Week 2, DFI- Work Work Work Work Work Flow

30.7.19- Session Two

Focus: Work Flow

Today was my second session in the DFI (Digital Fluency Intensive)course. These are some things I picked up from today.

At the start of the session we had to reflect on our learning from last week. We went around the group and shared out thoughts from the following questions.

WWW

What has worked for you since the last time we met? 
What hasn’t worked (or made sense)?
What do you need help with?

How to- A great site that was shared with us today- How to Site to support Adding Content to Blogs

It has a lot of great videos of how to add videos etc to blogs

Google Hangout- connect with people anywhere with internet. Today we connected again with Dorothy, however on each of our own computers instead of the big screen. We had to learn how to mute our microphones to minimize interference as well as comment and leave the call.

Manaiakalani Pedagogy-
We went through the Manaiakalani Pedagogy and discussed Learn, Create, Share. How this looks in some Auckland schools and how it may look for us. We also went into how Manaiakalani Pedagogy fits in with the New Zealand Curriculum.

It came up that children may feel how we are feeling today with our learning. Realising how I am feeling with the speed of the DFI is how many of my kids may be feeling. Rewindable learning- if its worth teaching, it's worth capturing. Children can come back to the lessons if they are unsure of something. We have all the resources available to us to look back on which makes processing easier for us however what we teach without making it rewindable makes it harder to access this info for children. This would help to remove barriers for children. Technology is not just a tool, it can make a real difference.

Google Hangouts continued-

We learnt how to join a hangout and how to screen share. It was good to learn that only one person can screen share at a time.

We were given the task of getting in a group to analyse a blog post.

These blog posts were under the Summer Learning Journey- This is a program that is run over the summer school holidays. The children's levels are not dropping off. They have to make 3 posts four of the weeks in the holidays for the great success. Not 12 all in the last week. The children need to have been blogging prior to doing this programme and learning the protocols etc.
Using blogs is a way of being connected with people outside your four walls or within your school.
Loom- google this. It is an app you can get to record a video hangout on a Microsoft computer. Quicktime can be used on Mac

There were a few trial and error moments with the group chat. One member of the group had to record the 'Hangout', another time, another was the leader. We had an issue with the sound in the first part of our recording due to bluetooth headphones being turned on. Because of this the recorder could not hear any sound through their laptop meaning we thought the sound had not recorded properly. This was a moment we all had to reflect on to figure out why it was not working. We got there in the end with some help and we have all been able to take this away as a key learning moment.
The following links are the links to our hangout.

The no sound version

The bit that worked

Google Keep-

Google Keep- Good for making a signature for things. You can make a list. Particularly for sharing with others or for a Grocery shopping list. All ticked items move to the bottom and can be un-ticked to resurface at the top again. You can set a reminder time or place and get a notification. Particularly good if this app is on your phone. To find the note faster 'pin' it. 'Keep' is down the right hand side of google apps.

Picture to Text-You can take a photo of a text and it will type it out. Share this with Syndicate. You can do this on a phone or you can take a photo/screenshot on your computer and this will work too.

Gmail-


We went through and checked our email settings. I created an email signature which I had been unsure how to do. I changed the 'undo email' to the maximum, 30 second, option and I changed the setting to not see the unread emails. I changed the theme to have a picture in the background which can help identify different email addresses. I also added email shortcuts. There are a lot of shortcuts to save time.

Google Calendar-




We were shown how to create a new event and we were required to set up an event with a 'Hangout' to discuss our DFI goals from the week and how things were going. This took me some playing around, however I got there. I will enjoy getting to chat to Kimberley at our set time to discuss how we are both progressing.




Workflow Organisation-
Teachers are known to have a million tabs open on their computers.
Onetab- This is an app extension from the google store. It closes all your tabs and puts them all on the one page. You can lock them and set it up so that you can have the same apps open on start up.
Toby Mini- Another tab organising app. I have decided against using this one as you had to log in and the 'Onetab' extension seemed easy enough to use.
Pin Tabs- This is the option I like the most. You can pin your regularly used tabs to Google Chrome so every time you open the app they come up straight away. An alternative is to make sure the start where you finished option is selected in settings.





Colorzilla- To match colours off other sites or pictures. You can then paste this into the 'custom colours' section in google drawing. 

Today's Reflection-
Today has been a very busy day. There have been moments I have had to stop to really process what we have been going through. I have found myself getting left behind at moments with a couple of things we have been shown from me trying to look at one thing we were shown and then us moving on quicker than I was ready for. I will have to be more aware of this for next week. I felt it was a fairly big step up from last week's session.
Today I have learnt what it feels like to be a learner. I have to remember that all of my students learn at a different pace and that some of my children could be being left behind in things we are discussing. I found it interesting when we discussed the 'Rewindable Learning'. How if something is worth learning it is worth recording in a way for children to go back and check. I feel I am somewhat limited with having things available online for my learners due to their age and capabilities so this is something I will need to figure out how to do in another way.
Looking at some people's blogs today I have had some inspiration for how I can adapt my blog to make it more appealing to look at. This is something I will aim to do going forward.
Today's session has been around work flow and how to be better organised as teachers. I am excited to have my tabs better organised for the future with the pinned sites. I think this will save me a couple of minutes on start up each day which is great.

Week 1. DFI Blog Post

23.7.19- Session one

Focus: Core Business

Today was my first session in the DFI (Digital Fluency Intensive)course.

The day started out recapping how Manaiakalani got started in Auckland with a . It was a good reminder as to why we have gotten started on this journey. This is the second year our school has been involved in Manaiakalani and apart from the session's with Mark we have done once a term, I have not had a big involvement so far.

We went through many short sessions throughout the day covering many aspects of ICT. Everything we covered today, and that we will cover will connect with Manaiakalani and Digital Technology and will have the Learn, Create, Share pedagogy.

Some of my key takeaways from today were;

• Some great shortcuts to save time. These shortcuts could be great to save time to put towards other aspects of my life, e.g. spending more time with friends and family.

• Something that I have not been able to get my head round over the last two years is how to share a 'Seasaw' post onto my class blogger. This is something I have been able to figure out today and was far simpler than I could have imagined. (Copy embed code-paste into a post under the 'HTML' screen-return to the compose screen-adapt the size in HTML if need be-publish)
• I learnt about 'Google Groups'. It turned out we, as a school, are already using this as a way to send some group emails. What I did not realise is that everything sent through these groups is saved under the 'Google Groups' app. I have decided this is something I want to take back to my Syndicate at school as a way to be able to easily send group emails and to be able to find information and docs for each group.
• We had a play around with google docs to try and make some visual media. There is a great many ways you can jazz up google docs, which I did not realise. This link has some great examples. This is a simple doc that I made for a notice.

• We had a play around with 'Voice Typing'. Something to make this easier for children in a louder space is to cut the bottom off a paper cup and have the children speak into this. Children will need to announce their words clearly for this to work.
• Google Drive can have an advanced search to find docs. Once you click on the search bar you can wait a moment and it will have an option to do an 'advanced search'. You can select the kind of doc yo are looking for, the person who owns the doc and many other options. I have found some colleagues struggle to find docs so this will be a handy thing to take back to share with my team.
• The 'Snipping Tool' is a useful tool to use when trying to cut an image from the screen. You can search for this from the 'Windows' start button.

The DFI Site is a site that has many great tools to use going forward.

The Cohort info is on the following site.

I have learnt many great tools that I can use today as well as take away to share with my team. I have learnt some shortcuts I can use to continue to help me save time and become more efficient, which is one of my goals when it comes to my work and having a good balance. I think as this course continues to go on my ICT skills will continue to grow hugely, which I am very excited about. I have always considered myself fairly well up to date with ICT and fairly proficient however, from today and being involved in Manaiakalani this far, I have realised I have a lot more to learn. I look forward to seeing what else I can learn and develop and how I can transfer these skills into the Junior setting with my class.

Watch this space...