Final DFI Session

 Google Educator Level 1 exam.....done! That was an exercise in patience and problem solving. Highlighted aspects of google that I thought I had mastered but will need to go back and revisit.. e.g google classroom. This makes one stop and reflect on how we assess our students...exams, pre/post tests etc, nice to know that this is just one very small tool used to take snapshots of our students learning. 😎

What a great learning journey this has been personally and I am very grateful for the opportunity to be able to upskill and build on prior knowledge, collaborate with a wide variety of educators from New Entrant to High School and to connect with other educators from across the spectrum. Viewing and responding to blogs as well as websites has inspired and activated positive change in my teaching practice. My goal is to have more rewindable learning in maths and literacy up on the Hub website as well as making the learning visible, I share my visuals and clips with the class, next step is to put this onto the website. 

Not sure where I will go from here except to consolidate my learning thus far through to the end of the year and look at some other options to further my skills i.e apple learning centre or Hapara Champion

Computational Thinking

 This final DFI session focussed on the new Digital Technologies in particular computational thinking. This was very timely as part of our school P.D has been to work with the facilitators of the new Digital Technologies Curriculum aligning the new curriculum to our hub inquiry and learning programmes. As part of this, we are investigating using Minecraft Educational to use term 4 as part of our building relationships focus. I found the conversation around the ethics and morals of digital technologies very interesting, the spotlight being put on our biases, known or otherwise when designing programmes. 

The chance to rewind learning over the last 7 weeks of intensive learning highlighted what I need to revisit and where I have 'mastered' certain aspects of this portion of the DFI.

Had fun with the minecraft coding practice, so getting my head around that. Scratch was just that...scratching my head, will need lots more time to get the hang of this. So much to learn and time poor. 

Devices

New learning today Explain Everything! Was able to complete this Explain Everything. Not sure if I would use this as our students in the hub use chromebooks and not ipads. Looking at other school websites is inspiring as always, new ideas and confirms that I am on the right track with my own hubs website.

I found the Hapara google meet was full of new applications such as the pause screen (can't wait to try this one!) as well as sending an email to the student who is on task/off task i.e. are they on the right site...right place, right time👀. Yes, your learning is visible guys. I will need to go back and resort my groups as they are a little out of date, this makes it so much easier to 

Screencastify is something I have used before but not in a while so it was useful to go back and work through this. I am not one of those people who can just chat away and record at the same time. I do need to have a script to work from so this takes a little added time when doing a screencastify. My goal is to use this more, especially as part of the rewindable learning and visible learning for my learners. It is a bit of a toss up using recording on my slides or screencastify. I am sure I will sus this out in time. 

Thanks for the Google Certified Educator Checklist Level 1 as I will be checking this out to see how much I have actually absorbed and taken on board. I did use google notes today down the side of my docs as must do's, can waits and hope to's, I think I will using this everyday from now on.....just have to get into the habit of opening up the notes each time.

Enabling Access to Sites

Having missed last weeks session I was playing catch up with the sites portion of the DFI sessions. I started my Hubs learning site at the beginning of the year and had kept it pretty basic with link to our seesaw blog, intoducing the teachers and putting in the newsletter and then along came the lockdown. This fastforwarded the content on the site as it became our primary way of sharing the learning with students and whanau. After today's session I can design and add buttons, link learning from the home page to the other links in the site and it is now a lot more user friendly for students and whanau. I will need to get some student feedback as to the improvements and then move from there. Looking at the websites of other classrooms/hubs and critiquing  was very helpful and inspiring, everyone happy to share their learning journey without being 'precious' about where they are at. This type of P.D to learn from the 'experts' as well as others on the course over a term is something I have only experienced a handful of times in my long teaching career. Most courses are one and done or you have to take a years leave/ attend night courses over a long period of time. To have the time to learn, consoldiate that learning and then reflect has been personally invaluable. Hey isn't that Learn, Create, Share? 

I am pretty proud of what I have been able to achieve in the time given to change things around and am looking forward to sharing with the students 'the new look' front page. Their feedback will guide next steps. Finally sorted out drawing and how to elimante the edges of pictures so the final result is a cleaner look. 

Moving forward, I will include real time learning rather than just having rewindable learning, which is what most content is at present. Looking at how other teachers present their visible learning will provide with best practice, but looking forward to having a play.

Spreadsheets and Google Form

Kia ora 

Today's session required more brain power as we covered google forms, google maps and spreadsheets. I have filled in google forms so this was a familiar format, however making one of my own..... was fun and purposeful as I construct one as an assessment tool for fractions. Lots of learning and revisiting required for this. 😅

Google maps is a tool I have never used so all new learning. Not sure when and how I would use this but the group have come up with some great applications re measurement for my students so looking forward to having a go at this. I played around with on of my favourite places to travel. 

Google sheets is again something I have played with so was familiar with some of the applications, however I haven't constructed one in a while so I have had fun applying this learning to something practical for me ... as an assessment tracking tool. 

 I am pretty proud of my professional looking pie chart of a student's blog posts over time. I have also made my first blog comment on a course members blog, her blog post was awesome so will make the time to review others as well.

Annnnnd here is my first ever gif. Who knew?

The Media and It's Uses

Another packed session to pick my way through. We started with a focus on the "Create" part of the Manaikalani pedagogy. Kindergartens are all about the creating and somewhere along the learning journey it becomes less obvious in our teaching practice. This has really challenged my thinking about my own teaching practice. Where do I provide opportunities for purposeful, scaffolded and differentiated creative responses for my students to express what they have learned are learning? Hmmm! 😔

 

Drawing was an area that really opened my eyes to new functions that I hadn't explored before. My efforts and learning are reflected in the All About Me post on the left side of my blog. Feeling confident using this creative tool and will endeavour to use it more.  😃

The Youtube part of this session has been a 'game changer' for me. I have a couple of high needs students who have their own ipad (these guys not ready for a chromebook). I have put together some a slide show for each with you tube links for learning sites, listening to stories and you tube clips that reflect their interests. The issue I had with this is that the students once they clicked on the you tube clip could then access a variety of other similar clips. Using this tool AWESOME. Will be using this all the time now for my embedded you tube clips. 

Safe YouTube

Can now put in a voice recording to my slides so this will certainly help with the rewindable learning for my students. Picked up a neat trick from the group for children recording their own voices without picking up the voices and sounds of others.... speak inside a cube! Thanks guys.

2nd DFI Session

The reflections shared at the start of todays session was helpful as others picked up on some of the things that I was still ruminating over i.e. starring in my google drive the folders and documents I use regularly is something that I will now be using and doing on a regular basis.

Another full on session covering teacher dashboard, something I use in class at present to monitor the students online learning and their creates in their learning folders. 

Hadn't done a google meet for a while (not since the lockdown), so using the calendar to invite someone into a google meet was an excellent refresher as I had forgotten how to link someone in. Yep, if you don't use it you loose it. The first video had the first 4 minutes or so being a bit of a giggle fest as I ended up with a split screen and couldn't find my way back to the blog I was reflecting on. Got there in the end by posting this trimmed version so this was an exciting learning journey for myself. 

The gmail part of todays session was able to allow me time to tidy up the large amount of emails that had accumulated over the last month or so and to label and organise the important ones. The delay for send emails was a revelation so have changed that in my settings. 

The Deep Dive into tabs was another highlight this session either just using the icons or shortening the labels beside the icons annnnndd I learnt how to split my screen! 

I have greatly appreciated this opportunity to have some one on one support from the other participants and of course the lead teachers.