External Recognition DFI Course - 30th June 2021

Day Nine DFI Course- Ohaeawai School 

Today was the last day of our DFI course. We started the day by reflecting on the last week and the course overall. We shared any questions that we had about our upcoming exam too. After that, we filled in a feedback form about the course overall. It was good to reflect on what I have learnt throughout this journey and what my highlights were. 

Next, we met with Vicki online so she could share about some of the Manaiakalani roles and opportunities that we have access to now that we have completed the DFI course. 

EXAM TIME!!! We had 3 hours to complete the online exam. I found that I had heaps of time left after submitting my exam so I spent this time working on my blog and doing some of my own schoolwork. Thankfully, I passed! It was great to get my results so quickly. I wish we got feedback about which answers we got right and wrong though. 

We spent this afternoon sorting out our blogs and making sure we had labels on all of our posts so we could get our DFI badges from Vicki. Here is my badge below. 

Overall, I really enjoyed doing this DFI course. It was great meeting everyone and learning together. Here is our DFI whanau on Day One and Day Nine.

Devices DFI Course - 23rd June 2021

Day 8 DFI Course - Paparore School 

This is our second to last course day together. We started our day by reflecting on the past week. This reminded me to print out the resources that I have found to use with the Bee bots in class. 

Our first session of the day was with online with Dorothy. The focus was around the word ubiquitous. This session discussed how research shows that decile 1 kids have heard 30 million less spoken words by the time they start school than decile 10 kids. These words can be in any language but the huge amount of words that some children miss out on in those first few years of their lives, affects the amount of learning they have access to. 

Dorothy shared how technology helps us to remove barriers, find solutions to problems, and provide opportunities for new ways of learning. She highlighted the importance of technology and ensuring we don't dismiss it as just a tool. She said it is a tool but not just a tool. Dorothy showed us some apps that students can use on the iPads or Chromebooks to create rewindable learning. She also shared a range of questions for us to reflect on that were based around ubiquitous and rewindable learning. These will be interesting to reflect on in the upcoming weeks as we approach the end of term. 

The next session was around the cybersmart curriculum and how we should focus on teaching the students to make smart decisions with technology as opposed to teaching them how to keep themselves safe. Being Cybersmart is the roof to the whare of Manaiakalani. Vicky talked about how while we need a strong foundation, we also need a strong roof too. She also introduced a systemic approach to teaching the students how to be cybersmart (each term had a particular focus). Vicky also talked about the need to teach students about their digital footprint as this can greatly affect their lives. For example, secondary students need to be aware that what they are sharing online can impact on their job opportunities. 

Our next session was based on the Manaiakalani journey. It began by looking at how Te Tiriti of Waitangi principles are woven through Manaiakalani. Equity and access was a key focus for Manaiakalani when looking at devices that would be used within the programme. We also learnt about the devices that were introduced and used throughout the Manaiakalani journey. 

Next we had the chance to explore using Chromebooks. This was great because I haven't had many opportunities to use these before. We practised using different shortcuts and finding different things on the keyboards.

We then had a session around iPads. The beginning of the session was around teaching the students how to care for the devices. These were things that we have covered in class both in my own lessons and lessons with Whaea Donna (Manaiakalani Facilitator). We had the chance to use the Explain Everything app. We tried using a few tools on the app. This is not an app my school uses but it was good to explore it today. Here is my quick creation below. 

In the afternoon, Vicky talked to us about the exam and what this will look like. We also learnt how to register for the exam. We had the chance to create in either Explain Everything, Screencastify or Hapara Workspace. I explored Hapara and learnt about creating a workspace, giving feedback and submitting assignments. My Hapara workspace wasn't loading properly so I couldn't finish creating but it was great to learn more about Hapara. 

Vicky shared some tips about gadgets we can add to our blog and ways that we can monitor our student blogs too. 

Computational Thinking DFI Course - 16th June 2021

 Day 7 DFI Course - Waitangi Treaty Grounds

We spent our day at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds which was stunning. It was lovely to be on this whenua for the day.

     

As always, we started the day by reflecting on our past week. Then we moved on to our Hapara hot tips session where we learnt about workspaces and how they can be used to store resources and assessments among other things. 

Our next session was around the new digital technologies curriculum. We learnt about the two parts to the digital curriculum; computational thinking for digital technologies, and designing and developing digital outcomes. I had been to a workshop earlier this year based around this new curriculum but honestly haven't revisited it since. So it was good to go back to it and learn more about it. 

One part of this korero was about how teachers need to ensure that we choose digital technologies purposefully as opposed to using things that are just fun or have that novelty factor. This is something I think we have to constantly reflect on because there are so many apps and websites that we come across that look great, but aren't really that effective within our classroom programmes. 

We also saw some examples of learning intentions that could be used that are in line with the progression outcomes of the curriculum. These were great because I can easily incorporate these into my classroom programme, especially when we are using technology like the Bee-bots. 

The next session was a deep dive into the future of tech. We looked at one video that had a lot examples of what technology might look like one day. It's interesting to think about as I think there are many pros and cons. Kerry also highlighted that we often don't know about breakthrough technologies that are happening right now in New Zealand. 

Our next session was based around the Manaiakalani pedagogy focus of empower. We learnt about how this aspect is really about empowering people to take back control of their lives. Part of these slides were about the lives of whanau who struggle with the cost of living and having a limited income. Vicki talked about how students in lower decile schools are coming to school having heard far less spoken words than students in high decile schools and how this affects their schooling. She also talked about how we can have the ping pong type conversations with students through things like blogging.

We then had a session around stop motion. It was great because we had the chance to create our own animations. I worked with Paul and we used the stars for our animation. We spent a bit of time just looking through the buttons and tools within the stop motion site. 

Our next session was around using Scratch. I have used Scratch Jr in the past so it was good to explore this tool further. After lunch we had the opportunity to explore more of Scratch, stop motion animation or the blue bots / bee bots. I saw some awesome examples of how we could create plastic grid mats for the students to use when programming the bee bots. Alicia showed us how we can use the mats for story sequencing and foundation facts in mathematics. We also looked at some resources that we can find online to use with the bee bots too. I made a video of how I programmed the blue bot to move to different characters.

 

Next I created a stop motion animation. I had a play around with the tools on the site, created a title page and added text to the video as well. I enjoyed learning about this today. It was a lovely day of learning. 

Enabling Access - Sites - 9th June 2021

Day 6 DFI Course - Paparore School 

I missed this day as I was sick but I have looked back through the agenda and the resources for this DFI course day. Today's course was all about Google Sites. 

On one of the slide decks, there were some points around the purpose of a learning site and the visual appeal of them. I liked looking through these as I like to understand the purpose behind why we do things and tips around what something could / should look like. As I already have a class site, it's good to think about these things as I could definitely go back and make some changes to mine. 

I did have a look at some of the class sites that were shared with us too. There was a real range in terms of how they look. Some of the sites had things that I couldn't access. This was a good reminder to make sure that my site doesn't have that same issue and that I have shared everything properly. 

I took some time to look at Mandy's blog post and leave a comment. It was great to see that she had made some changes to her own site too. I have definitely done the same after learning more throughout our DFI course. 

Collaborate Sites DFI Course - 2nd June 2021

Day 5 DFI Course - Ohaeawai School 

Our Manaiakalani pedagogy focus for today was around the kaupapa aspect of teaching and learning being visible. The foundation of this idea was, can you see it or can you not? Dorothy shared the idea that sometimes our learners fail in the school system because we have spent so much time hiding the learning journey from the students themselves.

She also asked "what have you done to lay out the learning journey for your students this week?" This was an interesting idea to reflect on. Dorothy talked about how Google Sites became the one stop shop for making teaching and learning visible for everyone. This is something that we would learn more about through the day. Many aspects of this korero linked to the idea that there are no surprises when everything is visible. Dorothy also touched on the research done by John Hattie around visible learning for teachers. 

Our next session was around mutlimodal learning. One key idea that I reflected on most was the need to engage learners and hook them into their learning. I think this is a foundational idea of effective teaching and learning in any class. Differentiation and personalised learning was an important part of this as we know we can't engage all learners in the same way all of the time. 

Kerry talked about how the homepage of a google site is like a shop window. We want the audience to want to explore our sites. We looked at some examples of presenting information in traditional formats vs multimodal formats and how this can drastically change the level of engagement and student agency. 

We had a chance to explore some different google sites from a range of year levels. Some of the sites were really aesthetically pleasing and it made me want to make some changes to my own class site. 

Our next session was about creating a google site from scratch. I have already created one for my class so I have played around with this over the past year. It was a great refresher on how to create a site and what to keep in mind when doing so. Vicky also recapped the importance of creating a google site that entices your audience to want to look more at your site.

We then looked at a multi text database which showed content around T shaped literacy. This was interesting because I have heard this mentioned many times since moving to the Far North, but I didn't have any knowledge around what this actually was. We had a slide deck available that we could look at which outlined the theory behind T shaped literacy. We explored some of the themes on the database and chose one that we wanted to create a multi modal site to be based on. 

We planned our site either on paper or on Jamboard. Here is my initial layout plan for my site. The layout changed a lot when I actually started making my site. 

I found some stories and articles that children could read, watch or listen to and added them to my site. I tried to ensure that my site was in line with the T shaped literacy theory and had main, complimentary, scaffolding and challenging texts. 

Here is the link to my multimodal site