DFI Day Three

Kia ora koutou!

Today was day three of thedigital fluency intensive. Our session today ran a little bit differently to the first two sessions. We were connecting with people from all over the country and our whole day was run through google hangouts - it was awesome! I thoroughly enjoyed connecting with a wider network of people across a huge range of schools.

We started today by unpacking the ‘create’ part of learn create share. Dorothy reiterated the importance of hooking the students in and inspiring them to be creative. Another important point that was discussed today was that the students are not just consumers of content - they should be creators of content too! It was really cool to see Robin Sutton’s (tumuaki at Te Huruhuru Ao O Horomaka) and some of our students’ blogs shared during today’s DFI session. A wondering I had after this session was, how can I support my primary and secondary colleagues with their task design to ensure their tasks generate thinking, encourage collaboration and give the students agency. This is something for me to think about!

There were several things that I now feel more confident doing. I am going to be able to blog more confidently now knowing that I have altered some of my blog settings and disabled certain features. I also feel that I now have a better understanding of YouTube and I feel more confident altering settings to personalise my YouTube account.

New learning for me today included how to embed YouTube playlists that I had created into my google site/blog. I feel quite confident doing this now. Vicki led an awesome chalk ‘n’ talk about google slides and showed us so many different ways to create. I would like to spend some time exploring this with my students as a number of them are simply using google slides as just a presentation tool. I had an awesome 1:1 session with Donna on how to use google drawings to create a comic. This was an awesome session and I can see myself doing comic creation with my students. Comics are an awesome way for the students to share their learning and can be used across any curriculum area. I figured out that I could embed a link within my comic that students could click on when the comic had been published to my site. Below is one that I created -  it is a little bit of a mash-up, but it was great to learn about the features of google drawings that I was not familiar with. 

I am thoroughly looking forward to our next session - thank you to all of our awesome facilitators.

Ngā mihi,

Katie.

DFI Day Two

Kia ora! Today was Day Two of the Digital Fluency Intensive for cohort one. Our focus today was 'workflow'. We looked at a range of useful tools, websites and extensions that I can use to work more efficiently and connect/simplify platforms that I am already using.

We started our session today by joining a Google Hangout with Lenva Shearing who was up in Auckland. We talked about the 'Learn' part of the LCS pedagogy. A key message I took out of this Google Hangout was that TMP was built on two parallel lines. These are digital tools/infrastructure and the way we are doing things in the classroom (teaching and learning). It is essential that time is given to building the digital capabilities of staff so that they have the confidence to create and deliver authentic learning experiences.

There are a number of things from today that I can see myself trialing with my students. Within the next week, I would like to introduce my Year 7-9 wānanga group to Google Hangouts. I will run an introductory Google Hangouts session and as a class, we will have some sandpit time. I have created this slideshow which I will share with my wānanga group.

Kathleen (Gilerthorpe Primary), Jayne (Hornby High School) and I had a go at recording our Google Hangouts session. Our aim was to discuss Lydia's blog (a student at Tamaki Primary School). We had a few technical difficulties the first time around. The recording below shows our second successful attempt. We knew we were successful the second time around because we had successfully recorded the audio with the visual.

I will definitely be making use of Google Keep. I can see myself using this tool alongside Google Calendar. Currently, I am using Sticky Notes on my desktop but would like to convert to Google Keep. What I like about Google Keep is the huge range of features it has compared to Sticky Notes - you are able to set time/date reminders, photos can be added, 'grab image text' converts text within an image into text in a Keep note and you can add collaborators to Keep notes. There are so many useful features in Google Keep!

Today I learned some useful Google Calendar hacks as well. These are going to enable me to work more efficiently (in both my professional and personal life). Keyboard shortcuts shown below are going to be particularly useful.

I will also modified my email signature to include my class site and professional blog link.

I thoroughly enjoyed today's session and cannot wait to share my new learning with my students and colleagues. Thank you for taking the time to read my post, please leave me some feedback.

Ngā mihi, Katie.

DFI Day One

Kia ora koutou,

Today was the first session of the Digital Fluency Intensive for Cohort One.

We started off our day by discussing the origins of Manaiakalani and reminding ourselves about the importance of

our underlying pedagogy 'Learn, Create, Share'. I now have a deeper understanding of how Manaiakalani came to

be and the journey from it's inception in 2007. Manaiakalani means 'A hook from heaven', I found it particularly

interesting to learn that Manaiakalani was the name of a constellation that could be seen from the skys above

New Zealand. Read more about the Manaiakalani story here.

Today I learnt several new tips and tricks around how I can better manage my google drive.

The 'chrome and drive' session was particularly useful and already I have been able to implement some of the things

that I have learnt. New learnings include:

There were a number of things that I plan to use in the classroom with my students. These include addons/extensions

such as Kaizena, Draftback and Easy Accents. I also plan to make better use of voice typing with my students. I also

plan on doing some explicit teaching around organising our google drives. I would benefit from spending some time
looking at how my google drive is organised and make a few changes to improve my workflow.

Look forward to receiving some feedback. Thank you for taking the time to read my blog post.

Ngā mihi,
Katie.