Made it

DFI Completion 

I made it through and have thoroughly enjoyed taking part in the Manaiakalani DFI, 2021. 

Having an online, out-of-school, opportunity has provided me with the time to reflect and develop my skills. Not having regular interruptions due to school life has been appreciated.

I have improved my class site, started a blog, upskilled my google suite fluency. All through the time provided (and repetition). 

I have been reminded to ensure published material is clear, visually appealing: hooks students into the learning and reminded to share material beyond our local school environment. 

I have appreciated the work-home life balance that the course's hours has provided me. To have afternoons not at work was an unexpected bonus. I have been able to make dinners and spend time with my children (happy wife = happy life). 

31st March DFI Blog

 DFI Day 8: Computational Thinking

These are the things I learned from today's DFI:

1. Empowered

Need to equip our next generation with the skills to both compete and succeed in a digital world. Through skills, through a safe environment: consistency and stability of the learning environment (in a child's sometimes very inconsistent life), equitable outcomes and access to technology with the goal of providing learners ownership/control of their education. 

2. DTG curriculum / computational thinking

Digital fluency is the capability to use our own digital technologies in the world we live in. Yet, the value is when we move beyond being a digital consumer to becoming a digital innovator. The DTG curriculum allows learners to develop the computational/algorithmic thinking that most computer operating systems have as their base: an ordered step-by-step set of instructions that accurately describe a process, action or event. 

3. Coding

Examples in Mathematics 

Robo-Compass

Maths Puzzle

Line fitting

Linear Lines

Parabola

Mihi

I created my mihi through gamefroot.com.

Hamish Wood's Mihi

4. A bit of fun

Created by Teachers and Students - both learners while doing this!

24th March DFI Blog

 DFI Day 7: Devices

This is what I learnt from today's session

1. Ubiquitous 

Anytime, Anywhere and at Any pace. 24/7 students have access to their learning - if they choose to. The opportunity for students to learn from the teacher of their choice. Technology removes some barriers to learning and provides solutions to problems. It connects our students to learning from many parts of the world. 

One of the learnings from online learning (Lockdowns) was that online 'face to face' is more draining than in a class. So we could do less talk and more support (guide on the side rather than the sage on the stage) throughout the online platform. 

Through lockdown, as a school, we were fortunate in that 99% of students had devices and access to the internet. This was a logistical accomplishment. We chose to teach less and allow students to have a measured approach to their learning but there was high accountability to the teacher and their caregivers. Surprisingly, our students did better than in previous years. 

2. Being Cybersmart

Like with all expectations, we teach what we should be doing rather than what we shouldn't. Our kawa of care so all can confidently and responsibly use their devices within the boundaries of respect. We share what is positive and comes from a position of both confidence and learning

3. Shortcuts

DFI Digital Dig - lots of fun and some new tricks learnt

4. Recording our screen

I have used screencastify before but not used the screen recorder on an iPad. Control centre - screen recording. But - there are so many ways to do the same thing. I am not sure whether I would use this function. 

5. Using EE - an example

17 MAR DFI Blog

 Day 6 Enabling Access. 

The big things I took from today. 

1. DFI is a continual process of choice

This (my DFI) is a work in progress. As long as I keep using, adding to and improving my digital skills, the digital experience (for myself and others) improves. 

2. Connected

Being part of a team gives a place of belonging and gives us access to share and receive from others. Being connected develops a shared and common language - therefore allowing people to become even more connected. 

3. Using sites as the center of class learning.

I need to ensure my site is easy to access the day's learning. Use less-words and more images. Less navigation required and all info readily accessible/clearly identifiable.

As a result, I have worked on creating a more comprehensive site page for my Yr 11 class topic: Number. So that if and when students are working from home, it is not a scary site to navigate.

Number topic - site, Document that has been worked on. 

10 Mar DFI Blog

DFI day 5 

Things learned from today's DFI

(1) Visible

Dorothy shared the next Manaiakalani value: Visible. Ensuring the learning is accessible to all students - not just those who can read the teacher's mind. There is the need to have an intentional use of technology to help learning become visible to the school community; so discussions around a learner's learning journey are taking place more. If visible, there are no surprises - the learning is accessible, available to all, and before it is needed. 

Dorothy suggested the class site is this community interface. Hapara becomes the interface that opens up student learning to the teacher. 

(2) Multimodal sites. 

Multimodal Sites. Our class site is the hook to empower learning. Our class site home page should engage the learner and reflect what is happening for that day/time. The heart of multimodal learning is engagement, accessibility, agency, cognitive complexity to improve outcomes and differentiation through multiple modes of communication and opportunities. 

(3) Google sites

A great opportunity to look into how to improve our existing sites to engage learners. I am still a little bit of a novice here - but now I am much more aware of creating more engaging sites. I have spent a good amount of time trying to tidy up my maths drive folders (that are linked to my site) as I have become aware that if I share my site with the world, I want it easily accessible, tidy and engaging. 

Hamish's Maths Site

3 Mar DFI Blog

 DFI Day 4

Lessons learned from day 4

(1) Learn, Create, SHARE

Dorothy shared about the importance of thinking about the 'who' we are sharing our digital information with. The platform Blogger is a safe environment for teachers and learners. Personalisable and multi-purposeful. Blogger gives a great opportunity for feedback and feedforward (whether student or teacher). Through feedback learning continues even though the moment has passed. 

Secondly, we were encouraged to share our resources with the wider world (for our growth and to support others). 

(2) Google Forms

I felt at home with this presentation as Google Forms are something that I (and our school) use a lot - for example, collecting student's option choices for each year (allowing flexibility for students who change their mind ...), as a 'mood sheet' to check in with a student's understanding of learning and/or wellbeing, as a way of collecting student learning/assessment, of collating survey results from schools or the community ... 

(3) Google Maps 

This will be good for showing points of historical interest around our Town. I also liked the idea of showing our pepeha via google maps also. 

(4) Google Sheets

This is another function that I am very familiar with. I was trained with Excel and Google Sheets has most of the functionality of Excel and its greatest strength is shareability/collaboration. 

Yet I still learned some new features:

• =sparkline( )
• alternating colours for rows. 
• I liked the functionality of the 'explore' tab. 
• for dropdown options - go to Data, Data Validation. This is useful when setting up reporting sheets. 

Play Time

(5) Analysing student blog data 

I can see the value of student's analysing their own data. Looking at Dyzon's posts from 2018 to the end of 2020, I notice that His blogs regularly increase in May (pink circles above peaks). In wonder whether there is a particular focus at Dyzon's school, Tamaki Primary, at this time of the year. 

I like the positive, thoughtful and helpful mantra of how to write comments on other's blogs. 

24 Feb DFI Bog

 DFI Day 3

Things that stood out to me: 

(1) The 'Hook'. 

A reminder of the importance of having a hook into learning for many of our students. The content is not enough - but need to develop the opportunity to have playful, creative, out-of-the-box opportunities. Then being able to engage the learner to the content through these activities. The 'hands-on' or 'real life' activities link learning to the memory/brain as it demands us to think and analyse what is going on.

(2) YouTube

Checking our playlists on my work YouTube channel. I found that extra videos had made it onto some playlists (either in a wrong playlist or not relevant to the playlist) - this reminded me to check playlists regularly. Especially as some playlists are my shared videos to the community. Good value to use playlists and embed into a student's workstream so potential distractions minimised. Found difficult to find the embedding link for a playlist. Eventually shared playlist to a new blog then took the code from this.

(3) Google Drawing

Used a template and designed an introduction slide for my blog. I noticed that when I amended my drawing, it automatically updated in my blog - helpful. 

(4) Google Slides

A reminder not to have a presentation where I am just repeating what the slide says (very boring). Slides can become an animation. Many features/applications seem similar to Google Drawings

17 Feb DFI Blog

DFI Day 2.

These are the takeaway learnings from today for me.

(1) Google Keep

I am already a user, but it was good to put the extension/shortcut for Google Keep onto the toolbar. I also saw the potential of using the shortcut to capture links or Photos or even translating screenshots of text into text. This function would be great for my NCEA L3 Statistics class for finding referencing research is sometimes in a PDF (or other) format. I have also now started labeling and organising/archiving my notes into folders. 

(2) Gmail

I am now looking at removing boomerang as the scheduler seems to have all the functions I require.

(3) Calendar

I have now set my work calendar to view over 5 days instead of 7. This is handy for school to show more on the screen. A good reminder was demonstrated in setting up online meetings. I have used this function before but not in 2021.

(4) Bookmarking Tabs

Another function I use regularly. The shortcuts to save pages were helpful to increase speed and ease of use.

(5) Recording meetings

We were asked to look at a blog Link to Blog. Then we paired up and shared a little about what we read in the blog, what was the intent of the teacher, and what did readers of the blogs say. In GoogleMeet, this conversation was recorded and is embedded below. Thanks to Kerry for her support. I have recorded meetings before but not embedded onto another document. So new learning here. 

10 Feb DFI Blog

 Kia ora 

I had the opportunity to revise some old and learn some new skills. Pace of DFI was just right. After using google for over a decade, some skills I regularly use. 

After starting the day with an ipad, I was kindly reminded to use a desktop computer. As I did not have one of these, I had to borrow a very slow computer for the remainder of day. I will see whether I can borrow a school CB for the remainder of DFI course.

New Learnings 

(1) groups.google.com. A great way to have emails and information kept over time so new people who join that group will have access to previous discussions. 

(2) Had the opportunity to work on my common Mathematics site (rather than have separate links to each level). HWD Mathematics

(3) Speech to Text function. I have seen this but not used it before 

RE: Manaiakalani - nothing new learned. But it is the putting into practice of things learned that is now happening. Learning, creating, and now .... sharing

Having the right equipment for the mahi would have helped with speed and fluency - but we have what we have.

Trying this blogging thing out

Thought I would give this blog thing a go before I showed everyone at DFI that I am not really a blogger. 

I have used (and as a school, we have used) Interlead Connect as a reflection database for a number of years - but we have recently stopped paying for this as a school. This could be my new way to share reflections of teaching/teaching practice with staff or students.