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!