DFI Reflections - Reflections

Today was our final day learning online together in our DFI group. The last 9 weeks have been an incredible learning journey for me, all the things I have wondered "how do they do that?" I now know how to do and my students are definitely benefitting from my new found knowledge! 

I am proud of how much I have up-skilled myself, I am really excited to keep up-skilling and have so much more confidence to join in online learning where I would never have before. I regret not trying Toolkits before now, I see so much future learning for me using this platform. 

Moving forward I know I will be much more able to support and engage my learners online using my site as a learning place where before it was purely a tool for storing my planning.

My new word for the day is Ubiquitous and my goal is to be able to say this as well as Mrs Burt! Ubiquitous - Anytime, Anywhere, Anypace! 

So today was Exam day! I couldn't get stressed about this, my son was sitting his Level 2 mocks today and I had to be a good role model for him!  Now we wait for the results! I found that I finished with a really good amount of time to spare..if that is a good thing or not we will see! The knowledge I had from our time together learning really did give me the confidence I needed and all the scenarios seemed to be from things I had experienced with a little new learning thrown in to test me!

I have loved learning with our Bubble Group, I want to say a massive thanks to our facilitator Vicki Archer, you answered all our questions regardless of what they were, you supported us and helped us de-bug when we needed that too! Thanks to our lovely supportive bubble, I loved "meeting" you all and hope we stay in touch! What an amazing group of talented individuals we are!

DFI Reflections - Computational Thinking

Today in DFI we began by looking closely at the Manaiakalani kaupapa of Empowerment, the advancing of Rangatiratanga; of taking back control of their own lives. 

Thinking about how we use devices and that devices are not "just a tool." It is about overcoming barriers of distance and time (NCZ) We have spent the past 8 weeks unlocking the digital tools required to make learning more engaging to the students. 

The things that disempower families and our students; money, rental properties, landlords, health, education etc. All these things are out of our control as teachers, what things can we control to make the difference? 

Becoming digital for our families was in a sense giving them the tools to take control and be empowered.

This week we looked very closely at computational thinking. The way we looked at different digital tools made me realise how much scope there is in both literacy and numeracy for student engagement. 

I had a play using Lightbot which I can immediately see many benefits in both literacy and numeracy; following or giving instructions, using direction.

Next I used Gamefroot to help create my mihi. I enjoyed this very much, I was able to troubleshoot when the game would not go any further, it was interesting seeing how one tiny mistake could cause the whole game to cease working and to find where I had gone wrong and fix it myself. Troubleshooting as a complete novice gave me a sense of accomplishment that the students would enjoy I think.

Lightbot

Gamefroot - Mihi Maker

DFI Reflections - Devices

Today focused on the devices our young people use in their classrooms and we experienced Learn Create Share using Chromebooks and iPads.

The use of devices from the student's view helped me understand some of the frustrations the students could be feeling when using their devices to complete tasks. A lack of visibility due to the small screen or different brightness would affect how much learning they experienced and it made me mindful when designing my learning tasks of avoiding the moving of small objects, filling in of small boxes, low quality or small images.

Utilising the device I don't normally use from the teacher's view, helped me gain new knowledge about shortcuts, and how I could make use of those myself. 

Today's task was to develop an activity around Cybersmart using Explain Everything or Screencastify.

Having not used iPad's myself before for learning I decided to have a look at using Explain Everything. I quickly realised there is huge scope for designing activities using this format. I am looking forward to having a closer look at what can be created here!

DFI Reflections - Enabling Access- Sites

Today was a really interesting day for me having a look at what makes a site easy to navigate and how to enable access.  We spent much of the day looking at the different components of good sites and in our fabulous wee group who are all now feeling like good friends and colleagues we gave advice to each other to help improve our own sites. My site by the end of the day looked a whole lot different but I think that is testament to the quality feedback my group gave me.  I feel confident that my site will be a lot more useful to the learners and their teachers and that I will be able to update it easily from now on.

Please have a look at my site and leave me some feedback! 

DFI Reflections - Collaborate - Sites

This week in DFI we learned about Collaborate-Sites and how to use Multi-Modal Learning.  This was a new concept for me and I learned many new things here! I am very excited about trying this out with the texts I use in Quick 60! During Level 3 lockdown I have been thinking of how to meet the children's needs in this time of online learning and think this would be a great way to do this. This is my Multi-modal site about Pigeons.

DFI Reflections - Dealing with Data

Today's new learning for me was My Maps. This is something I had never used before but can see how useful it would be in the classroom as a Maths tool; What a great way to teach perimeter, length, distance and time! I can see so many uses in the classroom and in my own daily life.

This map I created looks at places I like to visit in Auckland and would share this with visitors. 

My Maps

The second new learning for me was around data and ways to manage it effectively.  I had used spreadsheets as a tool before but mainly to store information such as testing results and attendance tracking.  I was really keen to learn more about how to manage the data and use it.  The benefit of being able to track progress, identify and manage target students and monitor their progress is endless. I can see many opportunities here for me to use sheets t better inform my teaching.

Spreadsheets

This spreadsheet looks at blogging data over a period of three years. It shows that this person on average blogs 3-4 times per month, if we were to break it down further it would most likely show a blogging history of once a week.

Keeping track of this information is very important and helps to identify children's needs.

DFI Reflections - Media

"Creativity focusses on the process of forming original ideas through exploration and discovery" Kohl 2008. One of my favourite events of the year is the Manaiakalani Film Festival, seeing the students and teachers creativity celebrated on the big screen is always incredibly inspiring. Hearing the children talk about the films they create reminds me I must always strive to learn more so that I can provide meaningful learning experiences for them.

Today Dorothy talked to us about the 'Create' part of the 'Learn, Create, Share' pedagogy and our session was focussed on Media; how we can use this to enhance the children's learning. We learned how to use Google Drawing, Slides and YouTube effectively as a creative learning tool. 

For me, this was a very interesting session as I have only used Google Slides for my planning and today showed me new and creative ways to use it with the children.  I hope to be more efficient in my planning with this new knowledge and to create tasks for the children using what I learned. This is an example of using Google Slides as a learning tool.

DFI Reflections - Workflow

Today in DFI we started by looking closely at the Manaiakalani Pedagogy: Learn Create Share, with a close focus on Learn/Ako. I came away thinking about the knowledge and skills I gained in my years of teaching both in the classroom and small group literacy and how in the last 2 years I have taken that knowledge and increased my effectiveness as a teacher by integrating digital technologies. My planning and monitoring of the children's progress is already more effective and with the DFI skills taught I believe I will see an impact on the achievement outcomes.  

We spent some time looking at new ways to manage our workflow. We looked in depth at Google Meet, Keep, Gmail, Calendar and Tabs.  These are tools I have explored myself as a teacher with limited digital skills and used lightly and sometimes inefficiently. I feel now I will use them far more effectively and this will benefit my students and their teachers greatly. 

Using Google Meet to discuss a blog post, I was able to practice a new way of collaborating with a colleague, I would like to practice this to develop the skill more, I was concerned I didn't have my screen shared and if I needed to read the work aloud, but that is something I think I can develop more confidence in using and see potential in using this in the future. I would like to use this with the students I teach so that they can record their reading aloud and talk about their learning with a buddy.

I am looking forward to learning more about these tools that I have only lightly used in the past and seeing how they will benefit the students I teach.

DFI Reflections - Core Business

Today I began my DFI journey!

I have taught Reading Recovery and Quick60 at Pt England School for the last six years and I love being part of the incredible learning environment that makes Pt England special; Manaiakalani.  However, sometimes I have had to call on my talented colleagues or students to help me with the digital side of things. It is my hope that this course will increase my understanding of the Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy that make my learning environment so special and give me the digital skills to improve my teaching in my specialist context.

Hearing the Manaiakalani story told this morning gave me much to think about.  Teaching at a Decile1 school was not new to me, I taught in Porirua East for 15 years before making the move north so I was well aware of the needs my students and families had, however, learning about how the area I teach in grew in the middle of a very affluent area made me think about how different their needs actually are.

Today I learned what the Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy might mean to me and the programme I teach, how I can use the Learn - Create - Share pedagogy in my own teaching to extend the children's learning and be a more effective teacher. I gained new skills for organising myself in my workspace, using Google Groups, Drive and Docs in a way that is efficient. I am looking forward to using these skills in my teaching soon, in particular working in Google Docs to improve reading mileage, fluency and accuracy with my higher level groups.

Making it accessible

One of my goals this year was to have a really useful and accessible site for my colleagues, students and families to use.  I wanted to have resources on my site that would inspire a lesson or meet a need. Planning that was digital so that if children changed groups it was easy to slot them in and continue their learning.  I used an online site that allowed me to create simple and effective buttons so that my links were clear. I have been using Lockdown time to create a more user friendly site!

Change of Practice

I wanted to see if by changing the emphasis in some parts of my lessons I could encourage more conversation and richer language.  When the children arrive in my room at the start of their lessons they read their known books from their book boxes.  There is just a short time available to discuss the books because Quick 60 requires a new book every day.

I have decided that this year I will change the programme up slightly to give myself more time to encourage these discussions.  I will introduce two new books each week, giving the lessons a longer time slot for reading the previous books and discussing them.

My hope is that by doing this the children will develop a greater understanding of the texts, better fluency and phrasing and strengthen their comprehension through conversation.