Session One: Digital Fluency Intensive

Today was the first session of the Digital Fluency Intensive for Cohort 3 2019. I was feeling a little bit apprehensive but I  thouroughly enjoyed the day and have come away with ALOT of ideas and new things to try!

It was interesting to learn the background of Manaiakalani and the origins of Learn, Create, Share.  It was encouraging to see the shifts in achievement levels of our students and to recognise the teachers and people in the communities who have worked hard to drive this initiative.

My biggest takeaway for today was learning all the different ways to utilise Google docs and it's tools more effectively.
I learned how to use a table of contents and headings in documents and how this could be used to track the children's learning. ( underlining is so last Millenium!) Links for each heading can be shared so you can straight to a certain part of a document. In our Create session of the day, we had to create a visual resource using google docs. I had never thought of using a table to keep text and images from scattering all over the page. Also using the "Explore" button to find images and adding *png for better quality images.

We also touched on using Chrome and Google Drive effectively and little tips to use them more efficiently. From learning to organise and move folders without changing the sharing settings, little shortcuts and to the need to have different profiles for work and personal accounts.
Voice typing is a tool that I think we could use in Te Waka Ako, especially to motivate some of the boys in Literacy. Gerhard's idea of using paper cups with the bottoms cut out is fabulous. This can be used by the children as a microphone.

As I learned today from exploring and using these tools myself, we need to give the children time and allow them to master using these tools effectively. The same way we spent time teaching them to set out their exercise books correctly or practicing handwriting, the same emphasis needs to be given to mastering their skills when using these digital tools.