Session 9: Last session!

We have come to our last DFI session and with that the moment of truth - our google certification exam. 
The last week I have spent some time revising everything we have touched on during the past sessions. Looking back through the different sessions' agendas and slide decks, I  have realised how much we have covered over the last 9 weeks. 

Moving forward, it will be good to stay in the habit of blogging here and checking in on the blogs of the rest of the cohort. I'm not sure how this will go as we also have Appraisal Connector so sometimes it's almost double-handling information and time-consuming. Although I think it might be a good way for me to refer back to the activities and tools I have picked up. 

A big thank you to Gerhard and Dorothy for sharing all your wisdom and tips with us. A big thank you to the rest of the cohort, it's been nice collaborating with you all and hope we all keep in touch!
Enjoy the Xmas break!

Connecting with Manaiakalani

Ubiquitous Learning

How can we provide Rewindable learning content for our learners?
A reminder as I plan the next few weeks and start thinking about next year to ensure that I am providing opportunities for rewindable learning for the students at my school.

What digital learning offers is giving those learners from less advantaged homes the choice about when they want to learn.

Summer Learning Journey
We have signed up to offer this programme for our students. So over the last few weeks of school, it will be important to focus on building their confidence with threaded conversations, building them up to be able to converse with those who will be responding to them in the Summer Learning Journey. So that it almost becomes second nature to them. It will also be important to continue reinforcing the correct blogging and commenting formats.

Session 8 - Devices

Session 8: Devices

Our second to the last session for this cohort. The weeks have flown by! 

When I reflect back on everything we have covered here, it's pretty overwhelming and I do worry about how I will remember everything. Lucky for me everything is rewindable hence why I attach the slide decks for each topic here. I will always have them to refer back to when I need something or have time to look deeper into it.

In today's session, we also had to register for our Google Level 1 Certification Examination. So there is no turning back now, this time next week we will all have passed!

I gained new tips when using Hapara, particularly the "sharing" tab which I had never noticed before but will be so useful when ensuring children are filing their content into the correct folders.

It was good to have the opportunity to work on a Chromebook and iPad, gave me some perspective on what i is like for our learners. I'll definitely think about this more when preparing and sharing work with them.
Explain Everything is an app that I think could be a great tool for the lower ability learners in our syndicate. I need to explore this more and touch base with Miriam, I know the junior school is using it successfully. I can see how it could grow their confidence and would be an easier tool for them to use and navigate.

Connecting with Manaiakalani and Pedagogy

Being Cybersmart

2011 Cybersmart curriculum was created in response to a need for an instructional program that taught children to be smart online. Built by teachers for teachers.

Focusses on positive reinforcement of positive behaviors. 

The main focus for teachers is to learn and use positive language.

Taking the opportunity to teach the learner in different situations and use the correct language to do this.

Think about these fundamentals when planning for next year - building the foundations for their digital journey from the start of the year. 

Smart Learners: Similar to teaching them how to set up their books, set the stands and expectations for their digital devices, eg. rules, navigating Google docs,  voice typing, Google Read and Write etc. Focus on the positive - Kawa of Care - can begin with creating a document and then moving on to creating short videos and animations that model Smart behaviour.

Hapara Teacher Dashboard

Slides

"Sharing" tab - will show all documents which haven't been filed in the correct folders/ Should be cleared weekly, also important to do as a school at the end of the year.

Blogging - can use this tab to check blog posts and also shows drafts. Can also check comments children are making under the comments tab. Comments which are made by anonymous users will be in red.

Manaiakalani 1:1 Journey

Slides

Chromebook devices providing equity - our children should have the same opportunities to use devices as children in more affluent schools.

Digital DIg is an activity that should be completed every year.

iPads - Explain Everything -  looks like an awesome tool that could be good for Kenny, Aarav's etc. I need to spend more time looking at this app and maybe talk to Miriam.

Using Screencastify

http://Cybersmart.manaiakalani.org

Session 7: Computational Thinking

WWW Discussion

Manpreet has created a Maths warm up using Google Forms. She kindly shared it with us and its a fabulous resource.

Google Forms Test

Connecting with Manaiakalani - Empowered

Slides

NZ Treasury has just released encouraging figures about the contribution of Manaiakalni to our communities. For every dollar invested into the children in this program they are seeing a return of $37.

Our children are starting school at 5 years of age with the skills and cognitive ability of a 3 year old.

32 million is the number of words a child needs to be exposed to, our children are starting school without this.

OMGTech - Viv

Slides

Bill Gates list of Top 10 breakthrough Technologies - small group discussion around these breakthrough technologies and if we feel these are going to have an impact on our world and that of our learners. We agreed that yes they will have an impact and that each breakthrough although has its merits and place in society, will also come with their own set of negative impacts. We reflected on past breakthroughs and that they may have originally been introduced as an advancement we have seen the negative impacts some of these have had on our society and world now, eg.plastic bags. 

Game changer documentary - vegan argument. 

Sort Me! A good activity to show children that all data can be sorted using algorithms and debugging. Algorithm activity - could be used in class - has to be an even number of people and half that for the number of rows. 

Skin Vision app - an app where you can load an image of moles and it will advise whether it is low risk or high risk and will even refer you to a specialist if its high risk. 

Who is making the decisions when programming these technologies? Does their set values match ours? eg. Trolley problem moral activity - self drive cars. 

Hour of code

A site with various different coding activities. Coding activities fall under mostly CDDT.

Kodable could be good for Kenny, Aarav etc.

Minecraft good for beginners.

Scratch - schools can receive a license to use Scratch, children will receive their scratch log in with their gmail accounts.

Teacher accounts - can set up class and student accounts to help track progress. 

Zombie Lights - basic electronics activity using basic resources.

Scratch Jr - starter cards which are a good starting point.

Binary code - base 2 numeral system. Working out the binary code for numerals.

Makey Makey - awesome conductive paint lesson on OMGTech wharenui, using conductive paint that children make and connect it to the makey makey to create art.

Instructables has a collection of Makey Makey lessons.

This was an overwhelming session - lots of things out of my comfort zone and experiences. But in saying that a really worthwhile session and I have come away with a lot of activities and ideas to try with the children and myself!

Session 6 - Dealing with Data

Manaiakalani Pedagogy - Visible

Visible Learning SLides

Learning should be visible to the learner all the time.

"Can you see it or can you not?"

John Hattie - Visible Learning

One aspect of visibility he doesn't delve into is: What does visibility look like in a digital world?

Feedback and Feed Forward: an important tool to help accelerate learning for the learner. We are using digital tools to do this too now.

Wanting whanau to be partners in the learning, be a part of the journey - making learning visible to whanau as well.

Learners who are successful are those who can navigate the teacher's mind. They also more often than not had parents who had had success in their educational life. Knew what they had to do to pass - if no one explains that to children how they are supposed to know this.

The Game of School: Steve H 

I do have some thoughts with this: are we then just teaching to the test? Are we encouraging the learners to dig deeper and develop a deeper understanding?

Hapara - parents can access the children's learning through the parents portal.

Manaiakalani Google Class on Air - cameras in the classroom

Blogger: Professional Blogs/Blog posts

As educators we need to be aware that we are not locking parents out of this learning journey - can be done digitally with the use of passwords and logins etc.

Google Forms

Google Forms Slides

You can create different pathways using forms by adding sections.

Settings - remove restrictions in the settings menu.

Presentation - tick shuffle questions order - shuffles the order of questions to ensure that everyone is working on different questions at the same time.

Responses - 

You can set a time for the form to be shut down.

*Select responses destination - responses can be sent to the same spreadsheet for example.

Possible uses for Google Forms:

Pick A Path Stories

I have completed a lot of forms but had never had the opportunity to create my own. A tool with endless possibilities and that could be used in s many different contexts. Shiralee and I spoke about using a form to gather information at the beginning of the year as a Getting to know you form. - set of questions and also"One thing I would like my teacher to know about me is...."Add questions asking about the children's cultures and then placemarking these on mymaps.

It could be also a useful tool to try and engage parents, gathering their ideas and suggestions about how they could be better engaged with classroom and school life, how they could contribute to their childs learning at home more effectively and about keeping informed and permission slips etc.

Google My Maps

My Maps slides

Place Marks - can customise colour and icons, add an image.

Class site - this is who we are - culture in our syndicate/ special places for families

Blog commenting - placemark blogs children have commented on - paste their comment in there too, so will have a map showing a collection of blog commented they have made.

Planning traveling routes - can select different modes of transport to and from destinations.

Use to teach scale - an area of class, then school, community, North Island?

Can share or embed your map into other documents or sites.

This is going to be another valuable tool that we can utilise in class. So many possibilities to be explored!

Google Sheets

Google Sheets Slides

A good tool for holding a collection of data and information.

Super Spreadsheets Trial Document

So you can see all data on one page - Click on column A

RWC 2019 is an authentic event happening at the moment that the children could be using sheets. Upload results etc.

Lots of learning about sheets today. Sheets has always been a tool that I found confusing, so I rarely created sheets and if I do use it it was a format created by someone else. This session was invaluable and although I learned alot I will still need to continue playing around with it.

Blogging

Children can get badges for posts and comments eg. for 50 posts, for 100 posts

Rather than a set blogging commenting time could the children make more reflective posts?

Reading for example - children could write an opinion piece on the text they have been reading.

Have conversational posts on class blogs, asking for their opinions, opening up conversations rather than formal pieces of writing. 

Another session with a whole lot of learning! I have come away with several things I want to try with the children.

We have decided to create a Google form for the children to complete next week about their cultures. We will then use this information to create a mymaps using placemarks to display all the cultures resent in Te Waka Ako.

I would like to use Robyn Anderson's case study in Maths. The children can collect data and analyse information from their personal blogs.  Why tdo hey think they had more posts in one month compared to another or comparing the amount from year to year. It will be an interesting activity for them to do and it would be intriguing to see the children's thoughts around this.

Analysing Blog Data

Session 5 - Leading learning - Enabling Class Sites

Connecting with Manaiakalani - Connected

Schools in Manaiakalani met for competition - sports days, speech competitions etc but they did not 'Connect' about learning.

Tuhi mai Tuhi Atu

A systematic organised way of making connections through blogging across the clusters. Groups are organised so class blogs are visited and commented on, can be done during Literacy sessions. It could be something we could look at being a part of again. Give the children more purpose behind blogging and commenting, be good for them to have people visiting and commenting at their work as we are still having problems with connecting parents and families onto blogs.

Exploring sites - link to slides

It was valuable having the opportunity to explore other class sites. 

Our own syndicate site - no dropdown of reading groups / Writing drop down is not across the top.

* Beginning of the year activity - children to create a tour video of the class site. A good resource for parents and family but will also show their understanding of the class site.

Stepping outside our own likes and preferences and thinking about what will be best for our learners.

Important to plan your page out first and everyone gets to share their ideas and collaborate. Use post-it notes, whiteboards, big sheets of paper etc.

Think about colour sets - can google colour palettes - blue and green colour palettes.

Creating timetables - rewindable video of the steps on the slides.

Explore

This was a time for us to share our own class sites with everyone and for other group members to give us feedback and tips. This was a very useful thing to do and Shiralee and I were able to set some goals of things we would like to work on and change on our Te Waka Ako site. 

Some useful tips we received were around issues such as the layout of our work in the different pages, having a differentiation between the different week's work. This was easily rectified by changing the background colour for the different weeks and adding a simple title such as "Term 4 Week 1" at the top of each section. We went through each subject page and did this. 

We decided that we would like to have a copy of our weekly timetable visible on our homepage. This will be great for the children to check in what they have on for the week. We can also add if any staff are out for things and little reminders for them. This will be a great tool for parents and families to access also.

Shiralee and I added a photo of the three of us to the homepage - we didn't want to have a blurb about each other, we wanted to keep it mainly about the children. We will also add a photo of Shamim and Bjorn, our teacher aides.

Working and exploring through other sites helped to identify a few things we need to put some thought into and work on later...

Children navigating their way through our site - how many times are they having to click to get to their work? Remember the 3 click rule!

We also noticed that some pages didn't have much loaded onto them, eg. Writing. So we need to cater for more opportunities for rewindable learning in this area. Maybe create slideshows around the genre we are working on at the moment for the children to refer back to. We seem to have provided for these opportunities in other areas but not Writing.

Quick Workshops

Image Carousel - on google sites. How to load up images using this. Shiralee and I thought we could use this on our homepage and add a carousel of images of the children from their different activities for that term.

Making site Buttons and Banners- when making them within google sites - one generic button type and you have to use the theme colours and all buttons will have the same colour.

Making buttons and banners using google drawings allows you to be more creative. 

This link Creating Site Buttons will take you to a google drawing with the steps.

Making Banners a useful tip I learned when making banners was resizing the canvas so that it will make it smaller or bigger when you add it to your site.

Don't forget to download as a PNG image!

Overall a really useful session and I feel like we made some practical modifications to our syndicate site.

Session 4 - Collaborate - Sites

Feedback from our week

Google Earth - children visited their country of origin. Compare birds-eye view of Auckland to the islands.
Longitude and Latitude activities - Geometry next week

*Youtube channel - refresher next term. Have a look at it over the holidays.

Kea Kids news - Heihei. On Stuff commenting tool is enabled.

Bouncy Balls - balls display for noise levels.

Connecting with Manaiakalani - Pedagogy and Kaupapa

Slide deck
You can't have sharing without connecting. Sharing is about making a connection.
Sharing has been an important part of us as a society for a long time - in our communities the sharing of food, our stories, the positives, and the negatives.
The medium we are using to share has changed.

2005 - beginning of Social media - ability to share our lives with others with speed and amplification -You tube/ facebook/ Bebo/ My space.

Manaiakalani realised that this was something that could be harnessed to be the 'hook' for learners - "Share' was the hook for children. Now we can reach a global community and audience - know our learners know that they are not limited by their geographical location they can reach out and go beyond.

Doesn't matter what medium we are using it is connecting with an authentic audience which is important.

BLOGGER - the main space chosen for our young people to 'share.'

Resembles it in functionality, not in appearance. A vehicle to help us to teach young people to become responsible digital citizens.

Three check system:
Hapara teacher dashboard/ Teachers email address loaded on each child's blog/latest post loads at the top.
Best way to learn about something is to use it ourself.
Blogger - Gives a context to teach children how to navigate their way through the information highway.

"Learning how to finish" is a vital life skill for our tamariki to have and to develop for life as an adult.
Sharing is an incentive to finish learning - when I have shared then feedback and feed-forward can happen.

Multi-Modal

Slide deck

Emphasing engagement as a Hook. 

"Window Dressing" - we want to display ourselves and our lives at our best.

If you want to engage our learners we have to make it look attractive - hook them in. Our learners are faced with a world full of websites and companies etc which are trying to entice them. 

Our challenge is hooking our tamariki into our digital learning space.

When we have hooked them we want to provide them with multi modal learning opportunities.

When you have children behaviourly engaged because you have hooked them in then we need to engage them cognitively. Change the depth of the content and the way that they think about it and that's where a shift will occur.

Each learner learns in different ways - have to present the learning in multiple ways to suit the different styles of learning. need to present our content in a variety of ways to engage every one of our learners. A universal approach when designing learning.

Exploring Multi-Modal Sites

Had time to explore different examples of multiple text and multi-modal learning sites.

Google Sites

Create a folder to save buttons etc.

Plan out your pages and sub pages. The goal is for learners to get from the landing page and get to their reading tasks in 3 clicks.

Multi Text Database

T shaped Literacy texts

Have a main piece of text, 

A complimentary piece of text - a video, a comic, 

A scaffolding text - an easier piece of text. Easier language or contexts.

A challenging text - a harder piece of text. 

Learner selected text - wheres their choice? a text selected by the learner, eg. book boxes, give a list of websites where they can select a piece of text from. Padlet/Form - what was my learner selected text.

Additional texts.

We had an opportunity to look through an amazing resource, a multi-text database.

Create time!
We had to create a multi-modal site for our learners. This was a very long process! I wanted to create something that I would be able to use with my readers. As a starting point, I used Journal surf to find an article that would be my main text and theme. The next step was to plan out what my site was going to look like, a useful step to keep a track of pages and links which will need to be added while sticking to the 3 click rule.

It took me a while to get my head around how this was going to look and work for me, but I guess the more I work through this process and use it the easier it will become. I do think if I set it up properly it will be an effective way to hook and engage my learners.

Session 3 - Media

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

A good way to practice using Google hangouts -  Practise using Google hangout by introducing it to the children. Put children in groups and they can call each other and find their "Happy' place using google maps and talk about it with their buddy using hangout. Could also use this for writing?

100 word challenge/ Voice typing - Google docs have a new feature. Word count can be displayed on the left hand side so you can see your word count as you type. We are going to introduce voice typing to the children as part of our writing plan next week. We were going to select an image for the children to write about, but after some reflection about the 'create' aspect I thought the children could select their favourite image from ski camp or use one of the Google Earth Voyager stories.

Exploring Google Earth

Google Earth

Introduction to Google Earth. What an amazing tool for Literacy and Numeracy!

Doesn't need to be downloaded as an app anymore. You have the ability to set what your globe will look like by turning on animated cloud cover. Shows cloud cover for the last 24 hours.

Google Earth would be a great source of inspiration for writing. Use "I'm feeling lucky" setting and write about the images. Voyager setting would be great for literacy too - select culture - various voyagers you can select. Each voyage has stories about each area, recordings to listen to hear the language. Can visit schools in different areas, landmarks in different countries.

You can measure distances between places - numeracy avenues you can explore using google earth. Would be useful for teaching scale.

Using Google Earth Engine - Google Earth time lapse - for example looking at deforestation of places like Brazil can lead and open up powerful conversations.

Google Earth Studio for animation and movie making.

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

Connecting with Manaiakalani - "Create"

Slideshow

It's all about the HOOK.

(Kohl 2008) "Creativity is not to be confused with talent, skill or intelligence.It's about thinking, exploring, discovering and imagining."

Creativity is not for preschoolers only - it is for everyone!

Starts with the doing and then the learning follows. Most of us need to do something, explore and discover something before we can learn. 

Disengaged children - be reflective. What 'create' opportunities have we given them? What have we done to hook them? This made me think about the struggling writers, in particular, some of the boys. Why are they disengaged? Have they been given the opportunity to 'create'? How can I hook them in? 

Can I utilise Google Slides with Pick a path stories or animation to hook them in? 

Start with the children "Create" and the learning will emerge from here.

The purpose is for the children to be creating and discovering not just observers. 

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

Chalk n Talk - You tube

You tube channels

Comments and content can't be moderated. 

Create a channel (need to know how to do this) for the purpose of creating a playlist for sharing with our learners. We can create a playlist of videos for students to watch without exposing them to advertisements etc. Add video to a playlist. When you want to share videos with students, open playlist, select share, copy embed code and this can be added to a google slide etc.

Google Draw

Google Draw

Google Slides

remove.bg - removes square backgrounds when you are using images of the internet.

Creating an animation using Google slides.

Can add perspective by changing the size of images, change arrangement - moving image to the front or back. 

New Features in slide - when slides are in present mode click 'B' to turn screen black and 'W' to turn screen white.

Command+Shift+P for a flash pointer when in present mode

Can use Quick time player to record screen and also add sound or music.

Create - Getting creative with slides

Digital Pepeha  Ed tech pepeha presentation

Writing a mihi

Pick a path stories 

My Pepeha

In our create time I chose to work on my digital pepeha. I have worked with the students to create their pepeha but have never had the opportunity to write and create mine.