DFI 6 - Dealing with Data

We began our morning talking to Dorothy about the Kaupapa of being empowered. Dorothy emphasised that Manaiakalani is all about empowering learners AND teachers.

Technology is not just a tool, it is something that should be transforming our learners lives.

Research has shown that young people who get a back and forward conversation on a blog 5 times accelerates the child's learning- I find this amazing as I have many children that leave one sided comments so I clearly need to get them responding to comments, maybe I need to make time in class for this to happen. 

For learning to be empowered it needs to be learner centered, future focused, differentiated and personalised. Empowerment comes from being connected with other people. If they learn to be connected with others then they are empowered to change their future. The learning can't truly be empowered if the learning is not visible, ubiquitous and connected. We need to ensure that the learning we do empowers our children as they will then be able to change their future and strive to be BTB. 

Chalk and Talk

Dave then discussed Google forms with us and then showed us not only how to create forms but also dove into how to manage form responses. We then created our own forms, I made a form for my class to help feed into our wellbeing focus for the year. 

Deep Dive

Google mymaps

This is very exciting for me and my class as it is something we can use to help feed our Enviroschools inquiry. Below is how I have labelled a map for my class after they made their own maps last week. 

We then worked on google sheets and how we could use this for maths to help our children to Overall I found today very helpful. I enjoyed reminding myself about the different ways I can use google sheets and that way that I can then transfer these skills into the classroom. I think it would be interesting for my children to do their blog statistics now and then redo it every term so they can see how they can improve.

Overall I have enjoyed today and feel that I have learnt a few things that will be helpful in class. I always feel with sheets that if I don't use them I forget what to do so I have found it helpful to revise those skills that I used to be quite proficient at.

DFI 5- Computational Thinking

Connecting with Manaiakalani

This morning Dorothy is talking about Visible learning. Dorothy talked about how visible learning is something easy that a lot of people over think. Visibility in Manaiakalani is all about the learning being visible for everyone learners, teachers and whanau.

The children who succeed are the ones who can read the teachers mind. This is very important as when our learning is visible all children should be able to read the teachers mind.

Dorothy then talked about Hapara and how it was created for Manaiakalani. Hapara was explicitly created for visible learning about allows us to see what the children are doing but also helps us to show them what we are doing through the share links option. Dorothy also talked about how Fiona Grant coined the phrase "Ready to share" rather than "Finished Miss!"

One thing we need to make sure we do is ensure that digital learning doesn't disempower people and instead we make the learning visible. This is so important when we think about what needs to be private.

Deep Dive/Chalk and Talk

OMG Tech- Zoe and Viv from OMG Tech are here to talk about not only why digital tech is essential for schools but also why our children need them. 

Zoe discussed that globalisation is important for some things but we also need to ensure that we cater what we do for our place. We need to ensure that we have a group of children that are confident enough to speak up. Just because the technology is being created doesn't mean we have to use it in our country.

We then went into the library and did a sorting network. We were able to discuss debugging and how coding works. 

 Zoe then discussed the new digital technologies curriculum and how it works. They supplied us with a one page summary to help us understand the digital tech curriculum. We discussed that when we are talking about computational thinking we are talking about how a computer works.

After that we wrote a set of instructions for a paper plane, we then tests our instructions on someone else and then we had to breakdown our problems (decomposition). We then talked about logical thinking. Using our instructions would a computer be able to make our paper planes? We then did some debugging on the instructions to fix the problem that we have detected.

Levelling Up

We then played with scratch through a student log in so we could explore how we can use this with the children. 

Making meaning of content- Kia Takatū ā-Matihiko

A way for you to self assess where you're at in the digital curriculum. 

Is it important to know how computers work? For this block we are talking about how computers work and binary code. We talked about what the internet and computers are and how they work. Hello Ruby is an amazing site that we can use to start thinking about the concepts of computers in a different way. 

Overall I have learnt a lot today and have been given some great resources to get our digital curriculum journey going at our school. This has also given me an insight into how our children are going to be learning over the next wee while. 

Reflection Week 4- Enabling Access

The day began with a google hangout with Dorothy about the definition of authentic audiences and why Manaiakalani chose to use blogger.

Dorothy discussed that sharing is all part of the human experience and we always want to share. By making sharing an explicit part of our teaching we are giving our students an authentic audience.

Definition of Authentic Audience: People who choose to listen to you.

This was quite interesting for me as I think about developing an authentic audience for my class. I find by being a part of Tuhi Mai, Tuhi Atu my students have more of an authentic audience but now I need to consider how to engage parents to also leave comments on the students blogs.

Danni then talked to us about why Manaiakalani picked Google Sites. Danni teaches at Point England school and is down for the day to show us how to make our sites more meaningful for our learners.  Danni talked about how helpful she has found using her site for children that have had to go away for tangi or if they're sick for an extended period of time. Danni also talked about using different teachers planning to help support your own planning especially when she is planning something she hasn't taught before. This is definitely something I would be interested in as I love seeing the creative ways someone may teach something that is different to what I do.

We then rediscussed the SAMR model and how all parts of the SAMR model has a place in the classroom and how redefinition isn't always going to work for every piece of learning.

Google Sites
We explored each others google sites and then gave each other feedback. It was great to see what other people do and I have definitely got some ideas to make my own teaching and assessment easier. The next hour was spent tweaking and changing things on my class site. I focused on adding extra links for my children to use around different websites and games they use on a regular basis. This means that if they want to find the game/activity and it isn't on their maths/literacy grid for the week they're still able to easily access it rather than having to click through the terms work.

DFI Day Three- Collaborate

We began the day discussing whats on top, I talked about how helpful I have found Google Keep and Toby Mini. We then had a hangout with Dorothy all about create and the importance of creativity. 

The HeART of the matter is a documentary about creativity and how to use that to not only help with children's learning but also how to hook them in.

Multi modal- Today is all about multi-modal learning. Clarelle is an expert in multi modal learning and brings a lot of ideas to the table that I wouldn't have thought of alone. 

Multi modal is the design for learning that hooks students in. It is the thing that makes the children want to go deeper into their learning. We want them to be thinking deeper and pushing them to be thinking outside the box. First we start with behavioural engagement and then it shifts to cognitive engagement. 

For the afternoon session we then created our own multi modal sites. Over the course of the last week I have been thinking about homework for next term. I had been wanting to do an optional project style homework which was choice based. By using the multi model site that I have created today I have been able to successfully create a site that should not only engage my students but also help them to build on exisiting knowledge and to start to think out of the box. 

Overall I have found today extremely useful as it has not only helped me to improve on my current classroom practice but it has also helped me to implement something that I have been thinking about for a while. 

Mobilising Te Reo Workshop

Monday the 1st of April I attended a Te Reo Māori workshop all about normalising Te Reo into our everyday lives. Anton and Maya were really engaging and not only taught us some useful words that we can use in our everyday lives to help normalise Te Reo but also discussed why they have begun these workshops. My biggest takeaway from this evening was how easy it is to use Te Reo in my everyday life both at home and at school but also how much Te Reo I already use. Overall I now feel more confident with using Te Reo and less concerned about being corrected if I am using it wrong. 

Digital Fluency Day 2

Day 2 was all focused on workload. We looked at a range of different google based tools that we could use to help manage our workload. There were two things on top for me this week. 

The first was Google Keep. I am an avid notes user, not only on my iphone but also on my mac. However this used to frustrate me as the notes did not update on each unless I shared them with myself. Google Keep is a much better platform for me as it means that everything can be kept in one place. 

The second thing I absolutely loved was Toby Mini. Toby Mini is a google extension that helps you to organise and group your tabs. This means that you do not have to have a million tabs open at once but instead a group of tabs that you regularly use can be added to a collection and then when you need them you can open them all at once. 

What did I learn that could be useful for my learners?
At the very end of the day we  created a video to show us using google hangouts and exploring other learners blogs. Madeline then showed us how to embed a video into our blogs which would be good for my learners when they are videoing themselves reading. These videos could then be used on their blogs. It could also be used for them to share the movies they create later in the year for the film festival. 

Below is a copy of the video we made. Please note this is a very raw video of us trying to work out how to use quicktime and google hangouts at the same time. 

Digital Fluency Reflection Week 1

Dorothy talked through the history of the Manaiakalani trust and how Manaiakalani came about. We discussed how learn, create, share came about and how it is being used in different contexts.

We learnt how to efficiently use google docs and to create different headings to better help sort information on a doc. Dorothy introduced us to different add ons that she uses to help enhance not only the way she uses google docs but also enhances the way learners can use google docs.

The most important thing I learnt for my learners was how to paste without pasting over formatting as that is something my learners struggle with when copying things over into their blogs.

I also learnt how to create posters using google docs which would be great for my children to use as part of their create portion or their learning.