DFI Day #2 Tairāwhiti Cohort

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

Lenva presented the "Connecting with Manaiakalani" section today. I was riveted to her presentation. Even though we are immersed in the kaupapa of the Manaiakalani Programme, whenever I listen to one of the team talk about Learn Create Share I alway deepen my understanding of another facet/portion of our mahi.
The part that got me thinking more deeply was about amplifying teaching practice as giving and getting. I have just written 2 blog posts about this part of our term 1 staff meeting. I will go back to these posts and make sure that I have expressed with clarity amplification of effective practice.

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

Workflow and being efficient is hard to nail. Just when you think you have it sussed up pops another challenge - like screen recording in Quicktime. Today's Share | Tohatoha section was to be in a Hangout and record the conversation in 3's. One team recorded theirs but there was no sound. I had helped set up Quicktime for this group but forgot to check that the microphone was set to the internal mic before they started. Grrr!!! Sorry about that team!  It goes to show that practising with the tools and testing is necessary prior to any event.

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

Being able to record your screen is a critical skill to nail to make rewindable material for our learners.
Quicktime is something that I don't use frequently. I use Screencastify with learners in the classroom on Chromebooks and to make tutorials for teachers as the mp4 is automatically saved to Drive and can be shared from there.

Google Keep voice recording on a mobile phone is a fabulous addition to my toolkit.
For today's session I focused on voice recording in my phone app and was pleased that I had done so as there was a question from one of the participants today about using it for Te Reo Māori. This is a great way to record voice, download the mp3 from Keep on a laptop, save in Drive so it can then be inserted as audio into Google Slides. This feature would be so handy for inserting instructions into slides in my Cybersmart lessons. It would function like audio clips in Explain Everything where each slide can now have an instruction inserted for learners to rewind if they forget what to do. I need ot create a workflow diagram for this and share to the group.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

Keep is such a great tool to have. It integrates with Google Apps so well. I use it lots on my phone. In my personal life I use Keep to save recipes! If I am disciplined as I use it and apply labels it is an efficient file of stuff that I like but don't get around to cooking. I really need to teach my retired husband how to use it. Now there's a challenge!

Digital Fluency Intensive Day 7 - Dealing with Data

Another full on day. Forms, sheets, My Maps, data, data and more data.

My Maps was fun. And what a range of destinations we have in our sights. Ahhhhh! to have the holiday time (and money) to go to them all. In one of the classes I am facilitating in they are right into the Rugby World Cup. I already have in my mind a My Maps tasks to do with this hub of learners.



Sheets are such a versatile app. We use them for everything in our role as facilitators. My next learning is to link data from another sheet into a new tab I already have a target sheet in mind.

Forms are another versatile app and we use them lots for students to turn in links to work completed e.g. comments made on other student's blogs. Yes, we can see comments on our student's blogs by using Hapara, but once they comment on another student's blogs at another school and click Publish, as we do in Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu, we have no way of moderating the comments from our end. So a Form is a great tool to use for this. I have the Form embedded in the class site so it is accessible for classes. An example is here. An if you embed the Response sheet as well then the 2 parts are together.

Analysing blogs stats is a great way to get student's into ownership of their blogs and to use Sheets as a visual representation of their blog stats.
I looked at Quasia's blog. Here is the number of blog posts over 7 years - the first year being the setting up of the blog ready for the following year.

Just found out I could embed the graph. So here it is embedded...

Thinking about Sheets, statistics and graphing the hub I am working is that is right into the Rugby World Cup could be using Sheets as the competition begins. They are in teams so a collaborative tasks would be a great way to explore Sheets and graphing.
When I did the stats for the number of visitors form countries I copied and pasted the data from the blog page of stats and then deleted the columns I didn't need. Much quicker way of getting the larger numbers into the Sheet rather than trying to remember and type in separately.

Digital Fluency Intensive - Cohort 2 2019

To be included in this PLD programme is the highlight of my job. I have been looking forward to this with much anticipation. I am always learning and view this opportunity to extend myself as well as support teachers. As a facilitator my Friday's have been up until now in schools providing in-school support for teachers as an Outreach Facilitator. For this term my Friday's are gong to be full-on days attending the DFI with this band of committed professionals. I am going to buckle in and enjoy the ride of Learn, Create, Share.

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?
Everytime I listen to Dorothy Burt talk about The Manaiakalani Programme I find out more about this highly effective programme. This time I concentrated on the building of partnerships with whānau. This is critical to having whānau fully engaged as partners in their child's education and to students' success. I have been involved in many whānau hui in my current role and the school's are always disappointed with the small turnout they have and the focus some parents have on homework, neatness of printing or screentime. These topics overtake the hui and the main reason for the hui gets lost in the hype around these issues. Schools are asking how they can engage whānau in hui that is learner and learning focussed. I can hear another blog post coming up.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?
Workflow is so important in my role. Anything that improves or makes for speedy execution is welcome. Today I brushed up on Table of Contents in Google Docs, voice typing (with hands cupped around the microphone) and unique URLs for headings within Google Docs.
The new learning for me was the power of Comments in Google Docs and using it with students to reverse roles by getting them to read text and assign questions via Comments.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners? 
The Google Doc section today was full of content that allowed me to review some of the features I was aware of and extend my knowledge of Docs. Today we were given applications in the class e.g. use of Comments to get the students to do all the work while working with texts.

The voice typing with hands cupped around the microphone is definitely going to be a game-changer in a class of 31 very vocal students. I think I remember seeing somewhere the use of paper cups with the bottoms cut out for this purpose too. I'll try the hand

I am a Google Drawing fan and it is my default app for anything to do with images. I used Google Docs today to create a poster that highlights the use of shortcuts. Shortcuts should be the way students do stuff. I am currently in a year 2/3/4 class where lots of them have difficulty using click+drag. Shortcuts eliminate the barrier of not being dexterous and needing to control via a trackpad.  Maybe I need to review the pinkness of it. What do you think?

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?
Getting in and Kondo-ising my Drive is a must. My personal Drive is a schmozzle and my work one is a mass of folders. I need to get in and cluster folders together and bring joy to my Drive.

Pecha Kucha - Autodraw

Today we worked on a Pecha Kucha style presentation to share a tool. I have shared Google's AutoDraw. It has turned me into an artist!
I found it really hard to talk for 15 seconds. I thought I was a talker...but this was difficult. I do admit to doing it off-the-cuff.
If I did it again I would definitely have to write the script and time it.
I love Screencastify. I use it lots to make tutorials. I am using it in my classes to introduce teachers to the power of "vlogging".
I will let my passion for Autodraw speak for itself in my Pecha Kucha.

Creating Portfolios with Google Sites, presenter - Emily Fitzpatrick

Google Sites are our bread and butter in Manaiakalani for visible and rewindable learning.  Our Pilot teachers build a class site to make learning visible and rewindable for their students.

While I am quite happy with how my use of the new Google sites is developing, this session was a good reminder of how to work with people new to Sites to get them to set up a site from scratch. As this is my focus for our Tairāwhiti Toolkit later in May, a very timely session indeed!

Emily's resources are here.

The other great resource for anything Google is Steegle.

Visit our Tairāwhiti Site which Maria, Renee and I build for our Manaiakalani Outreach Programme.

Keynote #2: A Māori Perspective on developing Resources to Support Te Reo Māori, presenter - Te Taka Keegan

Te Taka Keegan has a mantra that if you need something then you probably need to do it yourself. This session highlighted the difficulty in NZ around having Te Reo Māori resources for classes.

Te Taka has worked with Google and Microsoft to develop resources such as Google web search in Māori and Google Translator Toolkit for Māori and The Māori Macron Restoration Service.  Take a look at them and see if they are useful to you.

Taka did caution us about the use of Google translate as it is throwing up lots of inaccuracies. He thought he needed to make another trip to Silicone Valley to help them fix it up!

Taka showed us Swiftkey - an on-screen keyboard that you swipe to type. The beauty of this keyboard is that it remembers your keystrokes which is great for Te Reo Māori and dialects. SwiftKey learns your writing style to suggest your next word - much better than any other predictive text keyboard I have used before. I have been using it and already it has turbo-charged my keyboard on my iPhone.

Keynote #1 - Let's Make Some Magic, presenter - Emily Fitzpatrick

Emily was a really engaging presenter. She was full of vim and vitality and really got us thinking. Link to Emily's resources is here.

Emily's point was that there are ways to make magic happen in the class...

1st magic: Questions inspire. What questions inspire your classroom? Do your students ask the un-Googleable questions?

2nd magic: Go beyond expectations. High expectations student rise to the challenge. Expect success rather than accept failure

3rd magic. Find a new normal

Closing remarks: The right person finds the right question. the importance of being problem solvers

Magic makes the impossible happen...

How will you make magic happen in your classroom?

Tools help to create magic in the classroom

What tools are in your toolbox now?

Reflection: this session really feeds nicely into our Manaiakalani term 2 focus on "Learning empowers creativity". And the big question of how do digital technologies turbo-charge creativity?

Ed Tech Summit - Wellington

During the term break, I attended the Ed Tech Summit in Wellington. This summit was 2 days jam-packed full of Google Goodness. It was held at Amesbury School which is pretty new and that was a delight to be in modern learning spaces.

In true digital immersion fashion, an App was used to communicate and organise schedules. The neat thing about using an app like this at these summits is that you can change your schedule whenever you like. This is particularly handy if you miss a great session and can pick up on it at another time.

The sessions I attended were...
Keynote #1: Let's Make Some Magic, presenter - Emily Fitzpatrick
Design Thinking and iExplore at Ormiston School, presenter - Michael Davidson
How to get the most from your Chromebook, presenter - Suan Yeo
Flipgrid: The Tool For Student Voice You Didn't Know You Need, presenter - Nick Brierley
Google and the 4 C's, presenter - Kim Sutton
Demo Slam

Keynote #2: A Māori Perspective on developing Resources to Support Te Reo Māori, presenter - Te Taka Keegan
Automate the Mundane, presenter - Emily Fitzpatrick
Keep it Together!. presenter - Rachel Duckworth
Creating Portfolios with Google Sites, presenter - Emily Fitzpatrick

I got so much from each session that I think I need to reflect on each session in a separate blog post with links to resources.

Day 2 - Goodbye Paper Diary

As we proceed in getting our new cluster organised the calendar is starting to fill up. After many, many years of being tied to a paper-based diary, I have chucked that away and now use Google Calendars. Feels a bit like the comfy blanky being wrenched off me and tossed away never to be seen again. Have to practise what we preach. Thanks Renee for showing us how to set up reminders.