Embedding Slides Into A Blog Post

Todays DFI tip
This is how you embed slides onto your blog.

1. Click file
2. Go to publish to web
3. Click embed
4. Choose small
5. Copy
6. Click HTML
7. Paste link

Our Last DFI Day

What an amazing learning opportunity this has been.

Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Intensive Cohort 2 2018

Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Intensive has not only given me the skills to work in a digital learning community but the Manaikalani kaupapa has inspired my pedagogy.

Learning alongside a beautiful bunch of educators, who share their fears, frustrations, successes and aha moments have been equally as special.   

There are many aspects I need to revisit such as sheets, google keep, and google calendar but I'm well on my way.

Thank you to the DFI Cohort 2 2018 for a wonderful 9 weeks.

And....... I passed the Google Educator Level 1 exam!

The Digital Curriculum

Reflecting back on my Manaiakalani DFI learning journey I think one of the most memorable sessions was with the OMG Tech Team.

Unpacking the New Digital Curricula

I'm one of these people that likes to know the 'why' behind things. The new digital curriculum does just that. It takes the teachers away from just teaching technology as a tool, to teaching students 'the theory of how technology works and how they can use that knowledge to solve problems'.This is the guts of technology, the knowledge that will have our students immersed in the digital world at a much deeper level. This is the knowledge that will hopefully allow our students to get innovative jobs involving technology in the future, allow them to keep up with technological change and develop some student's passion for technology.

The digital curriculum is broken into three categories 

• Technological Practice - The How
• Technological Knowledge - The What
• Nature of Technology - The Why

There are two key areas; computational thinking and designing and developing digital outcomes. 

During the day we also explored:

Binary

I can now say that I have a little more knowledge about binary, hexadecimal number systems and data representation.... and I kinda liked it. The seemingly foreign language actually began to make a little sense. 

Off-Line Sorting Network

Possibilities galore for the use of this in maths. We used it for sorting numbers from smallest to largest. A fun physical activity that the students will love.

Coding

Scratch

Create your own interactive stories, games, and animations.

Hello Ruby

A fun way to learn about computers, technology, and programming.

The Creation of a Class Site to Enable Ubiquitous, Empowered, Visible, Learning and Connected

Enough of my own excuses of being swamped down by the busyness of classroom life and thanks to the motivation and push from last weeks Manaikalani Digital Fluency Intensive session.... it was time to pull my head out of the sand and finish creating the class site that I had great plans for at the start of the year.
Although not pages of the site a finished, it is up and away.

And here it is...

https://sites.google.com/tamakiprimary.school.nz/jgrm3/kia-kaha-2018

The opportunity for learning to be Ubiquitous, Empowered, Visible and Connected strikes such a strong cord. I love that I am developing the skills to be able to make this happen digitally. Thank you Manaiakalani!

Thoughts while creating it

• A functional portal for students to access learning opportunities related to inquiry topics, and resources used in class.
• Stepping away from ability groups to mixed ability groups for reading meant removing slide decks for individual ability groupings and replacing it with a slide deck with learning experiences and resources for multiple entry levels and different learning needs. 
• Making it visually appealing (a vast improvement of my make-do links randomly placed on a blank sheet) 

Feedback from parents has been that it will be good for their children to access learning taking place at school when homesick.
They were also excited about the opportunity to see what their children are learning about at school. 


This week I'm going to step up my class blog, connecting our blog to our class site, and getting the children to take ownership. Also connecting our site to the school site for students at home.

Motivation and an Inviting Shop Window

As an avid shopper that has spent a fair few years enjoying London shops and still dream of Saturday shopping sprees down Oxford Street, this week's Manaiakalani DFI course hit a certain cord with me.

Secondly it connected nicely (as things often do) to a conversation I had had earlier in the week with a friend in PR, who explained to me the importance of presenting well formatted reports. He explained how an amazing, however unformatted, 'messy' report, can be turned away or not thought as highly of as a less superior flashy looking one.

For me who has never been one for fancy lettering or borders, making things pretty makes me panic. I don't know weather it is a patience thing or just the fact that it has always taken me three times longer than other to write something, and that I have always been ashamed of my spelling so that by the time I'm finished I just want it gone.

However the connotations I gained through the following words allowed me to see the dressing up of work as something as important as an impressive shop window or nicely laid out shop.

“these windows inspire me to go in”

“they need to sell from this.

“....Trying to represent that inner window so that when someone is walking past they go ‘oh wow, I really want to go into that store...”

The session showcased the use of Google Sites as away of sharing learning opportunities with our students, and we learned the importance of a well laid out, captivating site, verses the opposite.

and.... I surprised myself.

My Website

Here are some key points from the session:

To motivate our learners to engage with the curriculum we need to be creative ourselves.

Working in a Manaiakalani school we can't just expect the device to motivate, it is what we do with the technology (the possibilities) that motivates.

We need to think of multimodal ways of presenting the learning, and different types of literacies to extend and deepen learning.

We should think about the texts we are giving them, how can we use these texts to motivate students through cognitive engagement.

Draw them in so they are behaviourally engaged.

We all have different ways of connecting to learning, if we only teach and present in one way, only those that learn that way will succeed. This struck a cord with me, a student that traditional ways of teaching didn't suit.

Food for thought.... and motivation to take time and put the effort in to make presentations look engaging.