Week 9

Final week of DFI

It's been an amazing journey thats enlightened me with new knowledge and skills I can apply to all areas of my life especially teaching. It was great meeting educators from around Auckland and sharing our learning experiences, knowledge and resources.
Alongside the DFI PD, we were working on attaining skills to sit the Google Level 1 educator exam.
In preparation of the exam I went through a checklist and practised the skills. Later I sat unit reviews to test my understanding through Google for Education. This I found very useful as it helped consolidate my learning. Really excited to share, with all the hard work and effort I can now say I'm a Certified Educator level 1. Thank you Manaiakalani for making this happen.

Thanks to Gerhard and Dorothy for presenting the course! You have been very helpful and supportive. I have learnt many skills and strategies that I can apply. One of things I was amazed by what we can do on Google Sheets. I don't use google sheets often and if I did it was for really simple things. This course has allowed me to organise data and view results. Another one was Google Form, thinking about ways of how I could collect data and view results on Google Sheets. I found this interesting as we looked at ways we could integrate this into our classroom programs. A way I use Google Docs, Google Forms and Google Sheets is a really easy to integrate in my Reading tumble. Using Google Sheets I set the instructions e.g. Child needs to read a book. Then the child fills out a form to review the book. Using the data from forms, you can review the data and read all the children's book review.

In relation to Kaupapa and Pedagogy we looked at

Ubiquitous Learning
It's different from how learning use to be
In the past more learning happened at school.
Not a lot of academic learning is not happening outside of school
In a school term → learning accelerates and drops over summer
Summer learning keeps the momentum going
Harnessing the power of digital tech and scaffolding children's learning outside school hours.

Manaiakalani provides this opportunity for students to continue their learning via the Summer Learning journey. Children blog in the holidays whilst being Cybersmart.


Woohoo that's a wrap for DFI Auckland Cohort 2019.

Week 8

Week 8 - Digital Intensive Course

This week our focus was: Being Cybersmart - empowering our learners as connected and confident decision makers. In our session I have learnt:

The language we use is very important - we need to ensure that we use positive language.
For example, "being a Cybersmart learner", "are you leaving a smart footprint?"

Getting children to think about their digital footprint.
Having a shift of from being protective to proactive

Implementation - Cybersmart needs to be a whole school focus. Being Cybersmart is just not for Chromebook kids, it relates to all aspects of activity eg playing games at home.
Similar to PB4L looking at desired behaviours and deliberate teaching.

3 categories

Smart learners - navigation, and idea of at home in a digital world.

Smart Footprint - what types of info do we share, learner should understand what they share is visible, or comments on a google doc.

Smart relationships - connections they are making and how to best do that via blogging. What is the correct structure and how do we get audience to engage in our blogs.
How can we equip our learners to make smart decisions.

Use of Blogger - legally allows us to use the accounts, up to year 10. Teacher has visibility to see post, comments. Posts are emailed to the school - to ensure we have a protected network around our learners.

Kawa of Care - empower parents and caregivers by partnering with whanau and aiga to confidently connect with their children's learning.

Quality blog comments
Having consistent language for smart relationships to develop.


Teacher dashboard
Today I have learnt how to effectively use my Teacher dashboard, I have listed some tips and tricks that I can refer to for this application.
Hapara - making learning visible.
Children must open or drop the file in the folders -
The posts and comments are visible on the dashboard - an overview of what's happening on the learners post.
Red comments - are anonymous user commenting on the blog.
Don’t tell children what you can see or can’t.
Files - Friday - get children to tidy up their drive.
Highlights are unavailable after hours
Focus browsing - short time frame
Reset class folders - use that if the child had accidentally deleted the folder.
When using guided browsing - you need to manually put each link.

For me, it was really eye opening to use this application because there was more to his application. Not only could I see their online activity at school. I could reset their passwords focus their browsing. I think I will find the guided browsing very helpful as there are some student that will require that extra support.

Manaiakalni 1:1 journey

Use of the Treaty -
Partnership - learning from one another, community undertaking, owning the device - connecting through partnership


Participation,- making sure every learner can participate, every teacher can be supported to become digital fluent, children having the same device.

Protection - empowering our learners to make smart decisions, provisioning of blogs, it's happening legally and students/ teachers are protected.

IPADs

There is a really neat application called "Explain Everything". I've never used this tool before, but I do see how this could be integrated in my classroom. The application allows children to attach videos, record and free style draw on the platform. You can use different modes of media. I really cool example presented in class was - 'Spelling Test'. The words from the test were recorded on the page. Children can replay the recording to hear the sounds to help them with their spelling.

For fun and a bit of and sandpit time -  a friend and I explored using the tool and thought about ways we could use this with our students.

Week 7 - Computational thinking

Week 7

This week, we had 2 wonderful people from OMGTech to support and teach our cohort about computational thinking.

To start our session off - we focused on Empowerment. It was really eye-opening using an outside perspective of the term ´Agency´. I often use the term 'Student Agency' with parents and people in the wider community. Not realizing the word 'Agency' could also relate to child and youth services. It is very important to explain any teacher/education jargon to people outside of the profession.
Empowerment - It's not just a tool.  When it transforms the way we learn, offers us new uncharted experiences and opportunities.

The second half of our session was lead by OMGTeach. I found ethics and morals very interesting, using the context of self-driving cars. Scenarios were given to make decisions about what we would do if a life and death situation arises. Personally, I found it very tricky as it does determine your moral and ethics, however, through our discussion, these situations are thought of by a special team.

We later looked at the Digital Curriculum and what it consists of.
Digital technology is defined by creating something with digital technology
E.g. darkroom for photography

Speaking of Darkroom - a very interesting point was raised especially with today's younger generation. Most children have no idea what a darkroom is. This was notable from a popular Netflix series - Stranger things. Viewers had no clue what was supposed to happen inside. This reflects how digital technology has developed over the years. I recall, in my childhood, we had the windup cameras and we only had one shot to take the perfect picture. Only after getting my photo's processed I would be able to see what I have taken. In comparison to the present, we are able to take photos on our handheld devices and view them straight away in our gallery.

Key terms that were defined were

Digital fluency - being able to use the product
Digital technology  - how do we make it on photoshop?

The most enjoyable part of our session was learning about Scratch. I have used scratch before, but it was a good session to refresh my memory and challenge myself. I had to create a maze, I was given an example to work with to familiarize myself with the functions available on scratch. I have embedded the maze I created, it's a work in progress. :)

Week 6 - Google sites

After a wonderful 2 week break, I'm feeling excited to continue my journey in DFI.

This week, we focused on enhancing our Google site.
Some of the key features that need to be considered when creating are site will be explained further. The importance of having a class site is create visibility. Visibility was one of the ideas we discussed about pedagogy and connecting with Manaiakalani. It is important that whanau can see on the site, so they are able to see the sequence of learning. It creates the aspect of shared language as people are connected by visibility and shared language. In the digital world, sharing is so readily available. We are able share with people across the country or the world. We don't need to be face to face.

Google Sites

Children are getting quite familiar with what to expect on the site. As teachers from their previous classes usually have a similar layout.
However there are still very important aspects and ideas that need to be considered when creating a sit. There must be:

A purpose -Think about what your theme is - colour, story → it should be consistent throughout.

Planning - Always layout your site

Theme & Design
Think about colour, layout (not to cluttered, sharing permissions) and font ( Have a consistent font, looks nicer) when creating your site.

The three click rule
When you are working on a site → if it’s more than 3 clicks, children will hardly engage.

Use the google layout as it helps with images and the buttons sit neatly.

For todays task, we had gave feedback on each other blogs by using google forms and used that feedback to make improvement on our site.

Some of the things I worked on were:

Document permissions - allowing access to documents

Site

I also added a link to school site and images of the children and teacher(me). The media album, has pictures of the children only viewable to people in our domain for safety.

I have updated the Reading and Maths page. I have added pictures to the reading slide to make it more appealing to the children and added links on the Maths page and removed the slides to make the page more user friendly.

This session was very valuable as I received peer feedback on my site from other teachers. I was able to use the information obtained and make changes accordingly!

Week 5

This week I had an increased understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy, we focused on Visibility. Visibility is key especially including whanau. Previously alot of learning was not visible and this became an issue. Often the teacher would give instructions, but children would just have to guess what they have to do. There is Cultural Capital - it was expected that if you go to school, you will succeed. This is often what we discussed with our families. Manaiakalani's aim is to have teaching and learning visible for everyone. This enables whanau to be involved in the child's learning as well as the student.


Today I explored Multi Modal learning, a really simple way to describe it is Teachers are like sales people. We have to sell learning to engage learners. An example presented in class today was window dressing. Window displays are set up to entice customers to purchase items. Similarly, Teachers need to set up learning and hook in their students.


To improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional I have learnt how to use google sites to create a multi modal learning space. It is important to plan your site before you begin and children should be able to access the content in three clicks. When embedding documents onto your site, you need to make sure you have your sharing options set up correctly so children can access the content with no hiccups. I created a site for Reading that would be useful for my students learning.

Week 4

Week 4 - DFI

This week, I learnt how effectively use google spreadsheets. I think this could really beneficial
to my workflow, learns and my personal life. I have learnt many skills today such as freezing
rows and columns, creating charts, conditional formatting and filtering data. For me this is really useful for analysing my data and selecting data to view results. For my learners, it would be a really useful tool to analyse data, children could analyse the number of people and countries has who viewed their profile. This would a really good statistical tool to use.

To practise my skills in Google sheets. I was given a blogpost to analyse and collect data. Using the data collected I made a graph.




We explored Google My Maps. I thought this was a very interesting tool, as I haven't used this tool before and it was really good to explore ways I could use this in my personal life and with my learners. An example we used in class was, information was collected using Google form about 'where is my dream destination?'. The data collected was then placed on the Google Mymap and we could see everyone's dream destination on the world map. You could use layers on the map to input and separate data to view locations, for example: my class could pinpoint their location about where they are they going in the holidays. For personal use - this could definitely be a good tool for me to make a travel plan.

For literacy, you can use maps → track a journey of a book.

Find a book that you can try that has real places on earth.

E.g. I spy will be a good book.

I SPY NZ history → a good book to follow through. 

Week 3 DFI

Week 3

This week, we looked at using the live options for videos. It is a very useful tool for teachers and children to capture moments that you are unable to attend.  It's very important to use a HD camera - A recommenced camera to use is the Canon LEGRIA HF G40, you can also use a drone to record an event.

Another useful tool to use is the Teradek: VidiU Pro. You can use this device to stream straight to youtube and its cable-less - $1200.

If you are filming outside - it's important to have a strong connection, you can use AP or broadcasting to have a good connection. Often an issue that you could face if you don't have a good connection - the video dies and audio is available.

A good way to set up live streaming is have 2 devices set up to see what the audience can see and the control feed to see the best way to view the video. You can also use a gimbal to keep the camera stay stable. These are few of tips given which will be very useful for my use of live streaming.

Youtube is often a very useful and an amazing tool for educational resources. However, on the flip side, the content on Youtube can often be inappropriate or you could off task watching a series of clips. Which quite often happens to me when the options for recommended videos pop up. Today I learnt a very useful option within Youtube where I can save videos and share it with my students. Using the playlists option I can save videos related to the learning and embed it on my class site or children can view the playlist. This will enable my learners to stay on task and easily select the video rather than using the Youtube search option. This will enable my planning and navigation for students efficient.

Manaiakalani - CREATE is a very important aspect. Creativity should be incorporated in all subject areas. Teachers should provide opportunities for children to create things to support their learning. Quite often creativity is encouraged in earlier years of schooling. I think in my practice I will be trying to include more opportunities where children have a choice to create things and explore using their creativity. A really useful example that was shared with us today was animations and digital portraits. A thought this was a wonderful example which could be used across the curriculum. Students from another school shared with our cohort on how they used google slides to make an animation and tell a story. Using google drawing, children uploaded their picture and traced around the image. Starting from the outline and then focusing on the finer details. I had an attempt by making a bouncy ball animation, however I will defiantly need to refine the movement of the ball. I really had fun as it was sandpit time for me and also a chance to test my creativity. A simple task, yet challenging and fun. Here is a link to my animation.
I also used google slides and screencastify to create a digital Pepeha.

Week 2

Week 2 - DFI


This week Dorothy did a presentation that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy.  Today's focus was on Ako/Learn. I learnt that implementing a digital environment assists in reducing our workload. The ability to plan and produce this on a google document saves time and reduces the double handing of printing out paper copies and making antidotes. It also provides the opportunity for your team to collaborate. The Manaiakalani programme follows R A T as a guide to be an effective teacher in a digital age.

• R -recognise
• A - Amplify
• T - Turbocharge  

To improve my workflow as a professional, I have learnt many new skills today. Especially organizing my tabs and Gmail. At the moment my Gmail inbox is cluttered. Using the filter system, I was able to organize my inbox. Using groups - Feu'u class, all emails that are received from my class will go into a folder rather than going straight into my inbox. Quite often children share their work via google and I end up having 100's of emails and notifications. The filter has enabled me to file this in a different folder for access.
Another application we used was Google Keep. I have been using this application for a few years now. Little did I know, it had many cool features that would enhance my workflow and productivity. I was introduced to labels where I could categorize my notes and also colour coding and archiving my old notes. I was really amazed by the feature where I could take an image of text online or in a book. Google Keep had the ability to grab the text and paste it in my notes. This is very useful for me as it would save me time and effort. Often for reading, I would write a cloze activity or comprehension questions from a PDF. This tool is able to extract the words and I could easily copy and paste it onto a Google document.
I also added a new extension called 'One Tab' this tool collated all my tabs into one file and I was able to go back and rename it under a group. I found it useful as often I would have several chrome windows open with heaps of tabs open. This was definitely a useful tool for improvement in workflow.

Today we also learnt how to use Google Hangouts effectively. My group and I worked together to assign a Google Hangout meeting and we were successfully able to share our content on our screen and also be able to collaboratively engage in a discussion. However, using the Quicktime tool - the microphone option was disabled. We used this application to capture the screencast and our Google Hangout meeting. Next time, we will ensure that we will check the microphone option on Quicktime before we record our meeting.
Some tips for a successful Google Hangout meeting, I have learnt that when a person is talking, it is best to turn your mic off to avoid the feedback noise, try not to have sunlight behind you as it creates a silhouette on the video and in a meeting it's nice to show that you are present by displaying your video.



Hope you enjoyed reading my learning journey. Please free to comment or leave feedback.

Week 1

Week 1

My first week at the DFI course was fun, it kicked off with the introductions of the members of the group and an explanation of what is the Manaiakalani kaupapa. Dorothy had a wonderful presentation that outlined the importance of the Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy. She outlined how we can embed a digital learning environment for students and how we could motivate our learners to engage in the curriculum. 'Learn, create and share' is one of the key elements and this can be implemented anywhere in the framework.

To improve my workflow as a professional, I have learnt how to use google groups. I think Google groups is such a good tool for groups. It would allow me to communicate and collaborate with everyone within a group. It would also be easier to send emails and I would only need to send an email to one email - which would be linked to the members of the group.
I think this would be a very good tool to use with my learners. This would allow to me share links, documents and communicate with my students. The group emails are easy to follow and easy to respond to. This is really important for my students as often they can lose their emails if they go through their inbox rather than an assigned Google group.

To my professional and personal workflow. I liked how Dorothy referred to it as 'Marie Kondo your drive'. I feel like this has huge importance! Having an organized drive is a must. I recall in my first year of teaching and the number of shared documents I had received - I felt I had lost them. Slowly, I started creating numerous folders and naming them correctly. This session was a huge reminder to keep naming and filing those documents, so it was nice to look at my drive and see what sparked joy and needed to go. For learners, I think it's absolutely important to have all their documents organized. It will be a good habit and also it will assist children being at ease when looking for their files.

In my session, I created a poster which I thought highlighted the importance of organization.
Drive Organisation for students

Thank you Dorothy and Gerhard for your wonderful presentation and support today. Look forward to learning some exciting new skills and development.