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.