DFI Wk 9 - External Recognition

Today is the last day with our awesome DFI cohort and what a stunning day it is in the lovely Ohaewai. Jess and I travelled down with our new friends, Ali, Mandy and Holly. 

Vicki joined us online and went over Manaiakalani job opportunities. 

Following on from this chat we had a break then it was onto our exam. That was a long time to sit lol, but I survived......just. Then we had our shared kai, well deserved I say. 

I've had an absoloute blast on this journey and have made new friends along the way. A huge thanks to everyone that's helped us.

WE MADE IT!!!!!

DFI Day 8 - Devices

Paparore is our school for today and it'll be the last time we come here with our DFI cohort. First up on the agenda was Dorothy who was joining us online from Tamaki The pedagogy and kaupapa for today was Ubiquitous. Anytime, Anywhere, Any pace, Anyone, the A4. Our young people being able to have this opportunity as learners. The focus was the learners have the potential to be experiencing high quality learning experiences right now -while you are here-. Rewindable learning, being able to accress this so that you can go back over and over as much as you need to. If it's worth TEACHING, it's worth capturing, If it's worth LEARNING, it's worth capturing.......love that......Today we have to reflect on how we did over lockdown. I was proud that our learners were always so excited to join online and see their teacher. They blogged alot and it was great to see the work they produced whilst they were at home. The only regret I have was I didn't join in their meetings online which in hindsight I should have, my interaction with them was leaving blogger comments. As a Teacher Aide, our role was to make sure we commented on blogs.

Next up it was Deep Dive with Vicki. Being Cybersmart, not cybersafe, for our learners to make smart choices. There's alot of cybersmart categories, Smart Learners, Smart Footprint, Smart Relationships, Smart Media, Smart Surfing, Smart Legal, Smart Money, Smart Values, Smart Teachers and Smart Parents. Being cybersmart empowers learners to connect when their learning is visible & ubiquitous. Our young people learn that every time they connect, collaborate and share online it combines to create their digital footprint. 

Following on from this was Vicki again with our Chalk n Talk. Manaiakalani 1:1 journey. -Partnership, Ako is a whanau or community experience, Engagement in the decision making eg Kawa of Care, Engagement through device ownership. - Participation, every learner can participate, Every teacher can be supported to become Digitally Fluent when all devices are the same, engagement through device ownership. - Protection this should all happen behind the scenes, Manaiakalani partnered with Hapara to design Teacher Dashboard to make all digital learning visible, Partnership with N4L and Linewize for filtering. Digital fluency starts with the ability to use the device, Learners, Teachers, Whanau. As a teacher we should be able to use a learners chromebook to see what they can (and can't do). We had a chance to explore the chrome book and learn all the shortcuts. Screencastify was explained next with a few handy tips.

After break it was time to have a look around ipads and how they are used, Kariene and Vicki took this session. We had a look at the Explain Everything app, and had to follow the instructions to create a new project. Following on from this Vicki talked us through what to expect for next weeks exams. 

The last part of our day we had to choose either to do a Hapara task, use Explain everything or create a screencastify. I had a tutu with the screencastify extension because although our learners use it, I have never had the opportunity to. This was our last learning session with our DFI chohort, next week is exam time!

This awesome photo of the sunrise this morning is courtesy of Vicki who stayed in our beautiful sleepy village of Mangonui last night. 

 

DFI Day 7 - Computational Thinking

Today the DFI cohort made our way down to the wonderful Waitangi Grounds where the sun was shining. We had Jacob Walker join us who is the Manaiakalani facilitator. Kerry showed us a few hot tips in Hapara. Then she followed on with a presentation about Digital Fluency and Digital Technologies, what's the difference? What does being Digitally Fluent look like in a Learn, Create, Share World. It's important that students have opportunities to be innovative designers and creators of digital solutions. Then we had time to explore the New Digital technologies Curriculum.

Next up was Kerry again and she went over the future of tech and what it means to our tamariki. What will our future job places, communities and societies look like? Then Vicki joined us online to go through the Pedagogy and Kaupapa of Manaiakalani, today was Empowered, Empowered Teachers and Learners. The Manaiakalani kaupapa of empowerment is about the advancing of our Rangatiratanga; taking back control of their own lives.

Our chalk and talk was delivered by the fabulous Monika who was a past teacher at our awesome Kura. She went through computational thinking, stop motion, then cloud stop motion. The steps you need to take in order to get a finished product. We had a play with stop motion, and that was a blast! Next up we explored scratch...I have had a play with this before and loved it.....Today was a lot of exploration as it's been a while.

After lunch we got to choose which one we would like to explore some more. Ali and I chose to make a Matariki creation using stop motion. It was super cool but unfortunately we ran out of time to edit it. It has been an amazing day of learning today in magical Waitangi! Here's a pic of the start of the day and the stop motion that Alisha, Ali and I created.

 

DFI Day 6 - Enabling Access Sites

 This week we were back at the lovely Paparore School with our DFI cohort.

First up we had Dorothy joining us online from Tamaki. The pedagogy and kaupapa this week was about how the word "Connected" fits. The importance of how being connected is so very important. Making connections for the Manaiakalani schools in that they are so geographically close, prior to this they did not connect that often, just like any other schools in New Zealand. Being digitally connected though has been an awesome move, forming great relationships. She talked of a shared language that we have that is unique to our own kura, comparing this to others where things could look totally different in other schools, but we have the one common goal of Learn, Create, Share. We need to all just focus on the same goals and paddle our waka in the same direction. Manaiakalani has a different learning focus for each term. There are multiple opportunites to be able to connect for us and our tumuaki. We are lucky enough to be able to partiipate in this DFI course. They have taken the tech power behind Twitter and have adapted it to be able to see data and statistics. To make a connection, both parties need to SHARE. I like this saying.........The important thing is living together, making friends and exchanging ideas - Te mea nui rawa ia ko te noho tahi, ko te whakawhanaunga, ko te whakawhitiwhiti whakaaro. 

Kerry and Kariene chalk and talked about using google sites. Creating change and creating more learning with your site. The causing of accelerated Shift was engagement, teaching conversations, cognitive challenge, visibility and scaffolding. Make sure that our site is like a one stop shop for our learning so we can enter whenever we need to plan for the week ahead and that our students know that, thats where they go to access their learning. Make sure it has visual appeal, the theme, good layout and keeping your fonts similar so it doesn't start to look too busy. 

Following on from this we spent some time looking over a selection of class sites. Checking them for visual appeal and site functionality. We had to record our findings, what works well and what doesn't work well. This was good to see how other schools use their sites. Next up we had the opportunity to present the site that we had created and get feedback from our peers.

Next Vicki joined us online, she went over how to personalise your learning site. She did a google drawing and used pixabay to get some cool pics to create a button. Following on from that we had the opportunity to update and work on our site again. I definitely needed this time because I hadn't been able to work on my site since creating it so am pretty pleased I now have something that the children can actually use now.

Last up we joined Vicki online again to go over Hapara Hot Tips, student dashboard. She also showed us how to deal with spam on blogs. 

Today was another awesome day spent with our amazing cohort!

DFI Day 5 - Collaborate - Sites

 Today we were back down in Ohaewai with our DFI cohort.

Dorothy joined us from Pt England in Tamaki. Today she was going over "visible" how are our floor boards so to speak. Is it visible or is it not? Can you see it, or can you not. Who is it visible to, basically everyone. Too much of a child's learning is hidden and this could ad to our children failing. Every learner needs to be able to see their learning journey. How do we make it visible? Through our google sites which are evoloving more and more. We also have Hapara so as a teacher we have the opportunity to see their learning immediately online also. She left us with a plea saying there could be barriers for our learners and their whanau that we have unintentially created for them. Open the curtains so to speak, and let them in to see their learning journey.

Next Kerry followed on from Dorothy with Multi Modal, Engaging "The Hook", Learning, Empowering and Multi-Modal UDL. With our class sites we hope that we can make it easy and accessible for our students. We want to create life long learners that are excited and actively engaged in their learning. We want an easy to use site that grabs the audiences attentiion. We will be exploring the 2 designs today, Multimodal design for behavioral engagement and Multi-textural design for cognitive engagement.

After break Kerry ran through a few Hapara hot tips. I didn't know about the Hapara Share which I think would be something I could utilise with my spelling words. We got to look over what other school sites look like and might I say, some are just fabulous and really drew me in.

Vicki joined us online to chalk and talk us through creating our own sites. This was fast and informative and there's so much you can do to produce an awesome site. 

After lunch we looked through the Multi-text Database and then had to create our own using the data that was made available to us. This was a great opportunity to explore. I chose to do mine about One Small Step because I though it linked really well to Stem Learning in our class to do with Rockets. Below is a screenshot and link to my site. 

Here is the link to my multi modal site