Digital Fluency Intensive, Day 9

Digital Fluency Intensive, Day 9 Another full on day. After these 9 weeks I can feel how much more prepared I am for embracing the Ubiquitous Learning. Technology enables removal of barriers, and it makes it possible to connect with learners, no matter if they are close or far away. The DFI course created virtually endless opportunities for me to utilize new tools in teaching.

Digital Fluency Intensive, Day 8.

Digital Fluency Intensive, Day 8 It was great to hear today how creativity empowers learning, and how digital technologies empower creativity. The device is not just a tool, indeed. The new Digital Technologies Curriculum sets the outlines for computational thinking. It is important to feel the difference between digital fluency and digital technologies. A digitally fluent person can decide when and why to use specific digital technologies to achieve a specific task or solve problems. A digitally capable person can create their own digital technologies solution. Would be great to see that students have opportunities to be innovative designers and creators of digital solutions as well. It was fun exploring coding today. I had my first experience with Minecraft, and it became clear to me why it is so popular among the children. Another successful day.

Digital Fluency Intensive, Day 7.

The main principles of being cyber smart were explained today. A very important area to cover
with my tamariki. The Kawa of Care should be something we revisit in the classroom from time to time. 

Hapara is quite a versatile tool, it’s good to know all the different things you can do with it. "Highlights"
will be very helpful in the classroom.

Exploring devices was good fun. I have managed to create a little project using the Whiteboard on
"Explain Everything".

And of course, the Screencastify. You can do a lot with this extension in terms of bringing more
multimedia content onto your website. Something like this. 

Digital Fluency Intensive, Day 6.

Digital Fluency Intensive, Day 6.

It was good to explore the “connected” aspect of the “Learn, Create, Share” model. The practice of evaluating the learning websites against two sets of criteria - “Visual Appeal” and “Functionality” -  was extremely useful. 

The feedback on my site was very helpful. It gave me some ideas about improving the content and boosting the appearance of the site. There should be a good balance between having lots of opportunities for children to explore and keeping everything usable and manageable, at the same time.
I have started the work on adding a new "Wizard" page to my website.

Important tip: having the week numbers only on weekly task slides could be confusing for children and whanau. Having the dates alongside with the week numbers will be much better.

Digital Fluency Intensive, Day 5.

A very intensive day in terms of learning. Manaiakalani Kaupapa is becoming more and more clear. The principle of visibility is quite important. It is great to see the connections between multimodal design behavioural engagement and multi-textural design for cognitive engagement. The importance of the Hook!

The T-shaped literacy approach is opening a new dimension to teaching and learning. 

I have managed to create my first Google site today. The whole process was very exciting. I will still need lots of practice and fine-tuning before I can transfer all my ideas into the site. Here is the link to my creation.

https://sites.google.com/edmundhillary.school.nz/monarchs/home

Digital Fluency Intensive 2020, Day 4.

Today’s focus was Tohatoha - Share. It’s all about establishing an authentic audience and connecting with it. Google Forms is fun. It is an invaluable tool for collecting feedback and for different types of data collection. It is important to set the right sharing setting before sending it. 

Google Sheets has much more to offer than I thought it would. Especially with the ability to produce different types of charts and to calculate maths data. Very useful. Here are a couple of examples of the things you can do with it.

The “Google My Maps” tool is fascinating. It is a great way of presenting visual data, I will need to spend some time exploring it.

Digital Fluency Intensive, Day 3.

Google slides would be the highlight for Day 3. It is quite a versatile tool for planning and teaching. One of the useful features I have learned today is how to embed a video into the slide.I have also created a YouTube channel and made my first playlist. Google Draw is another great tool to use in teaching and learning. Overall the media will make it so much easier to learn, create, and share.

Digital Fluency Intensive, Day 2.

 

 Another great session. First of all, the insight into "Ako" part of Manaiakalani philosophy makes much more sense now. I haven’t been using Google Keep before, but it might be quite a useful tool for organising your thoughts. G-mail is much more versatile than I thought before. And it’s great to have a signature in the emails. I know now that it's possible to have two events scheduled at the same time in the Calendar. And taming the tabs will prevent “running around” on the screen with your mouth. Google Meet was the highlight of the day. It’s a great tool, especially when you know how to record a video and publish it. Another bonus for the day - having Grammarly. Very fruitful session. 

 Here is the video we have recorded with Aaron.

Digital Fluency Intensive 2020 Day 1.

I was looking forward this morning to my first DFI session and wasn’t disappointed. 

First of all, the things are so much clearer now about the philosophy and methodology of Manaiakalani. The inspiring story of “Manaiakalani” creation will warm up our hearts during the whole 9 week journey.

I started to use Google a few months ago and it is so good to begin putting everything into the system. Making connections between bits and pieces I knew before and discovering new opportunities. My Google Drive is so much easier to use now after the big clean up. 

Google groups will definitely help to organise interactions of a better quality with my colleagues from different countries. Teaching others is the best way to learn new things, so it is time to start introducing basic Google docs skills in my Year 2-3 classroom. 

It was fun working with the info graphics.

A great start!