DFI 9 - Beating Around the Bush

A weird feeling with this being the last day of our intensive. What will the next challenge be? It's been great having the opportunity to delve in deep and soak like a sponge. It's highlighted that I thrive on that and in many ways need it.

Ubiquitous

Leaping into the learning pit:

Today I leapt in and became the learner. We often put our kids in assessment conditions and flippantly assure them "not to worry", "it'll be fine", etc...

To leap into that position as adults, many of whom in the room were rather nervous about the daunting task ahead of them... was actually a really valuable reminder of how it feels. 

I had a few glitches while attempting the practice tests for modules on the certification site. Many of my problems were due to my nature of over-thinking. "Could it be that simple?" "Surely it's wanting more...?" Apparent;y it wasn't.

The Level One test was in two parts. One was multi-choice, with a scenario given and the number of answers which should be checked.

The other was actual tasks that we were required to go through, from creating a site with specific content to creating a YouTube playlist and sharing it with a specific audience. 

The daunting part was dealing with Google Classroom, which I haven't used before. I found it easy to complete the actual tasks within that domain, however it was hard for me to answer the multi-choice questions because I couldn't relate it to my own tangible experience. How often does this happen with our students, particularly those stepping up into Year 4 and suddenly working in a digital learning environment?

All in all... I passed!

So Many Opportunities:

Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers

- Focused on your Inquiry. Throughout the process, you design a tool to be used to support this Inquiry. A fabulous think tank experience to help develop your inquiry process. Great opportunities from this as well as the extra support.

Google Class On Air.

Throughout the year, you put up 16 episodes of learning in your classroom as well as the work that akonga present from it.

Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu

Buddy classes from throughout New Zealand. 

Online Toolkits

Term 4: October 22, 23, 24

Professional Learning, where you lead a toolkit in something that you are comfortable with sharing. It doesn't have to be absolutely amazing... just something.

Social Media

Keeping up with what's running already, such as professional blogs, Google + Community, Twitter etc.

What next?

The question of the day.

I've come to realise that I'm a creature that likes to be in the deep end and being challenged. I can't just paddle in the shallows. It has been invaluable being in such an intense learning environment for this past term. I need to keep the pressure on to keep learning.

• Google Certified Teacher Level 2
• I've committed to leaping in and giving this a go... what's the worst that can happen? I fail? (I'm forever telling the kids that it stands for First Attempt In Learning)
• Hapara Champion Educator
• I've submitted my application for this online course. The Objective is to develop basic proficiency in the Hapara Suite—Highlights, Dashboard, and Workspace—from the point-of-view of a classroom teacher. Practice and reflect on positive, student-centred instructional use. While I've been using most of the features for years, I haven't been using workspace, so I'm interested in looking into this and how it can be harnessed for my practice.
• Could we be doing mini-interviews for everything that happens at school... then putting up a mini news bulletin, a simple iMovie, that is uploaded to blogs and Facebook at the end of every week.
• Next Year... there are a number of opportunities floating around. I need to "step into the arena".

Empowering: Learners, Teachers... and Me!

Connecting with Manaiakalani

We had the fabulous privilege to have Dorothy Burt leading us today. I always find that her perspective serves as a bit of a recharge.

Empowered

Learners and Teachers

Each of the 11 Manaiakalani communities has there own "why".

It began with the word "agency"... but that doesn't work within some of our communities, as the agencies that whanau are used to equate to various government Agencies... which equate to also turning their life upside down. Whanau interpretation is more important than ours.

It's important to not slip into a deficit model when talking about our communities. Despite the housing shortages and financial difficulties. Despite the outside influences that are impacting and adding stress.

5+ a day

Creating a dialogue with our kids, to develop their oral language, by bouncing the conversation backwards and forwards 5+ times. (Just like we want to create a thread with our blogging). This is a great strategy to combat the low oral language that our akonga arrive at our door with. By having deliberate conversations with the children we are effecting change in a positive way for them.

Google Forms

We went through a Chalk n talk to create a Google Form. It was great to be forced into amping up the use of it, rather than sticking to the tried and true. We created pathways etc, which was good to actually get stuck in and done.

Google My Maps

I'd never seen or used this before. pins can be dropped on actual maps, then pathways can by mapped, with distances measured etc.

Could use it at the beginning of the year to get kids to locate where they're from. Houses or countries.

Google Sheets

Protecting cells

Super Sheets! Using the Explore tool to work for you, creating graphs etc.

Tips & Tricks

• You can freeze more than one row by selecting the row first and then freeze up to row.... You can also "grab" the grey line and drag it to where to freeze to.
• Resize columns by highlighting the range. Then go to the top... double click on the blue line that appears. It'll allocate width due to length of word.

Getting Creative with Google Sheets

• Split name Add-on... when you have both names in one cell, you can split them into two columns (first and last names)
• Crop sheet Add on - to delete all the extra blank cells in a sheet, so that focus is drawn to what you're dealing with.
• Filtering for effective workflow and saving to utilise them
• Conditional formatting
• SPARKLINE adds a visual line to
• Macro Recorder... formatting a sheet and recording that, so that you can apply the same formatting to another sheet.

Students carry out a statistical inquiry about their blog.

Open a spreadsheet and gather some data.

What opportunities/provocations are there for 2020?

• Who would benefit from doing the DFI next year? 
• Whoever is new to the Takitini Team!
• Whakatau Leader, to ensure that the pedagogy is embedded within the Whakatau team.
• To quote Brene Brown... I need to step into the arena! 
• I'm interested in applying for Google Class on Air for next year.
• I want to consolidate some of the systems that hav'nt been working and have them more efficient to hit the ground running. 
• Amp up creativity.

Blinging sharing with Biteable

Today I leapt onto the learning pit alongside my learners to test a new tool. We learned to make a video using Biteable where we could teach others how to comment on our blogs.

It's such an easy tool to use and could be great for akonga sharing their learning about any topic. It also helps the,m to think about font and colour for easy readability for their audience. 

Here's my creation:

Learn to comment on a blog on Biteable.

Connected Learners and Teachers

DFI #7 - Media

Live Streaming YouTube

What is possible?

What can you do?

How can we take the kids passions and what they do further?

I WANT A DRONE!!!

Live Streaming all school events. We have a multi-cultural school who have whanau all over the world. How can we get what they are doing out to them?

- Streaming from our phones as well as laptops.

Connected

Maaniakalani has created a powerful network. It sprang from a culture where people held things to their chest without sharing. 

How can we create stronger connections between our two clusters? School Leaders?

It is our Shared Language, which creates the connection. The pedagogy and kaupapa language. Learn. Create. Share. Visible. Ubiquitous. Connected. Empowered. We create the language for our akonga through the cyber smart programme.

Our akonga need to be able to make authentic connections. In order to make a connection, both parties need to Share.

There's a misunderstanding that Share is about digital sharing. Seeing in real life is always going to be better than seeing digitally, but it makes it possible for people who aren't able to be there and to take it out to a wider network. Face-to-face is always the ideal.

Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu was designed specifically to connect our learners.

Online Toolkits then came about. It enables us to connect and learn alongside colleagues from around the country.

Google Draw

We looked at ways to utilise Google drawing. It really is the tool for any task and is very underused. 

I can see uses that have previously been monopolised by websites, such as Padlet, which were once free but have now locked themselves down to needing to pay to maintain services.

The Google Drawing Sandpit gives some great examples of how this can be utilised in the classroom for a wide variety of uses.

I created the About Me drawing for the sidebar of my Professional Blog.

Google Slides

Concepts around using Slides as a tool to enable access to learning have been sitting in the back of my mind for a while now. I've been trying to throw ideas around in the back of my head, for a method of planning on slides that tick all the boxes and is effective as well as efficient.
There are so many benefits for using slides over docs. It's useful for embedding onto sites. It makes it easy to embed and link content, texts and tasks. There is clear and consistent formatting, making your end-user appreciative. The current week's slide can be moved to the front.

Because you are an editor, you can see the comments. If people are view only, they can't see reflections in the comments. All planning is on slides so that it is visible, while still keeping reflections private to editors because they are comments only.

By putting instructions in the side, off the side of the slide, it means it is there for akonga to see and use, but once they publish it, only the pallette is seen. Same is the case in Google Draw.

You can also insert audio instructions with the teacher's instructions.

Way more than just a slideshow - Jesse Lubinsky

Game Changers:

• Getting traction for change with Google: when something isn't working, then email them with what's not working. Even better, email your class with the wording for what you want them to say and get them to copy and paste the wording into the help box.
• I'm envisaging learners creating their own jeopardy game to share their learning from Literacy!

I'm falling down the rabbit hole of additional resources and links at the bottom of each agenda!