DFI Day 5

Visible teaching and learning - the idea of can we see it? or can we not? Important this is about teaching and learning. We need to think about - Is it visible to the learners? Is it visible to the Whanau? Is it visible to the teacher? Is it visible to colleagues?

We need to think about when is it truly necessary to have stuff password protected. We want our students and Whanau to be able to access our teaching and learning without barriers. One of the helpful tips I got from Vicki previously is make the folder assessable for everyone so when you create documents in the folder you don't have to share again. 

I still don't have a lot of parents that make comments on blogs but it is something we are working on. Going into lockdown has made the visibility of teaching and learning even more important. I have had a few comments during lockdown from parents that they have had a good look at our class site and like how students can carry on with work as if they were at school.

One of the things I am still working on is creating videos of teaching to share on my site. This is quite out of my comfort zone but I am finding students are engaging well with this. It has meant when I am away they can continue with their work and they can work from home. 

Multimodal - delivering communication to people in a way that interests them and suits them. We want to design a class site that is accessible for all of our learners. This can help students become self directed. 

Leveraging up - Multiple texts through multiple modes. Exposing students to a whole range of texts and different. Gives students the opportunity to be critical thinkers (something I am currently working on with my students).
We are able to improve students' understanding for;
- Different perspectives and points of view
- Discern levels of credibility and reliability (really important!!)
- Different 'types' of texts - written, audio, visual, symbolic, etc

This has been an area I have really on just started to look into. We have done 1 off multimodal tasks for students but I really want to make this much more common within my teaching programme. I really like how we were shared the multi-text database and can see the value of this. I want this to be a focus for the near future in my planning. I look forward to continue exploring different ways that teachers set this up for students (again another amazing thing of everyone's sites being visible!!).

Kerry also spoke about recreating a new site each year and seeing how much these develop over the years. This got me really curious to go have a look at my sites from previous years. I have been using google sites since I started teaching in 2016 (back in the old sites days). It was great to go back and see how my sites have developed over the years. Some things I noticed - I have a lot more of my teaching/learning visible, I have changed the way I have my learning planner (I have written straight onto sites, used calendars, used google sheets, and the last couple of years I have been using google slides). Its amazing how much google sites have changed since I have been using them, they are always adding more options which is exciting! There are so many possibilities!

Google sites

Today we have gone over the basics for creating a site again. I found this very helpful as I am often one of the people in my school who helps others when they need assistance in creating their sites. Tips - making sure that you use the year in your site URL so you know what year it is from. 

We also got the time to start creating our own multimodal sites. I started 2 (because I kept changing my mind on what I wanted to create and had a really good idea related to next term). I started with an ANZAC day site - check it out here but keep in mind it is still a work in progress. 

I plan on using this next year so will continue to work on. So far I have really only added in videos and texts but will work on some tasks to complete with these. The other site I started to create is to do with our health topic for next term which is focused on getting active. This was sparked by looking through the multimodal text data base that was shared with us and one related to walking/getting active. I will continue to work on this site too and use it as a way to introduce our topic next term.

Overall another very enjoyable day on DFI! I am getting so much out of being part of this PLD and really enjoy working with my bubble. I can also see the benefit in using multimodal texts! I am looking forward to seeing how much students engage with these. Can't wait for next week.