DFI Session 9-Revision

What a mission! It took a while for me to get sorted and get in (I only lost one night of sleep waiting for THE email) but once I was in I managed to complete the exam in 2 hours. I am not sure if that is a good or bad sign yet as I am awaiting my results.

At the end of the day whether I pass or not is irrelevant as I have just learnt so much from these sessions, they have been invaluable!

The Thursday DFI group started out face to face, we were able to have two sessions before we went remote. I was really worried that I wouldn't keep up and would feel overwhelmed but I am so glad I continued. The way the sessions were structured was a perfect balance of practical, theory, good break times and time to reflect.

The days went quickly and the pace was good. It has been nice to split into our cluster groups every Thursday and to make connections and get to know each other better.

So much of what I have learned I have been able to use remotely with my students, however I am itching to get back into class and carry out some face to face learning. First up-clearing and sorting folders on Hapara. Next I am planning on getting my students to carry out the data activity on their blogs. They have been blogging noticeably more during this time so the data will be very rewarding and will set the standard to continue. 

Thanks to everyone for making this such a successful course! 

DFI Session 8-Computational Thinking

It was awesome to have Kerry talk us through the new Digital technologies curriculum and for myself to clear up any confusion I had around the meaning of computational thinking and designing and developing digital outcomes. The first being the behind the scenes programming side such as coding and the later the visual output, design such as using slides, draw etc.

These visuals really helped!

There was a lot of talk among the group around the up and coming exam. I had been putting off my revising, however made time over the weekend and during this week to work through the exam support texts. I watched the exam you tube videos on slides, draw and a bit of forms. The videos were great and as I was watching the video on slides I was also making a class 'guess the baby' slide for my Tuesday meet. The students had all sent me a baby pic to use. As I was creating I was using features that the video had reminded me of. Such as the word art which I animated to have their names fly in after we had seen the pic and had a guess.

 I also attempted the sheets challenge with only a little smoke from the ears and after an email to Mark was sorted. 

I had a wee play around with coding and realised it is not my thing! I persevered as the kids love it and I wanted a better understanding, but I felt a bit cross eyed by the whole thing. Not my favourite so far. 

Next on my list is to go to the Point England School site and look at how they run their virtual assemblies. It is one of my responsibilities at Belfast and I am keen to give it a go!

Fingers crossed for the big exam tomorrow!

DFI Session 7-Devices

A very informative and useful session, including going over the MK cyber smart resource site and having the time to sit down and play with screencastify which I have been meaning to do for the past two weeks.

It was helpful to be reminded of the language we should be using around teaching our students to be cyber smart. Around what to do and how we should react when we find or students find themselves somewhere they shouldn't be. Our natural reaction is to perhaps be shocked and take the device away, but what is this teaching them?
Having reminder of "What should it look like if you are in the right place doing the right thing"? ensuring that it is taught.
Asking students 'If I were to google you in 10 years what it is that you would want me to see'?
I also learnt a new word in Te Reo from Makaore-Atamai-smart, quick witted, intelligent person who is ready.

The above visual which was presented to us at the start of the day I thought was great. We do use one but this I found really clear and visually appealing.

It was great to have a quick run down of Hapara and reminded me that I do need to get my students to have a good clear out of folders and pop everything in the right place. I learnt about the sharing tab and that it is a good place to go for lost or randomly placed work. I could see that a few students definitely need a good tidy up. I liked the idea of using the highlights as a visible display up on the white board, just to keep everyone on track and where they should be.

I enjoyed using the chrome simulator and ipads. It was great to see from the perspective of kids-I enjoyed the digital dig to and wanted to keep going!

I enjoyed having the time to look more in depth at the Cyber Smart site which is filled with awesome resources. I focused on Smart Money and looked at Buyer Beware-which was about buying safely and smartly online. I created a quick screencastify to show how I would use this resource.

DFI Session 6-Enabling Access

Gosh today was so great to be able to spend some time looking and critiquing sites and getting some great feedback on our own sites. I was really amazed by what everyone in our group had done, the confidence levels had really improved over the week and there were some awesome resources made.

I shared our current team site which is our Senior remote learning site. It was wonderful to have the time to share and in doing so reflect on how it is working for our kids. We are finding that they are all super engaged and self managing what they are doing. We are getting so many blog posts and have all staff commenting on them.

 This afternoon I choose to work on my class site Room22/23 class site.  I spent some time in the Session with Mark tidying up my pages and sub pages and layout.
Due to the fact that I team teach with Kimberley Rogers in the class next door, I organised a really productive google meet at 1pm and we spent nearly an hour chatting and creating together! We focused on Mathematics and made some digital modelling books for the different groups, looked at using the teacher tools resources as rewindable learning and signed up for Maths Whizz. We felt like we got a lot achieved.

Now off to attempt the google sheet challenge!

DFI session 5-collaborate sites:

The intro into today's session was really well done by discussing visibility and what that means.
Day to day progress needs to be visible to students.

Sites-used to turbo charge and replace blackboard and whiteboard.

No surprises-learning needs to be accessible, shared publicly, barriers removed, no passwords. There should be no surprises and students should have all of this info about their learning. We as professionals need to make our own learning visible. This can and is done day to day in the classroom as we are modelling for students but also needs to be done for our colleagues by sharing our reflections. One of the ways we can do this is by posting on our blogs.

N.B Class on air-check it out, great example of online distance learning.

It was great to go over the how to of making a site, although I had made a couple of sites they were older sites that I made and then used for the year. So it was beneficial to go back and start from scratch. I found the planning of the site to be so important, rather than in the past where I have just added as I went type things. It was good to play around with a few new features such as the buttons and the picture carousal. Having the presentation on multi modal text prior to this was helpful as it stuck in my mind as I was creating my site.

The 5 minute site challenge was great! I did it in 7 mins but failed due to not putting my new pages on under the homepage as sub-pages. I will get it next time!

I had a couple of greet Meets with my class over the break one of them was a bit fun and we had a fancy dress. Connor won best dressed by turning up as a cowboy.

We have tried to make the Meets we are running this week a bit more formal, like a classroom I suppose. Hands up to talk, using the comments bar for questions only not sideways chat with friends, mics muted etc. It is working great and we are even doing the register in the morning! It was wonderful to be able to present and navigate our students around our remote learning site in real time via the meets. It amazes me how easily teachers and students have quickly adapted to this remote learning. I am so grateful that we have had this two years of prep. I cannot help but think what I (we) would be doing and feeling like if we hadn't. I imagine there are some very stressed out teachers out there. I have just received an invite from our Principal Sue to a formal, black tie happy hour meet tomorrow and look forward to that!

DFI Session 4-Dealing with Data

Wow this session has been super useful and jam packed with info. I need to take time to sit and reflect and go through all of my notes.
I really enjoyed the opening info around Share and how pertinent it is to our current situation. It was eye opening for me to think differently about what a authentic audience actually is, when Dorothy pointed out what is was not. Authentic=choosing to participate/listen/be present.
The fact that kids are choosing to come to hangouts that I am setting up and choosing to comment on my Mrs J today blog=authentic.

The reminder around the protocols around hangout and use of that was great. Making sure that we boot them off, remove the link and have a routine where we actively say goodbye is very important. We don't want anyone rejoining and getting up to mischief later. This will be something I take back to and share with my team as a reminder.

Many eye openers for me today, big and small! Another was the use of Hapara to monitor blog posts and comments. I have been using Hapara since 2019 daily to monitor what students are doing, and to check that things are in folders etc. I have never gone to the more drop down and seen the post/comment option. I emailed my team at lunch today to spread the joy!

I enjoyed the session on the maps, it was fun and I can see that the activity we did around filling in a form and then importing that into a My Map would be an  activity I could do with my Year 7/8. I would have a basic form with two questions-'Where is the best holiday you have had'?" and "Where is your dream holiday destination?" We would go from there.

The info on google sheets was mind boggling but great and I have a good example of what we played around with in my DFI folder on my drive.

 The analysing a blog activity was super. I chose a student from my class Charlie and have attached a link to the draw document I prepared from her data. I am going to attempt to get all of my students doing this remotely asap. I think it will make them accountable and is very important in the current times. It is so important that they are posting regularly when school starts back. I have added a link to Mele's blog where students can go to access the step by step how to guide. I will present and discuss as Dorothy did and then we will play around. I might run two sessions, a year 7 and then a year 8 to keep groups a bit smaller.

DFI Session 3-Media

I really enjoyed looking into Create with more depth. The fact that we in NZ have been using the model of create and play based learning for a long time just under different names was interesting. I though Dorothy posed an excellent question with '"why does the opportunity to create slow down as children get older"?"

I found the two following visuals to be very helpful in my understanding of create and how creativity works hand in hand with empowering out students to develop key competencies.

It was good to discover I have a youtube channel and how to save and add videos to my playlist. A reminder that youtube is not for kids was good.

I joined a group to go over the basics of google draw and then another to learn how to create a pick a path using slides. Both were extremely valuable and can be easily implemented and used in the classroom.

Finally I set up a google hangout with my class for tomorrow afternoon, just to touch base and catch up with what everyone is doing. I have set up a blog called Mrs J today! Which has been great to make connections and start conversations with my tamariki during this time. When school begins on the 15th we have a scheduled roster of hangouts with kids within my team.