Wednesday, 28 August 2019

DFI Week 6 Enabling Access


Visible Learning
For us, this is a work in progress.  We are working through this slowly but surely.  The students are bogging, this could and should be more regular.  Our school site, after today, is more useful and has some more information on it.
I need to work with my staff on learning sites and making the class learning visible. 

I have added a Toki Pounamu tab to the website and added some useful information for parents.  I have linked the School Values site to the school site.  Everything can now be accessed from the main page.
https://www.kumara.school.nz/
Has been a good day today.  I have had time to play with the site and try things.

Hapara parent portal? I want to find out about this and how it works.

Wednesday, 21 August 2019

DFI Week 5 Devices

Connect the RIGHT values to cyber smart
What does this look like throughout the school?
Year one through to year 8.  Part of the Graduate Profile?

Hapara
Looked into Hapara and how it works
Use this to send out emails
Able to set up focus sessions through guided browsing.
Can see what students are doing and what sites etc they are on.  Used in a positive way.

Using Chrome Books
Found this very frustrating.  The screen was small and it was very slow.   Feel empathy for the kids.
The digital dig was really good. learned lots of things I didn't know. The short cuts activity was great.  Lots I didn't know.  Will finish the digital dig in my own time. Was very worthwhile and will share it with the staff.










IPad
Using Explain Everything
You can draw, write, take video and photo and record stories.
Will share the Maniakalani iPad site with Junior teacher.  We are not one to one in the junior room but this is really great stuff for them to be learning
https://ipads.manaiakalani.org/home
I would like to go through the Kawa of Care with the Junior class so they have a good understanding of cybersafety.  How to look after their device and how to act responsibly online.  Would be good to get them blogging on the class blog as well as using seesaw.



To embed the screencastfy in the blog go to open a new window, go to the three dots, embed item and copy the link, go to the blog, change to HTML, paste the link, then go back to compose.  I will have to practice this.
I will teach the senior students to do this, this week.



Thursday, 15 August 2019

DFI - Week 4
The speed and application of sharing must come with a responsibility, especially in teaching. How much is too much sharing?

Students and society as a whole have a multitude of information coming at them all the time.  How do we filter this? Much of what we see online and news etc is one person's point of view.   How do we teach our kids to filter this and to think critically about what we read and watch online and on television?
Sharing in the traditional sense is a lot less problematic.  I am pleased that part of the 'Learn, Create, Share' pedagogy is to learn to share responsibly online.

DT Curriculum

Inquiry - searching, spreadsheets
Construction- robotics
Communication-  blogging, writing
Expression - creating

Inquiry and communication is like using Instagram
Construction and expression is like making Instagram

Look up kinetic maths

Coding, try Hour of coding
Follow links on the OMG tech web site 
Toxic code



 Making a maze using scratch.
This was a great session.  Really hands-on and lots of stuff to take back to school and use straight away. 
Thanks, Kawana, I feel much more confident about the Digital Technologies curriculum.

Tried using scratch with the students during the week. 
Was great fun and a successful lesson. 


Wednesday, 7 August 2019

DFI Week 3 Collaboration - Sites

Create
When a slide show is in presentation, go to the Omni bar and high light from present, delete and replace with edit.

Create is about creating in all senses of the word.  Not just on the computer but music, art, etc.  Letting children learn, explain their learning and present their learning through many different avenues. All learners are given a way to learn and present their learning that suits their style.

Multimodal learning
Using videos before reading a new text, introduce the specific vocab, gives the students an idea of atopic they may not have come across before.  Great scaffold.
Video and two texts with opposing views on a topic. Great for critical thinking. 
Multiple texts on a topic; could be a video, poem, journal article, pictures, etc.
This is not a new way of teaching and learning.  The new and now exciting bit is the way it can be done using technology.

Wow! The session on Multimodal sites was mind-blowing for me.  Took time to get my head around even some of it.  Was great to have the time to play and experiment.
Link to presentation on Google sites.  will need this to remind me how it goes.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1CxXAI9FdAXMndAWF6mycHd8lKCRq4-GDqoi_6nRvU3Y/edit#slide=id.g3ba4a56141_0_53
I genuinely see how these could be used in the classroom and will endeavor to help my staff use sites.  This may take some doing but will be well worth it as it can only improve teaching and learning.  Once I have added more to my values site and I feel more confident I will start to work on something for the senior class.
I have started to make a site around our School Values that I will endeavor to add to over the next few months.  As a school we are intending to break the values down with the students and have them create videos explaining each one, it is my intention to add these to the site. 
https://sites.google.com/kumara.school.nz/kumara-school-values/home

Use Haparra to set up a focus session.
This limits what the students can access.
Haparra - highlights - Guide browsing

Universal Design for learning
Ed Talks
Chrissie Butler

Thursday, 1 August 2019

DFI week 2
Work Flow

Hangouts and meet
Easier to set up a meeting using calendar.
Slide show with instructions for using meet or hangouts
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1kyVBidtwP7ACQaTvBmXgJttMhsGE-Omyd4uvCgtsN-8/preview?slide=id.g3dced2d43b_0_0
This was very easy to use.  Could see the value of this for meetings and talking with people at a distance.

Pedagogy
Learn:
Access and engage with existing knowledge in a digital learning environment.
Digital world running alongside effective teaching practice.  Using evidence-based approach.
Recognise
Amplify
Turbocharge
Effective practice
in the digital world of our learners




What does learn look like at our school?
What do teachers do?
What do learners do? - That makes a difference to our learners.

I want to use this model with the staff and clarify what we are already doing that is effective practice and what we can add to our kete.
What are we already doing and how can we do this in a more digital way?

Rewindable learning
Makes the learning ubiquitous - If it's worth learning it's worth capturing
Use screen castify to capture a lesson or a chat with a child
Found this session interesting.  Clarified in my mind what the learn part of the pedagogy is.
We have the effective pedagogy but need to be incorporating a much larger digital element.


Google Keep
Will use this to replace the to-do book I share with the office administrator.  Have set this up this morning with my office admin.  We are both very keen to see how it works.

Google mail
GT - sent
GD - drafts
C - new message
GI inbox
V while in an email brings up the labels
These are useful shortcuts for mail. 
Changed the setting of my inbox and mail while at the intensive, it is taking a bit of getting used to but I'll stick with it for a bit longer.

Calendars
Short cut for calendars
J next month
K previous
D day
M month

Onetab could be useful.  I tend not to have lots of tabs open so not such an issue.

I have to say, I am enjoying this intensive and all the learning.  I was skeptical, not sure why but at this stage, it has been really positive.  Each week I have come away with things that I have been able to implement straight away and that has made things easier.



Wednesday, 24 July 2019

Digital Fluency Intensive - Day 1



It was interesting to hear the back story of Manaiakalani.  I have been in my present job for 12 months, previous to that I was in a school that was not involved. 
The 'Learn, Create, Share' pedagogy is something I am very interested in and would like to strengthen this is my school. I would like it to become the way we work and be visible.

I have never been a big user of Google Docs. I stuck to what I knew, word, etc. I now feel much more confident with Docs.  I have learned to use extensions and add-ons.

  • Talk and Comment
  • Anyone can view
  • Doc to Form
  • MindMeister
  • Word Cloud Generator

I really liked the formatting, using headings and title, I think I will use this a lot for Board reports and other things.  
Google Groups is another tool I found interesting.  I have set up a group for my staff and board and will set up another for a PB4L group I belong to.  This seems to be a very easy way to not only share information but keep track of that information as well.
Some of the short cuts we learned today were great. 

  • Command shift T - brings back a tab
  • Command shift Z - to make an alias and shift to the top level of the drive
  • Command shift V - only copies the text - this is a favorite
  • Adding a number in front of a folder name means it will always be at the beginning of the list of folders in my drive - another favourite, means I don't have to go searching for folders I use all the time.
I learned about voice typing, how to change it to recognise an NZ accent.  I have learners at school that I think this will work really well for. I like the explore feature, that it can explore the web, images and also my drive.  This will be really handy when working on strategic plan documents, I think.
 I have a teacher that did the DFI last term, now that I am working through it I will be able to help him to implement these things in his classroom. 
  • Voice Typing
  • Version History - being able to label and name different versions of the same doc will be handy
  • Highlighting text and being able to ask questions and direct these at individuals and getting the students to ask questions of each other. 
A very simple thing that is already making things easier is to take the text away from the bookmarks bar.  Now it only shows the icon, this means I can see all the bookmarks I have and for me has made it more useable.