Session nine - exam time

Well, today we had our exam for our Google Certificate, and I was not successful. I was pretty gutted I didn't get a pass, and I did have a huge long story of my why's - keyboard issues, frozen screen, etc - that would have sounded much better with a sad violin playing in the background.

  However, the journey has been pretty epic, through the Digital Fluency Intensive course I have met some amazing people, heard some inspiring stories and most importantly I went back to basics with google drive, sheets, forms, docs, eg.

My biggest take home from this course was looking back into the 

Manaiakalani Learn, Create, Share Pedagogy again.

My highlight of the course was - the people.

P.S  I will re-sit this test ... will post about it later

Session eight continued - Hanging out with Google Hangouts

For the second half of our day - we were asked to explore Google Hangouts in small groups.  This was perfect as Toni, her team teacher Verbina and I are all planning to connect with a school in Auckland through google hangouts.  There were a lot of technical difficulties, the entire cohort was exploring hangouts so the bandwidth could have been affected, the microphones were picking up a lot of "noise" etc.  After speaking with Gerhard, he said that we shouldn't experience this issue when we connect with Tamaki Makaurau. I will upload a reflective blog after next week giving everyone an update on how the google hangout went.
Tips for teacher's planning to use Google hangouts:

• Practise with your class first, it is pretty hectic and pretty crazy - teach them how to mute their mikes, take turns, etc - let your tamariki go crazy on it under your watchful eye, then after the craziness settles, connect with others.
• Headphones make the difference - make sure everyone has headphones.
• No glass or windows behind the speaker - this creates a glare and your face is not clearly seen.
• Make sure the students on the hangout are not close by unless you are keen to hear a very annoying screeching sound.

Below is a screencasting of Toni, Dwayne and myself, as you will notice there is no sound, not sure why (could possibly be the muted microphone? I have no idea) and underneath the video is, of course, some funny photos we managed to capture during this exploration.

Above is a picture of Dwayne's screen whilst presenting his screen with everyone.



And this is Dwayne's Korero - Take one lol

Session eight - Making our work flow

Today we met  Gerhard Vermeulen from Ako Hiko, Auckland. His keyword for the day was Empowerment and his aim for the first half of the day was to give us the tips and tricks for improving our workflow. I was really happy that he mentioned this as I have been looking for ways to work smarter online, not harder.

Some of the tips/apps that I found useful were:

• One tab - a chrome extension that takes all of the tabs that you have open and puts them all into one space. First of all, this frees up your memory on your laptop but you don't lose that quick access to the page you are looking at.

• Organising your Gmail account - while I know about some of these settings, this was a good reminder that it might be time to check the organisation in my Gmail. Oh, and today I decided to "star" my Principal and create a filter so that I don't miss those important emails that she sends me.

• Making the most of your google calendar - I used to use Google Calendar a lot with my planning, appointments, etc but this year I have gone back using my Diary just because I still prefer having things on paper. But I have added the KEN's calendar to mine so now I'll know when all our PLG's + Toolkits are coming up.

Where to next with my workflow?

• I plan to organise my folders in my Gmail and create filters.

• Have a tutu with one tab.

Session seven - Site Seeing

Unfortunately, I was unable to attend our digital fluency intensive course today, But I was able to look through the resources available on our agenda.  I was also fortunate to connect with the guest speaker Clarelle and did ask her to give feedback on my class site.

Feedback from Clarelle:

• Easy to access the learning.
• Layout in writing, maths was well thought out.
• Headers and theme are consistent throughout the site.
• Really liked the idea on my spelling site.

Feedforward from Clarelle:

• Put my Treaty on my homepage, this is important.
• Reading site links to an outside site.
• Images are clearer than Google Draw.
• Gather feedback and feedforward of my class site with my students.

I really appreciated the critique from Clarelle.

My 2018 class site is the 3rd sites that I have had, below are links to my previous class sites and my current class site with a small summary of each site.

Click here to go to my Class site 2016
Adopted the site from the previous teacher and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, learned the ropes by "copying" others.  

Click here to go to my Class site 2017
Went absolutely berserk on my own site, creating multimodal pages, still copying off others.  Realised halfway through just how confused my students were because I had links everywhere.





Click here to go to my Class site 2018
Originally went into the year team teaching and my co-teacher originally designed the class site - when we separated into 2 classes, rather than make a whole new design, I reworked the site slightly to look similar to hers.  Thank Whaea Chloe 😼

Started off my site by looking at the senior class sites that my students were stepping into after me, is what I have on my site going to help set them up for next year?  Constantly asking my students if what I am putting on the site confusing them or making it easier for them.



I spent a few moments looking through some of my other fellow DFI colleagues and their class, and it's really great seeing how everyone's sites are developing.  I really liked what I found on Anna's class site - she has a link to homework and newsletters which I would like to add to my homepage next term - Thanks Anna.

Session six - Making our learning visible

Today the keyword was "Visible", and we had the lovely Danni Stone from Point England School in today to talk to us about the power of visible learning.  I really enjoyed listening to Danni as she shared her story with us, a lot of what she had shared reminded me of my first year in class.  A lot of what I have picked up from google sites I owe to my colleagues and some of the other wonderful schools in the Kaikohekohe network - shout out to Ohaeawai Primary School & Paihia School.

Danni touched on the Tuhi Mai, Tuhi Atu blogging programme that some Manaiakalani schools are currently involved in - this is a platform where 3 schools connect with one another through their classroom blogs - In 2016 & 2017 my class participated in this programme and my tamariki absolutely loved it.  I am definitely signing up for TMTA Term 3 now that my students have their blogs ready to go (Thank you, Tania Coutts & Mrs Henare).

Danni also shared a tip on how to get increase traffic on your blog.  She mentioned another teacher who posted prompts on her blog page and encouraged children to share their ideas in the comments.  This is something that I am definitely going to explore.

We explored multimodal sites and had a go at making one ourselves in groups.  I was grouped with Shelly and Deborah and together we started planning and looking into a multimodal site based on "The science of gardening."  I managed to finish the homepage, but there are 3 other pages that have been created, maybe we bit off more than we could chew? - so I guess the best tip I could give someone who is creating their site (especially with a time frame of fewer than 2 hours) is KISS (keep it simple, sweetheart).  

 

To have a look at the site click here

Some things that I will definitely try in the next week:

• Post a Prompt onto our class blog, to encourage more writing in my classroom, and maybe get more traffic.
• Post a reflection giving an update on student agency forms and voice typing.

One last thing - something else I have been doing is visiting other blogs from our Taitokerau DFI members - and tonight I visited Vanessa's blog, I was so happy to read that she completed her google educator level 1 exam.  You can read about it here