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.