DFI #9 Revision

EXAM DAY!!!

Can I become a certified Level 1 Google Educator?

Woohoo! Yes I can! Quite surprised as was a bit worried that I was rushing it a bit but if you using a lot of the tools, most tasks come as pretty straight forward. The theory at the beginning definitely required careful reading and I was glad I re-read each one before I continued on.

Summer learning journey
Cool opportunity for keen kids to encourage blogging over their school break. Definitely something to remember.

Google Classroom
Some benefits but I feel that google sites and Hapara provide a much more user friendly service for myself and my students.

Ubiquitous
I can see the huge benefits of allowing students to have access anytime, anywhere. BUT! We must keep our own sanity as teachers, professionals, parents, partners etc and draw a line that allows us to cope with the ever-growing pressures of this career. Sometimes it is great to respond to emails or give feedback/feedforward at crazy hours because it suits you at that time. But don't let it then become an expectation by others. We need our space and time away from these pressures.

The DFI experience has been challenging, rewarding and overall an incredible experience to take part in if you are ever given the opportunity. A huge thank you to Kerrie and Venessa for the coaching, patience and incredible expertise.

DFI #8 Computational Thinking

Empowering learners & Student agency a big focus today. How can we provide the tools, experiences and opportunities for our students.

Computational thinking
A very cool example of incorporating a local context into something that many kids are already so into. Fortnite in a Maori context - imagine! What would be the most valuable weapon? How would you fly in to an area? What would the different areas be called?
Some great resources to explore for use in the classroom. Some super frustrating and it will be interesting to see if the kids experience the same frustrations or whether it's just us oldies. Some great resource links...
https://code.org/
http://lightbot.com/flash.html
http://games.thinkingmyself.com/


Unplugged Coding
Language level appropriate for differing abilities was definitely something to consider, especially making sure that we were not using 'codes' that they would not have had exposure to or understanding of yet; for example coordinates or angles.
Clarity of coding to avoid any 'bugs'.

Loved the money grid - students could have the goal of achieving as much money in least amount of moves, or a certain amount, or give a certain amount of lines of code to gain the most amount - or avoid 'losing any money' by avoiding landing on them.




Chromebook Apps
Because I only have access to chromebooks with my kids I have been really interested in exploring applications that will work with chromebooks.
https://www.autodraw.com/ for drawing own backgrounds on chromebooks

Clap motion

Stop Motion Animator


How could you use computational thinking to allow your students to explore digital storytelling? The stop motion sites above will be great. Scratch is another great programme available to turbo charge the learn, create and share process... and I am sure the kids will much quicker at it than I was! Here's my little example.


Everything we touched on today helped to provide us with more useable tools to empower our students. Yes there are many barriers that our students face on a daily basis but we can do our best to minimise these or provide awesome opportunities for our students to experience success regardless of the negative impacts they are enduring.
It is becoming increasingly obvious how much support is available in the form of tutorials and online video to make me realise that I don't have to be the expert and can use these as resources with my students as there are so many things they will pick up and run with a lot more quickly than me.
I am interested in using Scratch, ClapMotion combined with green screen or by using photos with the background removed using https://www.remove.bg/.
The Google exam next week has played on my mind a lot and I know I have not managed enough revising to keep me up to the play, however I decided it was still worth giving a go and I'm not going to beat myself about it. Even if I don't get through it next week I will still be keen to resit at a later date. There has been so much amazing stuff to take on over the DF1 time but it's the learning that I have applied immediately that I remember and the rest is all a bit hazy in the background.

DFI # 7 Dealing with Data

A full on day today with so many great ideas to try and get my head around. I think my brain might just explode!

My goal before next DFI is to get every student to complete one blog post and give at least 2 ‘positive, helpful, thoughtful’ comment.

Using My Google Maps and google sheets together to populate a map of particular places. It would be interesting to use when looking at current events and where they are occurring around the world. Possibilities are endless I have used google sheets to create graphs before from data but I loved learning how to embed this so that it will automatically update when the data is altered or added to.  Lots of learning opportunities for this but also imagine having a class competition and kids being able to see the results being represented in a graph like this whenever the data is altered.

 I also appreciated the reminder about freezing columns and deleting unnecessary columns and rows.   I do my planning and keep my assessment notes as well as data all on sheets and have never known about the 'text wrap' tool. Way easier than having to press enter when the space runs out!

Break outs! What a fantastic way to motivate students by giving them a break out made in google forms for students to work through as a bit of a challenge. To move on to the next section in the challenge, they have to be able to enter the correct answer.

I started one on Number and added a link in to the slide deck that will allow students to revise a strategy if they have forgotten, however if they know the strategy they can just go ahead and solve the problem. 

If the enter an answer incorrectly it will let them know 'Sorry! Try again' but if they answer correctly, they will be directed to the next section where they can record their clue (a number, letter or word) that they will use at the end of the challenge once all sections are answered correctly to 'BREAK OUT!'

DFI #6 Wed 1st May

Enabling Access - Visible Teaching & Learning

Today was a great reminder about how to get the most out of Visible Teaching and Visible Learning. When looking at a range of Google class sites, it was evident what was working well and what was not. Everybody obviously has their own preferences for some things 

(style/colours/themes etc) but there are simple rules to help us to ensure we are making them as accessible and usable for our learners and their whanau.

The sharing of our own google sites was a stressful experience for me as I knew I had not made many improvements to it as I had been using Hapara mostly for sharing resources and tasks with the students.

My first goal this afternoon was to tidy up the home page. I really liked the sites that had student photos so I used a class photo for my home page. I also liked the pages that had a few main buttons to direct students to their learning. I have like the way my Literacy, Inquiry and Maths buttons are now clear and bold have decided to leave the other simple ones below as it still might provide a bit of a short cut for some.   New Look Home Page below!

DFI 5 - Wed 3rd April

DFI 5 - DEVICES

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?
Reminded of the value of blogging to lift literacy capabilities and levels of our students. Without the in school support I have not made a start on blogging with the students yet. This is something I would definitely like to start before the holiday break. I have found it much easier to apply the tools we are learning about in our DFI sessions, as I am feeling confident with these after spending the time working on them.


What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?
Great resources shared to support teaching of being cybersmart. There is so much available to use to support teachers and fabulous resources to copy and modify to suit our learners needs. Lots of great screencastify videos used to support both teachers and students.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?
I really need to get into the blogging side of things with my students as I keep putting this off! I am aiming to use some of the resources shared, so that I can alter and make my own in order to set my students up for success.

DFI 4 Wed 27th March

Manaiakalani kaupapa & pedagogy

Dorothy's google hangout this morning helped me to understand the reasons behind using Blogger. I had been thinking, why use another medium of sharing when we could just use something we already know and am comfortable with. However, the detailed explanation of the points to the left and the example given to ensure inappropriate posts can be removed swiftly if required makes it clear that Blogger is a great choice.

Useful with my learners

Using google sites as a one stop shop for your students would help them avoid distractions and minimise how many 'go missing' when following a string of instructions from the teacher to get them to the right place.

It also makes you think about the variety of learning experiences you are providing for your students through the multi-modal approach.

An easy way to set up 'must dos' and can dos' also.

Improving my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional

Using google sites as a resource bank for staff also helpful. I am finding it much easier to support and share great resources for maths through the use of our 'Maths Hib 2019'.

Improving my confidence, capability or workflow as a personal life.

I am looking forward to using Google 

Keep for to do lists as I use stickies often and 

have them all over the place! Then have 

to waste time going through to work out what 

I can delete! Also very excited about being 

able to take a picture of text and have it transfer

to text. Amazing!

DFI 3 Wed 20th March

What did I learn that increased my understanding of create within the Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy? I really appreciated the emphasis on students having the opportunity to play and explore and really let their imaginations run wild. It immediately made me write a list of items I wanted to purchase so that I have resources available for this creativity to develop. Playdough and lego will definitely be coming to Room 8 soon! Even in an Intermediate setting I know we often feel pressure to get the core teaching topics in and we forget about the benefits of exploration and play time.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?
Creating youtube playlists was a useful way to have all your videos for a topic at your finger tips. I can see this as being particularly useful with sharing with students in the classroom to keep them focused where I want them, but also for sharing with staff rather everyone spending time searching for the same resources.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?
Embedding youtube clips in slides will help to keep them focused and on task, rather than be distracted by the other videos popping up on the screen. I am planning to set up google slides with number strategies with the support video on the first page and examples for them to practise that strategy. The final steps will be for students to create their own Screencastify to share their working of an example using the strategy to prove their confidence. This could then be added to their blog.
Also looking to have a go at pick a path stories with my students. Started playing around with linking buttons on slides to different slides.


What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or work flow in my personal life?
Using google slides to set up strategy support for my students that will be rewindable learning will be of benefit to me in the future as I will be able to go back and draw on these in the future and share these with my staff in my role of Maths Lead Teacher for my school.

DFI 2 . Wed 13th March

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Manaiakalani Kaupapa & Pedagogy

The Manaiakalani kaupapa today has reminded me that we are creating learning opportunities and experiences that are beyond just using a flash device to do something we've always done in a slightly different way(SAMR Model). There are so many apps and extensions at our finger tips to make learning is connected, ubiquitous, empowered and visible!

Professional confidence & capability

Organise my email using labels and organising my inbox will help me to manage email traffic much more efficiently. I also changed my theme and love the new look! I have used the calendar function at a basic level but have now added the app to my phone and feel more confident adding to this now.

Learning for learners

The most useful item to use with my learners was Screencastify. There would be so many uses of this extension that I could imagine using as an extra teaching tool for the class, groups or with staff for sharing my own professional learning. I can also see the benefits of students using this to show their own learning, particularly creating their own 'teaching workshops' for their peers.

Personal confidence & capability

Google calendars, Gmail and bookmarks are all fantastic additions to my kete of items to keep my personal life balanced and organised. I can also see google hangouts as a possible way for family get togethers at a distance!

DFI Session 1 Wed 6th March

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

It was great to gain a deeper understanding of where Manaiakalani came from and the work and dedication that has gone into this from many years before. The impact of devices for students is clearly evident from the data. 

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

Using the subheadings tool to assist tracking on a google doc has a huge amount of potential within a school context and I can also see this as being a great timesaver also.

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

The 'title, headings and subheading tracking, removing backgrounds from images that contain people(www.remove.bg) and the voice typing under tools will be a fantastic tool that I can imagine using on a daily basis in my class programme now.

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

Using google docs to create posters/invites etc