Dealing with Data - Week 4

Share - it is such an important part of the learning but can often be missed out in the classroom due to time or lack there of. It light of the current situation where we are in lock-down to stop the spread of Covid-19, the importance of making connections has become a strong focus and one that I took for granted. Never would I have imagined a time when I could not go the school as see my students face to face. I applaud the New Zealand Government for taking this action to keep us all safe, but due to the swiftness of it, it has left me feeling unprepared for online learning. Being new to the Manaiakalani facilitation this year we had only just scratch the surface. When reflecting on sharing in this current climate I feel my learning will be from my peers who have experienced the Manaiakalani programme longer than I and also my students. Their digital knowledge surpasses my own and I look forward to learning from them and with them together on this collaborative journey of online learning.

An authentic audience is one where people choose to listen to you. How can we ensure we are being heard? Learning about Google Forms today has sparked many ideas and conversations with one of my colleagues about how we can use Google Forms.  We both created a form and uploaded to our Site for our tamariki to fill in. From there we will be able to gather some data on how they are felling, what their day looks like, what apps they are using and what they think online learning looks like. This is an exciting way to keep connected with our students, collect data that will link to their well being and encourage student voice about different types of learning activities. 

Data with Google Sheets - arghhh... my brain hurts after this session. I have used Google Sheets before but not created one, just entered data into one. I found this lesson frustrating especially with the many challenges delivering this content to a large group and all the technique issues that came along with this. I had great difficulty hearing and my laptop kept freezing. I was unable to participate in the smaller group chat due to my laptop continuing to play up (it's due for replacement) so I have requested help from my Manaiakalani facilitator at a later date. It's on my to do list. 

Blogger - what fun! I liked the way I could add labels and link key works to make it easier to connect with the appropriate blog or to organise my blogs. I can see the benefit of analysing the data in blogger not only to track the students blogs but to explore what types of blogs are more engaging and also spark a little healthy competition into blogging (like Mele's goal) or commenting on peers blogs. This will easily encourage more tamariki to engage in each others blogs. I enjoy using my classroom blog to get the message out but at the moment I am having trouble getting the tamariki to engage. For some of our year 5 students blogger is new to them and all the tamariki have their own school blog. I'm trying to find ways to get them to engage in the classroom blog as well by adding links to our Team Facebook page to engage whānau as well but this is not working. I think my expectations are too high as this is all new learning for our team and for many parents. I need to keep it simple and for now focus on getting engagement with our Team Sites as this where the bulk of our learning will be delivered over the coming weeks.

My Maps... I can see this becoming a fun way to explore and make real connections to our local area, nationally and linking to whānau overseas. First thought was it would linked nicely to Mathematics but as I played around with it I could see it easily integrating to all curriculum areas. It is an easy way to create custom maps with the places that matter to you. I like the way you can personalise it by adding colour, icons, photos and even videos. Add points or draw shapes anywhere, find places and save them to my maps and even make a map from any spreadsheet. I do need a little bit of practice though, lets me honest...a lot of practice. :)

I know there is  a lot more to add from today's session but my brain is full and it's time to log off. It was interesting doing today's DFI online as it gave me an insight to how our students might feel as online learning increases. I like the advice of keep it simple and limited the links. 

We can do this... 

Media - Week 3

Media... wow where to begin. 

Create This weeks session saw us exploring lots of different ways of being creative and engaging students with the use of google apps, Youtube and more.

“Give the students something to do,

 not something to learn;

And the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking;

Learning naturally results”.

John Dewey

Creating is all about exploring and discovering. It is a highly metacognitive. Teaching students to think outside the square, be problem solvers within a integrated curriculum will empower and motivate our students.

Live stream If its worth teaching its worth capturing, if its worth capturing its worth sharing. There are many different tools to use to capture learning and live stream or delayed stream for whānau to be part of the learning day. Our school has used a Go pro to capture experiences on Marine Reserve trips, cross country and triathlons. We also used a drone in 2017 to capture the school cross country. The drone is a fantastic tool but as our school is located in the airport zone you have to be sure you stay within the height restrictions. It was so engaging both at the event but also back in the classroom. To re-watch it and help relive the experience was a great way to support writing a recount.

For me today I was drawn to the learning about the DJI Osmo. I can see how easy this would be to use in the everyday classroom. It can capture learning while creating a professional finish to share as it provides stability when filming. I will be talking with my team about purchasing this product.

Chalk & Talk

Youtube Channel & Playlists

I have used my You tube channel to create playlists for school songs, publish videos of school events, videos to support learning for our classroom sites and many Ted talks to support my own professional study.

Today was valuable as I learnt about Youtube studio and the importance of having a school Youtube account to share directly from instead of always using my personal channel. With the constant changes in privacy and protecting the viewers we explored different ways to create or save a playlist that is suitable content for our tamariki.

The chances Youtube make constantly been we need to keep an eye on different settings or ways to save clips to our channel or playlist. The way I have always saved a Youtube clips is my viewing then using the + to add to a playlist. A new to achieve this is to save in search view by clicking on the 3 dots to the side of the Youtube clip, not once clicked into it and add using+ (you tube have changed settings to protect clips with kids) 

Important tips I learn't in You tube studio;

• Find dashboard
• Change settings around privacy per playlist (public/private)
• Change the order of your playlist
• URL & embed code

Google Slides

Yay! what a great afternoon spent creating animation using Google slides. I love the way google slides is so multipurposeful. 

My animation creation was to linked to our current inquiry about Kaitikitanga - protecting our oceans. My animation is a visual representation of what our oceans look like and what is happening with more plastic being introduced. Its a work in progress but I love the way I can embed it into my blog and it's updated as I make changes. 

The DFI course each week brings new learning, helps refresh and update our current knowledge and is interactive. I enjoyed today as we had plenty of time to explore and CREATE.  

Workflow - Week 2

This weeks mahi saw me exploring the learn element of the Learn, Create, Share pedagogy.

Learn, create, share is not new but has evolved and in recent years at a great pace. Enhancing what we do as teachers to engage and support our tamariki is essential to set them up for success in this ever growing digital world. 

I loved this quote 'We must all be swimming in the digital ocean" Lenva Shearing  

Chalk in Talk  - saw the importance of  sorting and organisation of your gmail.

I learn't how to schedule emails, created a signature, add 30 secs to edit a sent email, change display settings, adding a theme. Be careful when adding a theme as this can slow down or change your display beyond Gmail. Lots of tips were learnt on how tidy your tabs. One way was to use One Tab a Google Extension. This allows you to link multiple tabs within the one tab.  

To do this you right click while working in the tab and send it to One Tab. Another Google extension was to use Toby Mini this helps to Orgnaize your browser and share collections with others.

A highlight of today was Google Hangouts - to use either your email or calendar to invite others to a 'hangout' to share ideas or have a meeting. You can present your screen so others can see and also record your session. Our group was successful at joining the hangout and sharing ideas but we had a technical error with an internal microphone not working so the sound did not work in the video. 

The task was to review a blog from the summer learning journey and highlight what was the teaching design behind this post? What was the learner’s response i.e the post content

Who responded to the post and how did this support the learning experience or contribute more to the learning of the child?

There are some very digital savvy tamariki out there! They were awesome. When you reviewed the many layers of digital skills, prior knowledge, critically thinking, writing skills, reading skills & much more involved in the blog posts. They were interactive, reflective, thought provoking and encouraged the reader to leave feedback or create something to share on there blog. I found this inspiring and exciting as my learners embark on their first year of Manakalani facilitation in the classroom. I can already see how I will be learning alongside them in many of these areas. 

Google Keep - where have you been. This is the perfect app for me and my OCD tendentices. I can already see many ways I can capture thoughts or ideas to save them and organise them when on the run to easily .locate them at a suitable time. To be able to use this app on my phone also is fantastic, I foresee linking this to my professional blog, professional appraisal for capturing those unexpected moments for  evidence of student learning and much more. To be able to organised and label them into groups or archive when not needed is a SMART way of working. 

To do... continue to explore and reflect on the new learning, practice embedding a doc into my blog, give feedback to my fellow bloggers and partciplate in some Google Hangouts! Invitation sent, first one is on Monday! 

Core Business - Week 1

Here is our 2020 DFI Cohort One Team. 

Today was all about 'Core Business'. We reflected, refreshed and rediscovered the diversity of Google Docs. Many new tips and tricks were learn't as we created and shared with each other. 

Google Groups? what on earth was this??? I discovered that Google Groups manages your email, is easy to share, and everything is kept in one place. I can already see how this Google App will be more efficient to use within the school and classroom.

I created a newsletter in google docs which was new learning as I have always used google slides for this task. I loved the many ways I could use a table to create an interactive and fancy newsletter. Inserting images after removing a background and colouring the cell lines the same as the background made the newsletter look clean and professional.

Todays other new mahi included;

• Omnibox = URL box
• To jump through tabs use Ctrl + number (tab)
• Shift Z to move folders instead of moving to a shared folder - it is only a shortcut or ghost. Any changes with alter doc. Copy the doc is best if you want to personalise or edit a doc.
• Ctrl, shift v or paste without formatting - ensures text is clean.
• How to insert a contents page. Insert, bottom of tab, you can navigate the text by using the content.
• If you change a heading title it will change in the contents.
• Heading 1 - create the font size you want then update heading 1 and with create the same heading 1 size as you insert.
• Sharing relevant content in a reading - highlight the particular paragraph, then copy the URL. It will send the whole doc but when opened it will open on the highlighted paragraph.
• To share a doc without sending an email notification simply unclick the notify tick box then push ok.
• To use explore - highlight text/quote then click on (") this will cite and insert APA reference in the footer
• PNG good to use when searching something with transparent background.
• How to remove the lines on your table.
• Refresher on Blogger - Need to work on how to make an embedded doc bigger.

I wonder what next week will bring...