DFI Week 6: Enabling Access-Sites

Connected: 

This morning Dorothy connected with us and talked about Manaiakalani's pedagogy of connected. She explained the main goal for Manaiakalani is to connect children with authentic audiences. Even more so in this digital age I can see how important this is to have my own students connected in class, connected during lock down and if this was to happen again. Using Google Meet to catch up digitally was so powerful to share our learning, ideas and feelings during some hard times for children!

Chalk N Talk: 

Venessa talked us through some more tips on organising our class sites. One thing that I have learnt today is to not delete things off my class site. In the past if the topic is finished or I wanted to change my layout or organisation I have deleted things off my site. However Venessa made a good point that all our learning should be visible and online so children could access it at a later time. She made me realise that children can also continue learning from home as it is all rewindable. 

Explore: 

Today our main focus was exploring sites across the cluster at different year levels then we got to look at other peoples sites from our DFI group. Both of these were a great opportunity to give myself some feedback on what I can work on as well as give me some great ideas on how I can improve my own class site. Today I had time to refresh my home site and make some slides for writing next week. Feeling much happier with the overall look still a long way to go though. 

DFI WEEK 5: Collaborate Sites

 

Visibility: 

We were joined by Dorothy this morning who talked to us about one of Manaiakalanis main pedagogy of 'visible' and that teaching and learning needs to be visible. Very simply it is either visible or it isn't there is no in between. Every part of the learning journey needs to visible for the learner. She made a valid point that children aren't mind readers and cannot know what we want them to learn.

Learning needs to be visible for:

• learners
• whanau
• colleagues 

Multi Modal:

Kerry talked to us this morning about the multi modal pedagogy. 

How does multi modal modes relate to teaching? We have to be able to cater to different learners and in ways they can understand and follow even if the teacher isn't there. 

There are four priority principles to this kaupapa:

• Engagement-the hook: making learners engaged and hooking them into the learning. We need to sell our love of learning. 
• Personalising- future focused teaching and learning relevant to the learner.
• Acceleration-having authentic learning and learning outcomes to accelerate learning.
• Empowerment- empowering learners that their voice and beliefs are important. 

Kerry made a valid point that our class site is a reflection of us and in theory a shop front window. It should reflect ourselves, our learners and be engaging and want students to hook in and dive further. From this I know that working on my site is something I can continue to do. 

I had time to explore multi modal sites and I must say that this has given me so many ideas. I can see that teachers have collaborated with planning and making resources. I like that there was a variety of online tools that children could use like Explain Everything, they had made specific tasks for each reader. This is something that I know I want to work towards doing I just feel like I need time to do it.

Google Sites 

Most of today's session was spent around planning and designing our own google site from scratch. This planning process allowed me to have time to organise what I want my learners to be able to access. In the real world of running a classroom/with multiple sites I am not sure if I would do a proper 'plan' as such but get stuck straight into it and plan as I go on sites. 

I played around using 'Jamboard' for my planning.

Here is the start of my site I created:

DFI WEEK 4: Dealing with Data

Learn, Create, Share:

Today we met with Donna to talk about the Manaiakalani pedagogy of share. Dorothy talked about the year 2005 and how the year changed with social media. Social media began to become a huge influence on how we share. This was when Manaiakalani saw a hook into my sharing possibilities and embrace this change. 

"The purpose of sharing is the audience"

I know for myself and school we have a school Facebook page, classroom blogs for parents to access. We try and have lots of opportunities for our children to share and show their learning in real time. 

Google Forms:

Donna talked us through how to make a Google Form I myself have completed many Google Forms but I have never created my own form. This was quite exciting and I can see would be useful in the classroom to get feedback about teaching and learning as it gives all the responses in graphs and summaries etc.

Google Maps:

Together we practised making our own maps from destinations that we loved to visit as a cohort. I then learnt how to add specific places change font, add labels etc. This term our focus is mapping and we have just started learning positional language and started using scratch. This would be perfect for children to be able to find places from their community and then work out how many metres/kilometres to the school to the shop etc. What about if you walked? drove? etc.

Very cool the kids will love this! Especially because it is our community and they are the experts. I am so excited to try this. 

Google Sheets:

Donna walked us through Google Sheets and doing the online course today I must admit I will definitely have to go back and look at the slides and notes on this again. I feel like I need more time to get my head around this. 

Making meaning of content:

Lastly in today's session we looked at how to access our blogger data and graph this to interpret the data. Below is my graph and analysis. 

DFI WEEK 3: Media

Learn, CREATE, Share: 

Today Dorothy talked with us about 'create' and how important creating is apart of our own wellbeing.

There is no age limit to creativity 

I agreed with her that all children in early childhood, primary and secondary school should all be creating. Together as a class we shared together the things we had created in lockdown, it showed that even we are still actively creating whether it's baking, puzzles, art. 

"If we want creative thinking we have to do something with our hands, minds or bodies"

How do we get children to do this? 

I enjoyed this quote form Dorothy this morning as I think it is so important for children to engage with their learning. As teachers we need to do more not just have it in our plans we need to give them opportunities to engage and create.

"Creators of content not just consumers"

This is the goal for Manaiakalani to get children to create and by doing this will empower children's learning through:

• choice
• information/knowledge
• developing skills
• building capacity
• scaffolding

Chalk N Talk-Youtube, Channel, Playlists:

As educators Manaiakalani recommend that only teachers have a Youtube channel and not the children. Kerry also made a good point to embed videos into your site and to not share the video with children directly. The reasons for this are valid for example privacy, adds and child appropriate content. 

We learnt how to set up our own Youtube channel and made it suitable for teaching and learning. Here is the playlist I made for our junior cross country running practise.

Chalk N Talk: 

Deb took us through some quick tips of how to use Google Draw. I am lucky enough that with year 7 and 8's last year that we used this a lot for posters etc. I know from working with children that they LOVE using Google Draw and this is something that I want to work on and show the younger class how to use. 

Here is my two Google Drawing that I made for the class as we are looking at mapping, coding and positions and for my blog.

Chalk N Talk:

I feel confident using Google Slide as once again I have used this with the senior class before, it was a good reminder to use things like the explore tool to look for pictures and photos as in the past I have googled images. The explore tool is a fast way of finding photos and will be good to re show the children.

Create: 

I spend time on Google Slides doing a 'Pick a Path' this was so much fun and I'm surprised it took so long to make. However the feedback from others have said kids will find this so fun and really enjoy it.

Here it is please try it out but be aware it isn't finished yet.

Overall: I can see how I can step up creating with the kids particular the pick a path and google draw I know they will really enjoy creating on those. Time to try it out!