Thinking ahead

Today was the last PLG for the year and today we had a look at what makes a site great and how it should be accessible and visually appealing to not only our learners but our whanau and community as well. We look at the importance of making learning visible to not only us and our students but everyone that we want to engage with. We discussed how visible learning fits with making our learners connected, ubiquitous and empowered. Todays session looked at how all of these elements fit within Learn, Create and Share within Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy.  

Our final activity for today was to look at what we are going to be doing with cybersmart in our classes next year when we don't have a specific cybersmart lesson for us as well. I have been fortunate enough to learn so much from Fiona and also others in my team, school and CoL. I will use these ideas in my own teaching of cybersmart next year. As a team at Pt England we have also discussed how we need to make this an important element of our teaching and have this as something that is timetabled in each week so that our student's are getting exposure to this and know what it is to be a cybersmart student in this day and age. My plan for my teaching is above which I will be trying to use in my teaching next year. 

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!

Google Sites - Take One!

Reflection from my week. In the short couple of days before our DFI course this week I have tried to use screencastify in class as well as explain everything with my class.I have used this with my lower literacy group who are still learning english as a way for them to get milage with their reading. One of the tasks that they have to do is record themselves reading the book away from me. So I have made a small start to using some of the new things that I have learnt and will continue to do so over the next week!

This week our group met a few days earlier as there is the Manaiakalani hui on this Friday. Today we got an in depth tour of google sites which was very helpful and let us get our creative hats on! It was really good to see how to work google sites. I am really lucky I work in a shared space and we have a site for our team that was created for us by an expert at making google sites. Matt has taught me along the way how to add things on our site and how they work but it was a great chance today to see why I do it and why Matt has made it the way it is. Toady we got let loose on a google site and got the opportunity to be creative and make it in anyway we like. Because I love the way our class site is set out and how we use boarders I have used this today in making my own site. Below is the site I created which I am really happy with!

We were given the task of reading the story "The Lion and the Mouse" and then brainstorming the amount of activities that we could create from this one text. I worked in a group where we looked at year 4-6 and what ideas we could come up with. At first glance it would seem that it is just a reading activity however it is a really rich book that can be used in so many different ways. My site is show casing the book at one that can be used for literacy in my class. I really enjoyed the opportunity to be able to have a play and muck around with the site and not worrying that I might mess it up (which I have been told is very hard to do anyway) but was still nice to have a chance to play around. I also today learnt about a very valuable tool on blogger called blog lists as a gadget. I have added this to my professional blog and is something that I need to do for my own class on my class blog! That is definitely something I will be going home to do tonight!

Explain Everything

This week  was my chance to become one of my students and really become familiar with being able to use a Chromebook. I found this very useful and important because it is a tool that my students use every day. I always refer back to the saying that students are not at school to teach the teachers how to use these things so it was defiantly about time that I learnt how to use the devices that each of my students are on so that I am not needing them to teach me!

Before today I knew the basics I knew how to turn it and the ctrl shortcuts for copy, paste and cut but that was as far as my knowledge went. This session has allowed me to see how my students are using their Chromebooks and the opportunity to see some new tools that we can be using on class with our Chromebooks.

Today we also learnt about Explain Everything. This is a term that I have heard all of the time but not something I knew a thing about! It was one of those things where if people were talking about it I would smile and nod and get about my day! But explain everything is amazing, it is definitely something I will be trying to use in my class. I have a couple of students who has just arrived in New Zealand in the last couple of terms so the reading activities on the i-pads will be incredibly helpful for them. Below is a video I have created on an explain everything and what I have learnt and how I can use this in my class.



I am also going to explore over the weekend how to use this in my maths program so that there is the opportunity for rewindable learning. What I have been reflecting on a lot at the moment is how engaged my student's are when they are working independently so I want to use this to be able to make my teaching available when the students need it and be able to look back. I think by using this as a way to record the explanation and show the expatiation will be an incredible tool and asset to my teaching. This will give students the opportunity to come back as many times as they need to hear and understand the concept.

Watch this space I will be exploring this over the next few weeks and will let you know how I get on! I am very excited to see this in action.

Google Forms and Sheets

Today we learnt about google forms and google sheets, at the beginning of our lesson we had the opportunity to fill out a google form with the place in the world that we had our best holiday. We have then used this information and put in into a google map. I had no idea that this existed so is definitely something that I will be sharing with my students and will be using in the future.

This week I have learnt so many things that will help me with my teaching in a digital school, using these tools that I have to the best of my ability will not only help me but also help my students. The things that I have learnt in google sheets today are definitely something that I can share with my class and use in class with things such as my blog log and other things I make for my class.

Digital Fluency Intensive - At home in a digital world

This term I have the privilege of attending the digital fluency intensive which will be every Friday for Term 3. This week we have been looking at the Manaiakalani Kaupapa and the journey of Manaiakalani. This week I have learned the origins of Manaiakalani and how we are where we are now. I have learnt many new things with google docs and google drive which I will be able to transfer into my teaching. This will allow me to ensure that my students know how to use these correctly and to maximum potential. The Manaiakalani Kaupapa I chose to use for my poster was “at home in a digital world.”