DFI Session 9

What am I proud of?

I am proud to say that from everything I have learnt from DFI I am now already implementing it into my classroom practice. The response from the children has been incredible and it has opened my eyes to the different routes I can do for enhancing the learning.

What do I regret?

Nothing from the course but after finishing it I regret not taking advantage of what Google has to offer sooner.

What will I be taking forward into the new era of schooling?

This course has given me the confidence I needed as a beginning teacher to try new ways of learning. Throughout my time at university, I was stuck in some ways and did not think there were other options but after this course, it has broadened my thinking and it makes my planning something to look forward to now as I am excited to take what I have learned and work it in with my learners.

Not only in the classroom with my students do I look forward to using the skills but also with my personal life around the use of technology and making the most of the tools. I feel the amount of time that I will save using my device will be beneficial.

A huge thank you to the Maniakalani team for the effort and time you put into the DFI especially over distance. I am lucky to have been given the opportunity to take part.

DFI Session 8

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

Today I was able to see the future of technology, it amazes me the capability that technology has for all areas in life. We completed a moral machine activity which is a platform for gathering a human perspective on moral decisions made in life. This made me stop and think about how everyone has a different view or choice and the power that this can make. The world of technology is ever-growing and I am thankful to be a part of DFI to be able to see the opportunities it offers.

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

Along with what I mentioned above, today when we looked in computational thinking I was able to see how technology along with our own knowledge as humans can work together. I look at technology in a learning environment as a tool and it is there to guide and help me as well as my learners.

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

A point that stuck with me today was to focus on the learners being creators and designers and not just users and consumers. I have found that with my learners when introducing them to something new on a device, they learn best when they have a go at creating and designing. I have noticed the communication and thought process that goes on while they are doing so is remarkable, they are learning to identify problems and find solutions for them through trial and error. I think that this will set them up well as life long learners to find solutions in their everyday lives.

Another aspect that I enjoyed and know that my learners will also be using coding. When I was able to give the resources a go myself I had to use a higher-order thinking process to build what I wanted to achieve. The progress and end results were rewarding, I especially enjoyed the compute.it game, code.org and the Minecraft based activities. As I was giving these a go I could see the enjoyment my learners would get with this, I look forward to implementing these into our learning.

Pictured below was a scratch I had a play around with, I need to give this more of a practice as found it challenging but a great learning experience. I think my learners would be able to teach me a thing or two.

DFI Session 7

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

I chose to follow the smart and legal lesson as attached above my students have recently agreed to the Kawa of Care and now need to understand why it is so important. This will be a great lesson to run through with my learners to reinforce what they agreed to. Because they are young and it is their first time learning about the terms and conditions they will need that reinforcing also.

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

As a professional I found learning more about Hapara was very helpful as I am new to this. any tips on here is handy for my workflow. I took away the importance of making sure to enforce adding work into the correct folders and how to view the student's work.

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

As well as the Terms and Conditions lesson linked above and the Hapara tips I think the session today around Chromebooks was very helpful not only for me but will be for my learners to help ease their workload. They need work on using the keyboard so these tips were great especially knowing short cuts and where to locate tools on the keyboard. These tips will also be fantastic to improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life.

DFI Session 6

I felt in this session that I was able to put what we have been learning into practice by using google slides, drawing, site and docs. I spent time creating multi-modal reading slides and sub-pages on my site to present these. When we were given the chance to reflect on each other's sites I was able to take into consideration what I could add to my site and to put myself into the view of what others would see. Having everything in 3 clicks or less, having a simple layout and easy on the eye will make my site accessible to all learners and anyone who uses the site.

I was able to begin to work on my goal which is looking at how I can extend and make reading enjoyable for my learners. Pictured in this post is a slide I created to show multi-modal learning in reading. During the reading, I feel like I was not digging deep enough and just reading and forgetting, but now hopefully having a range of tasks and information will engage my students and they will leave the main text feeling knowledgeable to then go and share with others.

Overall I look forward to stepping up in differentiating the learning and targeting engagement in not only reading but other learning areas.

DFI Session 5

https://sites.google.com/nbc.school.nz/room-9/home 

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

Creating an inclusive, differentiated approach to teaching in a digital learning environment made me stop and think about what I am currently doing and how I can adapt it to suit my learners. There are so many different ways that learning can be presented and I think that especially from the home learning period I have gotten to know my students and how they like to learn. This was through slides and having choices. After today's session, I was able to identify the barriers that could be involved in the way I am presenting the learning and how to change or remove these to make it simple and accessible for each group/student. Looking at some of the examples of how others present their learning and how it is changed over time from other schools I found that there are ways I can now move forward and add to it.

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

As a professional, I found that I was able to build on my knowledge when using sites. At first, I wanted to just add to my class site but actually starting from scratch again helped me to understand how to use each aspect to its full advantage. Creating subpages and linking these to buttons was a helpful tip to go over as well as knowing to know that I can put images in a carousel and also how to use the collapsable text, those are options I had never looked at or used before. Going over these things will help me to wizz through my site when adding learning or making changes and to be able to guide others.

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

Reading resource- I want to extend some of my reading groups so this discussion today around how to present it was fantastic. I liked the range of activities and the way it was presented. I am going to add this to my planning when I can have our Chromebooks up and running fully.

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

I was able to see how I like to view and learn. I appreciate the small design details in life and the extra step to make it look appealing to the eye. These sessions have made me excited to now use digital tools in my personal life as well as work-life e.g designing cards, posters or art. 

DFI Session 4

Create: Making meaning of the content

Today we analysed data from a chosen student's data. I chose to analyse a chosen student provided to gather yearly and monthly data. Here is Tara from Papakura Central School in Auckland, NZ. I found that she had been blogging since 2016 and finished in 2019 giving me a good amount of data. Her blog progressed throughout her years and I could see her blog posts increasing mostly from the middle to the end of the year period. I think this is great to see and reminds me the fantastic outcomes that blogging can create as without knowing Tara in person I can see through her blog the progress she makes not only in her posting but also in her learning. I look forward to seeing the progress that my students make on our class blog and look forward to eventually having a good amount of data to analyse and reflect on.

As a professional after today's session I can now improve my confidence, capability, or workflow as a professional with the use of sheets and forms. Sheets is something that I have been using this year for my planning but have been shown a template and have never looked into the background of it. After having a go today and finding the basics then expanding this I feel as though I have the main idea around using sheets and how to create short cuts such. For example as mentioned above I am now able to use this is a tool to track learning. I have been using it for planning but now I want to look into using it as a reflection and a data collecting tool to go along with this.

Something that I found most valuable for my learners to use is google forms. I have been familiar with this and after having parent/student conferences via google meets this week I gained knowledge that they enjoyed using it. I used this as a check-in sheet for the children to complete each morning, this way if they do not want to verbally tell me they can write it down and I have easy access. Taking away from today I would like to carry this on in the classroom by looking at implementing it into my learning also. I would even like to carry the use of forms through into my personal life by sharing with friends and family and using this as a tool gather information, thoughts and ideas.

DFI Session 3

Above is my create part of the session by focusing on animation in Google Slides. I learnt how important it is to get your scene right before duplicating your slides. I got near the end and realised that my hoop was too small for my basketball so now I have an unsteady basketball hoop animation. Still happy with the result as from experimenting how to do it helped rather than just listening to find what works.

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

Google draw- using these more efficiently. I have only previously used this for creating buttons on my class site but did not realise the other uses to it. Creating presentation ideas such as posters, displays and images in a unique way catches the eye and gains interest. Creating an about me poster for the blog was great and can be used during any other professional work.

Creating YouTube playlists- We use songs every day in the classroom and having these organised into playlists will help save time to use and to also find and add to the class site. I will also not only use this for my professional life but also my personal life by creating my own personal playlists. I find music an important part in my life as I always have it in the background in the car or at home and also love playing it for my students. It seems to have a calming nature for them during work so having quickly accessible playlists will be fantastic.

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

Google slides animation- The children would love this and I think it would show them how to properly be able to plan and take time into their work. Seeing the end result is very rewarding and is a good way to share learning.

DFI session 2

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

The 'Learn' side of Manaiakalani was great to understand and to view from a professional and learner view. Learning is an exciting experience and during these sessions and also this time of learning from home I have become a learner myself and now know the importance and excitement that comes along with it. I look forward to moving back into the classroom to share.

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

Today's session was great to improve my workflow and confidence in using the wonders of google to my advantage.

Google keep: This was something that I found great to learn how to use as I can not only use it for my professional work but also my personal life. I am going to use the sharing settings, especially when working with my team teacher to be able to share tasks and other ideas. I loved the use of keeping with the shopping list and look forward to using this with my flatmates along with the use of taking the text from a photo with our recipes.

Gmail: During this online learning experience my emails have been my main use and I am very excited to now know how to sort these and make it easier to view and access these. Especially by taking emails such as blog notifications then removing from the inbox and also creating labels so I do not have to search through a load of emails to find one.

Google Calander: I have been using this but not to my advantage as I have found it messy and hard to read. After this session, I have no organised this with colour coding and only viewing the calendars I need at the time. I look forward to trialling google calendar scroll that Lantham shared during our group bubble session to prevent the calendar from jumping around the place.

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

I enjoyed listening to the turbo charge information and when we head back to school I plan to use the treaty work that was mentioned to reinforce my expectations in the classroom.

During the partner work for discussing the learning of a students blog post, I have taken away how those out of the classroom see the blog. Showing the students a quality blog post is important here. I am going to share the blog with the students just as we did today to help them identify the learning they are doing and how to present this.

Manaiakalani DFI session 1 reflection

Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Intensive Day 1

I now understand the pedagogy of Manaiakalani from first starting in 2006 to become a sensation. I was amazed looking back how far it has come and I am lucky to be a part of this. The change in technology along the way has not been changed but adapted.

From this session even though it was completed over distance, this has reminded me during this time of learning from home that we are still capable to learn together through the wonder of technology. One of the many highlights that I can take and use with my learners is the mic to type aspect on google docs where students would be able to read out loud a story or piece of work and also to use as an editing tool when re-reading their work.

I have improved my confidence, capability, and workflow in my personal life by not only using the skills I have learned today through work-life but technology plays a huge role in my personal life too. The small questions that I have always spent time avoiding or not knowing I had were answered. For example, getting rid of the white background in photos by using the remove.bg website, how to create google groups and short cuts that I did not know existed.

Attached in this post is the screenshot from having a go at playing around on google docs. Something that I could never master was having my pictures align. Here I have used a table to fix this and when needed I now know to make the borderlines the same colour as the background to not have them shown.

Other highlights from today:

• How to insert and use a table of contents from headings to make a larger document simple to follow.
• Sorting google drive- colour coding, alphabetical order and moving to my drive.
• Changing the URL when wanting to share the whole or some of document.
• Chrome extensions- Grammarly, chromePDF editer.
• Short cuts using the keyboard
• How to cite pictures and web links on docs.

The Start To My Journey

What the start of my teaching journey has consisted of

This year is proving to be one to remember. When it was announced that schools were going to be learning from home with honesty I was worried, worried how I was going to teach through a screen, worried how to use online sites, worried how my students were going to cope, worried that I was going to lose relationships that I had just built. It could go on. I decided to turn these worries into challenges and that I was not only going to face but overcome to the best of my abilities.

How? 

I am lucky enough to be a part of a school that had already been set up with online facilities such as class sites, blogs, and a fantastic support team to help me with these. I have had to learn how to use the wonders that google has to offer, although in the beginning I probably wouldn't have said that but after time and a few screams at the screen, it has improved. I have avoided these in the past, looking back on that today what a mistake that was. This has been a huge highlight of mine during this journey so far, I am amazed what you can do online and with the help of my amazing support team at school this has been a huge step forward in my journey.

My class blog and daily hangout calls have been the most rewarding. This tackled my worry of losing relationships with the kids as I am able to see them every day not only to discuss learning but just to check in and chat. Some even stay on longer to chat, to read a story to me, or share something they have been doing which brings a smile to my face every morning. The kids are my main priority and as cliché, as it sounds they are why I chose to be a teacher. I often feel like a proud mother hen with even the smallest things that they say or do. My goal is to make our time on the hangout an enjoyable experience, I often think I have lost the plot. For example with my Wacky Wednesday theme on Wednesdays I have worn my clothes backward, put socks all around/on me, and putting my acting skills (that are nonexistent) to the test.

Some challenges along the way

My relationship with screen castify and recording myself is proving to be a love/hate one. This is something that has been great to present learning and to break it down for the students but wow I think it takes up most of my time as I record almost 100 takes before giving up and just posting one. I cringe at listening to my own voice and worry about how I look or sound. Here's hoping this relationship improves.

I take my hat off to those who work from a computer all day every day, this has been a challenge as my eyes, headaches, and back are not my best friends right now. I find that I could easily be staring at my screen all day and I have found it hard to know when to switch off. I am now trying hard to completely shut off at 5.

What now?  

My learning journey has only just begun and I am going to use this experience as a foundation to grow. Taking everything day by day seems to be the way to go at the moment. I am thankful to have started my first year of teaching with such a great team.