Digital Fluency Week 9

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

Ubiquitous learning is one of the four Manaiakalani kaupapa words - rewindable learning has been scaffolded in my classroom through my class site. I have a student who was overseas and access to the class site helped her and her parents to keep up with what the class was doing - however I have received feedback where some of the areas of the site were not accessible so this is something I have fixed.  

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

I am excited to be able to go back to school after completing this course and confidently use the google apps with my class and integrate them into my learning programmes. We are about to begin blogging next week and I feel equipped to teach this aspect after completing this course. We will discuss the Digital Citizenship aspect of begin respectful and behaving properly online. I am excited that my students will now be able to 'share' their learning and creation through their blogs and look forward to embedding the 'learn, create, share' philosophy within my classroom. 

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

I feel a lot more confident to share my learning and thoughts publicly with fellow colleagues who may be interested in what I post. Also building a network with teachers from other schools in the Te Hiku Cluster has been very rewarding. 

Digital Fluency Week 4 (Catch Up Session)

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

The introduction to Google Forms and Spreadsheets was excellent! Thanks very much to Kerry, Dave and Dorothy for making the recording of this session accessible to those of us who were unable to participate in this session. I feel a lot more confident with the basics of creating different types of questions in forms and dealing with the data through sheets. It was also great to see how impressive the predictive AI technology google has and I can definitely see this saving lots of time. My previous experiences with forms and sheets was literally filling them out - which is not much help in the classroom. Learning how to find the average and freeze rows and cells is also very handy to know and I am excited to use these features when collecting and analysing in my students' assessment data for the end of the year.

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

I am keen to use forms to gather student feedback on their attitudes towards learning and how I can improve classroom learning programmes. I am also interested in using forms to question students as part of the teaching inquiry I am about to start through Mindlab which is focused on 'using blended learning approaches to accelerate student achievement levels in writing.' 

Once I become more confident with using forms I would like to encourage my students to try making forms to quiz each other in either literacy or numeracy.

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

I look forward to converting the data entered onto sheets into graphs to show a more visual picture as I think this will make data a lot easier to interpret rather than just a whole heap of number on a page which I often find to be overwhelming. 

Digital Fluency Intensive Week 8

Improved your understanding for the Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

Empowerment involves students, teachers and whanau. Manaiakalani aims to empower and educate all stakeholders in our learner's lives with/through the use of digital technologies.  The aim is to not just see digital technologies as a tool, but a way to transform the way we all learn and use technology to empower our lives.  We need to think about our sites as though students are going home to discuss their learning with their parents and whanau with our sites being used to enhance these discussions and partnerships. Therefore our sites being access capable for all with no locked access in essential. 

Empowered you professionally with your teaching practice?

Computational Thinking 
Today we had the opportunity to work on computational thinking, breaking down the new digital technologies curriculum and have a play with programming some robots and making stop animations. It was great to finally have the chance to experiment with these tools with the assistance of some very knowledgable experts to help troubleshoot issues I came across. I can definitely see amazing potential to integrate these into my classroom programme. 

Below is a video of me using Dash Robots and another where Blake Masters and I created an animation using Clapmotion and Green Screen:

Given you new skills that you can use with your learners?  

I have taught a bit of computational thinking using things such as The Foos app (digital),  plastic cups and mazes (hands on non-digital). My students really enjoy it and I'd like to continue this with the use of digital technologies such as Dash Robots. My students have a good understanding about the 3 three roles they can adopt when programming being coder, debugger and robot. I feel a lot more confident with introducing robots into the classroom now that I have had some practise using them myself. 

Improved your confidence with digital fluency, capability or workflow in your personal life?

I can see a clearer pathway for how I can integrate the new digital technologies curriculum with my students and have realised we are doing a lot of it already! I can't wait to begin the Raranga Matihiko PLD next term with my learners and am keen to empower them by offering a wider context and resources to be creative and digital experts within our school.  

Digital Fluency Intensive Week 7

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

Today's Manaiakalani kaupapa focus was Connected. Connected as in within the class, whanau and  wider world. Being connected extends the learner wider and helps them to realise that there's more than just themselves out there.

Being connected also extends our professional relationships and eliminates the location barriers as we have greater access to other professional colleagues online. We have greater access through blogging, emails, google hangouts. It's not only between schools but also the school's community (BOT, whanau, teachers, students).

Being part of the Manaiakalani cluster of schools means that we are developing a shared language - learn, create, share, shared pedagogy, shared kaupapa.

Term focuses with students: T1-Learn, T2-Create, T3- Share, T4 bring them all together. Each of these aspects are specifically taught and broken down with students.

Connecting face to face is still very important. Having DFI's in different schools is is a great way to build connections within the cluster.

Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu - Write to me, write to others, register your class.

Activities on slide 12 - link

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

Today we worked more on developing our class sites. We had a look at other people's sites and completed a google form to offer our feedback on how we thought their site's visual appeal and user experience. There was also an opportunity to share what we have done so far with google sites and received feedback form others. I definitely fell my class site has really engaged my learners and they enjoy using it. They also don't spend as much time mucking around on random apps and all of the apps on our class iPads are used for a purpose. 

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

After looking at Clarelle's class site, I have gotten some ideas for how to link in Explain Everything activities to my slides and she is happy for me to use and adapt some of the activities accessible on her site - Thanks Clarelle! She has also recommended that I have a look at the work Rebecca Spies is doing with her class for persuasive writing which is our writing focus for the term.

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

It was nice to see that others are still developing their sites and starting small. I have enjoyed helping others in this session to set up 'the bones' of their sites. It has helped me to consolidate the skills I have learnt over the past two terms.  It is becoming more evident that our Junior Syndicate needs to spend some time creating Explain Everything resources that suit our learners.