We've finished!

Wow!  It's so hard to believe that we have arrived at the final session of DFI.  Today's session started off with a reminder about what ubiquitous learning means and exploring some of the potential this can afford teachers, learners and anyone with a passion for continuous learning.  I found this slide a helpful reference as it captures the various elements of ubiquitous learning.

It seems hard to believe that we are in the last session.  We have learned so much across the nine full-day sessions of the DFI.  I have gained a much deeper understanding of how digital fluency can be applied professionally and have been surprised to learn how much of this new knowledge can also be applied to day to day living too.  When I think back about the degree of apprehension that I started DFI with and how much my confidence has grown, it really is a step change.  Embedding videos, setting up YouTube playlists, using not only Google docs but sheets, slides, forms, classroom, groups and more!

Thank you so much to our wonderful, supportive facilitators  Maria, Stef, Amie & Herman have provided a positive, high trust learning environment that I felt comfortable to take risks and make mistakes.  Behaviours that we so often hear ourselves talking about with our children.  It is humbling to be the learner and refreshing to embrace the challenge of stepping out of my comfort zone to pursue new knowledge which will help not only me but those around me in my working and personal life.   Thanks also to Dorothy and to the other guest speakers and colleagues we interacting with over the weeks.  I'm happy to say that my confidence with Hangouts has improved greatly and I now use it as a very effective communication method.

Lastly, thanks to my colleagues who went on this journey with me and to their principals for enabling their participation on this DFI course.  The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive and the sense of togetherness for this group of DFI pioneers here in Tairawhiti is truly inspiring. 

As this Maori proverb so aptly states, "My strength is not that of the individual but that of the collective."

Nga mihi, Jo

Mindblown at The MindLab

Today's session at The MindLab was kickstarted with a session by Shanon who highlighted that the following skills will be most sought after in the future:

• Interdisciplinary skills
• Creative & analytical skills
• Entrepreneurial skills
• Leadership skills
• Digital & technical skills
• Global awareness & civic education.

It was the notion of technology for good that most resonated with me.  So often the media is quick to deride the impact of digital and it is important to approach the topic mindfully and with balance.  Just as a frypan can be used to sautee mushrooms or hit someone over the head, so often it is not about the device but the person's motivation, morality, and purpose!

The Digital Curriculum I Hangarau Matahiko is the government's response to the impact that technology is having across sectors and recognises that our children need to be digitally astute and responsible citizens to participate, create and thrive in the digital world.

In pairs, we worked through the various curriculum levels and identified examples of digital technologies in action.  I found this one-page infographic a useful reference tool.

The day was peppered with learning and laughter as Emily & Mac helped us to explore the roles of coder, developer, and robot in groups of three.  Clear communication, collaboration, defined roles all came into plain this activity.  Again, I feel so fortunate to be learning alongside so many passionate educators and in a high-trust environment that recognises that risk-taking and making mistakes is simply a part of the learning journey.  As we continued to 'de-bug' our code new learnings evolved.  For instance, challenging the assumption that the robot needed to be blindfolded - why couldn't we write into our code that the blindfold could be removed?  

It wasn't until after we had finished that I thought how much more effective we could have been if all the teams chose the same number and worked on writing the code and then refining it together.  This course continues to challenge our thinking and to be more aware of how we can approach tasks differently and use digital technologies to improve our communication, collaboration & time management.  

Yes, it takes courage to make your thinking and learning more visible (I was really hesitant about posting those first few blogs, after all, who would want to read it!?).  But the DFI has reinforced for me the importance of embracing a culture of change and nurturing the spirit of collaboration. 

The rest of the session was spent exploring Cospaces and how animation and coding can be applied to educational settings.  Joanne & I had a great time exploring this new programme and bringing our story to life through creating a setting, characters, movement and speech.  Although still a newby I could see so much potential for this to be an engaging way for children and adults alike to familiarise themselves with coding in a fun way.

Another excellent day of learning, although the sitting of our Level 1 exam next week is now looming....

Enabling Access

Enabling Access

Today's session included content about the importance of the 'connection' element of the Manaiakalani kaupapa.

Dorothy and Stef both highlighted the invaluable networks that have been established through Manaiakalani 's growing footprint across New Zealand.  The range of opportunities that the Digital Fluency Intensive (DFI) to share our thinking and content within our group is exciting and very motivating!

This SAMR Model is a useful framework to refer to when applying technology to learning and teaching to maximise the potential affordances of digital technologies.  While also being reassured that we don't have to be looking to modify and redefine all the time and that there can often be value in applying digital technologies to both the substitution and augmentation phases. 

My word of the day (and in fact week) is 'favicon'.  Thanks, Herman for introducing to this term.  Joanne & I both enjoyed learning how to add a favicon on to both our sites and blog.

Today's session was included critiquing several sites to identify what makes a site both appealing, engaging and effective learning and teaching medium.  It was inspiring to see sites from educators who are well down this path having been in Manaiakalani for many years and have sites which are instantly engaging and designed so professionally.  It is important to remind oneself that I am only starting and that a marathon starts with the first step over the start line.

Working on Google sites this afternoon provided a refresher on some of the seemingly small but important steps such as mapping out the site from the outset with minimizing the number of clicks needed to access key content, mindfully designing the navigation of the site, getting buttons, etc.  By the end of today, I felt a greater level of confidence in designing my Google sites and had set up several pages, created several round buttons with bespoke images and creating my very own favicon.

In looking around the room there is such a high level of energy and commitment to applying our new found skills again this week.  Yes, I'm still in the learning pit!  But with a sense of humour and knowledge that together we are making a difference for dozens of teachers and hundreds of learners is incredibly motivating. 

I can see clearly now

The art of visual and sensory engagement

Creativity, innovation, appealing to several senses, paying close attention to detail, using only quality ingredients and stunning presentation.  Today's session highlighted several similarities between the world of gastronomy and that of multimodal learning.  

The 'deep dive' this morning shared how powerful learning and teaching can be if purposeful, engaging, multi-sensory experiences are woven into classroom learning.  This content continued to deepen my understanding of this component of the Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy and the 'hook' that increases engagement and enriches learning and teaching.  

The notion that cultural capital generally begins at home in conversations around the dinner table was another interesting point.  Equitable access to learning and teaching is more than access to a learning device and WIFI, it is about creating an environment which demystifies both the content, process, and assessment processes and supports rich learning conversations, self-reflection and collaboration for learners of all ages. Creating equity around every learner having access to digital affordances is key.  

During the multimodal media session, we viewed a video about the spectacular Liberty's windows in London video.  This reminds us of the need to create an enticing 'shop frontage' if you want to attract people to engage.  Hooking kids into learning is so key - creating exciting and wizzy ways to engage kids in their learning. The Manaiakalani symbol for this is the hook.  Maintaining But this isn't sustainable every day for teachers, however through smart use of digital tools and multimodal design it can be.

Providing multimodal opportunities to engage with the learning and deepen understanding was the focus for the afternoon.  Woolf Fisher highlights the importance of focussing on multimodal literacies to extend and deepen learning.  At every level, our young people need multimodal literacies.  Woolf Fisher Research shows that visible learning and teaching contributes to accelerated learning. 

I felt more confident using Google Hangouts on my laptop, as well as mobile phone.  This time my laptop camera and microphone both worked without a hitch - yay.  Dorothy's session today provided another authentic opportunity for us to gain experience and grow our confidence in using this effective communication tool.  In our Google Hangout, Dorothy talked about attaining behavioural engagement through multimodal texts that hook our young people in (includes video, animation, books, visual communications).  Cognitive engagement follows behavioural engagement and develops through multitextual, a range of texts at different stages.  

Today's session increased my knowledge of Google sites and continued my journey of learning how to make my work more visible and practical ways to collaborate more with colleagues and others.  From today's session, I have started to set up a Google Site for Connext Trust and will keep working on sharing more of our stories, calendar, images and resources this way. 

Maria mentioned Tuhi mai tuhi atu and I'd like to take a closer look at this.

Amie, Herman & I worked together and explored how to set up a Google site that was multi-modal and multi-textual.  The topic was around horticulture and was designed to provide an engaging introduction and learning experience for Y9-10 learners.

  Click here to view (it's still a work in progress).

As we end our sixth week of the DFI the real-life application of new knowledge throughout this programme continues to be so useful in a pragmatic way.  It provides an excellent stage to learn about the context, build our technical knowledge, and then are hands-on applying this new knowledge in an authentic context and cementing that new learning first-hand.  As I referred to after Week One, being in the learning pit myself and experiencing the successes and frustrations first-hand continues to provide a useful lens through which to empathise with how new teachers and learners may be feeling too. Two thirds of the way through and I'm already looking forward to getting back to it after the school holidays.

Thanks, Jo 

The World Came to My Place Today (thanks to Manaiakalani)

The World Came to My Place Today ...

                                         

And just like that!  Here we are into our fifth week of the Digital Fluency Intensive here in Tairawhiti. Today's session saw us learning about the Cybersmart curriculum, how to use Chromebooks and iPads, as well as tools such as 'Explain Everything' and 'Screencastify'. 

Cybersmart curriculum

The importance of using positive terms and consistent vocabulary across classes and schools was raised.  Having had the difference between the term 'Cyber smart' and 'Cyber safe' made me reflect more thoughtfully about the language I will use from now on.  The Cybersmart Curriculum is about learners and educators being smart and empowered through the use of digital technologies.  Although a subtle difference in terminology, this message resonated with me.

Here's the link to my presentation about Smart Teens, a strand within the Manaiakalani Cybersmart curriculum.  In learning about this topic I was introduced to a range of valuable resources.  Of particular interest was the importance of knowing what personal information is available about you online, the need to respect that once an image or video is posted that it is permanent, and how mindful we must be about how we use and share our biometric information such as facial recognition, voice recognition and thumbprints.

Cybersmart Teens

Explain Everything

Today was my first time to experiment and learn about potential applications for the app 'Explain Everything'.  Although my trial version didn't afford the full functionality of the paid versions, today was a good opportunity to familiarise myself with the key functions.  I can see so many benefits of using such tools - not only is it making the learning more engaging, it is increasing visibility and providing teachers and learners with rewindable learning opportunities.  Not being a classroom-based teacher, I need to think more about how I could apply this to my professional life.

Here's the simple activity I completed about a book called The World Came to My Place Today.  Note the back to front map, still a work in progress ...

Key learnings

It is interesting to reflect on how much I have learned so far and I can feel a growing confidence in the use of Blogger, as well as how my broader knowledge is contributing to the effective use of digital tools.  For example, I can see how interactive tools which are engaging and empowering for learners recognises incorporates the elements of SISOMO introduced to us previously. 

Although I do confess to still feeling a little uncomfortable in front of a camera, it is becoming more familiar as we practice on Loom and Screencastify.  This course continues to open my eyes to a raft of apps and tools that support collaboration, save time and help share stories and projects with a range of audiences.  This applies across both my professional and personal life and I look forward to incorporating more of these each week.

Thanks to Manaiakalani for your vision, team and resources that truly do help bring the world to my place and many others each day.  'Til next week.  

Nga mihi, Jo

Maps, formaluae & data (it's more fun than it sounds!)

This week we focussed the start of the session on 'Share' and Stef spoke about the essential role that sharing and communicating has played since the beginning of humanity. 

To effectively communicate and share our stories and learnings we need to have an audience for it to be authentic.  The value of blogs in providing an authentic audience for learners and educators was discussed.

We spent time learning more about the following:

Google Maps
Dave Winter introduced us to practical applications for Google Maps through the use of MyMaps.  As a groups we discussed how others had already used this which included topographical maps to identify rivers and build understanding to water quality.

Here's an example of how I applied this to identify which schools are members of the Tairawhiti Manaiakalani Outreach.  I'm looking forward to applying this to a range of other areas too.

Google Forms
This is an efficient tool to capture information and collate data in an easily digestible format.  We spent time applying this to our own roles and here a sample form I designed today.

Google Sheets

Similar in many ways to Excel, I found this session helpful as we learned practical tips like how to freeze columns and rows (View, Freeze, 1 row or column), the ability to highlight the data set and the way that Google then automatically calculate commonly used equations like sum, average, minimum and maximum will be a real time saver.  Take out for me from this session was a real time saver - highlight the columns you want to resize the width of then adjust one and then all will be converted to the identical width set.  The ability to use formulae to colour code data sets is another excellent tip.

It was an emotional day as we paid our respect to those affected by the awful tragedy in Christchurch.

Thanks to everyone for your collegiality, warmth and presence.  

'Til next week, Jo

Channeling YouTube

15 March 2019

Today's session highlighted the importance of creativity.  Mindful of the importance of creating content and not simply consuming it, I found Kevin Roberts (former Saatchi & Saatchi) SISOMO a very useful framework to support future creativity.  SISOMO is short for 'Sight, Sound & Motion' and found me reflecting on previous presentations and how they incorporate these elements.  The conclusion was that there is an opportunity for sure, to amplify my messages through the use of effective audio and video files. 

Not being a classroom teacher, the context in which this was applied was a presentation about the Bikes in Schools Tairawhiti project.  Having received wonderful videos from teachers and principals I saw an opportunity to integrate these.

Today involved setting up a YouTube channel and customising playlists, as well as learning how to upload video clips to my YouTube channel and then insert that link into a Google Slide presentation.  I found this pretty exciting!  Here's a copy of the Bikes in Schools presentation here. Check out the drone footage of the Tolaga Bay Area School!  Thanks to Richard Tuhaka for the footage.
Oh and check out the new About Me gadget too!

Ahhh...the joys (and frustrations) of lifelong learning...

Learn I Ako

The focus of today's session was on the Learn (Ako) element of Manaiakalani's Learn, Create, Share model.  As I find myself happily in the learning pit again, I can empathise with learners of all ages seeking to gain new understanding about what can at times seem to be an overwhelming plethora of digital tools.  

It is energising to learn new content and to then put this to practice through the 'create' process and then to share this new knowledge.  There was more rich learning for me about the Manaiakalani kaupapa and key takeouts were:

• Digital learning is not about throwing the baby out with the bath water.  It recognises that nothing replaces great teaching but that with quality pedagogy and appropriate digital tools that accelerated learning and increased engagement can be realised.
• Effective practice with digital affordances creates an acceleration in learning.  

So many time-saving tips!

Building on from last week's deep dive into Google Drive and Google Docs, today's focus on Gmail and Google Calendar provided several practical ways to work smarter.  Setting up GMail so that functions like automatically adding events to Calendar help with time management and visibility.  Setting up appointment slots and gaining confidence with Google Hangouts, so too do shared calendars.  Today's Google Hangouts session was challenging, particularly with a few technical glitches with microphone and camera settings which took time to resolve.  But we got there (better late than never!).

Google Keep is another digital tool.  Having had an introductory 'play' with it some weeks back, it was good to learn how to pin notes and archive old items.  I hadn't used the Loom extension before and found it useful to learn how to record and then trim the video.


Extensions to help manage files and time more effectively are always welcome and today I added Toby Mini to my suite of tools.  Having previously used OneTab already, I  like how you can set up collections and customise it to curate tabs and related sites.

We covered a lot of information and I have a greater appreciation as to why this course has the word 'intensive' in its title.  This opportunity to learn new skills and improve my practice is energising.  I will be applying my deeper understanding of Gmail, Calendar and Hangouts with gusto!

Let's get this digital learning journey started

1 March 2019

After a little trepidation, today marked the first day of the Digital Fluency Intensive.  Excited by the prospect of developing my skills and confidence in digital tools, this day revealed several practical time-saving tools - always a bonus.

Key take outs from today included tips about Google Groups and collaborative inboxes.  Google provides plenty of opportunities to enhance collaboration and increase visibility amongst team members.

As a long-time Windows user, the overview about Google docs and some of the functionality (for example voice typing, sorting content by effectively using Headers were very useful and I could see how they would be put to use right away.

The ongoing challenge of taming my Google Drive was assisted with some proven systems.  The importance of setting up sharing permissions currently and how much time can be saved by saving the document in the correct folder in the drive at the start was another simple, yet effective suggestion.

The last session exploring some of the more creative tools available in Google docs saw me exploring infographics and building more confidence in formatting in Google.  It's early days, but the journey has started...