DFI - Devices

3-2-1 Reflection

Three bigs ideas:

1. Google sites is a way of enhancing Ubiquitous Learning; anytime, anywhere and at any pace.
2. Explain Everything is a beneficial app to use in the junior end of our kura, with one:one devices.
3. Hapara is a great digital surveillance tool to make visible the learning or non-learning for our students.

Two Insights:

1. I now know the importance of ubiquitous learning for learners in low socioeconomic areas. 
2. Early language learning is vital for future success; communicating with others, accessing the curriculum and day today life.

One Question:

1. Is the Cybersmart Curriculum tailored to individual school needs?

Here is my basic Explain Everything: 

I really enjoyed creating on Hapara today - the Workspace.

I was teaching in a Year 2/3 classroom during lockdown.  We used Dojo as the means to communicate with students and whanau. I am in the process of setting up Hapara Workspace and Google Sites to communicate with students and whanau and to make my planning visible and ubiquitous. 

I have been teaching my Year 10 class how to use Screencastify to record voice over for picture books that is focused around out integrated unit of Te whare tapa whare.  The students had to check with one other adult whether they chose their target audience correctly, before they could share with that classes teacher ie Years 0-3 for Two Little Bugs. They then created a google form to send to the teacher to receive feedback on how they presented their story.  As the facilitator of their learning I made sure I offered advice and support as we went along, however for the end product the students self-assessed, peer assessed and received feedback via google from from other classroom teachers.  Some of the stories were also shared in our school celebration assembly.  There is also an element of collaboration with this task that was included in the rubric; the students will be continuing to work on the during the year. I did find collaborating via google slides very beneficial ie one student would insert photos while the other student typed out the text.  A group of students have a very long text, so they are going to ask teachers and students to read a page each, to be recorded. 

Here is a link to The Red Tree by Shaun Tan, presented by Zak and Deakin (Yr 10).  

Here is an example for Google slides and self/peer assessment completed today by year 10 students Isabelle and Angelina.

DFI Week 6 - Enabling Access

I have been setting this task for our learners and I really wanted to try it out today: 

3-2-1 Reflection

Three bigs ideas:

1. Consider the Principles of Kaupapa Måori when connecting with others, in particular Åta - building and nurturing relationships and wellbeing.
2. Creating Class sites builds transparency and offers students a platform to learn multimodal.
3. Visible teaching is a new concept for me and I can't wait to receive feedback from my learners and their whånau and the wider school community.

Two Insights:

1. I now know the importance of getting to know your learners to taylor learning to their interests and abilities; offering differentiated learning through Google sites appears to be more doable. 
2. I am confident I can share my learning with other colleagues with regards to creating Google Class Sites, as well as learn from others.

One Question:

1. How do you use image carousel? 

Here is my efforts thus far with Google Class Sites: 

DFI Week 4 - Dealing with Data

Today Dorothy talked about Share - Tohatoha within the Manaiakalani pedagogy.  I am intrigued how this connects to Connectivism Learning Theory and the eight principles; diversity of opinions, connecting specialised information sources, learning may reside in non-human appliances, capacity to know more is more critical than what is known, nurturing and maintaining connections, seeing connections between fields, ideas and concepts, currency and decision-making is a learning process (Siemens, G).  Critiquing my initial knowledge of  Ako-Hanga-Tohatoha pedagogy, the principles in bold stand out - what do you think? 

Two important points to make that distinguish Connectivism Learning Theory from others ie Constructivism, firstly, "the ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant" (Siemens, G) information, this could relate to the Cybersmart curriculum. Secondly, that knowledge can be transferred within the school environment because it resides in a database and not with the individual teacher (ubiquitous). For more information on Connectivism please view the following video by Dr George Siemens: 

       

I really enjoy working with data to inform my practice.  Today's session was very informative.  Google Maps was a new learning experience - we have been working in a cluster with two other schools, so I decided to locate the på sites and significant places.  

It was fun creating a Google Form regarding traveling in NZ and abroad.  Here is the form if you wish to complete it:  

It was nice to have the time today to practice some of the Google Sheets skills.  I have only really used Google Sheets for my timetable, and student attendance at whanau time.  Here is a example of a Google Sheet, analysing data:

All the above skills and tools I am happy to share with my students from years 5-10. 

DFI Week 3 - Media

In today's session I learnt that sometimes in education you need to choose your own path, even if it means defining it along the way.  I believe in my classroom practice being influenced by research be it school based and scholarly educational articles.   Hoy 2006, once said that "thoughtful administrators as more inclined to be guided by theories, as imperfect as they are, than by impulse or the biases of dubious beliefs.  Make mindfulness a habit of the mind".  When trying to define student engagement within our school setting I headed down the researching path and came across a number of government documents that define engagement.  The definition that I thought might be relevant for my context was:  

"Student engagement can be defined as the level of participation and intrinsic interest that a student shows in school. Engagement in schoolwork involves both behaviors (such as persistence, effort, attention) and attitudes (such as motivation, positive learning values, enthusiasm, interest, pride in success). Thus, engaged students seek out activities, inside and outside the classroom, that lead to success or learning. They display curiosity, a desire to know more, and positive emotional responses to learning and school" (MOE, p, 2010). 

When listening to Dorothy today expressing her understanding of student engagement within the Manaiakalani pedagogy it became clear that the values of; connected, ubiquitous, empowered and visible holds the teacher accountable to provide the learner with the tools and skills to engage.  Therefore, within my context I think it is important to have a meeting of minds as to the definition of engagement when moving forward with our teacher inquiries.  Maybe one inquiry could be based around researching and defining student engagement within our school and wider community.  When I shared the Ministry of Education's definition with the leadership team the first comment was that elements such as perseverance is reflected in our school values. 

A new experience for me was learning to use Google Draw - I loved the tool, however, to perfect some of the tasks, it takes time.  When I found out about Youtube channels etc.  I was really glad that I had the time to explore Youtube and learn how to embed videos into slides. This would be a skill that I would share with my learners.  Learning about sisomo was also very interesting as I want to develop the media department at our kura, with a green screen.  I have become more confident in navigating Google Suites, adding audio into slides and embedding youtube videos.  

I learnt that having documents to go back to and rewindable learning is beneficial.  I am the type of learner that likes to take time to think about new learning, make connections and build on them.  When for example I was writing this blog I went over the Media Agenda to remind myself of all the things that were presented to us.  I have improved my confidence in teaching students because I have made the learning more predictable to them.  The same layout for each session, ie WALT, SC, Task and Reflection.  I have also tried to keep the Google Slide theme the same for each year group.