may get very frustrated if they have to start over numerous times. 

Click on the picture and use the arrow tools to explore my mihi.

DFI 7 - Devices

A great start to the morning learning about another part of the kaupapa, the great word 'Ubiquitous'. The idea of learning any time, any where, any pace and from anyone. (A4)

Digital Technology has removed the barriers of learning and given opportunities for new ways of learning. NOW Learning is accessible outside the school hours. Rewindable learning makes learning more accessible for our learners. The learners can go at their own pace - they can slow down or speed up. 

Reflecting on the Kaupapa of the Manaiakalani Programme in light of COVID 19, whether you did Lockdown: Season 1 or Seasons 2/3/4, and YOUR readiness for ubiquitous learning...

What are you proud of? Our students were already familiar with the class site and how to access their learning. They could access their drive and find files shared in their folders or create files in the correct folders for their learning task. Lots of the students were able to create blog posts independently too.

Learning was available and accessible for our students and they completed the set tasks at their own pace. The feedback from the parents was very positive.

What do you regret? Nothing. 

What have you taken forward into the ‘new’ era of schooling? 

We use Google Meet on a wet day for our whole school morning Taumata. 

We moved our Kawa of Care meetings with our Whanau to earlier in the year - making sure they were prepared if we has to move into another lockdown - Season 2 for Northland.

Today we explored the chromebook and completed the Digital Dig. This is a task that I have done with my learners at the beginning of the school year. I also do a Google Docs Challenge task that is graded by coloured Ninjas. After they complete each section of tasks they are awarded a Ninja badge with a coloured belt. The students really enjoy this activity and it came quite competitive for lots of the students.

Today we also explored ipads and the wonderful app - Explain Everything. This is a very powerful app for our learners with a myriad of possibilities. Some of my Year 3 and 4 learners last year enjoyed using this tool to create DLO's to share their learning. I would like to explore the whiteboard Explain Everything a bit more and get my learners using it.

Our Task: We had to explore some of the different tools in Explain Everything. Here is a video of what I created.

I enjoyed exploring the variety of teacher created tasks and seeing the variety of tasks that the learners can do in Explain Everything. Such a wealth of resources available at our fingertips - one of the many benefits of being a part of Manaiakalani.

For the CREATE task I decided to create a workspace in HAPARA about being a Smart Learner.

Here is a link to my workspace.

DFI 6 - Enabling Access - Sites

 Today Dorothy talked about another important part of the Manaiakalani Kaupapa - CONNECTED. 

Being digitally connected empowers our learners.

Being apart of Manaiakalani allows us to connect with teachers and learners across the 100 schools.  Teachers do not need to feel alone on their journey, there is always someone to help and support. Because everybody understands the shared language it enables us to connect.

The rest of the day was spent exploring sites and working on our class sites. It is always great to have time to explore teachers sites and see what they are doing and 'steal' ideas. Like the saying goes - there is no point reinventing the wheel. I am looking forward to getting back to school next term and working on my own class site.

Because I am not in class at the moment I took the opportunity to share my site I created while I was on my sabbatical and show my bubble all the resources they have access to.

You can check out my site by clicking on the image below.

DFI 5 - Collaborate Sites

As always a lovely sharing from Dorothy about the Manaiakalani Pedagogy. Today's focus was on Visible Teaching and Learning - one of the structural elements that make Learn, Create, Share work!!

As the meaning suggests: Visible = See it (It needs to be Accessible and Available to all, and in Advance!)

Teaching and Learning needs to be visible to the learners, whanau, the teacher and colleagues. Digital technologies has helped make teaching and learning visible for students to have success. They no longer need to have the ability to read the teachers mind.

Having our teaching and learning accessible on our class site made lockdown easy for our learners and whanau. They could access the learning for the day and whanau were able to move through the tasks when the time suited them. 

The next part of the day focused on Multi-Modal which I have done lots of exploring of and I have made many resources to use in my classroom. The kids love it and it definitely engages them. I was very lucky to be on the Innovative Teachers with Angela Moala so learnt lots from her as she was creating this wonderful resource. When I had my sabbatical I spent time looking at lots of Manaiakalani schools and examples of multi-modal. I have included some of the examples of my site I created. 

The final part of the day was focusing on creation of sites. This is one area I am confident in using and enjoy putting together sites. One key point when creating sites is the importance if the WOW factor. 'It is the shop front window.'

As part of my group I began to create a site about Myths involving the Moa. Click on the image below to see the beginning of my site.

I have used the picture of the Moa on the road sign as my banner as I think this is a great provocation and will start some great discussion before we even start the reading.

DFI 4 - Dealing with Data

Today began with the wonderful Dorothy sharing about SHARE. Social Media has sped up and amplified the power of sharing. We have always had the opportunity to share but sharing now with the power of digital has allowed it to go beyond our local community to become GLOBAL. An Authentic Audience for Sharing. 

Great Point for our learners: I am ready to SHARE!

Helping our young people to understand what finish means is really important. This is a very important simple life skill that students need to know for the real world.

Sharing can be a starting point to drive learning. 

Learn Create Share is no longer a linear thing. You can start at Create or Share. 

GOOGLE FORMS: I have used forms for lots of different purposes, both in the classroom and for school wide use as well as voice from our whanau so was confident with using them. One great idea that I picked up today was using it for a spelling or basic facts test and having the ability to lock the screen so the students can not access anywhere else.

GOOGLE MY MAPS: Another tool that I have explored but have not used with the students. Now that I will be teaching in the senior school I can make use of it for teaching measurement in maths. I created a map about some significant places in our community.

 

GOOGLE SHEETS: This is one area that I definitely need to learn more about. I picked up lots of useful tricks today that will be useful for both my teaching role and my role as DP. Love the idea of being able to quickly make a sparkline of students data. I can see how beneficial this is going to be when analysing student progress and achievement.

 Today's CREATE Task was to create a Blog Analysis. I used our Team Awa site. I created two graphs - one about posts per year and one on posts per month.