DFI Day 7 Devices

Another remote learning day as we are still in lockdown at Alert level 4.

Today we learnt more about Cyber Smart from Fiona Grant. It is important we revisit this every year for children who have entered school after Term 1 and also to reinforce this important learning for All children. 

It empowers learners to be positive. Key words are POSITIVE  HELPFUL  THOUGHTFUL.

We also learnt about Hapara, which makes the learning visible to the teacher. The Seniors in our school use this, while the Juniors use Mosley so this was very informative for me. I will be able to view some of the Seniors work without having to visit individual Blogs.

Senior children use Chromebooks as their learning device. And, no doubt, with much more skill than I showed during our practice!!

I was slightly less lost during the session about ipads, as I had used Explain Everything with my Junior class before with Donna Yates' help.

This was our assigned practice, so I recorded it on screen castify to share on my Blog.

Our next learning was about Screen Castify. I viewed the Manaiakalani Smart Values and recorded myself speaking about the tab and adapting it for my Junior Learners. I need to re-record this, as I found an awesome Manaiakalani Rap but as I clicked on it, it must have gone onto the next video, and I missed it. However, I did learn to record... just need to find the stop button!!
Screen castify video to come when I can perfect embedding a video into HTML without deleting what I've already written!

Kerry gave us some more Blogging tips.
I still need to practice using the layout and make a new page 'Teaching as Inquiry'
But for now... I need a big long beach walk in the sunshine while it's low tide!

DFI Day 7 Screen Castify Take 1

DFI Day 6 Sites - Enabling Access

Another distance learning day full of information!!
We began with  a talk about being CONNECTED which is even more relevant at present while we are in lockdown and all learning remotely.
We have all spent the last two weeks...yes, the holidays!... thinking about/planning and setting up our distance learning for the first two weeks of Term 2 for our classes. Our Sites and hangouts are making the learning visible and making connections digitally not only with our kids, but also with their families. Every one is unsure of this new learning platform, so we are all stepping into unknown territory! Still some teething problems of course, even getting msgs during DFI to say the Principal and one parent can't get onto our Google Hangout...We'll have it sorted by the time lockdown is finished & we return to school!!

It's a great time to be on DFI actually, because at least we have had an insight into using all these digital tools, before we all HAD to put them into real life practice in order to teach and interact with our staff, our learners and their whanau.

Gerhard guided us through the basic site requirements and some valuable points to think about... does the site allow the children to accelerate?? Can they get to the learning within 3 clicks??
It's all about the VISUAL APPEAL and the SITE FUNCTIONALITY.
There is a lot to balance and we become graphic designers/artists/techno wizards while building our sites.

We viewed the sites of others in our regional groups and filled out a form to give each one feedback. It was a bit like speed-dating with sites!...
Luckily we were able to spend a bit of time making some improvements. Especially after going into an incognito window to view our site to find all the things without access. It's important to put everything we want to put on our sites into a seperate folder in our Drive, allow anyone with the link to view items in the folder and then put them into our sites. I have added more photos because it might engage more whanau to view our site. Will keep working on it. Luckily ours is a shared site with input from two other teachers also, so it is evolving quite quickly.

Kerry talked to us about Blogs and showed us how to add a gadget. I managed to add Melissa's Site to my Blog, then add Edwina's Blog to mine as gadgets in the side bar! Will search out some junior sites and blogs to add.
Also reviewed with Venessa today how to embed a video into my Blog with success.
Whew! Time to stretch & do some yoga :)

DFI Day 5 Collaborative Google Sites

Our second remote DFI session today, held in my spare room, without the collaborative, instant help of knowledgeable colleagues in the room. I just had to unmute my microphone or write my queries in the chat bar & help arrived remotely! But I think I managed to keep up and make a start on everything required!

It sure was a lovely start to the day doing a gratitude chain and hearing what everyone was thankful for. I could definitely adapt and use this in my class of 5 and 6 year olds. Helps to develop listening skills too. And especially important at this time of lockdown to show gratitude and to let others know about it!

The VISIBLE teaching that Dorothy explained made me realise how far we have come from insular, individual, don't copy, don't share mentality to the collaborative, sharing kaupapa we have today.

That led us into learning about collaborative teaching and learning through Google Sites.
Multi-modal has multi modes/different styles/videos/graphs/animations/songs and caters for a range of learning styles.
Multi-textual has multi texts a big question and opportunities to read multiple texts tied to a learning topic/higher level texts and thinking/ideas-based.
This was a reminder about T shaped learning which I hope to do more of with my class.
The 2 multis make so much sense to me as a Junior class teacher!
This is my attempt at creating a site from scratch...
https://sites.google.com/d/1LKHl7q6AxO4KP_Eh-jWgT2qC_b9LSdfq/p/1VG85McWidXJpA-MXUyxRnaoIpIuAZEiL/edit

We then broke into small groups, and Maria Krauss led us in a brainstorm of ideas using a Google JAMBOARD. We then had a crack at creating a multi-textual site from scratch about a Junior level reader. This is a work in progress, takes a looooooong time to do, but I expect it gets quicker with practise.
https://sites.google.com/d/1so6tt20PDirxNyiiBxJhLkR6gV4I4MVm/p/1F-6g6AcUeA5lph-rN1b-hezHGgBBCywH/edit

Kerry showed us a blog tip about changing reactions, which I finally managed to do! If you leave me a reaction you'll see ;)