Session 9

Today I sat the Google Certified Educator Level 1 exam. It was great to be able to 9 weeks of learning into practice as I worked to earn my first digital badge!

Attending the Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Intensive has been a great experience and has really made me feel at home in a digital world. When we started, I was able to use G Suite but had a lot of fumbling along the way. I now feel I am able to use Google apps with much more confidence. This has helped to reduce the time I spend trying to find the right tool at the right time. I am able to complete tasks much more efficiently.

Session 8

Today's session was great and has made me feel a lot more relaxed about diving into the new Digital Technology Curriculum. There are a lot of concepts and ideas that will be really simple to integrate across the curriculum.

Zoe and Viv broke down each part of the curriculum and it now looks a lot less daunting. I really enjoyed the number sequencing activity. I think this is a great interactive way to introduce what might otherwise be a complex concept. This would even be a great maths activity.

Having the opportunity to simply 'play' with the 3D pens was fantastic. I spent quite a bit of time playing, wasting filament and wondering what to actually make while I got familiar with this tool. This opened my eyes to what it may be like for our learners to pick something like this up for the first time and how important it is for them to have opportunities to create.

Digital Fluency Intensive - Session 7

Today we explored  a range of digital tools to help with workflow. I am really keen to start using OneTab. When I am planning and teaching, I often end up with far too many tabs open and it is sometimes a chore to quickly locate the tabs I need. I would like to explore Toby at some stage as this looks to be even more efficient but am not yet sure if it is the tool for me.

Having the interrelationship between the terms 'visibility, connected, empowered, ubiquitous" pointed out for me was great. Previously, I have always believed that these four concepts are important but I now see that they are not effective unless they exist together.

I found the session on Google Hangouts interesting. My group encountered some technical problems along the way and this lead me to wonder how I would handle a similar situation in my classroom. Personally, I don't know if this is a learning tool I am ready to dive into yet but can see the value it could bring to teacher collaboration.

Session 6 - Reflection.

  

As I missed this session, I did not have the chance to give and receive feedback on any other class sites. Having a discussion with Gerhard highlighted an are for improvement within my own class site. I then went through all the documents that are linked to my site and made them public.

This feedback was very timely because the following week we had a whanau evening where the children had the opportunity to show their parents how to access their learning online.

After attending a number of DFI session, I am really keen to give multi-modal learning a go. I would really like to try and create a page within my class site where my students can access a wide range of content.

 

Digital Fluency Intensive - Session 5

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?
Today's segment about developing Cybersmart learners was really insightful. I too believe that as effective teachers, we need to prepare our learners to make smart decisions while online. Using the term 'smart' rather than 'safe' is really important and it was great to learn why the Ako Hiko cluster has adopted this thinking.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional? 
I love Google Keep! As I am a teacher in a 1:1 environment I try really hard to make sure that all material I give my students is available digitally. This is really important to me as I want my students to be able to access their learning anytime, anywhere. Learning how to use the grab text feature will allow me to very quickly and very easily snap a photo of any body of text and upload it for my students. This is defiantly going to result in less trips to the scanner!

I would also like to find some time to snap photos of any note from professional development sessions that I have handwritten. Turning these into digital documents will make adding them as evidence of the teaching standards much easier and more streamlined.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?
I would really like to have a go at creating some multimodal learning experiences for my children. One of my professional goals this year is to create a more integrated programme within my class and I feel that through this, I can provide lesson content through a variety of different types of media.

Here are some snapshots of a multimodal site I created today.

Digital Fluency Intensive - Session 4

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?
One of the key pieces of learning I took away from today is the idea that learning, creating and sharing can happen simultaneously. I particularly like the notion that valuable learning can occur during the sharing process both for the person sharing and people viewing what is being shared.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional? 
I really enjoyed Khismira's session with the Ipads. I had previously heard of Explain Everything but as my students use Chromebooks had never explored it. It is a great tool that I plan on using within my reading programme.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?
I am going to include creating a Screencastify task within my weekly reading contracts. This will involve my students recording themselves reading each of their texts aloud.

Exploring Hapara has made me realise that there is a lot of work that my students have not filed correctly. I really like Dorothy's idea of doing a weekly checks of any unshared documents. I will try this from next week.

  

Digital Fluency Intensive - Session 3

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

Todays session has helped to clarify what the create component really is. Being a teacher in a 1:1 Chromebook class, I always try to plan creative tasks that are completed on a device. While many of these have been engaging and successful, I am excited at the prospect of allowing my students to become more hands on with their creating. Another aspect that I found interesting today was the use of creative tasks to hook students in. In my mind, the learning always occurs first but I now understand how much learning can occur through creating something.

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

I often use video clips in my classroom and now that I know how to create and share playlists, I will now be able to locate appropriate videos instantly. The ability to add contributors to my playlists is going to be great when I am planning collaboratively with my team.

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

I really like the sound of the word bank task using google drawing. This is not something I have heard of and I think it would be a great way of brainstorming interesting vocabulary at the start of writing sessions using picture prompts. This could be a really effective collaborative task if students are working on it together.

As my students become more confident Chromebook users, I would also love to introduce them to animation using google slides.

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