Week 9 - DFI Finale

The end is here, we have made it and I am going to miss our Tuesday sessions that have been full of thinking and learning. What an amazing course, lots of talk about the pedagogy behind Manaiakalani, which then makes you think about your own teaching pedagogy and what needs to be adjusted to fit with your new ideas and beliefs.  I think the big learning I am taking away is that teaching needs to be:

• visible
• rewindable
• a variety of multimodal content
• ubiquitous access to learning, i.e. could the child learn by self 
• connected (blog links, other sites)
• creative - both in your teaching and learning.

Today we were exposed to the term Ubiquitous Learning - I now know how to say it, so that's a bonus. It means that learning can be Any time, Any where, Any place and From Anyone.  This of course became our Distance Learning from this year. I know after attending this course and what I want to achieve with my new Learning Site that I would be so much more prepared for this if we were to need it again. I think my students would also be more prepared and I really liked the idea of having "Google Meet Drill" opportunities while we are at school to ensure that if we were to go back into lockdown my students are ready and have the skills to engage in meetings by distance.

The fact that my daily teaching is becoming more visible, rewindable and ubiquitous I am loving the fact that if students are going to be away for any reason I can just let their parents know that the Learning Site will have all the learning for Maths and Literacy so they don't need to miss out. Eventually I want my students to know that they can just tell their parents that all the learning they will be missing will be on the Learning Site and there is no need to ask me for work.

So where to from here? I will continue working on my Learning Site and I want to change my planning so I am taking note of what digital areas I am covering, either in explicit teaching to my students or what they are using to create and then share their learning. I still need to think about how to integrate blog posts and commenting into my week and make it second nature for my students. I also need to make time to do blog commenting myself and how I see this fitting into my regular weekly timetable. I think these next holidays will be a good chance to have a catch-up and a think about how this will all look. Trial it for Term 4 and then be ready to hit the ground running for Term 1, 2021.

Week 8 - Computational Thinking

A few years ago when I taught in a 1:1 ipad class our message to parents was that the ipad was 'just a tool'.  This was to ensure the parents weren't worried that the classes who were 1:1 weren't just going to plug their child into a device and leave them to it for the day. Back then it was just a tool, although it did have the ability to create a new eagerness and interest in learning for our students.  The only part it was missing was the Share part. I can now understand the whole process Learn, Create, Share and how important the Share part of this process is. The students in my class are really starting to connect with the fact that they do get comments on their blogs and they can reply to them. The replying step is quite new to lots of them but it is really deepening the connections that are being made to their learning process.

I found the information that was shared on the Digital Technologies Curriculum very timely and very informative. Something that really stood out for me was the fact that we can easily be keeping a record of what we are covering in the Designing and Developing Digital Outcomes part by just noting it in our planning. For example if the expectation is that the students will share their learning in a Google Drawing and insert an image in the background (playing around with the transparency setting) then this can be noted in your planning and there is the link and coverage of that part of the curriculum. As the children have more and more tools in their toolkit then the choice can be up to them how they want to present their learning. Just this week I have set my students the task of researching an item of technology that they feel has changed their lives or the lives of others and I have given them the freedom to choose how they want to present their findings. When we share these with the whole class the discussion can also be about what tool was used to present the information and this will help students make their choices in future tasks.

It was fun to have a go with some of the different coding resources available to us. I think I will make this part of my programme some how. I need to find out what experience my students have had in this area and then go from there. There was a fun Dance Party type activity in one of the Hour of Code online resources that would be quite fun to use as an absolute beginning point to coding but if my students already have some knowledge then this wouldn't be of any benefit to them at all - other than the entertainment value! Scratch is by far more advanced, and I think it would be quite a good resource to use as a whole class where I also learn alongside my students and role model being a learner, asking for support from others, struggling and persevering to complete the task. I think I will timetable this in over the next couple of weeks of term and see how it goes. I can then add it into my Must Do activities - where I set them a certain task or the Can Do area for children to work on when they have finished other tasks.

Week 7 - Devices

Through the Manaiakalani pedagogy the belief is that we are empowering our learners as connected and confident decision makers.  Sharing their learning on their blogs is personal and the students need to decide what they want to share, what they want to put out there into the world to be 'judged'. This is where the commenting system of Positive, Thoughtful, and Helpful safeguards our learners and ensures they want to keep posting their learning online. I really connected with this quote from Lee Anne Lindsey (2017) where she said that when taught in a positive light, digital citizenship helps them navigate effectively through the digital world resulting in healthy interactions, a positive digital presence and increased learning opportunities.

This week we had some time to work on a Chromebook - the device used by the students in my classroom.  This was a beneficial session to use the same device as what my students use every day to become more familiar with this.  There are lots of shortcuts, I wonder if there are actually too many to remember but obviously the more you use something the more familiar it will become.  I have noted some of the shortcuts I think my students should know and should use.  I will add these into my digital learning sessions each week and the students will use them or not, to suit. 

We were reminded about Screencastify and Explain Everything.  I need to find something similar to use on a Chromebook that doesn't require a subscription.  I have had my students use Google Drawings with Screencastify to explain their maths learning but just wonder if there is something better than this.  My goal is to get my students using Screencastify a lot more - such a valuable tool to get them to verbalise their learning. 

Week 6 - Leading Learning with Class Sites

My whole journey for today was my Class Learning Site.  I started thinking about it before today's session even started, so we had only really just started the day and I was in the mindset that I wanted to begin constructing my class site from scratch.  It was such new learning for me at the beginning of this year hence the fact that my ideas, knowledge and pedagogy surrounding the use of a class site has changed. 

I have really enjoyed the exposure to all the thinking on:

• visible teaching and learning
• rewindable learning
• multimodal content
• ubiquitous access to learning, i.e. could the child learn by self 
• connected (blog links, other sites)
• opportunities for learners to be creative

We spent some time today looking at different sites to share some ideas with us.  I had been looking at some examples and knew what I wanted my site to look like. It just seemed like the perfect time to start my site again.  Here is a quick image of my old site compared to my new site.  It will be a work in progress of course but I think I can quickly set up the Writing and Maths pages ready to use. 

I want to incorporate buttons for those learners who find these easier to access.  I want to ensure the learning is visible and it is rewindable.  Thanks to Cara, who is in the DFI course with me, I saw an excellent model of how I want my class site to look and operate.  To me it seemed clear and easy to follow for teaching and learning.  I will be very interested to get my students' opinions on the new site compared to the old site. 

Week 5 - Collaborative Teaching and Learning

 Our connecting with Manaiakalani words of wisdom today were all about making learning visible. It really made me start thinking about how visible my teaching and learning is with my students and what I could change to ensure it is as visible as it can be.  Students should not have to jump through hoops trying to read your mind to have success, they should have the learning shared with them.  This is ensuring we are using WALTS, Learning Intentions and Success Criteria, anything that works for our students. A very important point to think about is that this needs to be visible at all times, so it can’t just be on the whiteboard or wall in the classroom, it needs to be shared and available digitally as well.  Then we go down that path of the students being part of creating the success criteria.  I feel like this learning journey is ensuring all parts of my teaching pedagogy is being covered and thought about and when I have it all set up and running how I would like it to be then it is going to be perfect!  I’ll let you know when that day arrives!

Engagement is also key.  How do we excite and ensure our children are interested in the learning opportunities we are providing?  Do they have enough choice?  Do they have all of the tools in their toolkit so they can make choices on how they will present their learning so they can share this with others?  I do see the importance of actually specific teaching of the tools, but being clever with this so they actually end up with a DLO that they could put in blog post.

We spent time looking at Google Sites this week, also dipping into T-shaped literacy which I am not sure I have my head around yet and so am gratefully checking out any examples people have to share.  My goal is to have a bit of a dabble for Week 6 and build on my knowledge and ideas from there.  I’ve learnt that you just need to start and then you adjust, learn, add, change etc. etc. as you go.  I currently have a Google Site set up for my classroom but my thinking was challenged with the idea that you can have several Sites running at the same time during the school year and that each year you should start a new Site. This means that the Google Site remains true to the year it was used in and is evidence of your teaching and learning for that school year.

I created a Google Site for a collection of ideas for an Arts Week that is approaching this term.  I also created some round buttons which I will now use on my classroom site - I was always intrigued with round buttons, rather than the standard buttons on other sites that I had browsed.

Week 4 - Dealing with Data

Unfortunately I was away for this session so I have caught up by going through the agenda and reading the other blog posts from the DFI group that I am in.  

The Share part of the Manaiakalani pedagogy was discussed.  Blogger was selected as the platform to share our students' learning on.  It has the ability to reach a large audience and the students can easily share their blogs with their families.  I need to rethink my ideas of what can be shared on the students' blogs.  It is not a showcase for perfect published pieces of work.  It can be parts of learning and it can be learning shared to get some feedback on next steps.

  

Google Forms was explored.  I have created one Google Form in the past and of course I have filled quite a few in myself.  I need to do a bit of investigating on how to incorporate them into my teaching.  I have seen it being used when we were teaching during lockdown where the teacher had set up a feelings survey type form, a form for students to use to check in with their teacher each day.  As I write this I am thinking it could be used as a reflective tool at the end of Inquiry topics, and as a starter - collecting prior knowledge on Inquiry or other areas of the curriculum.

I have had a play around with MyMaps but it seems a little bit beyond me at first glance!  I will need to find some nice and easy step-by-step instructions and go through what it can do.  I can see my students loving to map out their own trips/holidays/adventures but I will need to be a little bit more confident with how it works first.

Google Sheets was also worked through.  At this point I use Sheets for my planning and the Must Do/Can Do type planning that I share with my students.  I also use it to collate my weekly reward system but I am using a Sheet that has been set up for the whole school, I did not have to input the formula to ensure the addition is correct.  I also find Sheets handy for students to keep track of things like their Prototec maths results - they know how to type in what stage etc. they worked at and then insert the link to their results.

I can now:

• freeze columns and rows to keep headings in place
• select and resize multiple columns together to keep the sizing consistent
• highlight cells for a quick add (I knew this trick!)
• applying formula to multiple cells
• autofill cells with months of the year and numbers
• a beginner trial with the Explore button to create graphs

Week 3 - DFI - Media

Another session of DFI that did not disappoint!  What a lot of knowledge, skills and tools to pack into a day.  

The focus was on the Create part of the Manaiakalani Pedagogy today.  This is when you start thinking about all the DLO's your students can create.  

Today we explored Google Drawings and Google Slides.  What a lot of scope to use these for creating DLO's.  My next step is to give the students in my class the time to explore and experiment with these tools.  They are already using these but I know they don't know everything that they are capable of.  I spent a portion of today thinking about how I need to cater for my learners to guide them so they are able to use these options for that 'wow factor'.  I already have an alliteration writing activity planned for tomorrow, so as well as creating their example of the alliteration they will also use Google Drawings to present this in some way.  They can then share this in their blog, the alliteration will be part of the learning and then they can comment on the new learning in Google Drawings. 

I would also like to get my students to work collaboratively to have a go at writing and creating a Pick a Path story on Google Slides.  I will just share some of the fantastic examples we have had shared with us today and then they can plan out their story in their collaborative groups.  We will start in a very simple way, I am wondering about using a well-known fairy tale that they could adapt, e.g. Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Bears.

I have included my new About Me sidebar image which I created using Google Drawings.  You can also see that I have added it to the side of my blog as a gadget - more new vocabulary learning.