DFI week 2 - Workflow

Today was day 2 of DFI - Our focus was workflow.

During our Connecting with Manaiakalani we focused on ‘Learn’. Some of the key ideas I took from this were discussions about effective teaching practice, knowing that we want to do the best for our students.

We were introduced to the acronym RATE. 

Recognising that effective teaching practice, especially in a digital space

Amplify how can we amplify the effective practice

Turbocharge - taking it to the next level

Effective practice - we need to recognise what effective practice is and what it looks like in our school. 

This is something I need to think about more so I am able to turbocharge what we are doing to enhance the learning for our students and make the most out of the digital technology we are lucky to have access to. It's important to know that technology is not just a tool, we need to use it to transform the way we use it to make the most for our students. This led into the next part where we were asked “What does learn look like in your school?”. This is something we are spending quite a bit of time thinking about in our school at the moment. We are currently heading down the path of New Pedagogies for Deep learning, and I am lucky enough to be apart of a lead team in my school. Currently my focus is looking at critical thinking and of the dimensions of this is leveraging digital.

Vicky also touched on the importance of rewindable learning. This is something I am focusing on at the moment, especially with having this one day a week off for DFI. My recent focus has been with my year 9s, ensuring they can continue with the normal class work they would be doing if I was there. The great thing about having the site is being able to have all of the work visible for students. Currently we are working on measurement so I have created recordings using jam board, google castify, and my touch screen laptop to record myself explaining how to find the perimeter, area, and volume of shapes. I have embedded these on my site so students can watch these when they need help. I have had positive feedback from students about this so far which is good because I can't stand the sound of my own voice. Another teacher in my department has also used these videos to share on her site too. This something I really need to push myself to do this more often because it is very worthwhile.

Google apps/tools - Learning for the day

Google keep - note taking, filing, quick thinking. There is a phone version (have been using this for a while for my personal account but not for work) and an extension (will install this as it looks really good and easy to use)

One thing I love about Google keep is how pretty you can make the notes look. I really enjoy personalising slides, sites etc and being able to do this on notes looks great too! 

- Something I have not done before is adding collaborators to a note. Can see how helpful this would be! Will have to think about using this feature in the future.

- I also have not had a good look through the settings looking at reminders etc. Something I will have to look at. 

- Archiving - just pops it into the background, you can access later if needed.

- I also like how you can take a photo and get it converted into text! (one copy of a book and want to use the text etc). I think I will try to use this one out over the next week. I also want to use this for my lists of things I need to do, rather than random post it notes stuck to my laptop.

Gmail

Today I made a signature for my email. You can find this under settings in gmail It was good to learn you can make multiple ones. Here is one I made today.

My handy tip - If you are like me and often have unread emails and don't like having the unread emails at the top and want to sort them out you can search in the search mail bar "label:unread category:primary". This will show you all of your unread emails in your primary category. You can do this with any tabs by changing the word after category.

Calender

Something to use - Shortcut keys to change the view. This is so handy to know! Will save a bit of time!

d - day, t - today, w - week, y - year, m - month

Tabs 

Well, I am definitely a tab collector. You know its bad when you open a new window so you can have less, rather than closing the ones you already have. I already use bookmarks, although Its probably time to sort out my bookmarks again... I will put that on my to do list. I also need to spend some time looking at the different ways I can organise my tabs a lot better, which will help me stop feeling so cluttered while I am working. There are also some cool extensions to help with this too. This is my job over the next week. 

Create

Today for our create tasks we looked at using google meet to record and then using this recording to embed into our blogs. Its important to know that when you create a google meet recording it will automatically save into your drive under meet recordings (it may take a bit of time to show up depending on how long the recording is). 

How to embed a video on blogger

- Find recording in google drive

- Open in new window

- Embed item

- Copy the link

- Past into blog post under html view

Here is my google meet record I made today with Kate from my DFI bubble

Overall this was another great day of learning! I really enjoy the structure of the day - learning in a large group then having a time to practice what we have been learning in our small groups. There are lots of new skills I will take away from today. I really look forward to next weeks one! 

DFI Week 1 Reflection

Today was the first day of the one Digital Fluency Intensive. This involves 40+ teachers from around the New Zealand.

The morning started learning about Manaiakalani and its origin story and the journey they have been on since. Its very valuable learning more about why Manaiakalani was started and how the community were able to work together because they wanted to do better for their children. I think this is important because we all want to do better for our students and being apart of this DFI is going to help me learn a lot of new skills to use within my classroom.

Some of the key points of the why

- They knew that the digital world was hooking young people and that this needed to be harnessed. It was a way to grab the attention of learners because they were already interested.
- They could see the potential in this and wanted students to be content creatures and be able to share their learning.
- Equity! They needed to make sure that everyone in the community had access, its important that no one is left behind.
- They wanted to focus on the fact that achievement is much bigger than test scores.

Today I was also able to revise a range of skills for using google drive/docs and even learned some new skills!

- You can add a bookmark by dragging the padlock down to the bookmark bar (this one is exciting)

- How to check the groups you are in and change settings etc

- How to use headings in google docs

- Getting students to practice their reading fluency with the voice to text tool

- Control + Number to switch between tabs (only the first 9)

- How to set up workspaces in the priority tab of google drive (this is something I want to do over the next week to help save time).

We also got some time to be creative and design something on google docs using a table. I choose to create a talk moves poster for my class that we can refer to during mathematics. I used remove.bg to remove the backgrounds of the pictures that I have added onto my poster. Having more confidence in being creative will help me model to students some of the possibilities of what they can create. Although I am constantly learning from them!

Here is my poster

Overall I had a great day full of lots of learning. It was great getting to work in digital bubbles, with just a small group of others. I feel like this time will be very valuable. I am really looking forward to next weeks session to continue building on what we started today and learn more about Manaiakalani and the 'learn, create, share' pedagogy over the next 8 weeks!