Digital Fluency Intensive Session 8 Computational Thinking

Today Dorothy talked to us about the final piece of the Manaiakalani puzzle. How can we empower our learners, and how can I feel empowered as a teacher. This DFI course has definitely made me feel empowered and I enjoy going back to work the next day and sharing this knowledge with my team/school colleagues. 

Our explore today was around trying a few different coding platforms.

• Minecraft is awesome - I know some of the children in my class use this regularly and we are having it placed on the ipads in the next coming weeks - so I look forward to giving this a go with them, I did manage to have a play and code today - which was lots of fun!
• Scratch is also great - love this resource and so do all the children. When I was living in London, the school I taught at had timetable time for coding, and I learnt and had to teach using Scratch - so today felt comfortable trying another coding platform.
• CodeCombat tested my coding skills, I died a lot in the game! But did manage to code collecting gems, moving the player, and also changing the code of the background terrain.

Our create task today was creating something around coding. Vicki lead my group in coding (gamefroot.com) your Mihi - it was a great platform for children, and I could see a huge benefit in the children using this. At the moment the children in my school are writing their Mihi or Pepeha, this could definitely be a task we can use with the children who have finished writing theirs.

Here is my Mihi, and a couple of screenshots below to show you what it all looks it.

Digital Fluency Intensive Session 7 Devices

Another great week of learning about devices that can be used in schools. Dorothy asked us to reflect on the Kaupapa of the Manaiakalani Programme, leading into the first COVID 19 Lockdown. This was definitely an interesting time for all involved, particularly for me, as I had just been given a job at my new school - meant to start in person - didn't quite work out that way. I meet the children online through a google meet. The experience is definitely one I will hold as teaching memory. I felt incredibly lucky to be part of a school that was ready to deliver a great program of work at home. We were ready for ubiquitous learning! I was proud of the children, they were flexible, patient and they wanted to give everything a good go. They learnt so much within a short period of time - only being Year 3/4. I don't regret anything, I enjoyed lockdown and would feel comfortable if this was to happen again. 

Today we had to use different devices to feel and do what the children would. I believe you can't deliver a good lesson unless you feel comfortable around the technology you are using. 

Below is a copy of the google slides I worked through using a Chromebook. This was interesting to learn about lots of different shortcuts that can be used in the classroom. I will definitely be taking this digital dig back to my team and we will work on letting the children have a good at something similar. I am sure they will enjoy this. 

The next task was to use an iPad to use the different tools on Explain Everything. I had quite a lot of experience in lockdown using Explain Everything - I would use the iPad to present my screen so I could also see the children's faces while on a google meet. In class, we tend to use the iPad when children are videoing or presenting a part of their learning. Below is the first task set from today using Explain Everything. 

Our create task this week was to use the Manaiakalani Cybersmart program and present a lesson using either Explain Everything, Screencastify or Hāpara. I choose to use Screencastify, below is my video of instructions. I have also linked my google drawing of instructions. 

In Cybersmart last week our Year 4 children spent a lot of time playing and filming themselves on Screencastify. Our goal for the rest of the term is to teach our Year 3's how to use this great extension to present their learning. 

Digital Fluency Intensive Session 6 Collaborate - Enabling Access

Being ubiquitous - can the learner do it anywhere, at any time, and at any pace? 

We have spent some time this term already with Sharon, our Manaiakalani Outreach support person, at a staff meeting going through what is this and are achieving it. It was interesting to look at it as a team because we could show and prove it was working. Not only through our class site but through communication with parents. We have regular comments from parents about children going back on and going through their learning from the week.

We had to ask ourselves questions around why aren't more parents, families doing this - and how might we change this. One of the big points of discussion was, did they know about it and can they follow it. Making the link to today's DFI session really important as receiving feedback from someone on the outside, outside of your school domain giving that value feedback around how it looks, and how easy is it to follow.  I enjoyed receiving the feedback but also being able to give feedback to others. 

My school has made all 4 Hub sites consistent and there isn't a lot I can do about the font or layout of pages/ sidebar etc. changing. That's ok - I can just make sure the content is ubiquitous for all. 

I think we are always more critical of ourselves and before anyone had given me feedback about my site - I have decided what I want to change or modify. 

Today I would say it has been a fighting battle with the word 'buttons' and using pictures of teachers to create these buttons. Creating the buttons and uploading was not the battle, getting them to all be the same size was. Some of the pictures were rectangle-shaped and others square shaped - it just made it very hard to make them all the same size. My goal before DFI next week is to take new pictures (all the same) and then create the buttons from here. 

Another job I wanted to achieve today was uploading all the children's blog to our Hub site. All the children's names are there but we have not been given access to all the Year 3's and new children's blogs yet - so I will be adding the links when this is all sorted. 

Digital Fluency Intensive Session 5 Collaborate - Sites

Even know it was raining in Christchurch today, being part of the DFI program this term ensures the sun, shines brightly when using digital technologies in class. 

As I have been in a Manaiakalani school for 2 years we are constantly talking and evaluating if we are considering what is:

• Visible to the learner
• Visible to the whānau
• Visible to the teacher
• Visible to colleagues

What I love when creating my planning, intentions, and outcomes is it is for everyone to see - it isn't something I want to hide. I know that creating my Learn, Create, Share every week is for me to know what I want the outcomes to be but also important that parents and children can go back to look at what was taught or created. Rewindable learning. 

It has been interesting in the last couple of weeks at school, we have had parents asking what their child's password is - they are trying to be COVID prepared - it has been a great conversion to get into as we made it clear to the parents you don't need your child's password to view any of the teaching content. It is great to see that they are thinking about, they want to be prepared which is nice.

Today was all about using google sites in our classrooms, I have been using a google site for a lot of my teaching career so I felt pretty comfortable having a play and creating a reading activity. Here is the link to my reading activity. Enjoy! 

This is also my Hub's site - all our learning for the year goes on here. 

Something I would like to try is putting more buttons on our Hub's site, I will talk to my team and see what they think. Across the school, our sites are very much all the same - I unsure if I will be able to. Watch this space!

Digital Fluency Intensive Session 4 Dealing with Data

Today was an action-packed lot of creating and sharing back that work! I have definitely learnt useful things today which I wasn't aware of or wasn't sure how to do. 

We had time to create a form, which I did already know how to use but it was nice to be able to have the time to play. Here is a link to my form on your favourite things. What are your favourite things? 

The next task was to learn and create using 'google my maps', I decided to record all the schools in my cluster and then added in a few more schools in Christchurch. Schools are an essential part of our community. Shout out to all the amazing teachers out there 😀

I use Google Sheets every day at school, but there are many things that I didn't know about - which was great to be able to learn and put into practice. I will definitely be sharing with the ladies in my team!

My blog archive graph is linked here, but also a screenshot is provided below. Emilie is a student in my Hub and School - it was interesting to see when she was posting the most. Particularly during lockdown and summer learning journey.