Digital Fluency Intensive Day 6: Let's google Google ...

To be empowered is an essential element of the Manaiakalani pedagogy. All learners and teachers need to be empowered and it is essential to recognise  that technology is not just a tool, it is something that should be transforming our learners lives.

                                                                            

Using Google Forms are an excellent way of collecting data as it automatically links to a spreadsheet so can be analysed. You are able to analyse individual or group responses and then present them on a spreadsheet so they can be discussed.






Google Sheets is a fantastic tool but it does need to be set up correctly for it to display the information you put into  it. There are many shortcuts that were shared with us today and these alone will make our production of Google Sheets so much quicker.

Google MyMaps is an app that I have  not explored prior to today. I can see how beneficial it will be with so many of my classes who have been asking how they can get their students to do some mapping of their community. It will also allow students to map their journey and all of these activities can be embedded on a student's blog.













I found this session very practical. It was great to see everyone using their sources of data to make use of these Google Suite tools. I really enjoyed being a part of conversations with teachers about how they could use these tools in their classroom and everyone seemed to appreciate the facilitators assistance with their ideas.

Digital Fluency Intensive Day 5

Computational Thinking ... as it's now an integral part of the NZ Curriculum, it was great to have the opportunity to have two skilled visitors expose us to some of the amazing skills we can teach our students. Zoe & Viv from OMG Tech shared a workbook with great ideas that we could use with our colleagues and students, including practical activities that would be a wonderful addition to school play areas.

What this session confirmed for me was that we must allow students to be the problem solvers. We can structure their learning, but ultimately they need to be empowered to work independently and use the skills they have been taught to work things out. 

Digital Fluency Intensive Day 4

Share - Tohatoha 

was the focus of today's session and how important is it to acknowledge that we have always shared our learning and that of our students so we mustn't throw the baby out with the bathwater! The difference is that our audience has changed. This DFO shows how this has happened.

In order to share globally, Manaiakalani has come up with Blogger to ensure we are sharing safely and widely. It is certainly not the most out there way of sharing but it is a simple, safe and reliable way of allowing our learners to share their learning.

So, how do we get that authentic audience to interact with our learning? The same can be said about getting the learners to interact with the class site, and this is where we went with the final part of the session. I felt very privileged to be given the opportunity to view other's Class Sites, and they empowered me to rethink my ideas about what should be on a Class Site and the ways students can connect to this site in a positive way that assists their learning.  I found it of interest to talk amongst secondary and primary teachers and things they found worked better with their age groups. It was of interest to hear secondary teachers say that they felt some of their learners would connect more if there were more visuals, something they hadn't considered until they had seen others sites.

This was a wealth of information that will assist me in my future facilitation of class sites.  Danni had such wonderful insights to share and it made me inquisitive to look into other sites and see their amazing efforts.

Digital Fluency Intensive Day 3

Create / Hanga - It's all about the hook!

As Kohl says, "Creativity focuses on the process of forming original ideas through exploration and discovery" and so today has seen my creativity be allowed to shine.  My memories as a young child are full of fun times. I barely have any memories of doing reading, writing and arithmetic (as it was then called) but can vividly remember the painting, the chalk drawing, making the fort into a hut, dressing up, dancing and the list goes on, and so, I could totally relate to the 'HeART of the Matter' clips.

Create is a verb, a doing word and so it makes total sense that Maniakalani has used Dewey's quote, and this illustration to show the importance of it in their Learn, Create, Share pedagogy.

Clarelle shared some amazing ideas using multi modal resources that will be useful to empower the 'create' in all of us. 

We were lucky enough to be able to explore the Garden Science link and build a collaborative site on this topic. I found this an amazing resource, but was intrigued to see that the reluctance of our students to work collaboratively obviously comes from how the see the adults in the life collaborating. It was intriguing to me to watch those who chose to get an amazing resource they could use, making a great site, while others went off on their own to produce something of importance to them. Still great practice, but to me an opportunity missed. 

From this session, I take away a clearer understanding of multi model resources and see the utmost importance of create in the effective practice of teaching. 

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.