Delightful Devices - Another Brick in the Wall

Day 5 - DFI

Cybersmart not Cybersafe as there is more to living in a digital world than being safe and cybersafe does tend to have negative thoughts and it’s important that the digital experience is positive.

In the site below, these are the categories that are used for the cybersmart curriculum and it is suggested that we work our way through these and use the resources that are provided. Smart Learners (Term 1) Smart Footprint (Term 2)  Smart Relationships (Term 3).

Next we were off looking at Harpara (AKA Teacher Dashboard). I use Harpara in class all the time to support children at being in the right place at the right time, to open work the children have done, to smart share work out to the children. Today though I discovered that I can also access the documents that children have not put into the right place. A great visual way to ensure children put things away. Lovely way to liken tidying their drives is like tidying their bedrooms. We also explored the share links, which allows us to lock children into particular sites for a set period of time or to allow them to explore the internet apart from specific sites.

Part of being digitally fluent is about understanding what we ask our learners to do. We got a chance to work on an iPad (Year 1-3 students use this) and a chromebook (Year 4 - 13 students). Took part in a 'digital dig' in order to understand the chromebook shortcuts. This was really valuable and would be a great way to start each year. This is my digital dig.


This afternoon was about using screencastify which is a great tool that I do use but on reflection not as much as I should be. The tools that are now available mean that illustrating a point is clearer. A way of making instructions clear and learning rewindable. There was a new publication entitled '50 ways to use screencastify in education. As I was flicking through this I loved the following idea and would like to try it.

I then got inspired to change a maths lesson I had planned. I had initially planned for the children to write down where the mistakes are and then solve the problem correctly but now I will get them to screencastify where the mistakes are and then explain how they would solve it. I created an example for them to see how I would do it. This is now the new activity:


Goal: I need to take more advantage of this tool. When I find the time I would like to explore how other educators use it. I also need to finish looking at the '50 ways ..' publication.

Today wasn't as intensive for me as other weeks as I use Harpara and screen castify. However having said that, the information was relevant and I was able to learn new things that excited me. Another valuable day!