DFI Week 5- He Mātai Whakamuri

This morning, we learned about learning being visible. The main idea I took from this korero is making sure students know what they are learning about and what the teacher's intentions are. Reflecting on this, I definitely need to make this more obvious in my hub, both online and offline. I am starting to think about how I can use my google site for more visible learning not just a placeholder for different documents.

A challenge I am going to start is thinking about how I can incorporate multimodal sites more in our programme. I believe that my students will be more engaged in sites rather than just looking at a journal. I have started by creating a site based on the novel 'I am David'. This is a novel that we read aloud in class. I started by planning what themes are within the book and then finding resources based on the themes. I also tried to find tasks from different levels. I have started learning about online Escape Rooms so it will be another challenge to see if I can merge multimodal and escape rooms together.

At the moment, most of my student's reading activities are based around hard copy journals, books, and worksheets. We have just moved into student-directed learning this term so students get assigned reading tasks but they choose when they complete them and tick them off when done. It will be interesting to see how engaged they would be if I created multimodal reading on our class site. My students already prefer being able to work at their own pace and choose their tasks so I am looking forward to seeing how they take this on. I have a wide range of levels within my class so my biggest challenge will be figuring out how to best execute this! I have attached the link to my Google Site about 'New Zealand and War'. This will be a valuable tool for my students to utilise next year when we learn about NZ history.

It will be another challenge to see if I can use Google sites personally as well. Maybe something to do with my painting and printmaking but I will have to see what happens.

Online Toolkits

 Over this past week in lockdown, I have been making the most of online toolkits. I attended three sessions including Taming Testing with Jeremy, Te Reo Māori for the classroom with Makaore, and WeVideo with Cheryl. It was a great way to end my working day and I can see all three toolkits helping me a lot, especially with the situation we are currently in.

Taming Testing 

During this session, we learned how to use google forms to create a test. I was following along with Jeremy while he was explaining so that I could physically do it myself. I also made a copy of Jeremy's spelling test that he created then added soundbites to each question so that students could do the test at home. It will be great to see what other forms of assessment I could create with Google Forms.

Te Reo Māori for the Classroom

I found this session helpful as I could personally see how helpful using Mote will be to teaching Te Reo. I am already starting to use Te Reo more in my classroom as I attend after-school sessions, but this Toolkit showed me how Mote is great for helping with pronunciation. Students could be also using it when they are creating tasks or presentations with Te Reo Māori in it. 

WeVideo

Before this session, I knew a little bit about WeVideo but it was great to be able to touch up on a few extra tips and tricks. This will be extremely helpful as we move into Alert Level 2 and my students will be able to use WeVideo to create assembly videos etc. I had also mentioned in a previous post that I would like my students to use this form of media more. So it will be interesting to see where this goes!

Thanks to Jeremy, Makaore, and Cheryl for hosting these Toolkits.

DFI Week 4- He Mātai Whakamuri

 This morning we learned about the Share Kaupapa of Manaiakalani. This korero made me think about how many opportunities my students have to share their learning. At the moment my students mainly share on their blogs during our Manaiakalani lessons. I want to work on creating more authentic sharing opportunities. Whether this is using our blogs more throughout the week or sharing in other ways.

The biggest take away for my professional development are all the extra tips we learned about Google Sheets. Just little tricks that can make a huge difference and save a lot of time. I liked that you could freeze information so that it stayed put as you moved through large sheets. This will be extremely helpful when I am adding assessment data and do not want to lose the name of the student. I had some idea around using formulas as well but was great to learn a little more especially around creating them and dragging a formula across the sheet. I can't wait to use all of these tricks to make admin and paperwork a bit easier.

It will be great to use Google Sheets as a way for my stduents to share their learning. They learnt a bit about creating graphs from sheets during a Manaiakalani lesson but it would be interesting to see what else they could do. Especially looking at how many views they are getting on their blog from other countries. This will also be a great tool for science fair next year. Attached is a graph that I created from a students blog posts. It shows how many posts they made a month over 5 years. 

Using the My Maps app could be very helpful in my personal life. For example, being able to create an itinerary on a place I am travelling to. By doing this I can seperate them into catergories such as food or activities. I like that you can add extra information and images about a certain place. It can also help to know how far you will need to walk etc. 

My Map

 This morning we were working on My Maps. This is a map that I created about Tairawhiti Gisborne. It has many places you can visit including walks, restaurants and family activities.

DFI Week 3

 This morning we learned about the Create aspect of Manaiakalani. The conversation really resonated with me as I love the idea of facilitating opportunities for my students to be creative. I think my students will really benefit from being creative in the classroom. It made me think about how I can incorporate more creativity in my classroom. Allowing my students to use their hands to support their learning also fits into my Professional Learning Goal so it will interesting to see where I can take this. My biggest takeaway from this talk was that students should be creators of content, not just consumers.

At the moment I use Google slides for my own planning. I want to challenge myself to see if I can use Google slides more to create learning tasks not just for my own personal planning. This way I can embed them straight onto my Hub website and my students can find them easier. I liked looking at what students from different schools have created on Google Slides. Being able to see what they have achieved means I can try the same activities in my own hub. Below is a Pick-a-path that I created, it will be great to see my students give this a go as well!

Incorporating filmmaking into my hub would be a great asset for my student's learning. Being able to create films for various reasons including consolidating their learning. Just after lockdown last year (when we were at school but couldn't have large gatherings) we had some experience of using WeVideo to record assembly videos. It was great to see students come out of their shells to create videos. We have the space in our hub to create a studio so it will be interesting to see what we can achieve when we get the necessary tools. 

I have used Google Drawings in the past to complete art projects. It was great to learn about some extra tips that I didn't know about including downloading your drawing as .png so the background is transparent. Also seeing how you can copy the hex code of a colour to use across items or applications.

 

DFI Week 2

 Today we learnt about the Learn aspect of Manaiakalani. At our school, Learn looks like identifying where we need to raise student achievement and how we are going to make positive changes. We understand that every student has their own strengths and we ensure they are given many opportunities to develop these strengths. On the contrary, it also means we have opportunities to raise their achievement where necessary. 

I learnt about using Google Calendar and Google Meet to enhance my own capability as a professional. Attached is a recording of a Google Meet that I did with Cheryl today. It shows many aspects such as presenting my screen and also recording. Behind the scenes, I also created the meet from my calendar and learnt how to blur my background. As you can see it took me a bit of time to figure it out!

Organising tabs is a great way to be able to find what you need quicker. This is a tool that would be great to teach my learners as they quite often have a few tabs open at once. They also have certain websites that they use frequently. As intermediate students, they will be moving to high school soon and this will be essential for them as they begin to study and complete assignments. 

Google Keep is a tool that I want to use more in my personal and professional life. I will quite often think of ideas in my spare time so it will be great to be able to record these ideas on my phone then be able to access them on my laptop. I like the photo tool which enables you to take a photo and Google Keep will type up the information for you. I also want to use this app to be able to record Te Reo Māori that I have been using and have it available for me to use in and outside the classroom.