9 DFI 29/06/21

Day 9: Last Day

Today was the last day of our course. I spent a lot of the morning updating my class website. I have reflected on the feedback that was given to me a few weeks ago and I have included lots more pictures and buttons. I have re-formatted my reading response sheets and added them up onto my class website as well. I watched Dr Rebecca Jesson present a talk on T-Shaped literacy. It was very informative. I loved the 5 plus a day concept (where there are 5 opportunities given to children each day to read) during the day.

Slideshow from the T-Literacy Dr Rebecca Jesson talk

Where to next: Teach more chrome shortcuts to my children. Make some multi-modal resources for different topics. Continue to update my website with content. Continue to get children to show their learning on their blogs. 

Being on this course has allowed me to streamline some of my planning. It has increased my confidence with all of the associated Google Applications that we currently use. I have become far more aware how the digital world is currently impacting technology through the Trailblazers Digital Technology Workshop. It is both scary and exciting at the same time.

8 DFI 22/06/2020 -Empowerment- Money - Financial literacy

Empowerment 

Part of feeling empowered is being able to have choice. If you have enough money to meet your basic needs then you have choice. Therefore, financial literacy is so so so important. 

Financial Literacy Resources

-Mr Money Mustache - This blog absolutely changed my life. Read all the posts since the beginning

of time.(American based-very applicable for NZ)

-Mary Holm (One of NZ’s greatest finance commenters, has lots of free content with Radio NZ)

-The Happy Saver - Great down to earth NZ based Website and Podcast with content about how

the everyday NZer deals with money. Lots of great personal money stories.

-The Barefoot Investor Book (Adults) -Australian focus but if you go to the Happy Saver - Website,

Ruth the author of the website has made all the resources NZ applicable.

This book should be available to loan at your local library but be aware it is very popular. 

-The Barefoot Investor for Families Book (Children)-Great resource to use for adults to teach children

about money. This book should be available to loan at your local library but be aware it is very popular. 

-Sorted NZ -Sorted offers New Zealanders free, impartial information & calculators to help manage

money throughout life. 

 - Money Hub - A journalistic online resource with the aim of providing New Zealanders with the best

money guides, tips and tools.

-Kiwi Mustachians - NZ Facebook Group who share a wealth of information regards to

budgeting/investing/cheap companies (power/internet), long lasting product recommendations 

-The Simple Path to Wealth (J L Collins Stock Series) -Everything you need to know

about how a stock market works and what to invest in.  

-Deep dish -Financial literacy retire early blog website. Good website about how to be frugal

and save money. 

-Power Switch - Compare NZ power companies

-Dave Ramsey Podcasts - American based financial commentator

(Agency: Manaikalani ran into trouble when they talked about agency, especially with the general public as they had a really negative view on the word agency. Eg. Social Services Agency ect. Agency the word has now been exchanged with empowerment. Empowerment means choice).  

We completed a Trailblazers Digital Technology Workshop today. We learnt a lot about what some emerging companies are doing around the world with technology. We also unpacked the concept of 'Computational thinking'  (Coding information) Making processes to understand problems and formulate solutions. 

Wisk's Cora -Autonomous flying plane that carries passengers -Air NZ has won the rights to it. The fight to the ownership rights to this plane was apparently between Air NZ and Uber. 

Starlink (Internet) - Space - Nobody owns it and if you pretty much have lots of money you can send things into space. This is an initiative by Elon Musk to spread cheap internet throughout the world.

Soul (NZ company)- Made a robotic baby that learns though AI.

Waikato University - Have been researching AI for years. Great hub in NZ. NZ great facility to test AI because of size of country and population. 

Dorothy talked about the 'living/working poor'. House prices in the main cities of NZ are too expensive. Rents are increasing. Paying for power is extremely expensive. Rubbish (Auckland City Council allegedly charge around $100 per trailer load of rubbish).

Twinery.org : Great resource for making 'Pick a path stories'.

7 DFI 15/06/21

 Learning:

Rewindable learning- Removing the traditional 9.00am till 3.00pm model and allowing learners to access their learning anywhere and anytime. One great aspect is that it allows learners to progress through learning activities at their own pace. As was evident in 2020, having access to technology has the influence to positively change circumstances. It is more than 'just' a tool.

Below are some apps to help you create rewindable learning:

  Chromebooks Apps

• Screencastify

• WeVideo

• Pixiclip

• Explain Everything

• Movenote

• FlipGrid

• We video

• Spark Adobe

Mobile phones / iPads Apps

• Showme

• Explain Everything

• Quicktime - make a movie on Mac

Although I was not at the course today, I found out by reading a number of Blogs that Chromebooks tolerate lots more abuse than an Ipad.

Cybersmart Curriculum-extremely valuable and needs to be at the foundation of all schools teaching practices if digital technology is being used in the classroom. I think children like Ilisa said, need to be really aware of the content they upload online. In todays world, the digital footprint that you leave is a very powerful tool (both good and bad).

Manaiakalani 1:1 Journey -Great to make sure that all students in NZ have access to learning - leveling up the playing field.

Most of the rewindable learning that I have conducted at Belfast has been done via Screencastify.

-Great for teaching a particular math's strategy. Over lockdown, I developed videos modelling particular strategies and sent them out to my class.

-I have narrated a storytelling story and had it uploaded to a class website.

-I have supported students to make their own 'Weather news story' based on a storytelling story we did.

Had I been able to attend todays session, I would have really loved having a play around with the apps mentioned on the Ipad. At year 5/6 at Belfast we predominately use Chromebooks.

6 DFI 8/06/21

 Learning: 

Connected - Very difficult if we do not embrace visibility.  We all have our own networks, some online and some not. It's great when connections are systematically organised from a work perspective. The most powerful connections occur when both sides of the connection open up and share some of themselves. School wide links are shared for each schools specific website to help teachers and educators connect with one another. 

Our role and supporting children online - make it positive (Eg. Remember the old drink driving adds that were on TV- They showed people doing the wrong thing then ending up in a crash (apparently drink driving stats went up) - Recently they have flipped drink driving adds around and they now focus on the positives eg. Showing someone drinking then making good a choice to sleep at their mates house instead of driving home. 

Leading learning using Google Sites : 

SAMR (model) - Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition

The affordances of learn/create/share (engagement, teaching conversations, cognitive challenge, visibility and scaffolding). 

Websites: What audience is the site directed at? Is it for the students or the parents or both. 

How not to reinvent the wheel- Today, I decided I would like to update my the reading portion of my website. I wanted to look for more independent activities/follow up activities that the children could work on after they go through a guided reading lesson with the teacher. I had a research around and I came across Team 4's website at Point England School in Auckland. I really enjoyed the detail and the look of their reading activities. I made contact with one of the teachers their to see I could make a copy of these resources and upload them to my class website. Sarah one of the teachers replied very quickly and said she was more than happy for me to use these as resources for my classroom. 

Team 4 at Point England School are legends. Ka pai to mahi. 

The resources can be viewed here on my class website: R16 Class Website (Reading activities)

5 DFI 1/06/2021

Learning- 

Visible - Can you see it or not? - Is learning visible to whanau/our colleagues - schooling in the past has been a mystery. In the past learning has been 'a bit of a maze'. Websites now repurpose the olden day blackboard.   Visibility encompasses the 3 A's- Accessible, Availability and Advance. Is school an open learning environment (Is learning able to be accessed easily?) 

Learning has to be multi modal - What engages one learner might not engage another learner. I love the old teaching quote that you 'cannot get a fish to climb a tree'. 

Hapara- Log in to the sharing tab, then go to the unshared tab. This will show you how many documents that children need to allocate to the correct folders eg. Literacy, numeracy. The documents that come up are currently unallocated. It is recommended to do this once or twice a week to keep your drive clean. 

We created a website today collaboratively. Initially, we were split up into age levels that we taught. Our group decided to do a one page website on Financial Literacy.  Information was gathered from wide range of sources. The next task was to use this information and individually create our own one page website. The website that I created can be found here.

One tool that I will take back into my classroom will be teaching the children how to navigate their drives and sort their folders. I am excited now that I have a easy way to scrutinize how clean their drives are via Hapara. 

I have also made amendments to my class website adding a number of resources that are going to further support their learning.  

4 DFI -25/05/21

 Learning:

Sharing within schools is constrained by time, places and people. Authenticity of the audience is at the heart of sharing- an authentic audience according to Manaikalani is people who have the power to move on. 

Blogger: Tool to show people how to teach - resembles spaces our young learners want to be on. Similar to learning to drive. When you learn to drive a car you don't learn in a flash Ferrari most often you learn in an old/nana car. Same thing applies for Blogger. One big advantage of Blogger is owned by Google. 

Google Forms: Great to make surveys to get feedback from your class. You can also make quiz's. Good to make required fields so that students do not skip questions. You can import data that you have collected from a specific Google Form to a Google Map and add it in for example if you have a question about which is your dream destination to visit. 

Google Maps: Great to show bicycle routes. You can add multiple layers with different information. Maths - could use maps to work out the perimeter and the area. 

Google Sheets: Google translate was a good function. Once you have a data set and you select the data you want to make a chart on. You can go down to the bottom right corner and click the 'explore' button. This will bring up the recommended graphs that will look best for the data you are wanting to chart. Filter- Once you select the data that you want go up to the top right corner and click on the funnel icon. When that pops up go into your headings and filter accordingly. 

Blogging- Writing a quality blog

3 DFI-18/05/21

Day 3- Learning:

Hapara session- How to filter groups -can create a media folder to keep an eye on content students are creating. 

Creativity (Under the learn/create/share) philosophy  - Great NZ based documentary (The Heart of the Matter Documentary) -Tomorrow Schools, National Standards are some of the ways stated in NZ that have allegedly killed/diminished creativity in schools) - 'We need to return to our roots' was common thread when Dorothy spoke this morning- Start with 'create' so learning emerges and there is a child centred focus. In 'creating' a child gains purpose- Sir Ken Robinson (How Schools Kill Creativity, is another great doco). Sight, sound and motion - How important it is in advertising and how it relates to creativity- adds a greater connection for the user (Good to relay to our students about how to connect to their audience).  

You Tube Channel session- Have videos marked as unlisted (You have to give people the link-suggested) - Don't go down the public route. Turn commenting off on you videos. Think about the channel name. Best way to share videos is via a blog or a site. Ensure that children do not have their own You Tube channels when using their school accounts. There a legal issues associated with this. 

Media session- A tripod is great to help stabilise the camera when recording learning (could be a cup, box ect) is a must. Audio - Obviously need to have somewhere quiet to record it. Camera should mostly be on landscape mode. Be aware of lighting (window- make shadows on screens). If students are filming using laptops you can just tilt the screen.  Screencastify is a really great tool for rewindable learning. Zac Moran 2019 has a really good tips via videos on how to use cameras ect. 

Google Slides session- Remember to use only 2 fonts maximum so that your slides are not to busy. Keep in mind your audience. When you create slides for your learners, make sure you drag the most recent slide to the top so it is easiest to create for your learners.  Google Slides are awesome for getting your kids to make animations. Some kids have completed approx 1000 slides. Very engaging. If you are doing an animation, after you create your first slide you can duplicate it by hitting 'command D'. Make sure that when you have positioned all the images in the slide the way you want them go to 'arrange' then hit 'group'. 

Making interesting Google Slides-start off be making a interesting background- For example type in the search bar 'Floor and wall.png' - putting the .png at the end will make the background of the image you are wanting to select transparent. Then you can add say a plant, rug, tv, couch ect.  

Unsplash.com - beautiful pictures that are free to use 

DFI was very interesting online today. I definitely became more familiar with using Google Meet. 

2 DFI -11/05/2021

Day 2 - Learning:

Google Keep- The functions that really appealed to me were the fact that you could use them as a 'checklist' and adapt it accordingly for groceries. I like the fact that it can be used on you phone too and the ability of the 'app' to add people like my wife. I thought it was interesting if you turn on your location services and you apply a particular setting, you can actually get notified of the note when you drive past the location like the supermarket. I also liked the picture text grab tool, very handy for things like close reading activities. 

Google Meet- It was interesting to learn how to share your screen so that everyone else could see what you were looking at and so you could talk to it. I liked the fact that it automatically mutes your microphone when there is over a certain number of people on the call. I found it easiest to set up the Google Meet via Google Calendar. What was neat was that I could also add a location as well. The raising hand signal was also helpful. I did get kicked off the 'meet' on a couple of occasions which was annoying. 

Google Mail- I loved being able to categorize my email into 3 folders (Primary/Social and Promotional) and my email then applying this automatically. 

Taming tabs- I found this useful especially the 'pinning' aspect of it . One Tab was a good extension for bringing all your tabs into one place and then also restoring tabs. Could be useful when managing reading groups ect.

Google Calendar- I liked the appointment slots and the colour coding that you could format the slots with.

How to embed a video on your blog:

-First change your settings in share and make sure 'anyone with the link can view'

-Double click on the video

-Next go to the 3 dots and go 'open in a new window'.

-Next go back to the 3 dots and hit 'embedd item' and when the box comes up copy that text.

Then go to your blog and hit the pencil drop down in the top left corner and go to the HTML view and then paste the text you copied in there. Go back to the compose view and voila. 

Dialogue examples meme model for students

 

1 DFI - 4/05/21

Day 1- Learning:

What a fantastic start to the DFI course.

Today I learnt that Manaiakalani is a Hawaiian name given to a group of budding educators who wanted to bring digital technology to children in schools in NZ no matter the decile. Essentially breaking down barriers. I found it interesting that external help setting up the programme was sourced from educators who had done something similar in Maine in the USA. However, their big tip to the original Maaiakalani founders was that they needed to find some way to be able to get families to be able to contribute money towards devices.

The first session has helped me gain confidence with using Google Docs, Google Drive and Blogger.

Short cuts I found useful were:

Swap between tabs- control + #

Shift z- will allow you to save it into a folder

Control shift v- to bring through paste without formatting

Control shift b- bring book mark bar down or to remove it

Remove bg- https://www.remove.bg/ (Great website for removing background from your pictures)

Google Docs - Use explore to add images that don't have copyright to your work. It was also interesting to add subheadings then access them quickly via the table of contents. Would be beneficial if children in my class are writing a book and these sub headings could be chapter names. 

Remove boarders using Google Tables by setting the table colour the same as your page colour.

If you want to bring your folders in your drive to the top of your drive. Label the most important one with an astrix which will bring it all the way to the top.