And just like that the wall is full ... or is it?

DFI Day 9

And just like that the wall is full ... or is it?

9 weeks of intensive, brain crunching, snake pits and tornados of information is over. However I don't think it is over, just like my wall isn't really full. There is always room for more. More learning, more information and more excitement over applying the learning. On reflection, while I know there have been some weeks where I have left here thinking, 'What on earth? or 'How can I get better?' there has been more excitement about the fact that it's Tuesday and I was off to the DFI course today and what cool things would we learn today and then how can I use that information in my day-to-day, etc. 

Before I completely sign out of the course, let's have a look at what we got up to today though:

Ubiquitous Learning - Presentation                                        Ubiquitous Site

Ubiquitous carries the idea that learning takes places outside of the traditional school/classroom in the
digital era and barriers are removed:  

Barriers of Time - 24/7 potentially ie the time of the child’s choice (Empowering the learner). The time of
the teacher (adult learner) choice eg online Toolkits

Barriers of Geography- anywhere in the world, not just inside the school walls

Barriers of People- not just from your assigned teacher standing in front of you - anyone, including
experts, other teachers etc

Barriers over the Pace of learning - go faster/slower, rewind over and over, skip easy stuff…

All the Manaiakalani clusters have similar data over time, supporting the problem of limited learning happening outside of school hours. What this shows is great acceleration (learning) during the school year, then a sharp drop over the summer holidays. This is not new news, our children go BACKwards over  the Summer months. Ubiquitous learning is essential to arrest this. Summer Learning Journeys were designed with this in mind.

Blogging Supports Writing - Research

Summer Reading Slide - Article

Apps to explore:  Chromebooks

• Screencastify
• WeVideo
• Pixiclip
• Explain Everything
• Movenote
• FlipGrid
• EduCreations

Apps to explore:  Mobile phones / iPads

• Showme
• Explain Everything

Add more if you have them

• Loom - Windows option

But wait .....

that wasn't all!

We then had the chance to sit the Google Certified Educator Level 1 Exam and I am happy to say I passed. I'm not gonna lie, there were nerves going into this but its always great to remind ourselves of how our learners feel when we ask them to do something. My feelings will be very similar to theirs when they are asked to do something similar that takes them out of their comfort zone. It is also a timely reminder of how different people cope with or react/respond to different situations. 

So what now ...

Yes I will miss my Tuesday opportunity to meet up with  and learn from experts and colleagues so now I need to keep this momentum going! The feeling of accomplishment is high and in fact that is a very clear goal for me moving into term 4 and 2020. I will be proactive around the continuing development of me as an educator and in about connecting with colleagues.

Thank you DFI, thank you!

Dealing to Data

DFI - Day 8

The understanding for today was around Empowering, empowering our learners!

The word 'agency' has long since become a buzz word in education circles however for many of our families the word agency has negative connotations and therefore has the opposite impact. Therefore rather than having to repeatedly explain the positivity of the word, it was changed to empowering. After all that is what agency is. The word empower is inclusive for all our whanau.

80% of the Manaiakalani community in live with incomes of $19,000 per annum. They make it work, but they are the working poor. We are not just talking about whanau on benefits, these families are working and trying to juggle child care, bills and life. However it is quite disempowering. 5+ a day back and forth conversations make a difference to the oral language and blogging also strengthens this. We like to call this in our class a bloggersation.

If we want to EMPOWER our children then we can’t cherry pick which of these we do. All of the following need to be part of this journey:

We are building our own spider web for our audience. The more we click on others blogs and bring people to our own blogs then you are building your audience/links to your web.

Google Forms

• Setting up the first question as you want it and then duplicate it to save time.
• Settings - collect email address only works within an organisation
• Shorting the url makes it easier.

I had a chance to create a simple form about pets using different question types.

Google My Maps - Personally this is a great asset but it can also be worthwhile in the classroom too. I've created my next holiday using maps but we could easily use this to show where we are going on camp to Wellington and therefore share it with our whanau.

Google Sheets - This is where I admit a hate:hate relationship with sheets. However I now need to change our status from hate:hate to hate:like. Dorothy, very patiently, went through all the key things that would help us with sheets and I've had a play and it's not too bad.

Sheets on Speed - What we need to know for the exam :)

Google Sheets - We can use data from blogs to help the students create hypotheses around their blog posting. I had a go with a couple of my own bloggers and created the following info:

As bloggers, we are building our own spider web for our audience. The more we click on others blogs and bring people to our own blogs, then we are building our audience/links to our web.

And now the end is near ... and an exam is on the horizon. Of course I am nervous as it's been a full on 8 weeks with a lot of time spent in the learning pit. However I have learnt so much and now need more time to consolidate and 'play' with what I have learnt. Onwards I go ...

Google Sheets Sheets on Speed - What we need to know for the exam Blog Data C Using data from blogs to help the students create hypotheses around their blog posting. We are building our own spider web for our audience. The more we click on others blogs and bring people to our own blogs then you are building your audience/links to your web.

Tripping through Visible Sharing

DFI - Day 7

Live Streaming - Presentation

This has huge potential in regards to sharing. There is an initial set up cost with cameras etc but worthwhile. 

• Any camera that is HD capable and has HDMI out will give you the best results. The Canon LEGRIA HF G40 is a very powerful yet compact camera. I highly recommend: https://www.canon.co.nz/cameras/legria-hf-g40
• Allows for a cable free solution to live feeds. You can stream straight to YouTube, Facebook and other platforms. You can even stream to multiple destinations at one time. https://teradek.com/collections/vidiu-family#web-streaming

While the above is the ultimate, you can use your laptop camera or a drone. Drones should have a gimbal (I had to look this up) on it which is where when you turn the drone the camera stays level.

You don’t have to be live you can keep it private.

On immediate reflection: This would be great in streaming events that happen at school as it may be a way for more of our whanau to engage with what their children  are doing and for our tamariki to know that there is a way for their whanau to see/be involved with what they do at school.

Hangout with Dorothy - Being Connected Digitally

Being connected digitally is a way of empowering the learners and we can do it because the learning is shared and visible. It extends from the individual, potentially to the world. This is an inclusive model and again, taps into the human instinct to SHARE and to be connected with other human beings. A powerful network … allows the conversations to happen with the Ministry of Education, who also see us as a powerful network.

Diversity is celebrated - what ties us together is the language of Learn Create Share

“If you are all paddling in the same direction, you have greater power, you are more efficient. There is an impact on the nature of teaching and learning because if the teacher and student each know what it is you’re meant to be focusing on you are more likely to reach your goals.” - Dorothy Burt

Term 4 is about bringing the Learn Create Share together, have something to enable students to innovate and accelerate learning.

Digital turbo-charges but face to face is also just as important. Digital allows us to do more or include those that can’t be there. This is where Toolkits came from. 

You will often find the words connected and share tied together in Manaiakalani resources and events- it is impossible to have one without the other. Because connection is a two way, two person action. You have to give to get. If you want others to share with you, then you need to be a sharing kinda person.

Powerful learning, creating and sharing comes into its own supporting a Connected network when teaching and learning is visible. Connectedness is powerful when teaching and learning is visible,

learners (and teachers) have are empowered (have agency), and ubiquity is supported.

Research and writings about Connected - links

From today I have a burning need for further play and learning in the 'live streaming' area. I've had a chance to play more on google drawing and google slides in order to understand more about what I ask my children to do. A valuable experience. I do a lot with slides anyway as a lot of our work that we set the children are on slides. It was interesting to learn that using comments to put in my reflections of learning/lessons are only visible to the editors and that people on view only can NOT see the comments.

I've also learnt that when adding the embed code of an animation in the html of blogger (once the slide is embedded), if you change the delay amount from 1000 to 100 this speeds up the animation on the blog.

Another valuable day with more time needed to play and grow in confidence.