DFI Session 9: External Recognition

Participating in this Manaiakalani DFI course has been the best P.D I have been involved in throughout my whole teaching career! It has been inspiring, motivating, challenging and really made me reflect and adjust my own teaching pedagogy. I would now struggle to teach at a school that wasn't part of the Manaiakalani programme as it would feel like a major step backwards. That sounds dramatic but I know that I want to continue to work on aligning my teaching practice with the Manaiakalani 'Learn, Create, Share' kaupapa as I truly believe this will foster students who are confident and adaptable in this rapidly changing world.

I feel lucky to have been able to attend the online course as I have had access to a wider range of colleagues and been able to gain a broader perspective on how Manaiakalani is being implemented across N.Z. Learning from the comfort of my own home has definitley been a positive as well....just ask my dog! I have learnt lots of tips and tricks to manage my workload more efficiently and become more competent in a number of the G-suite apps. Today I completed the 'Google Certified Educator Level 1' exam and I passed! It was awesome to be in my bubble while we all received our exam results and to be able to celebrate and congratulate one another.....100% pass rate for the A-Team! Woop! Woop!

I was really nervous prior to sitting the exam and it gave me a first hand experience of how our students must feel when we set tests for them to complete. Since it was an open book exam, I felt fairly confident that I would be able to work out anything that was unfamiliar but my main concern was that I might run out of time. The three hours turned out to be plenty of time and I might even consider attempting the Level 2 exam at some stage.

I found it very beneficial to particiate in this course at the same time as my collaborative teaching buddy as we were instantly on the same page and both motivated to try the new things that we had learnt. I am excited for the other staff at my school to complete the DFI course and get on board with the Manaiakalani kaupapa. 

I truly am sad that our DFI course has come to an end and would like to thank everyone that has been involved in organising this course. I will definitely be on the look out for other Manaiakalani P.D opportunities in the future!

DFI Session 8: Computational Thinking

Today was our final session before we participate in our 'Google Certified Educator Level 1' exam next week. Dorothy started our day off by discussing the Manaiakalani kaupapa of 'Empowered'. This was centered around our tamariki taking back control of their own lives and empowering them so they can be confident to interact in a variety of ways (kanohi ki te kanohi, online etc). It has definitley become clear through participating in this DFI course that our devices are not just a tool. Manaiakalani is all about ensuring there is equity by giving everyone an equal opportunity to be connected in the digital age. The aim is to create an educational advantage, rather than disadvantage like there has been in the past. Whanau also develop a sense of empowerment and become partners in their childrens learning as they go through the process of purchasing their devices. It was pretty cool to hear that in paying the devices off whanau can generate a credit rating, which can be a common issue within lower decile communities.  

Thinking about the future and what could be in store in terms of technology, blows my mind a little bit! We already have robots that can teach themselves and apps that can detect cancerous moles, so who knows what advancements there could be in 5....10.....20 years? The moral machine activity was really eye opening and generated some interesting conversation. It highlighted how so many different factors come into play when making moral decisions and how these factors can be vastly different from individual to individual. 

I have been able to gain a better understanding of computational thinking and become a bit more familiar with the digital technologies curriculum. Our school is still at the very early stages of integrating this into our curriculum so it was awesome to hear about other schools' experiences and the progressions they are uisng.

A good portion of today was spent exploring various coding activities and resources. I came across a free website called 'SculptGL' where you can do virtual clay modelling and carving. I really enjoyed exploring this website and am going to try using it as a follow up activity with my reading groups by asking my students to carve a character. This video below explains how it works...

During our breakout session I chose to attend the 'Creating with Scratch' workshop run by Kerry. It was completley new to me and I was way out of my depth! I probably should have chosen the 'Introduction to Scratch' and learnt some of the basics and 'scratch' language first. However, I was still able to pick up a few things and was able to observe what is possible. I would just need to spend a lot more time experimenting to grasp all of the different functions and how to manipulate them. This is the random 'scratch' I managed to create.......not sure what is up with the noises haha

I am feeling pretty nervous about the exam but I am just going to give it my best shot and make sure I spend some time revising the provided materials. I am sad that my time on this DFI course is nearly over but I am also feeling really excited to have more time in class next term to implement all of my new learning!

DFI Session 7: Devices

Today we started off by further unpacking ubiquitous learning, which in a nutshell means barriers are removed so that learning can take place anytime, anywhere, any pace by anyone (A4). This allows students the time to learn outside of the traditional school hours at either a slower pace (rewindable) or faster pace, whatever best suits them. 

                            

We participated in a couple of activities using the devices that our students use (chromebooks and ipads). The chromebook activity was a digital dig which my class had completed last week with our Manaiakalani facilitator. My students enjoyed learning a few new tricks and shortcuts on their devices and so did I. Our ipad activity was exploring the 'Explain Everything' app. It was fairly straightforward to figure out and I can see why it is a popular tool in junior classes. Our school is currently in the process of setting this app up on all of our ipads and I am looking forward to seeing how our junior teachers integrate it. Click on this link to see a video of what I created. It was awesome to explore some of the teacher created tasks as well and see different ways that teachers are utlising this app.

We spent some time looking at the Cybersmart Curriculum and one of the main things that stuck with me was to focus on using positivie cybersmart language. Subtle things like using smart instead of safe and switching the focus onto what we DO rather than what we DON'T do.

I have had limited experience with the workspace side of Hapara so I chose to use our create time today to experiment with setting one up. My workspace was based on the cybersmart aspect of 'Digital Footprints'. Click on this link to see the workspace I created or you can watch the screencastify below where I explain my workspace...

 

I enjoyed the brief presentation about screencastify. I was already familiar with this extension but it was awesome to learn about a few extra functions in the toolbar (like the torch mouse function I am using in the screencastify above).

Reflecting on my experience of Covid 19 in regards to my readiness for ubiquitous learning, I wouldn't say I was prepared, but I am proud of how we (my collaborative teaching buddy and I) managed. Looking back over my teaching career, I started off at a school (over 10 years ago) that was fairly onto it with digital learning and required every class to have a google site (I think it was actually a wikipsace back then). However as I moved to different schools the expectations weren't there and although I still continued to create a class website each year, I defintley didn't do it as well as I could of and it was more just a site for the links I wanted my students to access.  When we were all forced into distance learning due to Covid, it made me realise how I had kind of just cruised in terms of my own professional development with digital learning (since leaving a school that had certain requirments in this area). With the combination of Covid and our school joining Manaiakalani, it was definitley the wake up call I needed and has set me on the path of a whole new teaching aproach/pedagogy. I just need to keep reminding myself to take baby steps and not get overwhelmed!

DFI Session 6: Enabling Access - Sites

Gone are the days where schools only came together to compete against one another.....the introduction of the Manaiakalani Outreach made things explode into a world of collaboration where students, teachers and whanau share a common language. There is no reason now why any teacher should have to feel isolated or stuck on their own, as we have a massive community of colleagues who have all been brought together with the common goal of learning, sharing and creating together. I am stoked to be a part of it!

Our main kaupapa for today was looking at our class sites and seeing where we currently are in relation to the points below...

It was really beneficial to just have the time to sit and explore such a variety of sites. I found it really inspiring and motivating and I will definitely continue to do some more exploring and 'stealing' of ideas. The old saying of 'no need to reinvent the wheel' definitely applies and I just feel grateful to be part of this community. 

Below are my goals I set for myself for today in terms of my site and I was able to achieve them all...

-  Make our site more interactive  

- Apply the 3 clicks or less kaupapa (simplify things). 

- Make it appealing to whanau as well (link to fb, newsletters etc)  

My site is definitely still a work in progress but I feel more focussed about how I want to utilise it now. In the past my sites have pretty much just been a place where I organised all of the website links I wanted my students to be able to access easily. I now have a much better understanding of the possibilities and am planning to gradually start using it more and more as a living and breathing workspace. One thing I am a little bit confused about is Hapara versus Sites for setting work tasks. They both have their pros and cons and I think I will probably end up using a combination of them both. 

Here is a link to our class site...

DFI Session 5: Collaborate - Sites

* This mornings discussion was all about visual teaching and learning. The key concepts being that the teaching/learning is accessible, available and in advance. We discussed how our google sites are what we use to make the teaching visible and Hapara is what makes the learning visible. Participating in this DFI course has really modelled these concepts to me and allowed me to step into my students shoes to become the learner and experience how they must feel on a daily basis. The fact that our agenda is available in advance makes me feel more comfortable for the day ahead as I have an idea of what to expect and it is reassuring knowing that the resources are accessible to me if I need to revisit certain things at a later date.  I can see just how beneficial this whole visible teaching and learning kaupapa is for our students and I will continue to work on making my own teaching practice more in line with this.  

We also looked at what multimodal means and how it makes the learning interesting and engaging for not only our students and their whanau, but anyone really. 

Multimodal means having or using a variety of modes or methods to do something.

The over aim behind multimodal is to: REACH THEM, SUIT THEM and ENGAGE THEM. Initially the devices themselves are engagement enough, but that doesn't last. We are now in competition with a mind blowing array of digital media and in order to keep our students (and their whanau) hooked into their learning we need to ensure we keep things visually appealing, interactive and fresh.

During our create time I set up a new site for our Enviro kaupapa but then realised half-way through that I should just add a new page to our main school site so that everything is in one place. I am quite comfortable with how sites work but will definitely be aiming to keep our site more multimodal and constantly changing so that our students are excited to check in and see whats new! Below is a link to one of the pages I added to our school site where we will be starting a seed bank collection....

The 'Hapara Hot Tip' was very handy. I had no idea about the functions of the 'sharing' tab, particularly the 'unshared' function......quite scary looking at the state of my students drives and the amount of docs that are floating around loose! Eeeeek!

DFI Session 4: Dealing with data

Today Dorothy started our session off by talking about the 'SHARE' component of the Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy. She highlighted the importance of sharing with a purpose and for an authentic audience (not just the teachers red pen).....an authentic audience is people who CHOOSE to listen to you! Sharing in the digital age now goes far beyond our LOCAL communities and has become GLOBAL!

As part of the Manaiakalani kaupapa, BLOGGER is our main online space for our students to learn to share. Blogger has similarities to other popular social media spaces but is a lot safer as it allows us as educators to control and monitor commenting much easier.  One message that stuck with me from this mornings presentation was creating a culture within my class where my students don't say 'Im finished' but rather 'I'm ready to share'. The act of sharing can be where the learning begins sometimes...for example the feedback given on blogs etc.

LOTS of new learning for me today! I was not familiar with google sheets, google forms or google my maps. My bubble leader was called on a lot for troubleshooting! I can see that google forms could be a really useful tool and I am looking forward to having a look back through at what other people created to get some ideas. This is a link to the google form that I created today.

Google my maps was a lot of fun to experiment with and I can see that my students would also be fascinated. With younger students I would probably use it more as a whole class activity. I liked the idea someone shared of using it as a follow up reading activity where you plot the journey of a character or even plotting our route after an EOTC trip. We are currently studying our waterways and have recently completed a roadside clean up. I am wondering whether we could use my maps to look at the journey a piece of rubbish might take from our school... to our local awa....to our moana. 

This is a google map of our cohort's ideal holiday destinations....

Google sheets was definitely the thing I struggled the most with today, but I now have a basic understanding of the various functions. I think, like anything if I continue to tutu I will become more confident. I spent some time this afternoon continuing to experiment and was able to work out a few other handy functions. I can see lots of different possibilities using the data to create charts and it was valuable to have a principal in my group so that I could see the way in which she was learning to use it to collate school wide data. It is awesome learning how the Gsuite tools all work in conjunction with one another. Below is the data I used to learn how to find the average, sum, max and sparkline. I was very pleased to learn how to make sheets more appealing to look at to!

Today's CREATE activity was to use google sheets to input data about how often a student was posting on their blog. We then used that data to create two different graphs, one displaying total blog posts for each year and the other displaying total blog posts per month. We were able to use our previous learning of google drawings to insert our chart from our google sheets and ensure they were linked so that when we modify our sheet it automatically updates on our drawing.  I will continue to explore ways in which I can use google sheets to work more efficiently.  Below is the 'Blog Post Analysis' I created...

We were given the code below to use when we are commenting on someones blog and we want to link in a website or a file in the comments section....

<a href="insert URL here">Insert display text here</a>

DFI Session 3: Media

Todays session started off with Dorothy discussing the 'CREATE' part of the Manaiakalani pedagogy. I enjoyed listening to her korero explaining how the create aspect is predominantly the part that 'HOOKS' our students in and I love how that is represented in the Manaiakalani logo below. This reinforced to me how vital it is to establish a safe learning environment, where students feel comfortable to share their ideas and become creators, rather than just consumers. It was also reminder to myself to not forget one of the main reasons why I chose to pursue teaching as a career.....to be creative!

During lockdown I had experimented with a youtube channel but didn't get very far. Today was a good opportunity to start organising some playlists and ensure I had the correct settings on my account. I created a second youtube channel under our class email so that my collaborative teaching buddy and I can both create playlists and easily access this from our promethean t.v, rather than our individual teacher gmails. 

We are not quite at the student blog stage yet but once we are I will make sure that I set up some of the handy tips that were discussed today. Things like making sure I have filters set up to manage the influx of emails in my inbox and utilising some of the extensions that were discussed last week to manage a large number of blogs.

I signed up for the 'Adding audio to your slides for rewindability' breakout with Kelsey and created the audio book below. I am looking forward to exploring ways to use the online voice recorder with my students. I would like to promote tuakana/teina relationships by challenging some of my students to create an audio book to assist junior students with their reading. 

I am lucky to have my collaborative teaching buddy doing the DFI course at the same time as me so we have discussed using the 'All About Me' google drawing activity with our students. We have just introduced the basics of google drawing to them and this will be a fun way to introduce a few more functions. 

I am loving the 'rewindability' of this course. Even though we weren't able to attend all of the breakouts I have been able to look through some of the slide decks to get little tips and ideas. It is reassuring to know that these resources are sitting there for us to revisit as we need and I will definitely continue to utilise them.

My last random thought about what I learnt today was that I had never looked at blogging as being EOTC! I can't remember which presenter said that but it really made me think differently and realise that it definitely is!

DFI Session 2: Workflow

We have just completed our second D.F.I session and it was another jam packed agenda. It is reassuring to know that all of our learning has rewindable slide decks etc that we can revisit to consolidate our learning or check up on things we may be unsure of.

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

- The main thing that stuck with me from this mornings focus around the 'LEARN' aspect of Manaiakalani was the reminder that we as teachers are constantly modelling to our students that we are still learners too. My collaborative teaching buddy and I have explained to our class that we are going to be away every Wednesday so that we can learn lots of new skills that we will then be able to come back and share with them. Our students were quite fascinated to think of us as 'the learners'. 

I took a screenshot of this part of the slide presentation as no matter how long you have been teaching I think it is vital to still remind ourselves of these actions...

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

- Google calendars is not currently utilised in our school but is something my collaborative teaching buddy and I have talked about introducing at some stage. My buddy and I currently use a shared calendar app but it makes sense to switch to google calendars as everything is linked in our G suite. As a whole staff we still have the big white board calendar of the term in our staffroom which most of the staff are comfortable with. However, I think we could be a lot more efficient by using google calendars. I think if we used 5-10 mins each staff meeting to gradually introduce how it works then we may be able to convert our staff members. Creating a google meet via calendars was new learning for me and I will continue to explore the various other functions. 

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

- I have not used google meets since last lockdown so it was really good to have a refresher and learn about the new functions. With the latest Covid situation, it is a timely reminder to also reintroduce google meets and our expectations/kaupapa around video chatting. 

 

* Todays task was to analyse a students blog post from lockdown and create a video recording via google meets discussing the following questions...

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?

I have never used the recording function in google meets and I will be honest, I was way out of my comfort zone! Working out how to use the recording function was fine......just the actual recording myself was uncomfortable for me....but I survived! Below is the recording I created and learnt how to embed in my blog....

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

- I learnt lots of handy tips for my organising my gmail and making it work more efficiently for me. I learnt how to set up two different signatures (a professional one and one to use with my students), created a 'unread first' section at the top of my inbox and am still experimenting with the use of email filters and whether or not these would be useful for me. 

- Google Keep is something I already use but only as a 'To Do' list with checkboxes for me and my collaborative teaching buddy. I learnt about lots of other functions, including the voice recording function available on the phone app which converts speech to text as well as saving a copy of the original audio. I also liked the tip about creating a google keep note with feedback comments that is accessible on the side bar when working on google docs. 

- The presentation about 'Taming the tabs" is something I will need to revisit when I have more time. Once we get our students up and running with their own blogs I can see that we will probably want to utilise one or more of the extensions that were discussed. 

DFI Session 1: Core Business

Today was the first session of our Digital Fluency Intensive (DFI). Prior to starting I was a bit nervous but am now feeling really positive as there is plenty of support readily available.

What did I learn that increased my understanding of the Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

Our day started off with a presentation about the Manaiakalani kaupapa. It was interesting to listen to the back story and learn about how it all started. I love the philosophy of 'Learn....Create....Share' and am excited to be starting my own journey. I am glad that my collaborative teaching buddy is also participating in the DFI at the same time as me so that we are on the same page.

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

- Lots of the organisational tips related to our google drives I have already learnt over the years through 'tutuing' but it is always good to have a refresher to see what systems other people are using. 

- It was useful to learn how to set up groups as in the past we have relied on our I.T support person to do this for us. I was just about to rush ahead and set up a group for the students in our class (currently using a group within my email) but then our presenter told us not to bother as it will interfere with our Hapara set up. 

- In the past I have avoided using google docs to create/present work as I have found google slides to be more friendly in terms of letting you place things wherever you want them. However, the tips I picked up today have definitely shown me that there is much more to google docs. It is my classes turn to contribute to our school newsletter this week so I used our google doc 'create' time to make a start on this. 

 - The 'explore' tool is another part of google docs that I havn't really utilised in the past. It will be very handy and help to eliminate some of the many tabs I have open!

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

The voice recording function is a tool I would like to introduce to my class. I can see it being a really engaging part of our literacy programme. My collaborative teaching buddy made the poster below when we were required to create a google doc poster:

I would also like to introduce the 'explore' tool properly to my students. I can see it eliminating some confusion as lots of tasks can now be completed from within the one doc/tab.

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

The 'priority' section in my google drive was completely new learning for me. I will definitely be utilising this for fast retrieval of my frequently used documents.

Looking forward to session 2!