Week 4 DFI 2019

Session 4

Session for is all about the SHARE.

We started the session having a google hangout with Dorothy Burt who was in a cathedral in Auckland. This worked well and highlighted to me how easy and convenient this tool is and how distance and location are no longer a barrier. I am going to try a hangout with my family in Canada.

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Share within the Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

It is always interesting to listen to Dorothy - she is very passionate about what she does.

My key take-outs from the session were as follows:

Sharing is about creating relationships

Speed and amplification of sharing on the world wide web/social networking has it’s benefits and
disadvantages;

Being able to share helps to accelerate learning in our students;

Being digital gets rid of constraints - helps to liberate our students;

There must be a purpose for sharing - and students need to have an authentic audience

Authentic audience chooses to listen. As Dorothy says:

Using the digital platform helps students be motivated to actually finish work

Sharing is a place to start learning again because people comment so then new learning can be
prompted.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

Google Sites is new to me so there was a lot of new learning for me. I did find that I had trouble keeping up with the pace of the learning in these sessions. As a principal I have not had the need to create a class site. I am thinking that it might be useful to create a PLD site for the professional learning journey my staff and I are on this year. It could be a one stop shop for all the resources and learning we are doing. I think this would be useful for my learners (staff) and myself. 

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

Going through all the ins and outs of Google Keep was very great. I was familiar with and was using google keep on my phone but not on my computer, and I was not aware of all the settings and linking you can do within this tool. 

Week 3 DFI 2019

Session 3
I am enjoying the sharing at the beginning of each session, especially the what’s not working or what we are stuck on as it is good to know that others are having the same struggles as myself.

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Create within the Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

Create

The create part of Lean Create Share is very important part of the learning progress.
Here are a few take-aways I jotted down from Kent Somerville's presentation:
'You can’t be creative if you have not learnt something first'. Create helps us to amplify our learning. We all children to be creative human beings - we give people an opportunity to show their understanding of their learning in different ways. It is important to not throw out what works - we just need to think about how we can use technology to further advance our learners. Create is a ‘DOING’ word and we need to remember this to help our students be creative. 

Creativity helps to supercharge the learning in our classrooms and our students access our curriculum and dive deeply into their understanding. 

I love this quote: Give the pupils something to do not something to learn, and the doing is of such high nature as to demand thinking;learning naturally results. John Dewy

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional? and 

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?

We whizzed through Youtube, google slides and google draw. Each one of these topics could be an all day topic in my opinion!. I am going to have to find time to practice and play. It gives me a new appreciation for what our students at Ohaeawai School create using these tools. I have to add I am in awe of my teachers who all have mastered these tools and use them daily with their students.

Here I had a go at creating an animation using google slides. This took me a while - I can imagine students would be able to work a lot faster.




What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

Mastering how to use Youtube, save playlists for videos I want to use for staff meetings, music and working out how to post live video to share with family in Canada is something I am really keen to learn more about.

Week 2 DFI 2019

Session 2

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

Today we focused on the LEARN part of Learn, Create, Share.

The two things that stood out for me is:

Great teaching + digital affordances will equal acceleration. We need to work along aside the students and provide scaffolds and guidance to help make connections for students. Teachers are essential in helping students make connections about what they are learning.

I loved this quote:

The SAMR model can help us in our planning to think about the learning. Are we providing activities to our students that are helping them to take their learning to the next level?

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

We spent a lot of time looking at how we can organise our email and calendar. Life can be made so much easier once you know the simple tricks. Organising labels for emails, colour coding and adding in filters has already helped me to organise my email.

I feel I already use my calendar well and have set up and used a google hangout to communicate and meet with staff at various stages. It was frustrating that the activity we tried to do during our session didn't work but it also made me realise the importance of having a plan B. It also reminded me that technology is great until it doesn't work.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?

When I return to school I plan on sharing some of what I learnt with my staff. I don't think we use calendars effective at school and this will be something I would like to improve on with all staff.

Veronica helped me understand and use the snipit tool. SO easy!

I also had time to plan with recording a hangout using screencastify or through powerpoint.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

Keeping my work calendar and personal calendar separate is easy. I plan on sharing my school calendar with my husband so he does not have any excuses not to know where I am and what I am doing. Swapping from my personal email and work email has been made easy now that I have changed the way my emails are set up.

Week 1 DFI

Day 1 of DFI!
Today was a great day of learning. Being part of a the Kaikohekohe Network as a Manaiakalani Outreach school I feel it is important for me to be able to stay one step ahead of my learners and at least be able to keep up with the teachers at my school. Today for me the importance of the Learn Create Share pedagogy and having great teachers in classrooms who can effectively teach was highlighted as key to finding success for our learners.

Learning about google groups will definitely make my work life easier. I love how google groups organise emails and people within a group and keeps all conversations together. In the past I was using groups made within my contacts.

Another take-away I was reminded about is to invest in routines right from the start. It is important to show students and staff what you expect of them from the start. An example of this is taking the time to show students where you want them to place documents, how you want them to name documents and lastly how to use title and subtitles.

We spent the last part of the session creating. I have learnt that I am not a creative person - this is something that I need to work on. This must be how some of our learners must feel. Practice makes perfect.

I look forward to practicing what I have learnt this week and sharing with my colleagues back at school.