Digital Fluency Intensive Day 2

Day 2 saw lots of experimenting in Google Calendar, Google Mail, Google Hangout / Meet and recording using Quicktime.

One of the best ways of learning is to try and work out why things aren't working as they should. It was  informative to see how to use these tools to make our workflow simpler and how they can be used in sync.

Using Quicktime was relatively new to me. While I had used it, (I was unsure of actually how to use the tool and have sound and pictures actually working on my finished product), save it and share it to a blog, by embedding the video. It was great to learn this process with others in the group and by doing the recording, I will (hopefully) be able to do it again successfully.

However, the best thing I learned today was the Toby add on. I plan to use this rather than One Tab which has not been as useful as I had hoped. I believe Toby will be more useful for me to organise my tabs and look forward to sorting them so they are easier to find.

Digital Fluency Intensive - Day 1

What a fantastic programme to be involved in to assist my digital knowledge which will (hopefully) in turn assist those I work with. It was fantastic to hear how Manaiakalani had evolved and Dorothy and Russell Burt's passion is a gift that our learners will always be very grateful for.
Learning new Google tricks was amazing and should help me in my delivery. While the session was at a fast pace, it was great to see so many people meeting the challenges and wonderful to be able to assist those who needed a bit more time. Now my task is to revisit the day's programme so I can fully understand all that we achieved, and I will be recommending https://www.remove.bg/ to teachers.

I have been lucky enough to read the other participants blogs and share in the knowledge that they too found this a fantastic opportunity to learn new skills and I look forward to the next session.

Students and their chromebooks ...

I can't believe the difference a year makes in a 1:1 digital class. This time last year I felt like I was a broken record, reminding students that their chrome books were their learning tools and needed to be brought to school everyday and must be charged - I mean you wouldn't bring a pen with no ink to school would you.

I feel like I'm working with a different group of students. I guess some of these students have been using devices for over 3 years now and while they are the new students in the high school, they're leading by example to their peers.

Today as I came into class I watched the continuation of a  wonderful lesson where the students were making a digital card to a senior student that had helped them at camp. They were all at work on their devices, no power cords were to be seen and there was lots of conversation happening about having to fit all their comments on the one page, not deleting other's posts, colour choices and complimenting others on their work. While quite noisy, everyone was on task, the teacher was confidently checking students were in the 'right place at the right time' on Hapara and positively reinforcing their efforts.

When some students began having a loud conversation about the task 'not working', the teacher stopped the class and used a CyberSmart lesson to remind them about being respectful of others when all working on the same page and the class had a discussions on ways they could work together better to get this card completed with every class members comments visible. It was interesting to hear them allocate the task of moving and maybe making the font size smaller, to a class member that they felt would respect their efforts.

These students have certainly have come a long way.