Digital Fluency Intensive, Week 1, 25th July 2018

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

Today I learnt about the Manaiakalani philosophy in practice for the first time. There new learning that google apps provide and taking the time to learn about the all will be fantastic for me both professionally and personally! I have realised that in order to integrate technology effectively into my classroom, I need to teach my students the basics and how to be organised as good foundations are laid by teaching those important basics at the starting line.  It was good to learn about Manaikalani as I'd only heard snippets of information previously.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?
Google Keep! I'm very interested in this, from websites for class, and organising work and personal life.  I'm a bit more confident in using google docs but I realise there is so much more to learn with this app. I Creating infographics for others to interpret information will be handy for presenting information for my students and too many words can put one off when it comes to learning. 

What did I learn that could be used with my learners? 
Voice typing that could be used with my reluctant writers. I have tried this in the past but it will be great to use in a fully digital classroom.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?
My household needs to upgrade our phones so we can all be on the same wave length when it comes to shopping and messages. The thought of being organised excites me!!

Digital Fluency Intensive, Week 4, 15th August 2018

Unfortunately, I missed this session due to the NZEI Teacher Strike Day. However, over the course of the week, I went back through what we had covered in our learning so far, I mainly looked at my blog site and what I need to do there to get it up and running properly.

To be honest I'm really nervous about sharing my work with an authentic global audience.

Digital Fluency Intensive, Week 8, 12th September 2018

I was unable to attend this learning session of our Digital Learning Intensive as I was on a Mussel Spat Hikoi throughout the week with different Iwi from Te Taitokerau, I was one of many marae reps that attended.  We travelled by bus from Kaitaia stopping at several places, Coromandel  and Opotiki being a couple.  We looked at the mussel industry down there and are seeing what that would look like in the North, initially looking at mussel spat operations on the West Coast.  A very important hikoi that could mean a lot of employment for our people in the future.

When I got back to reality and looked through the learning I missed, I saw there was some discussion on 'computational' thinking. I don't know much about this topic so I'm looking forward to learning more about it and how it applies to my practice classroom.

Digital Fluency Intensive, Week 9, 19th September 2018

Ubiquitous - carries the idea that learning takes places outside of the traditional school/classroom in the digital era.

The evidence for the power of Ubiquitous learning is clearly displayed in the Summer Learning Journey reports from Manaiakalani. It showed young people learning over the holidays with no teacher present. Their term 1 progress/achievement was carefully matched with non-bloggers and showed a very clear difference between the two groups.

It was hugely interesting to see how students who posted activities on their blog more than twice a week, on average had significantly larger gains in reading and writing than student who posted less frequently. I get excited thinking about the potential successes and gains that can be made in literacy for our Ahipara school students who are starting out on their Manaiakalani journey. How keeping up their blogging practices over the summer holidays could mean success for them on return to school.

Google+

I learnt about ‘Google+’ today and how Google+ communities can raise you professional profile and extend your personal learning networks. Google+ is an Internet-based social network that is owned and operated by Google.

Google+ can help you to connect to others that share the same passion with ‘Communities’, and also help you keep those interests separate with Circles. You can have separate circles for work and personal.  You can also control the amount of content you want to see from each community in ‘my feed’ in each community's settings. If I want to see lots of horses and not a lot of gardening pictures, then that's what I will see.

Blogging/Keeping Connected
Even though today is our last Digital Fluency Intensive, it would be great to keep blogging and stay connected with the group and share our teaching and ideas. This will be the perfect opportunity to stay connected with such knowledgeable teachers who all share the same passion in education and are always looking for new and exciting ways to teach our future generations.

Digital Fluency Intensive, Week 2, 1st August 2018

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

LEARN

Effective Practice Challenge

Recognise

Amplify

Turbocharge

in a digital learning environment

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

Gmail - Organising gmails with labels. I removed more than 2,000 emails, only 9,000 to go!!

Calendar - Can book appointments, and there are different ones for work and personal.

Hangouts - Is all about collaborative learning and PD in a group situation.

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

Google Hangouts - This could be great to teach students about different places, people and professions.

QuickTime - recording through google hangouts, this is good for group activities

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

I learnt how to orgainise my emails today and how to delete on mass, I really think google hangouts is a great learning opportunity for students and staff, would come in quite handy in the near future.

Digital Fluency Intensive, Week 7, 5th September 2018

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

Connected 
Being connected through Manaiakalani clusters means working together for the same purpose, understanding issues and working together on these, sharing resources, information, ideas and a shared language, making it possible because it’s visible, connecting through blogs. Students really need to understand what learn, share, create is from year to year each term focussing on a certain area, maintaining an even balance throughout as it’s impossible to have one without the other.

This is an awesome resource to give you ideas and inspiration in your teaching.

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

Google sites 
Google sites is used because it’s visible and accessible to all at any times.  It allows the learning to be available outside of traditional school hours, extending learning through collaboration, making rewindable content through multimedia and fostering higher motivation and engagement.

When designing our site we really need to think about our audience. Who will be using it? How are they accessing the site? Why are they using the site? What is you theme you will be using throughout your site? Remember the audience and create to suit them, not parents or colleagues.

Make sure nothing is more than ‘3 clicks’ when creating your class site e.g. homepage, to their group, then straight to the task and nothing more.

Today we were able to go and look on different class sites which was extremely helpful for a new kid on the block like myself. I got to see the difference in set work for the students at different year levels, how appealing different class sites were, what worked and what didn’t…


What did I learn that could be used with my learners?
I learnt that I need to be a good ‘window dresser’ when it comes creating my class site in regards to catching my students attention which would lead them want to dive into their learning.


What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?
I need to keep things simple yet appealing, and don’t try to reinvent the wheel :)

Digital Fluency Intensive, Week 6, 29th August 2018

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?
Cybersmart 
This learning gives increased opportunities for learners to engage in 'Cybersmart' conversations and decision making with peers, teachers and parents. It works best when embedded into an existing educational programme so students learn that every time they connect, collaborate and share online it combines to create their digital footprint. It’s about teaching students how to interact in a positive way. I learnt that being Cybersmart empowers learners to connect when their learning is visible and ubiquitous.

‘Internet awesome’ has good info regarding this topic.

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

Paihia School Observation 
A class of 46 students where it ranged from target students whose work was set for them to students who were able to plan their weeks learning from the choices that were given. Teachers were available for teaching at different times throughout each day and students were free to attend a workshop if they needed too. When given the choice with learning, a group of boys with high behaviour issues weren’t coping at all with the learning and having to make their own choices/manage their time wisely. They handed very little mahi in.



When all choices were taken away they coped a lot better, extra funding was gained and they have a male mentor who is there for two breaks and writing block on different days during the week.

The group are building with pallets but must complete necessary learning before the building starts. They’re much more interested in their learning now they know what they need to do, all their learning is based around the topic of pallet furniture. becksn@paihia.school.nz 

What did I learn that could be used with my learners? I learnt that giving more choice to students in regards to their learning can enable them to flourish and challenge themselves as learners. 

I also enjoyed the ‘Digital Dig’ we had to complete. We learnt how to use shortcuts and easily find information on chromebooks. This will make life a lot easier for my students on a daily basis next year. 

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

Thinking smarter in regards to class sites/class planning and learning, keeping things  

simple to begin without trying to ‘reinvent the wheel’, and making use of what teaching  

resources are available can save copious amounts of time enabling one to gain a 

life/work balance, well that’s the plan anyway.

Digital Fluency Intensive, Week 5, 22nd August 2018

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

Interesting info about Manaiakalani google class on air in this link - https://sites.google.com/a/manaiakalani.org/onair/

Visibility for parents 
Information needs to be visible as parents can feel locked out to their children's learning if they can’t access key information and see exactly what they’ve been learning.

I learnt that digital can erect barriers, not remove them. eg passwords - create significant barriers for young and old and should be applied thoughtfully. We need to ask ourselves - is it truly necessary?


Inaccessible technologies 
Some technologies are too complex or poorly designed. Inequity - young people COULD have been left behind if visionary principals and teachers had not created the Manaiakalani programme.


Multi Modal 
Is different ways of delivering communication. Engagement - we need to hook the students into the learning, a bit like window dressing to get attention. We need to inspire when creating visual tasks, so our audience will want to go in, a visual feast! This could be done at the beginning of each term so students can see what they’re going to be learning e.g. space, plastic free. Each syndicate could make a funny movie up to get students hooked into the learning.

You could use Imovie and keynote to make movies, but will need a green background that's not the same colour as your uniforms so you don’t have disappearing kids. Once students are hooked, teaching happens providing multimodal opportunities to engage with the learning and deepen understanding. Using multimodal literacies is to extend and deepen learning. There needs to be a purpose with what your giving them.


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

Planning 
Danni Stonne plans a weeks worth of learning but it doesn't always go to plan. If they end up doing spontaneous learning, you can still capture students responses and put it on the blog, BUT it doesn’t mean you have to change your whole planning, you’ll just edit and add to the slide etc… it’s about being flexible.


Multi Modal in Literacy 
Lets say your looking at wolves in reading (on google slides) you could give the story, a poem, video, multiple links for kids to look at to learn. Then having focus questions they have to answer about them, gives them a choice. Need to have a ‘must read text’ to ensure kids don’t just look at the videos, a bit like ‘must do’ ‘can do’. Activities could cover - remember, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate with several tasks under each heading. May be eleven tasks but students need to complete at least seven.

If you have year 4 students then completing tasks will take longer for students to grasp so you’ll have to keep reminding them ‘to make a copy’ or ‘put your answer in a different colour’.


What did I learn that could be used with my learners?
Today we learnt how to create our own multiModal Site with Danni Stonne. This learning was invaluable to my own learning and that of my students for next year. I am ecstatic with what I have created but I also know it will take a tremendous amount of time to set up a class site along with weekly planning.


At first we had to make a plan of how we were going to set up our page. You would do this with your students as well just like you would plan writing.

Next came the learning and creating part, I had so much fun I could sit there for hours exploring!!

 

Class Blogging 
When first blogging, it's always good to get students in your own class to make comments as your getting your students used to an audience before other people comment.


What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?
I learnt that asking for help when needed, instead of spending long amounts of time getting frustrated over something that can be so simple is a great idea.

Digital Fluency Intensive, Week 3, 8th August 2018

Create

Today I learnt that creative thinking leads to deeper student engagement.  When students are more engaged, they take more ownership of their learning.  Creative skills help students become better problem solvers, communicators and collaborators.  They explore and experiment more.  They tell richer stories and find their own unique voices.  They stretch their imaginations and make connections they might not otherwise make. They carry these skills through everything they do in school and into the future.

I like the way Kohl (2008) states "Creativity focuses on the process of forming original ideas through exploration and discovery. In children, creativity develops from their experiences with the process, rather the concern for the finished product.  Creativity is not to be confused with talent, skill, or intelligence.  Creativity is not about doing something better than others, it is about thinking, exploring, discovering, and imagining".

Google Slides

You can create slides with animations and speech bubbles, altering the time to a 7th of a millisecond, students absolutely love it. You can use this with maths groups - warm up could be subvertising, then pose the problem, students have to film themselves solving the problem/working out etc.
Google slides can also be used for school or class daily notices, schedules, it works well for large groups of people. A daily schedule, te reo maori, timetable, lunchtime activities, roll, maths/writing/any subject for extra learning, homework, value for the week, video clips can be created, the ideas are endless…  Google slides can create branching logic where you choose which way you want to work through a story e.g. 'continue searching for the dragon without weapons' or 'continue searching for the dragon with weapons'.  The students can choose any path they choose to get to the end of the story. 

You can now put audio onto google slides presentations ‘audio player for google slides’, worth looking into. Slides also has the option to download templates into presentations ‘slides carnival’. When looking for images on explore use ‘png’ or ‘gif’ as they wont move onto your document if they're not safe.

Micheal taught us how to create our own slide presentations by inserting images, using duplicate slides, repositioning images and pretty much adding whatever we want to make cool slides for our students to watch and then create.

My Fairy, Monster Animation

  Google Draw

This is my google draw creation I did today. It doesn't show up on my Blogg but the 3D shape spins around and the horse is running, the photos are also clear to see.

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