DFI - Day 9

Today was our External Recognition day!

We got to spend our time this morning doing the Google Educator exam and I passed!! It feels great to have sit the exam and test my learning! I think this was a great way to end the DFI. There were a few questions (mainly about google classroom) that I had no idea about but we got there in the end!

This has motivated me to give the level 2 exam a go in the next holidays. I will post the results to my blog after I do that! 

What an amazing 9 weeks! There is so much we have covered and it has been fantastic to have this time to learn, create, and share. I think having the time to try out new things is so important before we try to use them in the classroom. Also, after being in a Manaiakalani school for 3 and a half years it was great to get a better understanding of the Manaikalani pedagogy and kaupapa. 

One of the highlights from DFI for me was working in my digital bubble. I found this time very valuable being in a small group as it was a lot easier to ask questions and learn from each other. Its been great to see everyone grow in confidence throughout this term!

One of the biggest changes going forward is going to be ensuring I make learning as visible as possible. This is now something I really think about when planning and updating my class site. I look forward to reflect on how this is going in the future. 

I am so thankful I was given this opportunity to take part in DFI! It has been a fantastic 9 weeks and I am going to miss this time to focus on my own learning! (although I know my class are looking forward to it being over). 

Thank you Cheryl & Vicki and the rest of the DFI team!

DFI Day 8!!

This week for our focus was empowerment and computational thinking. Below are some of the amazing things I took in today!

During lockdown students were empowered to make the choice if they wanted to take part in the learning we set or if they would rather play games, watch netflix etc. We need to think about how are we going to engage and connect our learners? I feel coming back from lockdown I have some students who have really struggled getting back into the school routine and this question has been going through my mind. 

We also discussed the importance Encouraging students to have a conversation on their blog posts. Its not just a "great job" we should be encouraging students to ask questions, reply to their comments. This is something I have been working on but it needs to be ongoing. We actually completed the cyber smart blog challenge during lock down focusing on quality blog comments. As I am making commenting a regular task in class I will keep working on this with my class! Its also something I can model with my class when I comment on their blogs.

Today we also talked a lot about the digital technology curriculum and integrating this into our classrooms. We were shared a lot of resources to look through. I spent quite a bit of time looking through Raranga Matihiko and their resources and am excited to think about how I could use some of these resources in my classroom.

We also got some time to check out some coding tasks! I chose to work on code.org and started with a minecraft task then moved onto coding a flappy bird game. Check out my game here. I know this would be so engaging for my students! Can't wait to give it a try with them. I remember using code.org 

For create I got to spent some time on scratch. Our focus was how we can link mathematics into scratch - with a focus on geometry. We looked at creating a range of different 2d shapes which you need knowledge of the interior angles of these shapes to put into the code. I think my class would love this!! We are going to be looking at angles next term so I am excited to give this a go in class. I think this will be incredibly engaging for students and will be a great way to get them engaged with this learning!

I can't believe that next week is our final session! I am excited for the exam next week. But sad that it will be our last day! I have really enjoyed having this time on DFI to learn, create and share! It will help me so much going forward.

DFI week 7

Today was our 7th day of DFI! Crazy that we are already this far through the term. This morning it was great meeting with my digital bubble and talking about our experience going back to school yesterday. It was apparent that everywhere the most important thing was maintaining those relationships with students. 

Ubiquitous - Anytime, anywhere, any pace, anyone! 

Being apart of Manaiakalani has been amazing and put us in a great position going into lockdowns. It has meant that our students are able to connect with us and their learning is visible on our class sites. This really shows the importance of rewindable learning! 

Summer learning journey - this is something I have tried to get students involved with in the past but not a lot have taken on this opportunity. I will really try to encourage my students this year as I can see the amazing potential of taking part in this programme. The statistics coming from this programme are really impressive and I think I would like to share some of these with my students when explaining it later this year. 

Cybersmart - In our year of being apart of Manaiakalani I was lucky enough to have Vicki come into my class once a week to model cybersmart lessons for me. This was great PD and I learned a lot from this experience. It is great that all the students in our cluster went through this cybersmart programme so when they come to us at year 7 we can carry on with what they have previously learned. I almost feel that lately I have been slack with focusing on cybersmart so listening to this session this morning has reminded me the importance of these lessons and I am going to think about how to include this in my learning programme more! I have enjoyed setting the cybersmart blog challenges during lockdown and am thankful that these were made available to us. 

"we need to empower them to make smart decisions when online"

Today during our create session I started making a hapara workspace with some key areas of smart learners that I feel like I need to spent time on with my class. I will start the first one next week and will update how it goes.

Digital Dig - Today we got to spend time in our digital bubble working on a digital dig. I can see the importance of doing something like this with students to ensure they know how to use their chromebook! As a teaching it is important I know how to do these things on a chromebook too. I always struggle with the screenshot on the chromebook because I always forget. Lucky I have some amazing experts in my class that are happy to help. Check out my digital dig below (may not be completely finished as I did not have a chromebook to work from).

Explain everything - Today we got to have a look at explain everything which is a tool used in junior schools on ipads. We don't have any ipads in our school but it was good to check out this tool and how to use it. My nephew uses an ipad at his school in Australia and he loves showing me all of the things he had been doing in class with explain everything! Below is my attempt at having a play around on the web version. I think it would be a lot smoother on an ipad but it was great to give it a go. 

Reflecting on the Kaupapa of the Manaiakalani Programme in light of COVID 19 , whether you did Lockdown: Season 1 or Seasons 2/3/4, and YOUR readiness for ubiquitous learning...

• What are you proud of? I was proud of my students and how willing they are to adapt to the challenges of online learning! I am also feeling good about my class site and how far I have come with the work I am sharing on here.

• What do you regret? I think the thing I regret was maybe thinking we wouldn't go into lockdown again so I didn't take the time to prepare my students for online learning. We talked about different ways we can prepare students for online learning in the classroom - practice google meets, exploring our class site and doing something like a class site scavenger hunt.

• What have you taken forward into the ‘new’ era of schooling? Going forward I am going to plan how I make the learning that takes part in our classroom more visible on our class site. This is something to think about going into next term! Lets so what I create!

How are you using rewindable learning to support

1. Young people with learning needs? Something I am enjoying using is Mote records on all of my tasks I put onto my class site. I have a number of students who struggle with reading and often get stuck when I can't read a task to them. Mote has meant that I am able to record myself explaining a task to students and there is no longer this barrier.

2. Diversity, groups, wide range of abilities? With my year 9s I have been making slideshows with videos and screenshots of the learning we have been doing during lockdown and then sharing this on my class site. This is giving students the opportunity to go back and view these lessons again when they need it and in the own pace.

How did you support your learners for these days when you knew you were going to be absent (ie at DFI)? Thinking about when I first started teaching and setting relief was such a mission. It was often busy work, follow on tasks or one of tasks to fill the day. Now I am able to leave students work as if I was there. I can make videos and post on my class site and students can access everything they need!

What COULD you have done from the beginning if you knew what you know now? I think one of the most important things for me is just building my confidence to put myself out there and create videos/rewindable learning for my students. I hate hearing my own voice or watching my own videos but they are so valuable for our students!

What digital tools could you make more use of? One tool I have really enjoyed recently is jamboard! I really want to continue using this in my learning programme in the future. I also feel I know have a lot more skills in using google slides and drawings that I can use within my future learning programmes.

Here is an example of one of the tasks I created during lockdown.

Overall this was another great day at DFI! Its exciting thinking about the google exam coming up. I can't believe we only have 2 more weeks, it is going so fast and I am really enjoying having this time to learn and be creative with the support from the facilitators.

DFI Week 6

This weeks session was all about google sites! Its good to continue building my understanding of the importance of visible sites and seeing lots of different examples.

It is important that google sites are visible for students and Whanau. Because the learning is visible on our sites it has meant students have been able to continue with their learning during lockdown. I have had feedback from parents that they have enjoyed being able to go through my class site and see what we are doing in class. My next goal is to keep adding rewindable learning to my class site. I need 

One of my Goals for this session was to get my students blogs linked on my class site. This was something I started just before lockdown on a google drawing but never actually linked the blogs to it. I created the template below and got students to decorate a text box each with their name (its still a work in progress as you can see). Today I linked all their individual blogs to each box so now you can click on the name to access the blog. This is going to make commenting on each others blogs a lot easier! Check it out here.

Cheryl when shared with me a way another teacher is making her students more accountable of the work they are posting on their blog and making sure they are commenting on each others blogs. I am going to use the template to create one for my class and give it a go. I will update how this is going in a a few weeks after I introduce it to my class.

My next goal was to add some buttons to my class site. I have had buttons on my home page before but went back to have the tabs across the top. This just seemed to work better for me and my students. But maybe I will try again some day.

In saying that I did today create buttons for my mathematics page. Making this look a whole lot better! I'm still trying to figure out what colour I want the background but for now I will keep it as the default theme one. I also created a banner at the top! Check out these screenshots of the before and after.

Before

After

Or maybe in pink?

Kate from my bubble also showed us how to add an announcement to our class sites too. This is where you can write daily/weekly announcements and it will show up at the top of your site. You can also change the colour and choose if you want it to be on every page or just the home page of your site.

Overall I had a great day being creative and having time to have a play around with my google site! I am already thinking about what buttons I am going to create next!