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!!