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Thursday, 22 March 2018

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.


  

Thursday, 15 March 2018

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?



Thursday, 8 March 2018

Digital Fluency Intensive - Session 2 Reflection.

Session 2 Reflection - Google Sheets, Forms and Maps.

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?
One of the key aspects of the learn component that stood out for me was to need to have children critically engaging with learning material. As part of my professional inquiry this year, I am focusing on adapting my literacy program to allow students to explore texts much deeper than they have been. I really want to push my learners to think critically about the texts they are given and discovering the link between this and the Learn component has confirmed just how important it is.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?
After todays session I feel a lot more comfortable with Google Sheets. Previously, I have only used sheets for my weekly planning and for whipping up quick class lists and tables. I think I am going to be able to more efficiently track my students and their progress now that I know how to use sheets effectively.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?  
It was interesting talking to Kerry and hearing about some really awesome ways of using Google Forms within the classroom. I am particularly interested in creating a form that my students can use to record any new vocabulary they come across in the shared novel we are reading at the moment. I think that they will get a lot out of entering the word and what they think it might mean. I can give the class editing rights to the sheet of responses and the class can work collaboratively to define these words.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?
Using sheets to track student progress is going to save me a lot of time as Etap is not the most efficient program to use. By using sheets, I can have all student data in one place and can create charts that give me a better picture of where my students are at and where they need to head.

Here is a map I created during todays session.

 

Thursday, 1 March 2018

Digital Fluency Intensive - Session 1 Reflection

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?
After today's session, I have a deeper understanding of the foundation stages of the Manaiakalani Education Trust. Many of the values that sit behind the Ako Hiko Cluster's pedagogy now make a lot more sense to me. I really enjoyed learning about the local are and was particularly interested in how there seems be an unconscious attitude that success is determined by a persons ability and willingness to move away from the are. I feel that this may also be true for my school's local community.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?
It was great to fill a few gaps in my own knowledge of Google Docs and Google Drive. I was unaware that tables could be used so effectively. I have always struggled to upload images to my class blog in . way that is visually appealing. Using tables with invisible boarders is an easy and efficient way of doing this.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?  
The collaborative reading activity was a really successful task. This will be a great way of teaching my year 4 students how to share documents during a shared reading session. I would also like to introduce them to the Word Cloud Creator add-on as this can be used in a number of learning areas.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?
The Google Save add-on is going to be a great way to manage the thousands of links and pages I find.
Today's session has given me time away from the pressures of the classroom where I can learn some new tips and tricks and spend time playing and becoming more confident in using them.

Here is a digital poster I created using google docs that shares my learning from today.