DFI Session 9: Revision

Today in our DFI session Dorothy talked about Ubiquitous Learning. This means our learners have the potential to be experiencing high-quality learning experiences even when the teacher is not with them. Ubiquitous carries the idea that learning takes place outside of the traditional school/classroom in the digital era. Dorothy explained that effective teaching practice alongside the power of digital technology can transform learning and teaching. This means connecting young people with their own device + a learning programme designed by an effective teacher should be having a very different learning experience. Dorothy talked about the impact of the summer learning journey. The research showed that students who blogged made gains in reading and writing than non-bloggers.

Reflecting on the Kaupapa of the Manaiakalani Programme

in light of COVID 19 and our readiness for ubiquitous learning...

What are you proud of?  I am proud of my students coming to join the Google Meet and following instructions to do their home learning. I am also proud of meeting some of the parents in Google Meet and talking about the learning that their children have been doing. Parents really appreciated the work teachers do.

What do you regret? I regret not meeting my students personally and being in the classroom to talk to them and share their worries. 

What will you be taking forward into the ‘new’ era of schooling? Integrating technology more into teaching and learning. I will focus on well being of my students and myself to have a balance between teaching, learning and taking care of ourselves.

DFI Session 8: Computational Thinking

This is a screenshot of what I created in the Scratch site today.

The connecting with Manaiakalani session today was about Empowerment. Empowerment was translated in terms of giving back control to lives. This means empowering teachers and learners. Dorothy explained that the 5+ a day slogan can be reused here to think about language. She said that many students in decile one schools come to school short of hearing 32 million words and introducing the 5-way conversations in schools can help to shift the language balance. Dorothy explained that access to devices, to the internet, is not 'just a tool' but is so much more. It is about a connection, a path forward, a way to overcome barriers, a way to transform how children learn.

In our session today we also had plenty of time to explore. It was great to explore various places and gather ideas for how to implement the new Digital technologies curriculum. There are so many valuable and practical resources out there. I really enjoy and learn a lot from listening to other teachers share. It was interesting to see lessons shared where computational thinking and that it can be explored without the use of devices.

I really enjoyed playing around with the Scratch site. I can see so many ways to integrate this into a multitude of curriculum areas. 

DFI Session 7: Devices

This is what I created in Explain Everything today.

In today's session, Dorothy talked about the importance of Cybersmart,
Hapara Teacher Dashboard, life as a chromebook user and using iPads in the classroom.

The Journey of Manaiakalani

Partnership
Ako is a whānau or community experience.
Engagement in the decision making eg Kawa of Care.
Engagement through device ownership.

Protection
This should all happen behind the scenes.
Manaiakalani partnered with Hapara to design Teacher Dashboard
to make all digital learning visible.
Partnership with N4L and Linewize for filtering.

Participation
Every learner can participate.
Every teacher can be supported to become Digitally Fluent when all devices are the same.
Engagement through device ownership.

DFI Session 6: Enabling Access - Sites

Today was a hands-on session of creating and developing learning sites It was great to be able to have time to work on our class sites. I had my site since the beginning of the year but did not use it a lot except during lockdown when I had to use it for home learning. I will need a lot more practice and time to complete the site so it can be effective for my learners. I am hoping to get my site fully operational by term 3.  These are some of my goals that I focussed on today to develop my site:

• Buttons on some pages
• Add timetable on the homepage
• Add resources to the site from my drive

DFI Session 5: Collaboration - Creating Sites

Today we had the T-shaped literacy PD facilitated by Phil from Ako Hiko. With such a diverse range of learners in a class, I found the T-shaped multi-modal structure creates opportunities for all students to connect in more than one way to the learning.  

I'm still getting to grips with the different types of texts. I found the WFRC breakdown especially helpful: 

With some guidance from Mark, we collaboratively created a plan for a muti-modal literacy site. 

We used this to help us create a Google Site. 

I already use a class site and found the class site a great tool for visibility in the classroom. A class site creates the opportunity for children to go back and revisit areas of their learning in their own time. 

DFI Session 4: Dealing with Data

Learn, Create, Share
We connected with Manaiakalani's pedagogy this morning. Dorothy spoke to us about sharing and she mentioned that we have been sharing for a long time and that we are only constrained by time, place, and people. She mentioned that we have always had an audience with our learning, including the class, school, local community and Manaiakalani have embraced the power of online users, and provided children an opportunity for a real, authentic, audience. 

Blogger

• We are able to provide this legally, systematically, securely
• There is no new sign in required for G Suite users
• Guarantee three check system
• Largest audience reach via Google
• Multi purposed
• Can be used by students and teachers

Google Forms

Venessa talked us through google forms, which is great because I've never made a form before. It looked very simple and easy to navigate. We then split into our small digital bubbles to create our own google form. 

Google MyMaps

Gerhard talked us through Google MyMaps, which I have never used or seen before. He showed us how to use this tool and showed how it can be used for teaching measurement and comparing the growth in scales. We moved into our small digital bubbles and had some time to create our own map. I still need to learn more about MyMaps.

Google Sheets

Gerhard took us through Google Sheets and how we can use it effectively as educators. I really enjoyed the freeze feature, as this makes it so much easier to keep track of learners across different curriculum areas.

We split into small ability-based groups to work through the features of Google Sheets more carefully. Venessa was very helpful and showed us how to freeze rows and columns, find averages and sums of data, as well as create and input graphs or charts into the sheet.

Blogging Data

Dorothy talked us through the statistics available behind the scenes on blogger. I didn't realize how many amazing statistical analyses were available on blogger itself! Dorothy made me consider the authenticity of our online audience and our learners creating content that they actually want to share and talk about. This also made me think about the importance of time and giving my learners time to explore other blogs and contribute to their own blogs. I decided to analyze one of the students blogs from another school. Take a look at the graph I made using Google Sheets and Google Draw.

DFI Session 3: Media

Creating Texts, Shapes and Images in Google Slides



Google Slides and Drawing
In the DFI session today we used Google Slides and Google Drawing to create shapes, texts and images. I really like working with Google Slides because it can be easily embedded and shared into the class learning sites, blogs with students. The formatting is clear and consistent and the most current slides are always at the top.

U Tube and Playlist for Teachers
U Tube for teachers helps save videos to a playlist. Playlists allow users to organize videos and save them under different titles.

The 'create' element of LCS is a very important part of the process for me. Going through the Manaiakalani kaupapa each week is definitely helping me gain a better understanding of each element and how to implement it.