Google Certified Innovator

Google Certified Innovator appealed to me as a vehicle for having the opportunity to do something impactful locally.  We live in a beautiful place here in Tairāwhiti with a wealth of amazing opportunities.  It's a place rich in heritage, culture, innovation and beautiful ecosystems - a place that deserves to be celebrated for its incredible diversity and opportunity.

As an educator in the classroom for 13 years, I know how many amazing opportunities our community is filled with.  And I also know how much of a challenge it is to maximise all these opportunities as an educator.  They take time to explore, to design the learning opportunities around and to organise a class to attend them.

There are many educators that are maximising those opportunities, people that have the experience and have put the time into developing resources that can celebrate the opportunities.
Some of the wonderful resources in our community include:

• Waka Hourua
• The Mind Lab
• Turanga Heritage Trails
• Takitimu
• Gisborne Steam Train

to name but a few.

My Certified Innovator project explores the way we can get these wonderful resources collaborating with our incredible local educators in order to create accessible, digital and rewindable resources for all our local educators to maximise.  I'm hoping others feel the same and are interested in collaborating on this too.

Have you been part of community collaboration? I'm interested in hearing from you.

DFI Day 8

Today we began the day with a Hangout chat with our Auckland DFI cohort.  It was so wonderful to connect with my buddy and chat about how he's finding the DFI.  I'm finding my confidence in using Hangouts is increasing quickly and I'm excited about how my next

Next, we spoke to Dorothy via Hangouts, who shared with us about empowerment.  We discussed the learners in their area and the challenges they're experiencing in the way they come to school, the social issues in their community and the huge lack of income, stability and language they have in their community.  Although I've heard about his before, and seen some of it with my own eyes when visiting the main Manaiakalani cluster in Auckland, but seeing a few more images about what these kids are living with daily.


5 plus a day - I love this idea

It was interesting to see this concept in a different realm.  Encouraging learners to have five different conversations back and forth.  Like a table tennis analogy.  Five different iterations a day.  One way that this can really be implemented is through their blogs.  That back and forth conversations of commenting.

Computational Thinking with The Mind Lab
Shanon and Emily and Mac

We began with an introduction to LimbForge which is software that helps


Next, we played a game of Kahoot, looking at computational thinking - this was a great way to explore some of the content.

Following this, we explored a chart about the capabilities within Digital Technologies.  It was exciting to see the learning that can take place within this space.  I foresee it being hugely engaging for our learners and I'm excited to see how this could change the way women see themselves in tech.  My Google Innovator advocacy project links to this.

Next, we moved onto computational thinking and this was where the fun really started.  We explored the notion of computational thinking without tech to start with, to understand it better.  To do this we played a game where we had to direct our partner through a game board without them hitting the 'dangerous (plastic) animals.  It was really fun and was a great way to glean some understanding about why coding needs to be so precise.

Later, we used this knowledge to begin to apply some of it to some online tools we used, including CoSpace.  This was great fun and we learned a lot through the creation of our spaces and the coding alongside it.  It's so fun to actually get to learn on the tools the way the kids do.  Computational thinking is definitely something that's accessible to everyone - all that's needed is the right tools to begin to develop an understanding.  It's rewarding to think of how much our young ladies could get out of using similar technology - feeling more comfortable navigating the tech space.  Of course, our boys would enjoy it too.

I'm a little sad that DFI will be finishing after our session next week, but am excited to see how many of our amazing teachers go through the Google Certified Education Level One exam and feel the achievement of completing that.  They are wonderful educators and our region are lucky to have them.

I've completed my Level 1 and 2 already, as well as recently returning from Google Innovator, so I'll be working towards my Google Trainer instead.  Reading up on it here, it looks really interesting to be moving forward into this space as well.  Exciting times!

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

Today we learned more about the inception of Manaiakalani in terms of the learners the original trust set out to empower. These families have benefitted greatly from the opportunity to have greater opportunity to engage with learning - not just for their learners - but also for their families as well. It was heartening to see how much passion Dorothy and the team have for their communities.

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

Developing a greater understanding of Computational Thinking was fabulous! I really felt quite out of my depth with that, so I'm feeling like I have a much better understanding now. Exploring some of these charts was really wonderful too.

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

Some of the programmes we used today were LightBot and CoSpaces - these were really useful for taking back to use in the classroom. Update: It's been exciting to see some of our teachers going back and using these in their classrooms as well.

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

As always, having a greater understanding of how Manaiakalani works is beneficial, because I am always asked to explain the programme and kaupapa to others - which is no small feat in a short conversation. We didn't really learn anything else that could enhance my personal life in this particular session, but regular learning has meant I've just improved my digital learning across all platforms.

DFI Day 7

I actually missed this day as I was away in Sydney at Google Innovator.
The DFI class were looking at Google Sites for visible teaching and learning.  I'll be interested to hear what information they found was really helpful.

Class Site examples

I'm always looking for examples for teachers of useful learning tasks that are applicable in many settings.

In my role as a Manaiakalani Facilitator, Site building is integral to the successful implementation of a class where learning is visible, connected, empowering and ubiquitous.  Teachers are busy people and often feel that site building is going to add to their workload considerably.  This can be a real barrier to actually sitting down to get it done.  I totally understand this, having come from the classroom myself.  That said, I also understand how valuable it is to actually construct a functioning site that can support our learners.

Although I wasn't at the DFI physically this week, I'm still going to go through my same questions.

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

Exploring sites - looking at the many different ways teachers are using slides or drawings etc to make learning meaningful and purposeful and time efficient.

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

Finding some more sites to explore and utilise ideas from them that could support our teachers.

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

As above, more site examples. I'm wondering what a resource bank could look like, that would enable teachers to see learning applied in different ways with similar tools.

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

Adding the same label to multiple posts without needing to go back into each post individually. This is so helpful when looking at the changes needed to my blog when updates need to be made.

I'm missing not being at DFI this week, but my learning at Google Innovator here in Sydney has been so powerful. I've

DFI Day 6

Connecting with Manaiakalani
Today we explored more about visibility in the Manaiakalani pedagogy, taking the learning out of just the head of the teacher and allowing learners to be able to see what they're learning and where they're going. One of the quotes that really struck me was:

Success means knowing what the teacher is thinking.

It's something I've heard many times before and again, this really was something that affirmed for me what we do with our facilitation and our Learn, Create, Share pedagogy.  Future learning needs to be about moving away from the knowledge all being in the teacher's head and learners feeling like their ideas are only valid if they're the same as the teacher's.

We looked at a video of Will I am, visiting Point England School in Auckland and how he was there supporting STEAM learning within their school.

Deep Dive: Multimodal Learning
In the beginning weeks and months, the learner's own device seems to be enough to hook learners into learning.  It engages them simply by having their own device.  In time, when this wears off, the potential is that we ruin the engagement of having the device simply by using it for learning if the learning is not engaging itself.

Multimodal opportunities for learning is important and Woolf Fisher suggests that multimodal literacies are important.

Behavioural engagement and Cognitive engagement are both important.  If we don't have the Behavioural engagement learners won't even engage with the learning at all, but for many the cognitive engagement comes AFTER the behavioural engagement has occurred. The cognitive engagement comes alongside MultiModal texts.

I was really excited to see how the multimodal text has been transformed from just links, to a richly visual text including the multimodal texts, which was far more engaging.  I've seen these type of multimodal texts in text docs before, and was worried about how boring it was. So this is awesome!

I'm excited to start creating some of these of my own.

I know many of our teachers will have appreciated the affirmation that core texts are still vital.  Guided browsing on Hapara is so useful



Chalk and Talk and Google Sites
Here we revisited how to build our sites and add buttons etc.  As I use this tool daily with the teachers and learners I work with, nothing here was new.  As usual, I'm caught between keeping sites quite simple and 'clean' so learners can navigate them easily but also keeping them attractive and engaging.  I wonder how the best way would be to do this with our younger learners, who really seem to get confused otherwise.  I'm always looking for more ways to do this.


Levelling Up:
Today we used a Google Slide deck as our basis for a MultiModal Google Site.  Today our slides were to do with Gardening in Schools.  Our team worked on a site for Year 9 and 10 learners and we looked at three unit standards that could apply to the learning these students could do around horticulture relevant to our place.  It was challenging being part of a collaborative process with a short amount of time, because the planning of a site is fundamental to how useful it will be for our learners and that planning process took up a lot of our time.  It would be great to have longer to revisit these and get them finished off.  Some examples of what our site looks like can be found below.

There's definitely a lot of extra work to be done and it makes me reflect on how we might need to do that when I'm looking at how to collaborate with our local community resources in the project I want to do with Google Innovator. The purpose of these sites would be to lead learners and teachers through the exploration of our local resources and related resources that could support undertanding around this, but it's challenging to decide what content is most useful to everyone and relevant to as many learner age levels as possible.  Possibly there will need to be a site for each topic and pages for each of the different age levels?

Today's reflection questions:

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

Exploring how multimodal texts have been developed - moving from the Google Style multimodal texts that are found in the Google Certified Educator Level 2 content was really exciting.  That sort of thing really interests me - how we can think carefully and design for our learners.  The analogy to the shop window was really useful.

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

Some simple tips I learned today were to preview my Blog to ensure I've copied text over properly.  I felt a bit touchy about this today, so it was interesting being in the learner seat and noticing how I react to the way feedback was delivered and how I felt about that process.  Sometimes when we're tired we react differently and in my new role, I'm always conscious of the people I work with throughout the process as well.  The learner seat is an interesting place to be when you're feeling challenged.  Particularly when you're playing two roles in a space... of the coach and the learner at the same time and doing them both justice.

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

Multimodal texts are great! I love the idea of content being presented in many different ways and using visuals and graphics that help keep kids engaged.  It's not easy to keep learners interested in tasks these days with all the other stimuli they're used to.  Trying to meet this need and still keep the learning integral to the process is a great challenge.

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

Reflecting on blogging needs and ideas and technique and making sure I check up on the formatting and preview my site will help with a lot of the blog work I do in other areas of my life too.

DFI Day 5

Day 5!

Animations using Explain Everything, Digital Digs using Chromebooks and then we moved on to using Screencastify and looking at embedding.

Explain everything was a really new tool for me and I had a bit of a giggle about the challenge of that.  Mine wasn't particularly successful but it made me laugh.




We explored our Cybersmart Curriculum using Screencastify to see what's there.  I love the way the curriculum is set out and all the wonderful resources that are there because teachers can then utilise these in later years.






Reflections:


Time to reflect and share with colleagues

• What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy? I learned more about how Manaiakalani have trialled different devices in the junior school before settling on iPads as the best tool for use. Using EE today was really awesome and it became really obvious how much pre-work is needed before using this effectively.

• What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional? Working with the Manaiakalani Cybersmart Curriculum more would enhance my ability to create flexible learning for the classes I work in by meeting the needs of that class.

• What did I learn that could be used with my learners? As mentioned above, working more with the wonderful tools that can be found within the Manaiakalani Curriculum as there are so many great resources there that are going to support our kids in being Cybersmart and knowing how to negotiate this awesome world that helps them with their learning.

• What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?Using the keyboard shortcuts is so great! Especially that there's a shortcut for the shortcuts tab!

It's been wonderful seeing the progress everyone is making. There is so much learning and laughter in our DFI room and it makes me so happy.

DFI Day 4

This week at DFI was so exciting!  So many people had rich and valuable learning or questions etc and the conversation in the room was great.  Lots of important pieces of learning coming up and often things that are applicable to many people in the room, which is great.

Some of these things include:

• Permissions/ sharing on Google Slides
• Blog Gadgets moving
• Removing backgrounds on pictures that aren't photos of people

Share:
The way we share has changed rapidly over the years and particularly with the innovation of Facebook and YouTube and Twitter, the capacity for us to share has amplified rapidly.


Later we looked at Google Forms, which I've used quite often, but have discovered some other interesting ways we could use them, such as wellbeing, tracking which of our kids have wifi at home etc.

After that we looked at Google Sheets:

• Freezing rows and columns
• Highlighting a whole lot of columns and resizing them all
• Using the function symbol that looks like Sigma to input the functions for SUM etc
• Conditional Formatting etc

Later we worked with Dave Winter on the different ways we could extend our use of sheets.

Time to reflect and share with colleagues

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

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

Looking at the way we can link sheets together to import data is really exciting - especially as I learned about this earlier in the week with our blog admin accounts with our schools.

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

More ideas about how I could be using Google Sheets to help track our work with our teachers for the year.Looking at the way we could run Screencastify with our learners to get them to assess their blog post numbers across the year as a statistics.  

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

Great ways to use spreadsheets! I am particularly enjoying the Command F tool to help me find things.

DFI Day 3

This morning we had a great discussion around some of the tools from last week that we've been using and our experience with them.

My next step was to try to work out how it is that I needed to set up my Google Meet so that it doesn't ask me to 'allow' people from outside of my organisation to join as it was quite distracting and I wasn't as able to attend to what I was presenting.

CREATE
Next, we're exploring the concept of 'Create' within the Manaiakalani model.  There were some wonderful quotes and examples of how early childhood has long supported the idea of creativity.

Robin Sutton, Principal of Hornby High has a wonderful blog that focuses a lot on the Learn, Create, Share model.  I'd like to explore this further and find out a few more examples of 'Create' that our learners could be engaged in with the learning I'd like to look at across our region in terms of engaging with our community resources as well.

There are some wonderful examples of creation in a document here and an interesting conversation around how much we can scaffold and then how perhaps at times we should let go of controlling that 'create' process - and allow a bit more flexibility and choice for learners to be engaging in setting that creation task.

We looked also sisomo to encourage learners to be able to assess the level of creation they're engaging in.

Next we had a Google Meet with Kent Somerville from Point England School and he talked us through YouTube Live and drone work to live stream footage of cross country etc to their whanau in the islands etc.

Next we moved on to Google Draw and had a play with a template to create something for us.
Here's my example.

Next, we moved on to Google Slides and looked at animations.
My animation needs some work, but this is what I created.



Later, as part of my Google Slides work, I tried out DriveSlides which is a new extension that inserts photos quickly from Google Drive to a slide, without me needing to do anything.  So awesome!  The challenge we found is that new iPhones save photos as a new file type .heic which means they don't work with DriveSlides unless you alter the filetype to jpg instead. Great learning!

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

Understanding more about the 'Create' element and how empowering that is for learners.

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

DriveSlides could really support with this too! So much more time efficient to put photos into presentations and onto blogs and Sites.

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

Animations using Google Slides! Super fun and engaging for storytelling!

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

Again .... DriveSlides! Also creating posters using Google Docs. This is much easier for creating really precise designs.