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!!