Digital Fluency Day 9 - External Recognition !

 Wohooo its a PASS for me! 

So thrilled to pass my Google Certified Trainer Level 1 exam today 👏

I have been so INSPIRED and REFRESHED through doing the DFI course, I feel like I have a renewed passion for teaching. I could do DFI every term, loved it. I thrive in an environment when I am learning, and creating so this has been my best term in a long time. My brain is bursting with all the amazing new learning happening in my classroom. A big impact on my teaching has been the introduction of T-shaped literacy pedagogy.

As mentioned above ! I have really been inspired and equipped to work more effectively especially with the use of Google forms. WOW. I am using them to administer snapshot test for my GAP spelling tests. My students are benefitting so much because they are seeing their results instantaneously instead of waiting for me to mark them and return the tests.

COLLABORATING WITH COLLEAGUES

As always we are better together and I have really loved being with amazing bubble team. Here is a link to our blogs for future reference and some screenshots of a couple comments I have made. 

https://www.gettoby.com/p/pwfv2h72ff3q

Digital Fluency Day 8 - Computational Thinking

WELCOME to our FINAL week of DFI

Today we have explored more of the Digital Technology/ Hangarau Matihiko Curriculum. I am passionate about learning and teaching students to be innovative creators of digital technology rather than users, so this has been a double BONUS for me today. 

One key resource that I found in the slide that Kerry created for us was the Progression Outcomes - decoded for learners. This is an extremely helpful document to be able to translate the language of programming to our students. I am looking forward to spending more time looking into this more. 

Progression Outcomes – decoded for learners

Manaiakalani Class on Air

I love seeing how teachers like Danni Stone create powerful lessons that combine programming in Scratch with other core curriculum areas, like transformation geometry, in this case.

 Definitely keeping this here for future use. 

AND FINALLY ....

Having a go at using the pen add on in Scratch was fun today. Watch my video as I explain a little bit more about what I have learnt and created today.

Reflecting with a Screencastify video

Digital Fluency Day 7 - Devices!

I have been loving this session about Devices today. Our hands-on learning about the Chromebook keypad functions, shortcuts and so much more has been very beneficial. I know I get asked a lot of these questions daily and I feel more equipped now to be able to empower my students to succeed. 

Adding my slide here from some of the work I have done today. 

 

Having a  go with Explain Everthing. 

It has been a long time since I have used iPads in my classroom as the majority of students use Chromebooks in our year 7 & 8 classroom. Bring on a new challenge for the day. As I continued to experiment with the various tools like the DRAW TOOL, I started having fun and I could see some students in my class enjoying this app! I especially liked the INSERT NEW tool. I felt my students would be engaged in creating presentations like this while being able to include images and gifs. I have a few iPads in my classroom ... So it might be time to bring these out and have go with my class. 

My Explain Everything video

Thinking about REWINDABLE LEARNING 🧐

"Have a think now about the idea of rewindable learning
Ie capturing the teaching, capturing the learning
Enabling young people to revisit it over and over again

Manaiakalani "

Dorothy encouraged us to think about rewindable learning today. This is definitely been a key area of learning for me throughout the DFI sessions each week. I know I am thinking about each lesson I plan now, in a completely different way. I have learnt to become more confident with teaching using Screencastify. Even if it is only a short clip to enable a student to revisit an instruction of the task. 

Here is my example...

Today our create challenge was to Create or repurpose a Cybersmart lesson using EE covering one of the Cybersmart concepts for your learners.

Following on from our amazing learning with the Digital Dig today I repurposed the Digital Dig slide by BoI College by Kerry Boyde -Preece.

https://cybersmart.manaiakalani.org/being-cybersmart/smart-learners/digital-dig

Digital Fluency Intensive Day 6 - Enabling Access

We have had a very productive day learning about how to use Google Sites. Dorothy started our day be reminded us of the importance of being CONNECTED.  It was amazing to see how many schools and clusters are connected to Maniakalani and that we are all journeying together. I am looking forward to having a "Taranaki" Cluster on their site so see the amazing mahi happening in our area. Just a reminder for future this is the site where I can go to: https://www.manaiakalani.org/about/programme-outreach

To get us started we explored Google Sites that have created by other amazing teachers. WOW! 😳 I was blown away with the incredible sites that have been created. So many rich resources with visible evidence of teaching and learning.

We also had an opportunity to view sites created by our group. I loved seeing the diversity and expressions.  Up until this point I hadn't created my website yet, so all of this was helping me understand and gain a clearer picture of what my class site could function like. We got to do a peer review of each site and I thought this list of questions would be very helpful for me as I develop my site.

So I have started my classroom site: I haven't published it yet, but here are some screenshots of what I have started creating.. Watch this space for more progress in the coming weeks. 

Embedding our Newsletters

Having a go at the banner.

Creating Buttons with links for my reading groups.

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First Aid Friday!

Love that I can pop this up here on blogger as a reminder of important training. Today I completed a FULL First Aid course. I am all up to date with what is expected as a First responder.

Remembering my DRS ABCD !

Digital Fluency Intensive Day 5 - Collaborate !

Here is our website !! 

Digital Fluency Day 4 - Dealing with Data

Reflections from week 4 (day 4) of DFI - Dealing with DATA

Today we learnt so much more about how to deal with data more effectively and I have had some great light-bulb moments as our facilitators and colleagues have shared their tips on using Google Sheets and Forms to increase productivity and workflow. At the same time giving me more tools to be able to draw upon as needed.

"Share" - of the Learn, Create, Share Pedagogy.

Dorothy shared with us today that big changes happened in 2005 with the start of online sharing platforms like Youtube and Facebook. It was really interesting to think about how these platforms have changed the way we do life. I am personally very thankful to have these powerful tools at our everyday disposal. Having immigrated to New Zealand from South Africa in 2007, we have been able to easily connect with our family in this asynchronous environment where time and distance does not matter, especially when we live 11683km kilometres away with a 10 hour time difference.

Google Sheets, Charts and Google Draw

Our "Create" task today was to analyse some data from a student's blog and then analyse the data. Once we created the chart we looked at the data to understand the student's engagement in their blog, and how this is changed over the years that the student has been blogging. Some great learning today on how to use a Google Sheets to create a chart. We worked well as a bubble today sharing our learning and being ready to help where we could.

Google Forms - NEXT LEVEL

Saving the best for last ... I loved the new learning about how to use Google Forms today.  Jeremy thank you for showing us really effective ways to use Google Forms to collate data such as schonell spelling lists, and so much more. After today I plan to explore the other forms created by my colleagues on the DFI to learn more ways that forms can be used to increase productivity.

Amazing My Maps

 Learning about importing data into My Maps.

Digital Fluency Intensive Day 3

Permission for Creativity

I loved that Dorothy focused on CREATE  - "Creativity Empowers Learning". This really confirms my pedagogy and had encouraged me today to continue to make way for students to have multiple opportunities to be able to be creative. Often I have found the deadlines of assessments and assignments and the pressure of teaching to cause me to put some of this aside, however, after today, I have a fresh excitement to bring more Creative empowered learning into my classroom.

This documentary video is so Inspiring! (Saving here for a reminder) I wonder what you loved about school?  I loved and still love learning new things, engaging in opportunities that were hands-on. 

I have been challenged with a task in Google Slides to create a map, using the tools available. I found this tricky at times and also very rewarding. Latham explained to us how we could use Google Slides for Maths, and I am so glad he has showed us how we can do this. I felt his clear instructions were an essential part of making this task achievable. Here is my version of the map. 

Digital Fluency Intensive Day 2

What a great start to the second session of our Digital Fluency Intensive with Manaiakalani. Today I have increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy by learning more about the RAFE model as we focused on the AKO (Learn) aspect of the "Learn, Create, Share" pedagogy.  This learning has reinforced our prior learning earlier this week with Meryn our Manaiakalani Facilitator in school.  The key message that we are already doing incredible work as teachers and all the amazing work we are already doing already with effective teaching practises. 

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

I am feeling so much more confident with using Google Meet after todays sessions. Our challenge to reflect on a blog and record our Google Meet with a peer, was a perfect activity. After a few technical hiccups, we got there in the end. Thank you Louise for the amazing korero.  Here is our video, my first time using Google Meet to host a meeting and record or discussion.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?

What has impacted me today is the amazing blog by Mau, that I viewed for task. I noticed how she explained her learning so explicitly. This has really made me think about the purpose of my student's blogs or sites.  So I could use blogs like Mau's to show my students what other year 8 students are achieving with their blogs.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

On top today is the labels in Gmail. I have a camp coming this will be so handy for keeping all our camp emails in one place. I can see I will be using these labels more often to create a flow within my Gmail accounts.

Digital Fleuncy Intensive Day 1

This is my infographic created in Google Docs today to
summarise some of my key learning.

It has been inspiring to be in a space to learn more about Manaiakalani and the Learn, Create, Share pedagogy. Not only did we learn about it but we have been able to put this into practise with our own creations, like this inforgraphic I created using Google Docs.( This was a first for me)

I really loved using the 'remove background' tool. For the Marie Kondo image. I think my students will love it to.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

What has impacted me the most today has been the learning and information about the use of Google Groups. I am so excited to use Google Groups for creating better work flow, especially with emails for students and whānau. I have popped some images up from our slide deck and also as a reminder to set the default to allow external memberss to join. This is especially useful for members outside of your school email domain.

Remember to allow external members for people outside of your school email ! 

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?

The VOICE TYPING tool which is easy to use in Google Docs will be a game changer. To use this amazing tool to recording your voice which then types the words you speak as text. I use this kid of application on my phone, but have not seen it used in Google Docs before. To use this in your Google Doc - Select TOOLS in the menu bar and then Voice Recording. Remember to change to New Zealand English for our accent. (Or whatever language or accent you have)

TIP:

Vicki our facilitator shared a valuable tip which is to allow students time to practise to use the voice recording tool, just like learning to write. Another challenge can be classroom with lots of talking and noise. So you can try using a cup or a piece of paper rolled up to the mircrophone, or allow students to go outside to record.

I am looking forward to next week and to putting some of this new learning into practise with my class this week.

Hello 2021 !

I am so excited to get back into blogger for my professional blog. I am about to start DFI - Digital Fluency Intensive with Manaiakalani. This is an amazing opportunity and I can't wait to get into it. I am looking forward to connecting with other educators around our region and nation, and leaning in to soak in what they have to share with us ... Let the journey begin.