DFI week 9

 This week we have reviewed our learning from the term and taken the google educator exam. It has been great having the time put aside to reflect on the learning that has taken place and how I have already put much of it into practice.

I have noticed how the conversations in my class have shifted to include language around coding when talking of instructional writing, about how we could use many different methods to show our understanding and our devices are one of those, and of how my students are really valuing the opportunity to share their work over a number of different formats at the end of each day while also giving very constructive feedback to their peers.

I am grateful for the opportunity to have put much of this learning into practice in a supported playful environment over the past 8 weeks. It has meant I have retained much more and it has been easier to integrate much of it into my daily practices. 

I hope there is further training to participate in over the coming years, or perhaps even refresher courses. I feel it would be very valuable to check back in 6 months or a years time. I look forward to further accessing the toolkits available through Manaiakalani over time, especially having access to archived toolkits over school holiday periods.

It was fun to work through and complete the book creator certified author qualification too. This will be a great resource to add to my classroom.

 

DFI week 8

This weeks final DFI focused on computational thinking. This is such an important skill for our tamariki to practice and master. It is my favourite Albert Einstein Quote: “Genius is making complex ideas simple, not making simple ideas complex.” that I believe embodies this idea very well. 

I found the resources around teaching this thinking really exciting. Especially the TKI resources. I look forward to exploring these further in the weeks to come with my students.

Scratch was an interesting tool to explore, and I can see how simplifying the coding experience would make it far more accessible for younger students in particular, but also for older students new to coding. It is a very logical program to use and I look forward to getting my students to work in this program in the coming weeks and months.

I enjoyed exploring the online coding options and games too. I have a variety that I intend to use in my classroom, either on my promethean board as a whole class discussion activity, or on iPads for individual work. I have included snips of some of these below.

  

 

PaCT tool exploration

 We explored how to make teacher judgements today using the PaCT tool. Reviewing what we have already covered reminded us that we need to remember to look at what we are taking away from each lesson.

Take aways:

1. It is important to view the illustrations provided to get a really good idea of what the big ideas really mean for each set/ signpost.

2. If you think a student(s) is displaying evidence at one signpost then read the descriptions above and below to double check the level of sophistication fits.

3. The illustrations are also really great ideas for teaching a big idea.

4. You don’t need to review each student for each set. You would group students to think about where they are to decide your deliberate acts of teaching for the next steps, one aspect at a time.

5. We will rotate our specific focus each term on reading this year as we familiarise ourselves with these learning progressions. It would be impossible to be thinking about all the aspects for R, W and M constantly!

6. As always we would use OTJ from a number of evidence sources to decide where students are.

7. The focus should be less about where students are in terms of giving them a ‘level’ and more about “What do I need to teach, and them to learn next”. 

We took a sample of students work and then looked at each aspect and used the blurb and the illustrations to help us place a student on a sign post. 

A good discussion happened at the end of the hui regarding E-asttle v's PACT tool for end of year assessments. Below are some of the things we took away from this lesson. 

We have noticed ...

...with practice I will get faster at this and more confident with making judgements

…need to change year levels of some students, classes have been set up with names to use now, look at notifications

… writing LPF is good to use. Want to use instead of asstle this year as doubling up. Maybe can for yr1-2??

...… would be really valuable to go to experts on staff to moderate with my tricky judgements

… PaCT tool - taken lots away. Talking with others about what our kids are doing at different levels, useful to collaborate

… Feel confident with it and I want to finish putting them in

… just get it in! You know more than you think you do with your first sense.  Calm the farm a bit - you can’t teach it all

… after so long thinking about it, procrastinating and not doing it. Getting stuff in has been beneficial. SO many opportunities to double check and triple check, so it’s robust and thorough. 

DFI week 7

 

Today's learning was based around devices, and managing them in the classroom context in a way that promotes the manaiakalani values and pedagogy. I found it very interesting to view familiar sites and slide decks on a chromebook, and see how differently they display.

Explain everything was a really good app to explore today. It was great to finally get a chance to use a working form of this program as it is not functioning in my classroom at the moment. I can see a huge variety of ways to use this within my classroom, and ways to use this without it adding a large quantity of work to my planning. It will be a fantastic addition in the toolbox for my students when recording and sharing their understanding and mahi.

It has been so valuable to have this learning from manaiakalani during our lockdown period. My students and their whanau have provided feedback to myself and the school how they felt connected, supported, and confident to find the learning both for the day and previous days content. I felt confident in providing rewindable content over the time period for students and whanau. Its good to know that i can hide the tab on my website so it doesn't clutter up the page, but is still available for future use if there happens to be a need for it.

DFI week 6

Today we looked at different websites primarily set up for student access to learning. We then gave feedback to each person in our bubble, and used the feedback given to us to set goals around the development of our own class sites. It was incredibly valuable to have the time and support to take these goals and implement the necessary actions straight away. I have learnt how to create and embed a feedback and query form on my class site, inset a banner with important single sentence information parents or students may need, and have taken the time to better organise the pages within the site while adding space for student voice.

Screen snips of before I started todays editing:

Screen snips of after I finished todays editing:

DFI week 5

In this weeks DFI our kaupapa focus was on having visible learning and the benefits this brings our students. It makes a lot of sense to me to ensure that my students feel like what they have to say is being heard and has value, and this pedagogy aligns well with my belief.

I like the multi modal learning pedagogy too. Having classrooms with a varied range of students, all whom bring their own unique experiences, abilities and understandings to the classroom leads straight to good practice being differentiated for all students. Having the technology varied for not only learning levels but also learning styles seems logical and important to me.

 It was really fun making my own google site today for learning based around friendship and the book "The Rainbow Fish". I relearnt a lot of small things about making a site from the beginning of this year, and how to ensure the settings are checked to give everyone access. This is especially important with lockdown level 4 right now and having all students accessing their learning from at home. I feel this is something I will use a lot in the future.

DFI week 4

This weeks learning has been about three different apps that I have not previously used much, if at all. There has been a lot of new information this week

I found todays learning fantastic for showing me ways to collect and analysis data from tamariki, fellow staff, and whanau. It has given me numerous new ways to collect and analise data for and from my class, in a much more efficent way. Im looking forward to setting up a self reflection for students at the end of the school day or specific lessons, to help them become more independant and accountable of their own learning journeys.

I am excited to try using maps to help my students compare distances and locations. I had not previously used this app before at all, so there are many possibilities I have not tried for learning opportunities within my class.

With another possible lockdown upon us and remote learning very likely to become a reality in this coming week, I am wanting to try usinf forms in a way my students can access to check in with me each day. I envision this being mostly about wellbeing, but I may also see if I can use this for clarification of students learning and as an opportunity for whanau to reflect back to me on quantity and quality of activities.

Blog analysis

DFI week 3

This week in the DFI course I have looked at media. Specifically options for using different forms of media in the classroom and on my class website, and how to effectivly embed this in a variety of different yet appropriate ways so my students can access pertinent information in an engaging and age appropriate way.

I set up a youtube channel so that I can safely control what content my students are accessing to support their learning. I learnt how to change the settings to keep it safe, and to create playlists of videos and content to access from multiple platforms.

I then spent some time working in google draw. This was the first time i had encountered this program, and I enjoyed using its features and settings to develop visual content and embed this into my blog. I can see many benefits to using this program, and in getting students to use it when creating visual content themselves. I look forward to adding this to the options students have when creating visual displays of their learning and understandings in my classroom setting. It was especially useful to go further into the features of this program in our deep dive session later in the day. I discovered numerous additional features and got to discuss a variety of ways i had not thought of to use this program in my classroom.

It was very valuable to spend time working through features of google slides. This is a program I use often, so to find shortcuts and extra features is fantastic. I can see many ways I will be able to use this more effectivly with my teaching now, in a way students can access better, and to help me work far more efficiently by saving me valuable time when creating new slide documents.

Ko wai tou ingoa

DFI week 2

 Workflow

Week 2 of the DFI course has been very informative for me. I have been bombarded with useful tips for streamlining my digital time and being more effective in my teaching and administration time.

I particularly enjoyed learning about being able to use google keep more effectively, including using the voice to text function, picture to text function, and the different label options to colour code, sort, organise and list.

It has been very helpful learning more functions of google mail. I now have a far more streamlined system to use, with folders, tabs, priority starring system, the ability to use the smart finish function to finish sentences, scheduling emails to send to students or whanau at specific times, and having an email signature that includes links to the school and class webpages, as well as the class blog, to hopefully encourage more digitial traffic.

I found it really useful to spend time reorganising my bookmarks, removing the longer labels, so it is easier to navigate quickly and is now far less cluttered on ym screen too.

DFI Week 1

The first week of the Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Intensive has been a great affirming experience. It has given me confidence to know that what I am doing is best practice, and that I am not doing things in a slower or longer way when it comes to the use of digital technologies within my own teaching and organisation.

I found it great to take time out and spend energy on exploring the tools on google, and enjoyed creating an interactive document that can be used in my classroom. Im looking forward to crowd sourcing with other educators during this term and beyond.

It was great to practice skills and learn deeper functions of google docs, such as functions of the explore tool and page setup functions. I think these will be useful in setting up interactive documents for my students on my class website.

I intend to update my own professional profile with google, and to add a personal profile to my laptop in order to better seperate the two digital environments. It is exciting for me to start this professional blog as part of that process as it is the first time i have participated in any personal blogging.