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!