Digital Fluency Intensive Session 9 TEST TIME!!

Great to hear how people are using different google sites and apps in their classrooms. Many cool ideas that we could put into play in our syndicate.

Ubiquitous

Link to Slideshow

Anytime - personal lives can be interwoven with our learning and working lives.
Anywhere - can be offline as well as online so beneficial to work at the optimum times for ourselves.
Any pace - rewindable learning. An area I need to work on for the students in our ILE. I have used this over the last 8 weeks of the course and know that many things I have forgotten already
                                                                                                        because I haven't used them, so
                                                                                                        giving this to students is important.

This is invaluable for students who don't have the conversation benefits of middle class children - 30 million words.

Summer Learning Journey. 
Will talk to students that over the summer break they only need to go online 3 times a week to read, do the activity related, blog it and comment on someone else's blog. Will make Friday lessons where we will pair up students each week and they need to complete a reading task, do an activity, blog it by themselves without being checked, then comment on each others blog post with a full comment and then reply to those comments.   

Google Test 
Hardcore. Didn't pass. Too slow even though I felt I was working 'fast for me'. Frustrating to not quite get there. Maybe I will sit again. Frustrating because I know I have learnt a heap about navigation of the different google sites and systems over the nine weeks in the course. and feel much more confident to use them, but know that I read slow and work slow, so maybe doing it again when I know what is coming up will mean success.

Moving forward I'm not 100% sure how I will use this blog as I also need to enter posts into our school Interlead Appraisal Connector Site. Fitting everything in can be a challenge. However with a sabbatical next year it may be good to connect to others through a blog about the areas of research I will be looking into.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
                                                                                 

Digital Fluency Intensive Session 8

Nearing the end of the course it is interesting to look back and see what I have used and learnt over the last 7 sessions. Over this week we implemented a site I created out of learning from the course. This site had students Creating Stuff with all of our 75 Senior Syndicate students, over 4 2 hour morning sessions. Students had 9 creative tasks to make and then record in some way. From there they completed a slide on a slideshow that was connected and had some correlating work and reflection space. It has been very interesting watching the differing responses to this change in literacy delivery. Many students were very enthusiastic and engagement was high in the creative part of the activity. Completing the written element was more challenging, not in content, but because students wanted to then move on to the next creating activity.
link: https://sites.google.com/waikowhai.school.nz/creating-stuff/home 

In today's session revisiting cybersmart was really valuable and has made us consider how we set the year up in 2020.

Cybersmart 
Never having bad behaviour on a screen - bullying reinforces the bad behaviour, even if the message afterwards is positive and 'don't do this'.  Positive framing gives students what to do, not what not to do. This came up in our film making last year where one was created with a student being bullied. We felt uncomfortable with this as the message at the end was not very strong, but didn't link it to this idea.  An interesting concept around examples of good behaviour being enacted by the targeted child and then watched for 7 days changing severe bad behaviour.

Safety online
It is important to learn the language of positive messaging.
Cybersmart has a positive angle which was developed by teachers for teachers over many years to keep our students safe. Now this terminology is in a Cybersmart Week - first week of Term 4 instead of Net safe, which has negative angle or negative framing of what students are doing online.
Manaiakalani are also looking at Smart Wellbeing or Hauora to either add to or reconfigure categories so this sits inside one of the other categories. This is interesting as our whole school focus this year has been Hauora-Wellbeing and it is popping up more and more.
Overall, I feel we need to build in Cybersmart lessons with more consistency next year. We do these but need a more focused plan to cover the elements we want the kids to be learning.
Smart Learners - Kawa of Care - could be another treaty they sign for our wall and then make videos of what each element looks like in a positive framing. Make it fun, but the positive way to do stuff not the negative way to do things.
Smart Footprint -
Smart Relationships -
For our creative task we used screencastify to investigate some of these categories and elements withing that we could use in our schools. I completed a couple below.
Smart Media



Smart Relationships - Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu



Hapara Dashboard
This was an interesting session of revisiting Hapara and the many elements or functions within it. Although I use the basics regularly I need to relook at all the features and possibilities again and give myself reminders to check in to different parts or use them with the students. Things like the
commenting tab - check daily to see if any anonymous comments left as these are in red.
Digital Devices 
Teachers need to use digital devices that they have in classes. Dis-empowering if we don't know the experience the students are having. This was very evident as I have not really used a chromebook myself even though this is the 3rd year my students have had them!! I was slow and confused! I will spend more time on them in the future. I noticed with the ipad use, although I have used an ipad much more than the chromebook in the past, when it came to a new system I was again slow at navigating it. This was good learning for what we put our students through.

Digital Fluency Intensive Session 7

Session 7 is...
Looking at the Computational Thinking Curriculum and all it entails with Digital Technologies in the future was pretty mind blowing. Looking at the breakthrough technologies scary, exciting, thought provoking. There were so many things touched on and to explore at a later date it was hard to keep up and became overwhelming. (This is how kids must feel sometimes!!) Overall I get that this is the future for our tamariki and even if I don't get it, I need to work out how to feed it in to their learning so will go away and relook at items on different days.
I am putting the links to the slideshows as so many notes on them.
Empowerment.

LINK

"A computer is NOT just a tool" was a change in conversation from what I have heard in the past. The reasons are tenfold but comes down to empowerment that the access of being online gives families and people, and I get that totally. I can also understand how advantaged children with 32million words are
at an advantage when turning 5 as see the impact the lack of conversation has on the students through our school.

Look at Later
Nigel Latta videos are about empowerment in Manaiakalani are attached and will be interesting to watch.
32 million words - researchers - clothes - middle class look up https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/tyc/feb2014/the-word-gap

  On the other side of this access, one of the Discussion points first up, was talking about and considering the access students have to so much online. Looking at ages for social media - especially youtube accounts. In NZ it is 18years as need to be able to stand up in court and answer to the actions they take. Going back to our Year 5/6 classes we will create new work in Cybersmart covering these again and then Blog  about it over the next couple of weeks, then have the students resend their blog link to parents so it is something they see too hopefully. A way of connecting to the community but possibly look at consultation with community in other ways too.

Sort Me 

Digital Technologies Curriculum - Creating with technologies.
Really enjoyed the Sort Me activity that showed algorithm understanding and debugging examples. Will use this template (like picture) in Maths warmups as well. If want it bigger can go to 10 people 5 rows of full 5 squares, then numbering off. Looking at Values and Morals was really interesting and again thought provoking. The programming of self driving cars - biased as have the values of the programmers in them. Who are they? Do we align with their values and morals?   The cars make decisions on what they have been programmed for.  This wasn't even something I had considered.

Our ideas on our values and morals and the values employers want. 

These are notes of things I need to follow up on!!!
Trailblazers Workshop Website things to look at....
Charity to empower children to use technology. Teaches children to innovate.  https://omgtech.co.nz/
Minority Report Author. Phillip K. Dick Wrote science fiction  that has come about.
10 breakthrough technologies - Bill Gates - detail in Trailblazer website
Game Changers Doc - is it bullshit?  sensationalised or factual? Vegan argument.  Netflix
Paint me a picture - makey makey with conductive paint - lesson plan on site.
Scratch - create a teacher page as can enter class - check it out as it is so useful to teach so many parts of computational thinking would good to set up whole school - kids have scratch login.
Hour of Code  also important for teaching Computational thinking.

Digital Fluency Intensive Session 6

Session 6 has rolled around quickly and was packed with so many practical sections that could be applied to classroom and schoolwide learning or data collection. I used the blog to keep a tab of what I want to use them for and what we need to / or could update.

Visible Learning Visible Kaupapa
Can you see it or can you not?
Learners getting feedback is the ultimate tool for progress to be accelerated, feedback / feed forward. Digital tools now are being used for this and this is significant because immediate responses become real time reporting and connection. Whanau need to be partners in this learning journey, opening up and making this visible to parents, they can feel empowered with helping their children. Getting whanau to engage is an area we are still trying to improve. Student work is seldom commented on by their immediate community.
(As an aside I feel upping our 'teaching marking' and the checking of work needs to be more of a priority.)
Having expectations that they will learn like our parents expected us to learn makes a difference to what they produce I believe.  For those of us who could get inside the teachers mind, we were advantaged in the learning process. Whereas students who can't get into the teachers mind are disadvantaged.

Link

The Game of School - Steve Hargadon   - has a website that looks at what students need to know to participate fully and fairly at school. (His opinions) This is a website I will look at in more depth to see if I agree with the content. The brief search I did do showed arguments for and against what he is saying.  Does this relate to teaching to the test?

Change mindset about visible learning. How do we put it in one place? Class site and then blogging.  Google class on air - have a look at these teachers lessons to see how these teachers work.  Be careful about locking parents out of the students learning even more now digital learning is intrenched and more sophisticated.

Google Forms
When creating google forms it is good to use a range of different question / answer types. There is an opportunity to create different pathways based on an answer to a given question. This would be good to set up to collect data for the EOTC and PE/Health reports that are needed for the school. Creating forms for students, then separate ones for parents and staff.

Google Maps 
This tool looks great and I can see us using in Maths and Inquiry a lot. Plotting shapes onto a map to find the square meterage of an area in comparison to another area. Or look at distances using line tools. Personally I love the ideas of using it to plot a driving or cycling trip around NZ or overseas.

Google Sheets
The ability for collaboration in using google sheets makes it a highly valuable tool.
This session was invalable. I definitely had an old XL mindset around the use of it that I didn't even know I had! I can see many places that we could use this to streamline data across the school more. Use for Syndicate and Management Minutes - tabs for weeks. Creating a class names spreadsheet for all data to be entered over the year.
Cells can be locked down so others can't delete or destroy it.

Blogging and Blog Data Case Studies
A students blog allows a window into many different aspects of the students learning journey. By looking at students blogs we can see where they are at. A good idea to do in the summer holidays for the coming years students.

Spreadsheet Link

Looking at other students blogs to see the volume of blogs they create was interesting. We post less blog posts by far with our students as we insist on a full explanation of the task or event to go along with the post. This is done on Friday morning. We could add into our lessons more opportunities for students to blog their learning when they finish a task in one of the curriculum subjects, Reading crossover class for instance.
     This is a graph of the volume of posts a student called         Tara created over a 4 year period. The spikes in 2017           and 2018 were when she participated in the Summer           Learning Journey. In 2019 she has blogged with far greater consistency. 
     Lots of these posts are short responses to a learning and something 
     we need to look at, at Waikowhai. 

Ideas: 
Kids use a google site to show off an area of passion. Of maybe the create stuff work they put on either a site or a slideshow.
Getting to know you form for the beginning of the year - add in a question like one thing I would want my teacher to know about me
Look at Tane@awahonoschool.blogspot.com
Create a form with questions that is then used on google maps - students in cohort. All about me onto the syndicate site. Add writing about why it is special to them. Can be extended pieces of work.

Digital Fluency Intensive Session 5

It has been great to return to the DFI sessions and have the time to sit, listen and investigate in so many different areas of digital learning.  Personally I am coping with the speed and volume of information that is shared or covered much better. 

Sharing ideas and what has been done. 
Several people have used Google Earth for learning a lot. All say it has been extremely useful and the students are really into it. For example looking at Volcanoes in the World and Earthquake regions (tectonic plates) We could use this to teach Time in Maths this term. It also now goes underwater!

Connected 
Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu (Write to me, write to others) We have done this in past years and it has benefits. We missed signing up to this, this year as the teaching staff all changed at the beginning of the year and I was away, and haven't thought to connect throughout the year. Students definitely get more comments on their blogs and they are more 'alive' with this connectivity programme running.  Te Waka Ako will definitely sign up to this next year. We have only one syndicate site this year now so we may sign up as individual classes, but using the same site.  We would then push individual blog commenting.

Sites
Our Syndicate or class sites are important faces to the place and people we are. Ownership is really important and is a sure thing if everyone is collaborating in the development of them. Looking at all the different sites today and then again at our own site was really beneficial. We have not gone back into it over the year enough so having the time today to develop it more and get a good understanding of how to manipulate its features has really streamlined it and will be beneficial to the students. We noted several different things in other sites that we instantly thought would be good to include for our students. Things that will streamline for us will streamline for the kids too. For example creating a weekly timetable for them that reflects our planning timetable, developing house buttons to keep house competition alive, labelling and separating work uploaded into term and week sections, adding instructions to work that is uploaded and finally acknowledging our parent cohort more. This is an area we will continue to focus on. (One he hadn't really considered in the past.)

Going forward Also focusing on a design that will maintain engagement throughout the year and cope with work that is being 'ongoingly' added will definitely be a focus for our 2020 site, from the outset. Finally having the students create a video of how they navigate the site and what the purpose of each part is would be a worthwhile activity next year.



https://sites.google.com/kootuitui.org.nz/maker-y/home good Computational thinking site for teachers. Could be information and learning we could use to clarify these curriculum areas for 2020.

Lots to add to the Google Keep lists and think about using at the coalface!!

Digital Fluency Intensive Session 4

Week 4
I am getting into the swing of Friday mornings out to Panmure after a busy week of work. It's a dichotomy between enjoying the time to sit and learn and getting my head around leaving school on a Thursday afternoon for the week. The sessions are very beneficial. Heightened stress levels to keep up and get the most out of it, but a good focus and a buzz when 'I'm getting it!'.

New ideas from the sharing session we will use or consider. 
Bubble o meter - Bouncy balls app for the TV. Class noise levels are recognized and the image changes or words come up on the TV to quiet students down. Could be something we use in testing next term when we want them to be creating rather than doing 'silent work'.
Using Toothpicks x25 and marshmallows x20 to create the tallest structure possible.  Put it into the Create Taskboard.  - geometry 3D shapes revision.
Google Earth for exploration or countries and to use Longitude and Latitude coordinates.
Have a Padlet or drawing/doc that kids could enter their book review or student chosen text onto.
Hei hei - Kea Kids News on this channel - Look at this to see how to use in class.

Connecting with Manaiakalani Pedagogy and Kaupapa 
Connected Learners: SHARE Tohatoha

This image cool for kids to create something similar around
how they think they share. 

Understand sharing is not about digital or blogging, but has been around forever and includes everything we share - food, information, stories, good and bad times, emotions.

2005 watershed year because of social media starting up so people can share their lives. Youtube was born. This was a hook Manaiakalani saw they could use and found for some students the share is the hook while for others the create is the hook - both engagement factors. I see this in our students as well. Some really love the blogging process while others love the making process. 

Key is the purpose - global audience. "Any place can reach any place." 

Add caption

BLOGGER: this is the main space for our young people to share with the world. there are a number of important reasons for this that we/I need to remember. 

A space to teach students how to be and behave when online. 

Only author of blog not owner. Taking out on 'super highway' with checks in place - Hapara, teacher email connected, names on blogs. Google connection so seen earlier in search's. And so on. 

For myself I need to use my own Blog more as a teacher on a PD level as well as with the students. I feel we need to set it as a task that is completed. Some of our students have many drafts sitting unfinished. We also need to programme commenting in more as we haven't done this as much this year as we have not been part of Tuhi mai Tuhi atu. We need our students to comment on each others work so they are reading and listening to each others work more and connecting with each other on a learning discussion level.  Learning how to finish!! An important skill to learn as need it as an adult!! 

Share to start new learning also important - share to get feedback and feedforward so learning continues. Often can be in a new direction. 

Multi Modal Learning

Creating Sites 

Engaging students is the hook.  Class sites need to be engaging - a window to who we are and who our students are. A site they want to enter every time. An exciting space. We need to revisit our site with this in mind. A digital space that is leading our students into learning. 

Engaging learners so achievement accelerates.  Once we have behaviourally engaged students we get them cognitively engaged. Multiple ways of learning (UDL) in our students so the content we deliver needs to be provided in different ways so we engage everyone. Multi Modal Learning does this, like the task boards we have done in Te Waka Ako. 

When creating these they are for students that are reading to learn not learning to read. One main text with multi text database alongside - supporting text, scaffolded text. 

The example I created was around Rugby as we are heading in to a season of Rugby World Cup Mania and the level of student I have will be engaged in this topic. 

LINK

A great session that will be very beneficial in setting up Literacy programmes. 

Digital Fluency Intensive Session 3

Session 3 begins with some good ideas and tips from the wider group: 
Using Hangouts with students talking about favourite places. Groups of 3 students, each in a different part of the building.
Voice typing needs to be near wifi points. Do with students in Writing this coming week.
Google translate is useful if download app and hold phone over phrases and short paragraphs.  It will translate into English.

GOOGLE EARTH
Can be used on Chromebooks as doesn't need downloading.
Use the peg man to drop into a location and look around. Create a Slideshow of instructions about how to get into Google Earth and to a specific location. Use as a teaching tool and rewindable learning and in Writing.  Grab photos from around the world for Creative Writing
Moment in time writing - what see, smell, hear, etc or narrative writing.
VOYAGER - click into a topic, cultures or environments and much more. Each have texts for learners to connect to. Could be Reading tasks then Writing tasks.

GOOGLE EARTH ENGINE - timelapse function shows the Earth changing over last 35 years. Use for Inquiry discussions around impact on Earth and peoples.

Manaakalani Create - Hanga 
Using the Hook as symbolism for hooking the learner in. Engagement of students or learners.
Creativity is so important. All subjects have the opportunity for students to be creative in.
Hanga is a doing word - think the whole body use.
Creativity spans all ways and areas - it is not about the digital
                                                      learning only.  Most humans create, do, explore something to be able to learn or write or speak.

 ?  What create is in the lesson or learning if kids are disengaged?                                                               Why are they disengaged? How do we empower them? Have we left the create out?   
   Do we need to look at how many times we 'do stuff' first, then write or read or learn information.

Our students ski trip reflections are a case in point for us. The experience meant the writing and reflecting was so rich and so personal.

We are looking at creating a task board around Creating - 9 tasks to complete and then document in some way. Maybe 50 words or 100 words and video or images.

Youtube
We don't t have youtube channels at school as can't moderate comments, don't have visibility when on youtube. Keeps self and learners safe. BUT great for making Youtube Playlists. Don't send learners to youtube, upload onto syndicate site instead.

Google Slides to create Animations
Four of us created a collaborative animation with a generic plane across multiple devices and backdrops. Timing the start/finish of the play was by hand in this instance.
Playing with animation was satisfying and sooooo time consuming.

Digital Fluency Intensive Session 2

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Google Keep: improving my workflow and confidence

Google Keep is for any notes, thoughts, activities needed in life! In-depth note taking site.  Used best when used with phone - get most out of it. Also useful when shared with other people. Going through the features of this app was great for continued use. 

Connecting with Manaiakalani: new learning
Slides
AKO - Learn 
"Access and engage with existing knowledge" in a digital learning environment.
Important to understand this word - overarching. 
Move from the thought being about the device back to the thinking about the learning. 
Digital systems and uses need to be laid down and sorted so focus can be on teaching and learning. They need to be laid side by side as a railway line is. 

RATE acronym = 
Recognise (what is working, what we need)
Amplify (take effective practise and share wider and louder - digital go wider and further) 
Turbocharge (doing stuff could never do before - teaching on line to others parts of country)
Effective Practise (all the above improving this) NZ Curriculum Doc is this. Contextualising this to local communities makes it effective for our school. 

Questioning of self for our learners. 

Stonefields School image created to
contextualise their school learning

What does Waikowhai School do? Can we answer the question .... What does LEARN look like in our school? OR
What learning processes do we use or have?
     to have effective teaching and accelerated learning.

Adding Bloom's to Samr thinking. 

SAMR learning - moving class into digital world often substituting from book to device - not all wrong as don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water, but accelerating is possible because of devices.
Can we add SOLO to SAMR and BLOOMS?

An important statement that I need to focus on more - understand kids can go back into previous teaching so they can learn at their speed.
Teaching them to understand rewindable learning and use it more. Really important and something we can look at in our Syndicate as need to record our teaching more so is available for them to return to. .

Tools: in work and personal life

Going through the following tools was great and even better that the rewindable learning is in the agenda as many I will need to return to to be able to remember and use! I know I don't have to get everything straight away, but my old schooling expects me to!
The following are some of the tips and learning I will use.
Email Tidy Up
Scheduling when sending emails good for if working at night
Avoid translating emails to send - not correct. BUT receiving can be very good.
Calendar
Switching between calendars or hiding them so calendar not cluttered.
Using letter short cuts to move between parts in Calendar =  D day W week M month Y year N next screen P previous screen
Hangouts:
Start in Calendar. Set up event, add person on side. Check times and send. They accept, or not!
One Tab:
Collection of tabs which could be organised.
Shut down computer:
Restart every 24hours.  Clean my Mac - app. Cleans out rubbish every 24hours or when shut down.

Creative Task: Quick Time Recording 

The task we were given was on the slides in this link. The speed of instructions I find is fast and processing what is said, confusing and stressful. (Change my mindset needed!) It wasn't until later that I realised I could read it all to check all the steps were covered along the way. In this instance we did the task but the microphone was not enabled on Quicktime so there is no sound. 

 

SLIDE SHOW OF INSTRUCTIONS

Session One: Digital Fluency Intensive

uLearn infographic created while
 Pat Sneddon spoke.

Listening to the Manaiakalani story again from a different perspective was interesting and inspiring. I remember the first time I heard about this organisation or trust when listening to Pat Sneddon speak at a uLearn conference in Auckland and being totally blown away with the story. Today what was interesting to hear was the grassroots of how the journey got under way with the sharing of where the Learn Create Share model started and how it looked in its cyclic form. Seeing this as a process that included digital elements but wasn't digital in its essence was new and made it all make sense. I particularly liked the statement that we 'teach and learn' and are not digital classrooms or digital learners, but rather are swimming in a digital pool.

Link to Google Doc 

Using the Google Docs to create a visual media piece was great. I like using docs generally, and to have the parameters of its use expanded has made it even more popular for me. I enjoyed learning small elements that have frustrated me in the past. I was keen to learn how to use the png element with images where the white background of an image is not seen, but this made it slow to create, as finding the images was time consuming. Also I wanted the information to be correct so the document could be used by the school next week. This was good to experience as probably often the way it is for students. It's a work in progress so I have included the link.

What I learnt that could improve my capability and workflow was numerous.

**Creating Google groups: using one email address. I created a syndicate group immediately
and will also create a management one and others for the sports and trip activities I organise
throughout the year.

**Creating a personal google account separate to school - so all personal sites and connections are separated out from school and professional activities.

**Using - shift command v - to paste text etc without formatting. Something that has frustrated me immensely in the past!

**Using some of the add ons like Doc to form and MindMeister.

With my learners I am definitely going to share the correct way to paste above, plus

tips like Command Shift T to reopen a tab, right clicking on a tab to shut down all tabs or tabs to the right, shift z to create a shortcut for folders and especially using voice typing with students when writing. We have had some students resist using voice typing when we introduced read and write. Rather than only have a small group using it, we will teach it over several sessions to all students, so they can choose to use it when they want to or the situation benefits it. Learning about the annunciation of words - oral language - and speaking clearly so spelling mistakes can be picked up if annunciated properly would be a great starting point. 

Finally, it was a good reminder to use teacher dashboard to watch kids doing what we ask them to do AS we give them the instructions and teach and can feedback to them positively or hurry others along or notice problems that pop up for students.

Overall a day FULL of information and learning with a clear Learn Create Share format which highlighted for me the time needed to allow students to 'play' with new skills and knowledge as we all learn at such different speeds.