Last DFI

 Today was the final DFI. Today everyone sat the Google Level 1 Exam. We also had a delicious shared lunch.

It has been great working with a dedicated team of educators / learners. 

DFI Day Three

 A very interesting DFI day as we delivered it on Google Meet, instead of face to face.  Today's focus was on Media. I took the session on Google Draw. I only had one screen so I found it quite difficult presenting as I had to keep flicking back to the presentation to see what I needed to cover. I feel that next time I present I need to have two devices so I can have the presentation on one device and then the other device I can show - I will then make sure I cover everything that I need to cover. Thanks to Vicki for stepping in and reminding me what to cover and prompting me when I had blonde moments. 

I really enjoyed working with my bubble group - helping them troubleshoot and teaching them google draw and then creating in slides. I chose to share how to create pick a path stories in slides. This is a great way to engage learners with their writing. Was interesting to listen to how a teacher thought she would use it as a teaching tool in her class.

DFI - Day One Coaching

Today I was lucky enough to join the Face to Face DFI at Ohaeawai School as a coach to support Dorothy and Kerry. 

It was great to meet all the teachers from both Kaikohekohe and Te Hiku Cluster who are embarking on their DFI journey. I really enjoyed supporting them with their tasks from today. Looking forward to the rest of our journey over the next nine weeks.

DFI

 Yah - Passed Level One.

DFI - External Recognition

Well today was the final day of DFI. It has been a great journey and an awesome professional development opportunity for me while being on maternity leave. It has given me time to reflect on my pedagogy and given me enthusiasm for when I enter back into the classroom in Term 2. Thanks has to go out to the Manaiakalani Team that have put together this great programme. Also to Jeremy, our Coach, who has supported us in our bubble over the nine weeks.

Today started with a mix of emotions for me - leaving my baby for the first time after capturing her rolling over and over by herself for the first time and then having butteflies about having to sit the Google Level 1 Exam. It made me think about the situation we put our kids into when we tell them that they are going to be doing testing.

Completing the Exam was not as bad as I had thought.  The multichoice questions at the beginning did require some thinking, especially the ones about Google Classroom as this is one resource that I haven't used. I think I was well prepared and equipped with the necessary skills for the scenarios. I did have a few tricky ones but I managed to trouble shoot them. 

AND......

I passed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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.