Final Digital Fluency Intensive

Today was unfortunately our last day with our digital fluency intensive we had the opportunity to sit our level one Google exam. I am please to be able to say that I passed and am now level one certified. At the beginning of this 9 weeks I wouldn't have thought it would be possible to pass the exam but over the last 8 weeks I have been taught so much about google and what is available to me and also what is available to use in my classroom. I am so grateful to have been given this opportunity from my school and also from Manaiakalani. I would also like to thank Dorothy, Matt and Gerhard for all of their help and support over the last 9 weeks in getting me to becoming digitally fluent. 


I have had the opportunity to work with some amazing teachers from other schools during my time on this course as well. This really has been an incredible opportunity and I have learnt so much and know I will continue to learn more as I explore google. I am really excited to use all of these new skills and tools from this course in my classroom in the next term and cannot wait to see the results I get from my students. 

Introducing new google sites

This week we have had a chance to look at the new google sites. I was a bit apprehensive to begin with because we had spent so much time with classic sites and I was used to that set up BUT it is time for change so I embraced it eventually! I am so amazed with some of the features on the new sites and what is possible, I definitely think that there are some aspects of the site which will make my life easier adding things to the site in time for a new week of learning. It is amazing that you can upload more than one image at a time and that you can move things around the screen at your leisure rather than having to set up tables and then having to be precise about how you position things. Below is an image of the homepage for my new site:

It was so much quicker and easier to put buttons in the site and make sure that they line up and look visually appealing. The only downside at this stage on the new sites is the ability to move the words which say "Kelsey's Sites" I would really like this to be down at the bottom and to the right more but I am sure this is something that will eventually be changed by google as they update the sites. I am impressed so far with what I have seen and I will be using these sites in the future perhaps for my teaching standards page. I will be interested to see all of the new things that will be added and how this will make a difference to time when adding things to the site. It is really great to now had a place where I can get to all my sites and important places with one click of a button. I think I will create an extra page for all of the websites and places I go to regularly for my teaching so watch this space. 

Google Sites, Take Three!

This week in our digital fluency group we have been looking at our own class sites and how we can improve these or improve the way in which we use these sites. I have been lucky enough to have my site already created for me by Matt and the way it has been set up is great I think that it is very accessible for our learners and is appealing to the eye. The layout of the site is always one that I come back to when creating my own sites and how I want it to look. Here is what the home page of my class site looks below. 

The way that this site has been set is so that when a student opens this on their chromebook the dimensions are correct so this is exactly what they will see no scrolling necessary! It has been interesting learning this as it is not something that I would normally take notice of or even take into account when creating my own site. This week I have learnt how to create anchor points on my page which is something that I have put off learning partly because I thought it would be too hard and I guess partly because now I know how to do it I will need to remember to do this!

It became clear to me a couple of weeks ago that this is something that my students are used to from other teachers and other sites over the years. One of my students asked me why she had to scroll down to see a lesson when she should just be able to select the title and be taken straight there. This made me see that me not wanting to add this too my large to do list was actually impacting my learnings and how they access things. So by learning this today I have been empowered and I also how that the follow on effect to empower my learners! I will keep you posted and let you know how this goes! I think it will be a success for me and my students but it is making sure that I add this to the top of my priority list. 

Google Sites - Take Two!

After last weeks session I had a great week looking at my own class site and seeing how things have been set up on my site and how I can make sure that everything I put on there is visually appealing and accessable to everyone who visits my site. I have been very lucky that my site has been set up for me in my team and they have shown me so much of how the site works which has made my job easier and also understanding how and why things are the way they are. This week I have been working on my PRT site with some of the new things that I have learnt. 

This week in digital fluency we got the opportunity to image map which was an incredibly great experience! I really felt empowered leaving today's session not only have a learnt how to do something cool I feel like I could do it again and it could be very useful for my own class site or my PRT site or any other site I may need to set up in the future. This is an awesome skill to be able to know and I think I will use it a lot more now. 

The picture above shows my new teaching standards sites which I have created using image mapping. Each of the different sections on the wheel are linked to be click on and go straight to that standard! I am really impressed with this page and can't believe I actually made it myself! Looking forward to seeing where google sites takes us next week!