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.