DFI Friday - All connected through Meet

Today we looked at the need for our students to share their learning and how connected learners share. Sharing has been happening since time began but the way we can share all began to change in 2005 with the introduction of youtube, twitter etc.

Our sharing and responses to what we shared became automatic in far reached places, with instant response, unlike our usual mailing system. Although feed back and feed forward has always been available in our 1-1 or group discussions learners can now establish a much wider and authentic audience.

Students can share with a purpose and the audience can also choose to listen to you or not. Our chosen App, Blogger is not the coolest but it contains the all important 3 check system, it is secure and legal for all our school aged students.

Next we learnt how to use and make google forms, this could become very useful in these lock down times

Next we moved on to google My Maps. I had fun with this even though the sound and images were going in and out on my computer, the slide deck was very helpful. Here is a map of my twice a day walk with my dog Ernie. The first trip is in the dark at 4am and my second trip is between 6-7pm (daylight at the moment , but not for much longer).

I therefore walk 2.64 KM a day with my dog. My 10,000 steps are easy when you take into account my day at school with juniors and duties etc.

Sheets was next, this was a lot more tricky as I have not ever made my own sheet to add data. I use assembly a lot and e-asttle to add my student data but not starting from scratch. this is where I need to go and practise more!!!!

Session 3 Digital Fluency Intensive

At todays session we only had 6 present in person but everyone else managed to join our session through the hang outs meet link. It was good practice for what is to come in the pursuing weeks. 

We learnt how to split our screen so that we could view a shared document while still  seeing who the main speaker was delivering the document/slide/video etc.

We then covered the importance of CREATE  and how this is the hook to our kids learning. Creativity should be at the centre of our teaching practise to allow our students the opportunity to become problem solvers, communicators and collaborators.

Before covering CREATE today I had always seen Learn, Create , Share as the order ie, we teach in order for the students to learn, they then create something they have learnt and then share to buddy, through blog, to class etc. I had not personally thought of the hook of creating as the beginning element to hook our students into the learning.

Next we set up our own Youtube channel and customised the settings. We shown how to make a playlist that will only play what you have selected so that our students can't disappear down the rabbit hole of extra clips unrelated to the learning focus. As a cluster we should be mindful that when we embed videos we use google drive not youtube.

Google Drawing

In this session we practised drawing around an image and filling in the image with our chosen colours. We had the pleasure of viewing some work from students of Panmure Bridge school who had really developed this skill and then used it in animation movies that they had made.

Slides for animation

In this session we chose a background image (I chose Clarks beach) and then we added a ball. We had to duplicate slides in order to make the ball appear that it was rolling across the beach. Great Fun!!

link

Finally we ended the day with a choice of what to practise or make I chose to make a digital Pepeha. Here it is;

link

Looking forward to the next session.

Post DFI session 2

Today I had a practice joining hangout meet with Sally from our group. I am very pleased to say that this went very successfully. We couldn't record because we don't have the app yet, but here is a photo of my calendar reminder.

 

Session 2 Digital Fluency Intensive

Today was another exciting day. We looked at hangouts, how to access through gmail, the App or through the calendar.

We then had the opportunity to be part of a group hangout using comments and google map.

Next we delved into the Manaiakalani pedagogy of learn, Create, Share with a focus on accelerated learning.

Ako:

This was looking at how in harnessing technology we are able to amplify our effective teachers practice. 

Recognise - Provide authentic texts

                Develop thinking critically and strategies

                Develop collaborating

                Provide more choices

Amplify  -   Getting ie. resources to help with learning for

                          example,Tki, NZ curriculum, Teachers pay Teachers …

              -    Giving ie. Sharing through blog/site

Turbo Charge - Provide students with the opportunity to unpack their learning

through clips, 

                                 Images, rewindable learning on site

Effective practice removal of barriers, opportunities

                                     For new ways of learning

We need to remember that each school will be different as we all have individual communities.

Gerhard then introduced us to Keep and all of its amazing features while also helping us  clean/organise our emails and calendar.

After lunch we were back to hangouts.

To help us become more proficient at this, we have used calendar, to set up 2 hangouts with members of our cohort during the week.

Session 1: Digital Fluency Intensive

I have been a part of the Manaiakalani cluster for ten years this year and I am always surprised at how I discover or relearn something new in every session that I attend.

An example of this would be the strong partnership developed between whānau and schools in the very beginning of the introduction of digital devices within schools. I had no idea that parents and whānau were asked how much they could afford to contribute to their child's access to a device or how whānau and students could see Saint Kentigerns over the river and hoped to have similar access to technology. 

After today in my professional workflow I will be making sure that I always set up new folders as share with anyone with the link and only change this with documents that I don't want visible to all. I will also be taking the short-cut of Shift z with me where I can add shared items to my drive where I want rather than move (so that the file doesn't  then move for others who have access to the file).

I was also made aware of 'Voice Typing' in 'Tools'. I am excited to use this with some of my  students - especially those who have great ideas but that struggle with writing.
Another tool that I discovered today was 'explore' at the bottom of documents where you can complete web, images or doc searches.

To finish our day we had to create a visual poster or news letter. I chose to make a poster as an example to my students of the learning that we have been focusing on this week in maths. we were advised to set up as A5 so that it can been seen on our screen and to use tools to set up tables to keep our images where we want them to be. Another tip was to search transparent png or to remove back ground from images 'remove.bg'. When we were happy with our design we removed the black table lines by going to 'format table'

Here is the poster that I designed today.

I am looking forward to next weeks session.