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.

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.

 

DFI 3 - Media

A great start to the morning with Dorothy sharing my favourite part of the Manaiakalani pedagogy - CREATE. The most powerful HOOK!

I am always thinking about the Create tasks I am setting for my students as we know that Create engages our learners. I love watching what my students come up with when they are given the task to create something to share their learning. 

We need to remember that we want our learners to be Creators of Content - not consumers!

Creating should not be limited to just writing tasks, students need to be doing / using their whole being to Create - Harness Digital Technology to support this.

You Tube

A great reminder about playlists. I have playlists but a great tip I picked up today and need to use more often is the creating of playlists to share with the students. I love using you tube links to support students with their learning and instead of having lots of links to videos I can put them into a playlist and have one link and embed it on my class site.

Also love the trick about adding ?rel=0 to the end of the HTML code when embedding a video to avoid random content recommendations coming up at the end of the video.

Media

Media is Multi-Sensory. It engages our learners. There are many tools available for students to create media. It is not about the cost, it is about what you do with it. What have you got that you can make use of. We have been really lucky to have had Harley Alexander share his knowledge with us and our students about creating film. This was very beneficial when we created our movies for the Film Festival.

Google Slides

The sharing of some good tips that we need to remember when creating presentations.

If you can't fit your key message/takeaway on to a post it note, you need to refine, refine, refine until you can. When you create the presentation each slide needs a key message. When presenting don't read the screen - the slide needs to be the supporting cast of your talk.

When starting out - start with a blank slide.  Remember pictures can tell 1000 words.

CREATE TIME

Today I chose to work with Makaore on creating a Digital Pepeha in Google Slides. It was great to see and hear different ways our pepeha can be presented. Here is what I have done so far. Still need to add some more photos. We have a big focus on Pepeha at the beginning of the year. I would like to teach the children to make their pepeha with photos.

DFI 2 - Workflow

A great start to the day with Dorothy sharing the Manaiakalani Pedagogy with the focus on Learn/Ako. Again a great refresher about this amazing kaupapa. 

Today's focus was about managing our workflow so we explored calendar, google keep and gmail. These are all fantastic tools that I use everyday. One useful tip I picked up from Kerry on Google Keep which I am going to do is set up some feedback comments in keep that I can then access and use in google docs when providing feedback to my students.  I also learnt of some new extensions that will help manage my tabs, especially as I am a person that likes to have lots of tabs open. This might help my workmates too, as they like to hassle me about all my tabs open.

I am going to teach my students how to pin their tabs as some of them end up opening the same tab numerous times - this may help solve this.

Todays create task was to use a Blog post from lockdown and through google meet with a buddy answer the following questions about the post. Please excuse the baby noises in the background.

1. What was the teaching design behind this post?

2. What was the learner’s response ie the post content

3. Who responded to the post and how did this support the learning experience or contribute more to the learning of the child?

Recording a Google Meet is a great way to create rewindable learning opportunities for our learners. 

A turbocharge example!

DFI 1 - Core Business

Today was the first day of my Digital Fluency Intensive journey.

The day began with a presentation by Dorothy on the back story of Manaiakalani. I have seen and heard this presentation a few times but it was a great reminder for me about the Manaiakalani journey. 

Love the pedagogy of LEARN, CREATE, SHARE!! and feel privileged to be apart of this kaupapa. 

Having been involved in Manaiakalani Outreach for many years and taking part in many professional development opportunities eg toolkits I knew most of the content that was delivered today.  One thing I will take from today is the use of Google Docs for poster making etc as my go to is normally Google Drawings or Google Slides. I will be showing the kids how to create posters using tables as Draw is their go to. Another skill for their kete. I also really liked the reading mileage idea using voice typing. I could see this being a great task for those students whose goal is fluency and also helping with their editing skills. I will definitely be incorportating the Eyes of Text activity.

It was great to connect with Jeremy and our team of learners that we are going to work with over the next 8 weeks.