DFI : Revision

Kia Ora katoa, 

I can't believe how fast these past weeks have flown by and how much learning I have done in that time. I appreciate having learnt so many new things which smoothed my workflow and also gave me enough practise to master a few skills (like working with Google Forms).

My spreadsheets knowledge is still a bit patchy and that was my downfall in the exam as I needed to Google a few 'how to's to remind myself how to go about completing the task. 

Sadly, I didn't finish the exam but only by one question and I had perhaps 2 on review. 

I loved being a part of the DFI community and having my 'special' day to commit myself to focusing entirely on upskilling and putting those skills to practise. 

Some of the things I could apply straight away in class and some not. Sometimes, it was a bit too much to add more to my repetoire, and those skills are on the back burner for me to review at a later date. 

Although I am leaving Primary Teaching for a while, I hope to keep up with the alumni and the skills as I go into Primary Schools with a new hat on as a Maths Mentor. I'm sure I will be able to use those skills in my new job. I'll be getting an Apple laptop so maybe could go for some Apple certification. 

I'm not too sure what else to say...

I've appreciated hearing the Manaiakalani story and origins. It has put a whole new spin on digital learning and I must admit that when I started teaching at PCS almost 3 years ago, I was a bit anti-students-getting- their-own-Chromebooks at Year 3. I now see how this has empowered some of these students. The DFI would have been awesome to attend as a teacher new to digital learning, although I  had the support of my facilitator. I also feel empowered myself,  as without the internet I would not have been able to access the DFI and the community of learners. Being online and seeing teachers from all around the country has also made me feel more in touch with the teaching community. 

I will keep blogging and I wish everyone well on their journeys and highly recommend the DFI to other teachers! 

DFI 8 - Computational Thinking

Manaaikalani - Empowerment:

Digital access has given students access to learning especially this year - 2020.

We do need to make it appealing as students learning online from home will simply not do the work. Fortnite and Tiktok are our competition - Matt Goodwin

Read more from: Nigel Latta, Matt Goodwin

Money empowers you to make more choices:

$19,000 vs what others earn. Working poor.

Move, housing, remove rubbish, Good Guys - 30% interest, money from benefit, health, 2174 - measles

Low decile - mean average capability of a 3 year old

                     - 32 million words

                     - 1/3 turnover in schools

Digital empowers people to take more control over their lives.

5+ conversations per day are necessary.

$3.50 per week over 3 years for a Chromebook.

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The New Digital Technologies Curriculum

Computational Thinking

Technology Practise, Knowledge, Nature of

Two new areas:Computational Thinking for Digital Technologies - think like a computer scientist
Designing and Developing Digital Outcomes

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DFI Deep Dive - Future of Tech

Just - wow! some things I wasn't aware of that are out there!

Ethics and Morals...

Senarios:- VERY hard to do...!!!

Moral Machine

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Explore option: Kia Takatū 

https://kiatakatu.ac.nz/

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GOOGLE EXAM

Register with Proctor U

Sign up for scheduled time next Friday.

Incognito Window is recommended.

Check your equipment

Install extension

Can't go to specific websites

2nd device to Google things...

Expectations

Photo ID

Testing your equipment.

Reschedule next Friday to take the exam at the time.

Spend 90 seconds on each question.

US$10.00

EXPLORE:

Lightbot - This was good, fun and simple to use

Couldn't do scratch without an i-pad

Minecraft - Couldn't figure this out... Kelsey pointed me in the right direction and I ran out of time!

Kodable - This was quite fun - did the bug one. But again couldn't figure out how ot do it - haha!

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DFI Create had another go at Minecraft coding. It's not as simple as it seems - I am a beginner though!

Discussed process with Bee-Bot

Draw a square on the mat with an apple as a goal.

Get kids to diret each other

Then draw up the directions

Then feed those directions into Bee-Bot

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Blogger Tips

Checklist

On layout add pages and show pages - can add external link.

DFI 7 Devices

 Cybersmart

Learning outcomes can be the same but how you deliver it to students differs according to abilities.

Engage and empower students.

Deliberate focus: 

Smart Learners

Smart Footprint

Smart

Purposeful, designed lessons should be delivered. Teachers need to be confident with the language.

Underlying principals: Be Kind, Positive, Helpful, Thoughtful, Being in the right place at the right time.

We want students to recognise what is not right and know what to do about it. 

Cybersmart is also more about making decisions about: What personal information do I share and what  do I not. 

Smart Parents: supporting family and whanau in partnership with community. How do they connect with their child's learning?

Visible sites, visible planning, visible learning. 

Hapara Deep Dive

Enables visibility of what students are doing.

External on Sharing - shows if student has shared a document with a person outside of organisation.

Through Hapara you can access deleted items and reinstate if necessary.

Smart share - not needed as much when students can view link and make their own copy.

Dorothy suggests: instead of speaking to a student about inappropriate emails. Show on Hapara on TV the G-mail screen to help students understand that when you have an organisation email, anyone (management) can see all your emails.

Hapara Workspace - used for what learners have to hand in. 

Can see how many have started, how many have submitted, can embed into a site so all visible.

Can customise and change view...

Hapara Highlights - 

Pause the Screen

GOYA principal - walk around students while they work... (If not busy with Clinics!)

Can only be viewed when on school property - Protects Teachers 

Home is Private

Manaikalani Journey

Titiri Waitangi - At the heart of it all

Partnership, Participation, Protection

Device should not be taken away if student is off task - "Would you take a Maths book away from a student if they were doodling?" - Dorothy B.  Food for thought! 

Equity in access to learning

NO BOYD: Focus is on learning not on the device

Chromebook Simulator - Digital Dig

Experiencing using a Chromebook

I felt like I knew most of the Chromebook skills and shortcuts - learnt a few new ones too.

Tablets 

For young ones

One to one - a Stylis is essential for handwriting skills 

Set up

Kawa of Care

Storage and Handling

Explain Everything is the platform for i-pads

Inspector - helps to lock items, arrange page

 

Explain Everything Task 1  When I recorded the audio the images were off centre! 

HAPARA WORKSPACE

I've had a go at creating a Workspace for a Cybersmart Task. Creating blog comments.

Here is the link

It is also linked on my Class Site under Cybersmart

It is time consuming but a lot of fun to create. Thanks to Kelsey for sharing her links - I have used them in my Workspace, as well as some of her tasks. 

I had a lot of fun today - learnt so many new things. Excited to see if Workspace will work for my students.

DFI 6 Enabling Access

 'Limit the links' sent out to all principals before the first lockdown.

Limit the links 

Make connections  - students and teachers feel connected when online.  

RSS - Real Software Syndication

I want to add Twitter Feed to the Room 2 Blog - so that we can see blog posts in Kootuitui. I will need to find out how to do it! 

How do visible sites make learning visible?

Plan out site page

Use colour picker for visual appeal

Use only 2 fonts

VISUAL APPEAL AND SITE FUNCTIONALITY

We explored a few sites today which really helped with getting examples of what looks good and works well and what doesn't after discussing them in detail. 

Here is the feedback I got from my bubble: 

There is so many great ideas on here, I love all the interesting links you have availble for the learners.

Lots of Information here well done. Home page is quite busy - Maybe simplify it?

Great sharing of tasks and information on the site. I love the videos of you explaining the tasks for the home learning part. Do you know what kind of devices students are using at home? Some of the buttons are quite large? I wonder if you could use the space to make it less scrolling?

Then I went on to work on my class site and worked on these things and to improve the functionality of my site. 

I wish I had screen shot my site before I has made changes. 

Here is the link to my changed site: LINK

I'm still working on it though...

Got some really good tips on how to Eliminate Spam on Blogs

I went back to change the settings on my blogs. There hasn't been any spam on the Room 2 blogs to date luckily, but I will know what to do if it appears. 

Til next time...

DFI 5 Collaborate

 Visible Teaching and Learning

This week's post is in short phrases. I've found it tricky this time to reflect whilst in Level 3 lockdown but 

Straightforward - can you see it or can you not? Visible to whanau, colleagues, students.

We can learn from colleagues

Don't over complicate it. 

Consider cultural capital. 

Day to day functioning of teaching visible - no surprises - equity - so students can access their learing.

Google Site is the only one link that needs to be bookmarked.

Can link to home click on ipad.

Visiblity to the teacher - Hapara dashboard.

Multi-modal

Hook them in

Use Hapara to help with focus browsing

Sell the love of learning.

Multi- modal - behavioural engagement

Multi-textural -  cognitive extend and deepen learning

 - cognitive challenge 

- lifting ceiling 

- T-shaped literacy 

- remove barriers by offering different forms of texts

Site to stand on its own

About highly effective teaching

Give choice and allow for collaboration

Google Sites

Creating own blog

Create own buttons on Google Draw

Create a new blog

T-shaped Literacy

Angela Moala MultiText Data Base

Challenge students to find texts to support text they are reading.

Multi-modal site on one of the reading themes

Blogger Tips

Use labels!

Online Toolkits

Attended an online toolkit about creating digital badges for student blogs and found it really easy to follow and I've made a digital badge for 'Blogger of the Day'.  

I've created some criteria for that and will see how my students go! LINK

DFI 4 Data data data

Hapara

Firstly looking at Hapara hot tips. Checking comments especially those in red. They could be spam. If it is spam then don't click on it. Go to the blog and follow the procedure (not sure if I know it - will check on that). 

Everyone loves to share. The reason for sharing is the audience. Purpose... An authentic audience is people who choose to listen to you...E.g. Someone clicks on your post.

Blogger

PURPOSE of Blogger 

Blogger resembles the platform students want to be on but can be used to teach students how to make positive, thoughtful, helpful comments. 

To be cyber smart. Functional. Teach digital citizenship.

Essential that teachers keep a close eye on what our students are doing online.

The side effect if to connect with parents and whanau. LCS cyclical - sharing starting place for learning or the completion of learning.

Fun fun fun! 

Created a form and learnt all the possible settings available.

Google Maps - I got distracted but really enjoyed having a play and looking at all the new functions I learnt.

Google Sheets

Things I already knew how to do but found this as a useful reminder that it is there or saw a different way how to do it:

• Freeze row and column - just use hand to select columns and rows
• Resize columns
• Totals - sum
• Average
• Organise numbers
• Filtering
• Drag handle for days of the week, months of the year, numbers, patterns etc.
• Custom date format - NZ date
• Explore tool - ask questions about data, or charts, 
• Insert chart
• Conditional formatting - set the parametres 
• select data and sort
• adding a rule - which is so much quicker than what I used to do it which is using the filter
• Format - alternating colours to make the view easier to read
• Ctrl Shift F to ring back menu bar
• Protect cells and rows - can't be edited
• Add-ons increase functionality of sheets

New:

• Insert a chart using explore
• Find an average - how do we round off the average?
• Change SUM to Mult by  using shift 8
• Conditional formatting
• Data validation

I created a chart to show the data collected about a student's blogs.

Blog Comments

Remember to make quality blog comments:

Insert display text here - Use this code to insert a hyperlink on a comment.   

 "<a href="insert URL here">Insert display text here</a>"

DFI 3 Media

Here are the thoughts from my rambling mind today: 

Create: The doing demands challenges and creative thinking for students :-)

Last week Natalie and I saw the blog post of a boy who used his knowledge to create an ANZAC scene and acted out the 'life of a soldier'. It was clear that as he was acting out he was using the knowledge he had, but he was learning too.

Here is what I have learnt today:

• Google Drive is the default for students to video themselves ( I knew that but thought its a good reminder to have it here).
• Use You Tube channels for over 13 year old students only.
• When making a YouTube video make sure that  it is unlisted which means others can't search for it. Then the video can only  be accessed via a link.
• Turn commenting off for the YouTube videos.

Setting up the account was awesome! 

YouTube! I have sooo many playlists but they were not set up properly, neither were my YouTube settings - thank you. Now I am inspired to go and make some videos.

Videos - students need to be entertained and learn at the same time - Sisomo - Sight, Sound, Motion

Get a tripod!

Elements of media 

Recording videos with your phone -  always in landscape when videoing (I always forget that).

We video is something I might use, I have used  green screens  in the past and made videos for a school TV channel and it was so much fun for both the students and myself. I think that I will be looking into doing this again. We have just done some report writing in class so a perfect opportunity to record some  videos using the reports as scripts.

 

Live Streaming - YouTube, drone, /Google Meet

Live Stream sports events -Fusion can support...  wow! This has so much potential - imagine streaming Cross Country to parents who cannot attend. 

Film Festival - 3mins max video time - there are a number of film festival opportunities out there:

Podcast - comes to you,  an Audiofile does not.

Chromebook Apps:

Music lab

Online voice recorder

Google slides

Screen castify

• I want to make a money video as I could not find a good NZ one on YouTube.

Google Draw

What size is best for A5 or A4 paper? or for Blogging?

Using a png means there is no background or you can use : https://www.remove.bg/

Google Slides 

• Some tips and tricks for creating a LCS 
• Drag and drop

There are two options for drag and drop Google Slides

1. Students do the activity 
2. Students create the activity to show their learning 

Dragging stacks of objects is handy for when you want students to drag a number of items in a Google Slide. This makes me think about the money video and to match it I can do a money activity.

• Select group of images - arrange - align to the centre, middle
• One way for images to be fixed and not move around when other things do need to be moved around is  to create your images or forms - take a screenshot and then insert the screenshot as your background. 

As most techies know there are some things we want our technology to do for us that it cannot do just yet or is not part of the programming. In this case we need to think outside the box and find solutions to make the apps work for us! 

Once my video and DLO  are finished I will post them to my blog. 

DFI 2. Workflow

This session we are thinking about what 'Learn' looks like in our schools. The Manaiakalani program and Learn Create Share encourages teachers to look at effective practise and Recognise, Amplify and Turbocharge effective practise. Reflections are around 1. Using authentic texts, 2. having discussions, 3. thinking critically and using strategies to do so, 4. collaborating, making choices.

Well, today I've already learnt how to play audio on a Google Meet - something I was struggling with during lockdown as I love to be able to play music and songs for my class. Now I can do it! (Share a Chrome tab).

Use Google Keep to take a photo of text (for text models for Reading and Writing). Click on the text, It can be transferred onto Google Docs and students can use the accessibility tool to read it back to them.

Pinning tabs, using Toby mini to manage tabs and Toby can also be used to manage student blogs.

Looking at blog posts and considering the digital learning involved: 

Natalie and I discussed Zara@Belfast School's blog post.

We looked at what the teaching design was, what the student learnt and the responses. 

Finally embedding a video recording of the Google Meet to our blogs below:

DFI Create Using Docs

Here is the link to the Google Doc

DFI 1. Core Business, Friday Online Term 3 Cohort : 2020

I've learnt today that students are wanting to create things in this digital world and that they also want to share their learning to a wider audience. They are more engaged with a modern platform which in turn raises student achievement!

I learnt so much today!

• I've updated my Google profile and created nicknames for the different Google profiles I have to make them easily identifiable.
• All about Google groups (permission is required from the principal, for example, as the creator has access to all the email addresses in the group)
• My Google drive is organised - still needs a bit of tidying up.
• My share settings have been sorted now with one quick move - by moving all my folders into a 2020 folder and making that folder shareable to anyone who has the link.
• I know how to change my share settings so that slides or documents cannot be copied or printed - this is useful for learners as sometimes they make copies of the incorrect document.
• I can't wait to use the Chrome extension of Record to Slides
• 
  
• 

• This will be great for my learners who struggle to follow the intructions they nhave to read on a Learn Create Share. Instructions and learnign becomes rewindable!
• The session on Google Documents was so useful - the way to teach students on how to start out creating a document within a folder. 
• Adding titles and a table of contents means that students only need use one document which can be dated all all of their writing work.
• Using a url link to give students access to a particular paragraph
• To take advantage of voice typing for those students who are reluctant or struggle to write.
• Creating posters on Google Docs is possible! 
• Tools, EXPLORE is the way to go for making sure that anything that is copy and pasted is correctly referenced.
• Using Ctrl shift V to ensure all formatting is stripped
• Inserting images and making them more streamlined and looking better by using the Remove.bg - Remove backgrounds from images
• I found the Eyes on Text - Reading Mileage very valuable for students who need to read everyday and it is a great way to monitor their progress.

• I still need to:
• create better habits to help me manage my work flow which will in turn benefit my personal life. 
• A better work-life balance 
• A way to show all the learning I have done and a way to show all the teaching I have done! 

Invitation: DFI Term 3 Online Cohort @ Weekly from 8am to 3pm on Friday 9 times (NZST)

I've received my invitation to attend online DFI Meetings. Looking forward to learning new things and sharing them on this blog.