Digital Fluency Intensive Day 6 - Computational Thinking

Fun! Fun! Fun!
Who said learning wasn't fun?
Loved the day and loved the mixture of listening and doing with Shannon, Emily and Mac at Tōnui Collab (ex Mind Lab) here in GTown.

What a beautiful facility and the view is stunning on this sunny Gizzy day. It really made us realise that Spring is here. Sharyn talked about being away last week at a conference and hearing a speaker talk about bringing "joy" back into teaching. So I would call today as one filled with joy!

Apart from the setting and the Tōnui Collab hospitality, the content of today's DFI was engaging and motivating. I have heard of lots of this "stuff" but not had any opportunity to use it in a classroom apart from being with students when they have come to Mind Lab for sessions. 

Computational Thinking needs to not be pigeon-holed - as all learning areas of the NZC. I wonder what is happening in schools in terms of the PLD offered for this revised curriculum and what teachers are being told. Anyway - the unplugged session was a great way to introduce this concept. All teachers can do this and have engaging and motivating entryways into computational thinking. Teachers also need to join the dots with this curriculum and other leanring areas. Patterning is algebra and is computational thinking and new entrants do this when threading beads onto a string.  I could rant on about this all day...

I liked the models used today especially when working in groups and pairs throughout the day. This warms the cockles of my cooperative learning heart. I know this how Tōnui Collab work all the time with learners and love the model it shows teachers that teams/pairs can work on devices and share thinking. All teachers should be using social learning: aka cooperative learning, Tuakana-Teina or whatever model is used. Engaging students in leanring in small groups develops a whole lot of key competencies or "soft skills".  Once again, I could rant about this all day... or you could read my blog post about this here

The last part of the day was working in CoSpaces. Here is the animation Perky and I made. Now this was fun of the highest order! Am I a nerd?

Feeling joyful after this full day of learning and am looking forward to reading the other blogs about today.

Digital Fluency Intensive Day 5 - Enabling Access

I live and breathe in Google Sites every working day in my role as a facilitator with the Manaiakalani Programme Outreach. I have access to all the sites of the classes I work in and add a Cybersmart page to the class site for visible and rewindable learning. So whilst I work on pages on many sites I did find today an opportunity to go back to some of the pages and check visibility and how accessible the Cybersmart learning is.

Everytime I explore examples of sites I find more and more gems to model and show the teachers I work with. I am particularly interested in Junior sites where they have 1:1 iPads. I found Kashmira  Lal's 2018 site today which is a treasure. Seeing a whole year's layout was good in that your can see how she has archived each term's work to de-clutter the pages. She really did stick to the "no more than 2 clicks" rule.

Today we were able to enjoy and appreciate the generosity and sharing of our Manaiakalani whānau as we explored and gleaned ideas from the many sites available. Thank you to you all for this sharing and caring mahi that is part of the Manaiakalani kaupapa.

I use a set of slides to teach from and add to the slides as we move through the term. I have slides for Year 7 &8, another slide deck for year 4-6 and one slide deck for the younger year 2-3 class.
Here is the year 4-6 slides...
I find that by having instructional material in a slide deck, I add to the slides as I plan lessons and knowing it is embedded in each Cybersmart page, I don't have to embed different sets of slides again and again and again. There were so many examples today from other well-established Manaiakalani sites of how teachers can work smarter not harder by having their planning on slides that fulfil both planning and visible learning aspects. I know as a leader in a school I would be happy to see this type of planning as the interface for learners, parents and whānau.

I had an experience this week of wanting to view a school site. Our grandson has just changed schools because they moved recently. He told me the other day, thanks to the power of Skype, who his new teacher is and the class number se is on. So off I went to the school site to get the gen on the new school, class and teacher. This is what I got to when I clicked on his syndicate's name in the menu...

Sigh! 

& enuf said enabling access

Digital Fluency Intensive Day 4 - Devices / iPads

I love iPads and I love my iPhone and anything Apple. Whilst I am not a exclusionist and dis any other makes,  I am unashamedly an Apple fan, right down to Apple TV and Netflix.

So when it comes to iPads and Explain Everything (EE) this is all new learning to me. I have tried to use a while lot of other whiteboards and apps on iPads, I have never found one that has the features of EE. It is worth every penny spent on it. With schools investing in EE we need to make sure that the use of it is maximised.

Currently I am facilitating in a New Entrant class with iPads and loving every minute of it. The challenge of working with new learners who each have an iPad is huge. The class teacher and I are both newbies to this way of working and are nutting out the intricacies as we go. Not quite building the plane as we fly, but close.

Today I learnt how to trim audio. Yay! last week in class we were trying to do this and ended up deleting both the audio and the beautiful creative picture on the screen. Ouch! the learner was not happy!

Ending the day with a Hangout with Anjila from Auckland's DFI group was a bonus today. She had just sat her Google Certified Educator Level 1 exam this morning and talked about how she found it. One of her tips was to use a laptop that is not old She struggled with an old laptop from her school which slowed her down because it was slow. Our cohort sure did enjoy connecting with the Auckland cohort and gleaning gems from them. Not only did we find out more and ease our anxiety around the exam, we also practised Hangouts and their power to connect and communicate. A great example of "connected learners share".

Digital Fluency Intensive Day 4 - Devices / Chromebooks

Devices - my kind of day. As a facilitator I work mostly with learners and Chromebooks. But this year I am working with a new entrant class and iPads. This is very exciting. Scarey - but exciting. Lots of new learning!

Whilst I am using my MacBook every waking minute of the day in my job, I very rarely touch a Chromebook keyboard. I very seldom take over any learner's keyboard. I mostly point to assist them and get them to click, drag, etc etc. So working on a Chromebook in Slides was pretty novel for me.

The first thing I noticed on the Chromebook that was how small the slides were and the text even tinier. I must pay attention to the slides I make from now on and ensure that any text is highly visible and not too small.

So today on the Chromebook I particularly liked the Digital Dig and grabbed some more shortcuts that wold be great to have in my arsenal. My aim is to use a Chromebook more often while preparing material for students and practise the shortcuts to get them embedded into my brain.

Playing with Screencastify and commenting. We noticed that there was a tick box in Screencastify that allows others to comment.

Maria and I commented on each other's Screencastify video we made today and you can see how the comments behave if you pop the video out and play it in its own window.
The comment is also viewable in Screencastify when you open the video.

So we discovered another feature of Screencastify today. It's great to have the time to play and discover like this and then to test it. Now we are asking the question - how would learners use this? My initial thoughts are to use them exactly as we would comments in Docs, Slides etc - to to connect and communicate, to give feedback and feedforward.

Digital Fluency Intensive - Day3: Collaborate

So what does collaborate mean? It is a word that is bandied around lots in the education and business world. And what about cooperation? Are these 2 the same or is there a difference?

One dictionary defines collaboration as "to work jointly on an activity or project" but another defines the difference between collaboration and cooperation as... "Collaboration is working together to create something new in support of a shared vision. Cooperation is important in networks where individuals exchange relevant information and resources in support of each other's goals, rather than a shared goal."

I love this graphic and the way it shows the interdependence when collaborating.

John Spencer

During today I was thinking about the level of trust that is in the room as we worked on multi-modal texts and creating a site. There was lots of interaction between participants and offers of help as well as showing each other what they were doing. 

There were a few people who were probably feeling highly vulnerable when working with sites as this is the first time they have heard of them, let alone worked on one. Congratulations to the brave people who shared their first ever site on the screen. This relates directly to the level of trust that existed in the room and that they felt ok about sharing to everyone. 

The shared vision that was expertly conveyed by Dorothy in the morning session empowered participants to dive in and get going on a site. They had the "why" from this morning session and  they worked on the "how" during the rest of the day. Visit their blogs to read about their DFI experience. 

So were we collaborating - I say yes! 

Digital Fluency Intensive Week 2 - Workflow

Today was Day 2 of the DFI. I thought I was prepared for the intensity of the day after last week, but found it soon to be another day of information, deep diving (and occasionally coming up for air), clicking, thinking, processing and doing. I really had to get my multi-tasking on.

I loved seeing the group growing today. There was a lot of shared talk and asking each other for help. The collective knowledge in the room is immense and it is good to see them asking for help and others offering help.

Cathy and Gina

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

Reiterating the recognition of effective practice came through strongly here. This section of the day I feel is one of the most important for our cluster. With the challenging start to the programme in our area we need these types of sessions with teachers to expose them to the kaupapa and pedagogy to deepen their understanding. Even though we have covered this information in our staff meetings we need to keep revisiting the key messages of the Manaiakalani Programme. Every time teachers hear this they should be able to take a little bit more away with them. I really like the railway track analogy and the strong message of recognising effective practice.  

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

Thank you Maria for showing me how to use the Zoom accessibility function on my MacBook so I can magnify part of my screen while presenting on a screen. I can see how useful it will be for me to use in class with teachers and students. 

Helping to get screen recording going with small groups in the afternoon was useful for me to use Quicktime again. I use Screencastify lots so good to get the use of this tool nailed.

Once Perky's group completed their recording she and I searched on how to screen record in Windows and she did a quick test to see if it worked... and it did. Pressing the Windows+G keys to bring up the "Game Bar".  Instructions are here for PC users. 

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

Taming tabs will be something that I will bring back to the surface in classes. Bookmarking is covered when bookmarking blogs, class sites but some of my classes need their Drive, gMail bookmarked so they can get to it quickly. I can see a session on this then get them into moving files into folders. Many of the classes I work in have files just sitting in Drive and not in their Hapara folders. 

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

Google Keep for recipes - thanks Maria! I have used Google Keep quite a bit to curate stuff but haven't used the photo snapping that grabs the text and puts it separately under the photo. This was a Wow! moment. Making use of the voice notes function in Keep in the phone app is going to be a game changer. I don't think we use the collaboration function fully in Keep either but maybe that's because we use Google Docs and Trello (locally with our team) and share our thinking that way. 

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.