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.