Digital Fluency Intensive Reflection Week 8 12.9.18

Digital Fluency Intensive Reflection  Week 8   12.9.18

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani pedagogy and kaupapa?

Empowered

The Manaiakalani pedagogy this week was "Empowered". 

Children are disadvantaged or disempowered by having less exposure to known words through less hearing and reading thus limiting vocabulary; through less formative instruction; through lack of digital technologies and connectivity; all of which can limit later life choice in real life circumstances. 

Agency is having the power or capacity to act and make choices. This ability is limited when students start school already behind in foundational skills for learning.

Manaiakalani's aim is for all students to feel at home in a digital world and in this way all students are empowered to have student voice, learner agency, and the ability to express themselves etc.

Digital technology is not just regarded as a tool, rather, it transforms the way students learn (Dean Shareski). As educators, we are encouraged to mix and match the old technologies with the new; the best of both worlds.

Kerry Boyde-Preece, from Manaikalani, explained that student learning "lives on in the blog". It has a life. It is a living artefact. She described how blogs give life to student talents that may not have normally been promoted within the school curriculum. Students are empowered by knowing how to blog and put their work out to the world. They receive feedback and comments that add to that feeling of being empowered and links them with others with a similar talent.

Newly created jobs, such as drone operators are made possible through cutting edge digital knowledge. Students who have developed knowledge in this area have far more opportunities for employment. 

For Manaiakalani, the default is being visible. Kerry says that you can't truly be empowered  without being visible, connected, and ubiquitous, i.e.,work any time you choose and on a global stage.

We were challenged to reflect on how each has been empowered by Manaiakalani.

Professionally, I have been empowered with the increase in teaching knowledge. I have learned many new skills that I can share with my students, to help them learn, create and share.

What did I learn that could increase my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

Tania Coutts spoke on the key topic of Computational Thinking which is part of the New Zealand Technology Curriculum/Hangarau- Matihiko (Maori medium).

"The new content has been designed to be flexible, so it can respond to new developments and technologies as they emerge". Nicki Kaye, June 2017

New acronyms to be aware of in the curriculum are...
CT4DT- Computational Thinking for Digital Technologies

3DO- Designing and Developing Digital Outcomes

Kia takatu a Matihiko- The Digital Readiness Facebook page-https://www.facebook.com/kiatakatu/

Pikau/ Toolkits on the above page provide courses that are a good place for teachers to understand the new curriculum.

This an excellent video is about "What most schools don't teach".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKIu9yen5nc   

Also, a nifty little poster about 'Ten reasons to teach coding'...

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?

Most of the app.s we played with will be shared with our students. I worked with Robyn on the green screen video. This was very new to us so we were reliant on the instruction of our patient tutors to create a short green screen video with a background. I took an image of the trees outside and part of the waka shelter on the Waitangi grounds as the background. To this Robin added her ScuptGL image and Blake's video. The background noise was split out. 

Sculpt GL

I had a limited play with this app. with the resulting rather clunky image of DFI. 

 Block Coding-Robots: This app. was great for helping students construct a sequence of steps for the robot to follow. 

Clapmotion: I observed others telling a story with this app. and Lego figures.

I would like to explore more of Tinkercad, Do ink, Tilt Brish, and Paint3.

What did I learn that could be used to increase my confidence, capability and my workflow in my personal life?

I was reminded of how wonderful iMovie is for creating movies and slide shows and the work with a green screen took this knowledge to a new level. It was great to play and explore with new technologies and the opportunity builds my confidence eventually.

Digital Fluency Intensive Reflection Week 7 5.9.18

Digital Fluency Intensive Reflection Week 7  5.9.18

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani pedagogy and kaupapa?

Connected: Future focussed learning in connected communities.
Clarelle Carruthers from Point England came to speak with us about the Manaiakalani pedagogy of being 'connected'.

Being part of the Manaikalani community means that we are connected to a powerful network of similar schools, across the country and world. There are 19,000-22,000 Manaiakalani learners in secondary, area, primary, kura, and Catholic schools. Together we share the same pedagogical language, and 'paddle in the same direction', aiming at the same goals. Our common curriculum is centred around the 3 big pedagogies; Learn, Create, Share. 

We stand together. We are not alone. 

Each term the school focusses on one of the key pedagogies, although, all 3 are frequently referred to in class throughout the year. The planning allows for teaching and learning resources to be targeted at that area of focus. 

Term 1. Learn (about how to use the tools correctly)
Term 2. Create (using a variety of modes, digital and best practice teaching strategies)
Term 3. Share (Using the Google Suite)
Term 4. All

Other ways for teachers being connected are through groups such as...

• Google suite online groups
• Cybersmart curriculum 
• Twitter- Manaiakalani Cluster
• Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu -(write to me, write to others) where we need to register our class
• Tania Couts is our online facilitator; register online

To maximise the benefits of 'Connect' a teacher needs to be committed to sharing their teaching and learning. Being able to benefit from other teachers' resources and ideas means that, as a teacher, you will be able to share your resources with other schools. 

What did I learn that could increase my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

Clarelle shared her IT Bingo which contained a growing Multi text Data base.

We evaluated other class sites using the two criteria of visual appeal (the shop window of the teaching and learning) and  user experience (ease of use  for students where 3 clicks gets to the learning).

The course was full of handy resources and tips for developing our class Site as well as exemplars of excellent class Sites. These will help in the development of my own class Site. Going between Google Drawings and Google Site to create the 'bones' of my class Site was new learning for me. The front page of my own class Site is below. It is a work in progress.
https://sites.google.com/ahipara.school.nz/room-8-class-site/home   

Ethical and practical issues around students who were not allowed to share via digital technologies challenges our school to consider our policy.

Google Training modules will increase my capability with the app.s.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?

The day focussed on the learning being visible to learners and ways of constructing a vibrant and well designed class Site for them to easily access the learning. The resources will open up a broader, more self-paced programme. The careful unpacking of the 3 key pedagogies over the course of each year will help students understand each one better. 

 I enjoyed the Pixabay site for images.

What did I learn that could be used to increase my confidence, capability and my workflow in my personal life?

The new frontier of class Sites increased my understanding of what was involved to make a Site that would engage, teach and inspire students to learn, create and share. 

Esther's DFI Week 2 reflection

Reflection Questions for Week 2

• What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy

Dorothy explained the  place of “Learn” in Manaiakalani. Her video is contained in the agenda for the day. It is future focussed and is about increasing teacher effectiveness and accelerating learning outcomes in a digital environment.

Recognise: Teacher and student competence in learning

Turbocharge: The digital component-create

Amplify: The share feature

Schools need to have their own definition of “Learning” on their landing page or school site.

Higher Order thinking is to the fore e.g., Blooms Taxonomy

• What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

Confidence and Capability:

The course was helpful in the following ways....

Workflow:

Bookmarks- We looked at how to use bookmarks and organise bookmark folders that contain resources and links.

Calendars- We used settings on Google calendar to make appointments and send invitations to others. I will set up a Senco calendar for scheduling key tasks and invite people to IEP meetings etc. I might share this with the specialist teacher too.

I will sync calendars to my phone. I was able to send a hangout invitation using the calendar, which was a first.

Hangouts: This was definitely a steep learning curve for me today. It was my first time using quicktime. Etiquette for hangout needs to be understood by all before starting. Having different roles for the creation of this movie was interesting. I could see that this could be an effective means of sharing/collaborating once my capability is improved.

Small group hangout video

• What did I learn that could be used with my learners , capability or workflow in my personal life?

The hangouts potentially have real benefits for me as Senco, to share and collaborate for the benefit of students with additional needs (SWANs). They could be used for IEPs if parties could not meet although it could disadvantage parents who couldn't attend. Groups of students across the school could collaborate about a topic, perhaps as experts or expert to novices, or about a shared responsibility such as the PB4L group.

Esther: Digital Fluency Intensive Week 1

Digital Fluency Intensive WEEK 1

Content/App.	Task	What I Learned
	Google Keep Installed on phone and laptop. Explored possibilities	Pinning, Sharing, Collaborate button. Recordings into google doc or email. Photo of a page, use photo, grab image on text, it types from photo. Photo album, include on blog. Keep handy links/URLs in keep to use later. Create a comment and a link about surface features to insert in student work.
	Profile adjusted All email accounts entered Photo entered. Task bar set up.
	Teach documents to students. Set up student folders that are shared with teachers. Group stories Create a chain doc. By sharing a common template with specific people and someone else contributes to it Control shift V= remove format. Docs as a tool for creating visual media.	Highlight text, Command C, format it first before pasting as paste without formatting. Copied docs= put your initial before the title. Do not underline anything. Highlight title and “Normal Text” for heading 1, subheadings= Heading 2. Put cursor before first title, go to insert, table of contents. Your headings create URLs Command F for searching keyword e.g., digital Incorporate the chain activity into class programme- narratives, facts….
	Clean up your drive by making year folders Disclosure arrows, Folders to be shared	Transparency for all planning by sharing folders
	Adjusted my blog to make Teaching as Inquiry as a visible page The correct template has been set up	Use tables to manage my images. Infographics: use png images to colour the background (Table properties) Only access images via Explore Tool We made an infographic We did the scavenger hunt to try out the various Explore features
Skill checklist	Using the “explore tool”	Try out: Voice type, Add ons, Script editor, citation tools.
The 4 Goals of DFI	Our teachers are supported to acquire fluency using the basic tools our young people use for learning Our teachers are supported to acquire fluency using the basic tools required for effective teaching, planning, assessment and professional learning Our teachers are supported to understand how digital technologies used effectively can have a significant impact on accelerating achievement outcomes Our teachers are supported to understand how the Manaiakalani pedagogy and kaupapa has been co-constructed over more than a decade to maximise the impact of effective teaching and learning in a digital learning environment.
To do Next:	Try out some of the above app.s.