DFI Week 8 Blog Post

 Computational Thinking

Pedagogy/Kaupapa:                    Empowered

A direct quote which sums up empowerment: "The Manaiakalani kaupapa of empowerment is about advancing Rangatiratanga. Taking back control of our own lives". There was a lot of discussion around technology only being a tool, and I think in some respects it is but I also think that used properly by professionals and teachers who can see the potential of technology to transform students ideas, learning, lives and foster creativity, then technology is not just a tool. It can be so much more.

There was discussion about equity and how students don't all have equal opportunities, depending on the socio-economic backgrounds and/or communities. Students come to a decile 1 school with 32 million less words than others which puts them at a serious disadvantage to their counterparts and to their school journey and experience. The suggestion was made of teaching the students the 5+ a day conversation structure. Which, done properly, has the advantage to increase their language, reading and writing skills.

Empowerment - equity - for teachers, students and and communities.

The future of tech:

We learnt about all the nw tech over the past few years, some I know, use, have heard of, but plenty  have not. For example, Sophia the Robot, who learns through watchingYoutube. I find her a little creepy but also totally fascinating!

There is also the Zephyr's Cora, a full electric, flying vehicle/car that is currently being tested in New Zealand, and the hope is for it to be available to the public in a couple of years.

We where also introduce to the Morals and Ethics, especially in relation to self driving cars. 

- Who decides?

--Who programmes a self-driving car?

--Who makes decisions about what rules it follows?

--Who takes responsibility if someone gets hurt?

All these questions a food for thought, especially when we tried out the "Moral Machine", which I did not enjoy. There were almost no good decisions - impossible decisions. 

This whole session I think would be a cool lesson, modified somewhat, to do with my Year 6 class. Make them think and would have some great discussion points. Then it could be cross curricular, with reading and learning, creating and writing and then sharing with the class, and Principal perhaps and on their blogs. 3 most creative or in depth could go onto the class blog.

Scratch

I know for a fact that my students are great with scratch, I however am not, and I think that with more practice I may enjoy it more. I tend to lean more towards code.org, it is user friendly and is a great teaching tool for any age level, including myself, when it comes to coding.

I did manage to create something with scratch:

I think scratch could be, with more practice, a useful tool personal and professional aspects. It can make bring presentations, more interesting and visually entertaining.

It is a useful tool for personal life but it would not be my first choice, but that is just my personal opinion. I could however open it up to my students to teach the class, something to think about, student lead rather than teacher led.

DFI Week 6 Blog Post

 Connected: connecting with manaiakalani

"Connecting is a way of life for our students. Take it away from them and they will check out."

I like this quote from the Pedagogy site this morning because it is, I think, inherently true. Relatable for any teacher.

Manaiakalani has made connecting with Teachers and students possible across the country. It has given us the platform to do this and to help us be collaborative, to learn together.

Blogger was mentioned as a great way to help connect with and audience for both students and teachers and this is something I need to work on. Creating a wider audience. Also for my students, perhaps finding like minded teachers who would be willing to set up a Pen Pal system on blogger.

We also learned that to be truely connected you must be:

*  prepared to be visible

* be prepared to share

* make friends and exchange ideas (either as a teacher or in your personal life)

* Collaboration with others. I am a huge fan of this.

--Being connected = being collaborative. 

Being a part of Manaiakalani means being connected to a rather powerful network of like minded professionals. Gisborne just happens to be one of the biggest clusters in this network.

Google Sites

Above is my current site, it is still a work in progress however.

We have been working on our class sites. We first were able to visit and review other peoples sites, which was informative, and game me lots of ideas.

We then had a chance to review each others current class sites which was great. Gave me a whole lot of other ideas and some really useful feedback.

The main point that came through was that I need to show the visible teaching and learning.

I have also created a list of things that I want to work on over the week :

--Create and upload rewindable videos of my teaching for the students.

--Get a proper class photo for the homepage

--Weekly simple plan is in each groups page

--Success criteria and other resources in each subject page.

--Place a visually pleasing daily or weekly plan on Slides that can bee added to each week.

--Video's of various teaching sources from Youtube and the like.

A lot of what we have learnt this week is something that I am currently using and will still be using over the week. Maria helped me fix my sharing settings so my students can no longer edit/alter the class site, which is a relief. 

I am really looking forward to using the class site more regularly and better with my students.

Personally all that we have learnt about sites over the past couple of weeks with DFI can be applied to my personal blogs/sites that I choose to set up. It would be a great way to share with family who are far away what s going on o=in our little family, which is expanding, which is super exciting! I can also set up a personal blog to post tips on cooking, teaching, gardening etc. Which would be a fun and creative outlet. We can also set up a site for a new venture that my husband ad I are thinking about. It will be fun to have a ply around with what we have learnt and can now use in a personal context.

Resources (courtesy of DFI).

Share resources, links and tips arising during the day

Google Certified Educator Checklist Level 1 worth bookmarking

Danni’s material

Matt and Gerhard’s material

Lenva’s How To Site

The 60 minute Site - Lindsay Wesner

DFI- Google Sites Challenge this is a MUST do in prep for the exam!

Sheets on Speed Exam Support - reminder

Create custom headers for Workspaces

Google Analytics - a how to from Matt Goodwin

DFI Week 5 Blog Post

 Session 5 - Collaborative Sites

Today we learnt about visible learning and teaching. Basically creating some student friendly planning and displaying this on a class site for your students, making it visible, and hopefully this would increase their engagement in what they are learning.

We learnt that the class site should be visible and inviting for the students and the community. "Window dressing" making the class site something they want to be in or a part of. 

We had to create our own multi text database, and then using some of the resources our own multi modal site. I chose to do mine on reading and my topic was Maori Myths and Legends.

This is my class site  below. I hope to use this lesson for next week. I also want to expand on it ad use elements of it in Writing and Maths.

I hope you use what I created today on my site with my students as a new teaching platform. Hopefully something new will engage them and eventually this will become a part of the fabric of my class, incorporating teaching with technology instead of the technology just being a "time-filler" or "follow up task".

We learnt so much about sites, there are so many things i still need to learn but I know have a solid understanding about them and it cleared up a few issues I was having about how to incorporate them into my teaching.

It is also a great tool to have for other times when I need to create a site maybe for next year, or for my bun in the oven and make a site as a digital baby record book. Or albums for my family, it is also something that can never be lost or destroyed, which is really exciting!! 

GOOGLE CHETA SHEET RESOURCE

 

DFI Week 4 Blog Post

DEALING WITH DATA  

My Map

This is my version of a Map.  This was pretty cool and fun to do once you got the hang of using My Maps. The first layer is with the DFI cohorts dream/best international holidays. The second layer is my life in locations and durations around the world. Basically where I have lived for any period of time. I would like to give a go at importing a famous journey someone travelled, not sure which one but that would be fun to give a go. Not sure how to import it though.

Google Forms

We learnt about creating a google form. I have filled out many of these but this was my first time creating one, and I actually created one that I want to use on my kids, about our inquiry focus for this term and to get some student voice on next terms focus.

My Form

I'm not completely sure however how to embed a form onto a blog post, or if that is even possible. So here is the link to my form.

Google Sheets

We learnt about sheets, and I wish I knew what I now know back in the past. It would have made my life so much easier!! I always hated data analysis and spreadsheets because they were so fiddly and difficult. Now I have a much better understanding of google sheets and some of the cool tricks that you can do to make using them easier and even enjoyable!

We learnt about Alternating colours, Conditional formating, creating tables and graphs for our data, two different ways of doing this, we learnt about "=sparkline( " which was so cool!

I learnt this week that dealing with Data does not have to be something that is dreaded, something to not be looking forward too. Know that I have some tools and new learning I can look forward to a new and improved way of dealing with data without the added stress. That is the crux of it, it has taken away a lot of the stress that comes with data, and analysis of data.

Analysis of a students Blog

NB: I figured out hw to make this fit to the page by adding a width and height to it, thanks you Marie for that!!

This is a n analysis of a students from Tamaki Primary School, and I have analysed his blog posts for a selection of months in 2020. 

Dyzon @ Tamaki Primary School

This shows that as the year progresses the students number of posts decrease dramatically, with 16 posts in March, dow to 3 posts in December 2020. It would be interesting if I was his teacher and what I would attribute this drop to.

In reflection, for my own class I want to get blogs set up for all my students and put blogs into my literacy programme so that it was a weekly expectation for 1 post a week. And then doing this sort of analysis and trying to understand why a certain trend came about, what were the reasons, was it  for example, COVID = lockdown, illness, loss of engagement, boring, etc.

I really want to get my students blogs set up, this session has just reinforced this need. I want them to post pieces or examples of the mahi and learning and for this to b celebrated.

What I'm not sure on is how to create an authentic audience for them. I don't even know how to go about this at all. Would be interesting to do some research over the next week and find out.

DFI Week 3 Blog Post

Media Week

• What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

• What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

• What did I learn that could be used with my learners?  

• What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

* I learnt that by using creativity, acts as a hook that leads to greater student engagement. If the learning activities are fun and engaging for them then they are also fun and enjoyable for me too.

I learnt that the students need to create something with the knowledge they have gained. Then the knowledge gets embedded when it is used to create something.

* I learned all about Youtube. I set up my own channel and started setting up my playlists. I also figured out how to share these when I am ready and I am really looking forward to using this in my class. I had a very rudimentary understanding of Youtube but now I feel much more capable and prepared to utilise it to a much greater potential than I initially have been using it.

* I am looking forward to using what I learnt with creating Math DLO's. That was challenging but also fun when I completed my own town. I think that the students may find this a fun, interactive and creative alternative to worksheets, book work etc.

* I really enjoyed up skilling with Google Drawing, it will be a great resource to use in the future both professionally and personally. Creating documents that look professional, neat and alternatively fun and exciting depending on the occasion sounds like fun! I can't wait!!

Session 1 Wed 10th Feb 2021 - Core Business 

 DFI Group Email

DFI Session 1 Introduction

Session 1 Slides

Week 1 Blog Post

Pedagogy and Kaupapa

Today we learned about the history behind Manaiakalani and basically it's origin story. It all began in 2006 and has grown exponentially in the past 15 years, with more and more research going in and schools - teachers, principals, facilitators becoming involved. 

I personally found the research and evidence that they presented about the increased achievement of Y4 -6 students in reading and writing, the 2-4 times increase in the National Standards. I found this extremely positive and wet my appetite for implementing these practices within my classroom.

What did I Learn today:

I learned how to Plan - Document - Table - Share, basically how to create something on Google docs, using all the tools that they taught us today, which have all been super useful.

Above is the still unfinished document that I created today. Each of the buttons leads to the planning for each subject. Basically I created my entire weeks planning on 1 document, hopefully I can use this template within my class with my students. Share it with them at the beginning of each week, so they know what they are doing each day, and it is a user friendly platform for them.

It also hopefully makes my workload more manageable, planning has never been my favourite thing, but if I enjoy making things like this, maybe that mind frame can shift. Perhaps it can transform my teaching practice and student engagement.

Tools I found Useful:

Today we learnt about a range of different tools you can use for your drive, some I knew and some I didn't.

1. I learnt how toUse google groups, which is going to make life much easier in the future.

2. New ways of copying and pasting

3. A table of contents, which was big for me! Table of Contents example that I made

4. The most interesting and hopefully useful is the Voice typing, I am hoping to utilise this tool for my reports for one thing!

5. "Explore" which is a new and interesting way of adding images, videos and information to a document. You can search the web and your documents at the same time.

We had numerous opportunities to practice, for example the scavenger hunt, which was actually really fun:

Here is the link to the whole document: 

Scavenger Hunt

Overall

I learnt about some fun, interesting and most importantly useful applications that I can now use for my own work, in personal situations and for my students, basically to work smarter rather than harder. This Session has been invaluable and I can't wait to see what we do next!!

Nau mai, haere mai

Welcome to my professional learning blog.

This is a place where I can reflect on my Teaching as Inquiry goals

and how they link to the Education Council's

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