DFI Day 2

Really excited about heading back to the DFI this week.  Although I thought perhaps I wouldn't learn that much new information or skills last week, it was a wonderful informative day and the learning sparked new ideas for me.

This week's outline includes:
Google Docs
GMail
Google Keep
Google Meet



Resizing this was annoying so I learned how to do this:

Embed Code for Doc

I also learnt how to embed a doc and have it show up as a reasonable size.

<div style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; display: block; width: px; height: px;">
<iframe width='600' height='400' frameborder='0' src="Copy and paste the embed code of
your Google doc here/pub"></iframe></div>

So I used all the red code from publish to the web>embed:

<iframe src="https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSDtsnsxUfLtOQuijR8rERfx2Z-MbV9-gsVyuH-sf2iGQ3nMtxARm5iWA-vLbXr3pFXlQ1ZHi7aY31C/pub?embedded=true"></iframe>

Recapping on last week,
What worked well:
Being able to focus the whole day on these skills has been great.

What didn't work well:
I was a bit slow getting my blog post up last week, so I'd like to do that this week.  I'm going to take my notes here during the day and so should be organised by the end of the day with much of my learning ready to post.

LEARN
First, we were introduced to a video of Dorothy explaining how "learn" fits in and the understanding about us all being learners.
Acknowledgement of effective practice that exists all the way across the cluster.  It would be wonderful to have more of our teachers sharing their expertise in a toolkit during the Online Toolkits.

What does learn look like in your school?
This question was asked of us and we were then presented a number of different effective learning practices.  Some examples were the ALiM and ALL learning cycles as well as things like PB4L etc.


Recognise
Amplify
Turbocharge

Technology enables the removal of barriers, previously inconceivable solutions to problems, opportunities for new ways of learning.


We ran through some of the GSuite apps:
Google Keep:  I learned how to share my notes with other collaborators, so I shared all my old school notes with my new Manaiakalani account, so now I can view them in my new account.  I was worried when they didn't come through straight away, but after a little lag they came through.

GMail:
Looking at the view options
Readded Boomerang, which I've used before but with another account.  It was helpful to do that because I'll appreciate being able to know which of the teacher's I'm facilitating with have read the email that I recently sent out to them.

Today's reflections are:

Time to reflect and share with colleagues

• What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

Looking at the initial slides around learn, got me thinking more about the pedagogy that's been explored below the concept of 'learn'.

• What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

Going back to Google Hangouts and Loom and playing with screen recordings. I'm running an Online Toolkit soon for how to use Google Docs for Writing and Language work within the classroom so it was great to have some practice. I like that QuickTime recorder can trim clips. So can Loom though, so that's equally as helpful. I've had lots of great feedback that the Loom videos I'm using are quite helpful for people's learning, so I'd like to continue doing so.

• What did I learn that could be used with my learners?  

Definitely more videos to demonstrate learning. I also really enjoyed going back and using Google Keep.

• What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

Better use of calendars for writing down birthday gift ideas or places we could go for dinners etc. What is also helpful is navigating around my calendar by using the shortcuts.

Local Curriculum Resources

This morning we began our day with the Principal's PLG Hui at Mangapapa School.  We discussed a number of the celebrations and challenges of our growing Manaiakalani Cluster.   As part of this, we looked at the Convenor Notes from the Auckland Manaiakalani Hui last week.  Embedded in this was a website on local curriculum design.
Check it out here:
https://curriculumtool.education.govt.nz/

I'll be interested to see if they discuss collaboration and the design of high-quality real-life learning resources.

Collaboration Models

Part of the exploration I'm undertaking for my Google Innovator project is to look at how teachers and community resources (read: The Mind Lab, Tairāwhiti Museum, Waka Hourua, etc) could better collaborate to produce high-quality digital resources that are visible and rewindable in order to involve learners in real-world learning that is engaging and accessible to all.

Collaboration is a challenge when working across a whole region.  Many people are time poor and overwhelmed by other tasks, so although they are excited about the idea of collaboration, it's either not achieved or it's not turbocharged to the level that it could be.

This video was an interesting watch:
James Hopkins on Collaboration

This also led me to look at some new information around Practitioner Research and I found this "Inquiry on Inquiry" here.

Looking further, I realised that Google Scholar has a number of recent resources available as well.  

A bit of light reading for later: here.

Loads to unpack, but I'm excited about the impact it could have for our region if we can explore best practice for regional collaboration.

Core Business DFI

Friday of Week 5 saw us begin our first Tairāwhiti Digital Fluency Intensive.  As a new facilitator, I'm so lucky as I get to attend as well!  As someone who's already completed the Google Certified Educator Levels 1 and 2, I wasn't sure how much more I would learn, but I definitely still got some new learning out of the day too!  I love the way the day was split into Deep Dives, Chalk and Talks, Level Ups and Explore.  It means we've had exposure to loads of different content and now have the inspiration to undertake my Apple Teacher work for the end of these nine weeks of DFI.

Today we were using docs to create posters, which I had never thought to use.
I began creating this today.... but haven't yet finished it.

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

Today we learned all about the inception of Manaiakalani and how it began as Literacy Cycles.  It was so interesting finding out about that because so many people often think it because with loads of access to technology.  When in fact, it didn't.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

Some of the wonderful add ons that I haven't used before would be wonderful to improve the efficiency of what I do in my work, but also with the learners and teachers I work with too.  Docs to Forms sounds awesome, particularly in regards to setting up some quizzes in our learners' classrooms.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?
Using the URL for the kids labels in their blog posts could be particularly helpful to get them to post reflections about what they've been blogging about.  For example, when looking at how many maths posts, versus how many reading posts, and evaluate coverage for blog posts.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?
Docs to forms could make like so much faster!  So many of our teachers have had worksheets for their kids for years!  Docs to forms would allow them to make use of what they already have but in more user-friendly ways.

Manaiakalani: Sharing Tools

Today we met as a collaborative group to discuss how Blogger is working in our hubs and we created digital learning objects to share our favourite teaching strategy for having learners share.
I've found Google Slides so versatile and allows us to share in lots of different places.  There are so many different types of object they can create from a slide deck and they transfer well to places to share.

Learn, Create, Share

So I have a confession.  I've always been pretty good at the learning part and the sharing part, but I really struggle with the bit in the middle.

Historically, "Creation" has always been the aspect of whatever I do that is a bit 'messy' and haphazard, out of everything.  In fact, I didn't really call it creation, but maybe lumped it all together in 'learning'.  But that has changed.  Recently, with the idea of Learn, Create, Share while part of the Manaiakalani Pilot Teacher programme, I've been looking at my goals in slightly different ways, and have found that 2018's goals can all be tied together quite well.

1.  Enhance my knowledge of the NZ Curriculum
2.  Create visible, rewindable, digitally accessed tools to support learning and our tracking and planning templates (OTJ sheets, Learning Pathways etc.)
3.  Utilise the access to facilitators to maximize my Manaiakalani journey

From all this, hatched a plan to tie all my learning together, so that I was using the Manaiakalani  "Learn, Create, Share" model, to explore my goals and present back my findings.  In order to do all this, I knew it was going to be vital to use some planning tools that could support me in actually getting into action with my inquiry, every day.  Currently, I'm in the process of creating a plan to help me create action daily around my goals.  This gives me a very clear direction for my inquiry but also enables me to check out the big picture before I get there and look into potential upcoming problems before they arise.

My goal is to create lesson content for our learners that is visible (available on our Hub Landing Page), rewindable and maximizes teacher's time by tailoring learning around the NZ Curriculum and our OTJ planning sheets.  It will also enable learners to have a greater degree of agency over their learning and the ability for them to more clearly see the progress they are making around their own goals.

Watch this space.

Reflection: Using Digital Tools to support Writers

Google Docs for Writing

Using Google Docs for modeling and planning has been quite helpful in working with our students who require additional support but are not asking for it, as well as for those learners who struggle with spelling.  The new voice to text feature really aids students in the process of transferring information from 'brain to paper'.  Or in this case, brain to Doc.

To begin with, with our reports, we used a Google doc for accountability and to support with modeling.  Students had to write an introductory sentence to their report that including what the 'thing' was, the groups that it belonged to and where it could be found.  Having the student's writing all in one doc meant that they could use others' work as support but also, it was easy to track who had completed the task, and a quick look over the work highlighted important next learning steps for me.  For example:


I could see from this work that there were still some major capitalization issues, so we spent a quick hotspot session recapping these, before moving on. Following this, we used an existing planning template but adapted it for use in Google Docs, which was helpful in the planning process. Especially when it came to feeding in new vocabulary. 




I'm interested to see how this progresses with repeated uses.