27.8.19- Being Visible

27.8.2019- Session Six

Focus: Enabling Access

Today was my sixth session in the DFI (Digital Fluency Intensive) course. These are some notes and at the bottom is my reflection from today.

Connecting with Manaiakalani

Visible Teaching and Learning
Can you see it or can you not. Perfect vision. Can you see it.
Some students struggle to learn as learning has been hidden from them. We share the WALT or LI with children. This can be taken even further with technology by making learning an teaching visible. The WHOLE learning journey being visible and the students to be at the heart of learning. By showing;

• planning
• process
• outcomes
• assessment

If we are being visible, what needs to be private? e.g DOB, address, health concern, behaviour data etc should obviously be private.
We should have conversations more openly about where they sit with their learning, e.g. the colour wheel in reading and making it visible to students. They may have a fair idea of the top groups etc already or they may be completely wrong. Be transparent with them.
When everything is on the class site students can access their own learning e.g planning, groups etc. People can deal with anything if there are no surprises.
Hapara gives us visibility of our young people. Now going forward with digital learning ti is essentially a look in their 'desks'. There is also the ability for parents to login to Hapara.
Google Class on air- a webcam in the class to record lessons.
In Manaiakalani teachers are sharing their Teacher as Inquiry for the year.
It further breaks down walls and means colleagues can share their learning.
Blogger makes students learning visible.
The research has shown that being visible has a great result in student achievement.
When schools go digital parents can be locked out of the learning process due to the need of passwords to locate what children are doing and where to click etc. In the past parents could go to school and ask to see workbooks. By making everything visible and not having passwords this removes this barrier.

Deep Dive- Evaluating Class Sites

That the site is visually appealing and interesting. You need to think of the audience the site is for. Can you get to everything within 2-3 clicks (User Access).

Using the examples we did a review of the sites for what works and what doesn't which has been great as I am about to set up a site for the School Library. This was very timely for us to look at when this is my goal over the next few weeks.

Why Google Sites?

Having class sites that are a continuation from previous years learning or the future years. Have consistency through the school. It will help the learners.
Have clear and easy to access buttons and links.
Plan your site before you start. Is it for an Ipad, Chromebook etc. Will the little fingers on an Ipad be able to access the little buttons or drop down menu? If it is for Ipads have links that push out to slides.
Think about colours and fonts. Remember you are the role model for children. Try keep the same colour theme and 1-2 fonts throughout.

Putting your timetable on your site. It may be useful to make this in spreadsheeds.
Sites of use for inspiration- Clarelle’s Class site

Links from Today

Year 1 iPads for first time class onair

1-1 iPad site

Manaiakalani Google Class Onair

My Google Sites

My Class Site I have worked on today.
Belfast Library Site I have worked on today.

Reflection;

Today I have been able to make a Class Site to begin to make Room 4's learning and teaching visible. Today's session was all around being "Visible" and this being a Manaiakalani key principal. I have been able to set up several buttons up using google drawing. I had to play around a little bit to figure out how to add a new page or a new sub page as this did not seem to work for me. I also began to create a school web page for the Library. I hope to launch this site in Term 4 with the Syndicate Inquiry Topics available. This will be a place for students to gather digital resources for Inquiry and for other researching purposes.
Making these two sites has really helped to increase my understanding of Google Sites. It was brilliant to have a chance to get to play around and discover new things. I found I was able to get a lot of work done which will help as I will have less to do in my own time.
I have figured out how I can adapt some areas of a site to best suit my learners. We were shown a lot of class sites from people from this course. I found most of these were aimed at higher ability students so I had to get my head around a site for younger learners. Google Slides is going to be the best way to help my students.
By doing this my students, and their families will be able to access learning and their learning will be made 'rewindable' so they can access it again in the future.
Something to look up-
Sunshine books- Find out if we can get free access to the digital version through Manaiakalani. We have access to 6 free copies of all sunshine titles. This is something I found interesting and I assume we have received the physical books as there are many new Sunshine books in our guided reading collection.

Day 5- Lights, Camera, Action

20.8.2019- Session Five

Focus: Devices

Today was my fifth session in the DFI (Digital Fluency Intensive) course. These are some notes and reflection from today.

Cybersmart and being a Digital Citizen
-Showing yourself in the best light. Don't put negative things on there. This is how we train our students. If they are googled when looking for a career nothing negative will come up.

The three categories that we teach are listed at the top. One per term.
Lessons are available through this link.

This programme should run alongside your regular lessons and needs to be taught every year.
Smart Learners- How to use devices.
Smart Footprint- Teaching children to ask themselves- What do I want people to see about me in my future?
As a parent will you children want pictures of them online in the future. It may affect their digital footprint.
Smart Relationships- how to interact with others online. Ensuring children are being positive, thoughtful and helpful.

Hapara

"Making Learning Visible"
Teachers insight into you class. Nothing you as a teacher cannot see.
Students still own their drives. They are the only ones who can move things around etc. You can just 'see' what they're doing. Not do it for them.
"Dashboard" tab -shows what the students are doing in their g suite.
"Sharing" tab-automatically has everything shared with you as a teacher.
"All Docs"- shows all docs for children and will search their entire drive.
You can also see the student blogs and posts they have made from the dashboard. Hovering over will show a preview and clicking will take you to the post. You cannot see it until it has been published.
You can also view emails students have been sent.
Students must be using the "Chrome" app for this to work. This is a requirement for having a personal device at school.
This is not a monitoring and filtering tool It is to support learning. Children should be in the right place doing the right thing and it is a matter of teaching them this.
**Keep the screen up on the projector-this will keep the kids on task.


Manaiakalani 1:1 Journey
Partnership, Participation, Protection
Having a partnership with home/whanau, community, teacher and students. Having engagement.
Everyone can participate if all students have a device. Devices with Manaiakalani are required to be a Chromebook. (The best device for learning year 4 up) Having the same makes it easier for everyone.
Protection by using Hapara and making learning visible. It should be seamless and you should be able to see all students and all work.
Manaiakalani tested and trialed a lot of different devices and they do this each year to update the best device for our learners.

Digital Dig- Link to my dig with a Chromebook
We were asked to follow some instructions to find shortcuts etc on a chrome to experience how things were for the children in our classes.

1:1 Ipad Workflow
1:1 iPad Support Page
Explain Everything How to
All Ipads need to be set up the same.
We really rely on "Explain Everything"
All children use the same Ipad each time they use the ipads. Name with a label on the back. Ipad should be signed into individual learners accounts (drive, chrome and explain everything) if 1:1.

**Can work on a class drive and all children have their own folder on the drive.

"Explain Everything" - An app that all Ipads should have. There is a bank of resources already created for all ready to reads.

http://bit.ly/dfiexplain - on an Ipad type in. It will take you to a website. When you click on the activity it well say the file is not supported, or there has been an error. Click the 3 dots at the top, click the 4 arrows out "open in" and open in Explain Everything.

To add an "Explain Everything" activity to a class site you can create a slideshow and put in a link to the explain everything you want children to access hyperlinked in to a picture.

As we do not have the "Explain Everything" app on our iPads an quick alternative for sharing is on "Seasaw". If sharing the child's story, take a photo, then do a voice recording of the child reading their story and share on their Seasaw.

Some great resources for the iPads

Maths

Reading

Writing

Written instructions for Explain Everything

EE iPad Reading

EE iPad Maths


Lights, Camera, Action

How we all became filmstars for the day... Screencastify!

Screencastify How to guide
A video tool that records your screen that can insert a video of yourself or a voice recording.
Creating my own Screencastify -my video
Explaining how to create a slideshow -Video 2






A reading activity idea I found while exploring...

Reflection

Hapara is not something I have used as my students are too young to have their own google drives and accounts. I could see how this would be valuable for the older classes with one to one.

Today we got to have a play on some devices. I had a look at a Chromebook for the first time. This is not a device my students use, due to their age, but was good to see what our older students are capable of. Playing on the Ipads and seeing "Explain Everything" was really great. There are already some great resources made for reading books and numeracy that we can use. This will be a great app to get on our iPads, particularly for the lower end of the school. This is something I am going to look into getting to trial and hopefully get for next year. The only thing that would make management hard is not having many devices as I only have 4, which isn't enough for a group. 

With using Screencastify I found that I did not enjoy hearing myself recorded however I realise that this could be a great tool to use to demonstrate how to do things online or to model numeracy strategies etc. I chose to do my Screencastify on how to make a google slide to share with my team back at school as this is something I have been meaning to share with them. It would be a great way to save time instead of finding a time you are both free to show someone something. 


Today has been a great chance to have an explore of some new apps and tools. Each week I have been coming to the DFI I have become more and more excited about what I could do with my class. I have made more multi-modal slide shows and I have shared these as well as google keep to my staff in our Monday Morning meeting. It was great getting to share more of what I have learnt with the staff at school. I received some great comments following this, particularly about google keep.

I have also realised upon doing this course how much quicker I am becoming with some of my shortcuts which saves me a lot of time when creating resources. I am all for saving time and becoming more efficient! Through looking at other people's learning sites I am finding some great ideas I can use with my kids of things I have never thought of or things that remind me of things I have done in the past. I need to make more time to explore sites of others and leave some blog posts.

Looking forward to what I may learn next week. Bring it on!

DFI Day 4- Getting excited about Computational Thinking

13.8.2019- Session Four

Focus: Computational Thinking

Today was my forth session in the DFI (Digital Fluency Intensive) course. These are some notes and reflection from today.

Share-Connecting with Manaiakalani- Mark and Dorothy

Connected learners share. Human's have always shared things (cave paintings, scrolls, art, books etc) things have just changed. It is important when we talk about 'share' that we realise all the things we share. Our failures, successes, what we achieve, our food etc. It is something that makes us human, however we all like to share in different ways.
2005 a whole heap of social media came to be in existence, e.g Twitter, Bebo, Facebook, You Tube. The tag lines for these sites were all similar about sharing your life with your friends/the world. The speed that you shared your life changed. It became very quick and was amplified to more people.
In the past our young people had certificates that would be shared on the fridge and it can now be shared with the whole family online. Children started to want to share online too.
Sharing is not either, or. The previous ways to share things go hand in hand with how we are sharing now with Manaiakalani. There is more. We have gone from sharing within our school and we can now share with the wider local community and globally.
Sharing with purpose- in writing we think about the audience. There is the compulsory audience (class, teacher, school etc) who can be forced to listen. The children often know it is not authentic or wanted. We are trying to create an authentic audience for our children.
Why Manaiakalani chose Blogger- a lot of sites were looked into.

It's not about how we are doing it with the children it is teaching them how to do it correctly. The school board is the owners of these Blogs as they are underage. They are authors because they're legally underage in NZ for social media. Comments can all be monitored.
On our blogs we should have a side bar with all blogs we access. The setting should be set that the most recent post goes to the top. It makes it easy to check in with comments.
Cybersmart Curriculum- Delivered on a regular basis across the school and cluster with the same language. This has become a tool to help have a positive, thoughtful presence online.
Share to finish learning- The purpose of finishing to be seen not to sit in a book to never be seen again. Sharing to begin new learning is also a direction these children can go into. Feedback to feed forward (John Hattie). Feedback from all these external sources can feed forward into other learning and covering next steps.
We teach out children that if they are going to comment online these comments need to be... "Positive, Thoughtful (connect with it), Helpful (feed forward)".
The reading and writing from leaving comments will help raise achievement in itself.
You cant just lie back and think you can make a blog post and people will come and comment. You have to have a few tips and tricks. We are doing it as part of our sharing time- go to another DFI members blogs and leave a comment. The longer you linger in a blog it changed the Google algorithm with google to come up more higher in searches.

OMGTech! Intro- Speaker Kawana Wallace

Under Pam Fergusson Charitable Trust
Some positive things can be developed from AI. E.G "Skin Vision" to diagnose moles being cancerous. Cost is still quite expensive for some of these apps.

Employer values vs our values
Our employers values are often ones that can be replaced by machines. Our values are often more feelings based or around our families/friends.

Curriculum Deep Dive-
“Computational thinking is about understanding the computer science principles that underlie all digital technologies, and learning how to develop instructions, such as programming, to control these technologies.
Designing and developing digital outcomes is about understanding that digital systems and applications are created for humans by humans, and developing knowledge and skills in using different digital technologies to create digital content across a range of digital media. This part of the curriculum also includes learning about the electronic components and techniques used to design digital devices."

• INQUIRY includes data modelling, spreadsheets, access to online databases, searching, access to virtual labs, online observatories, virtual field trips
• COMMUNICATION includes word processing, e-mail, virtual conferences, graphics software, blogging, vlogging, presentations, websites and tutorials
• CONSTRUCTION includes robotics, computer-aided design, control systems, programming, electronics, digital manufacturing, game design and sensors.

EXPRESSION includes interactive video, animation software, 3D design, music composition, digital art, digital storytelling


Binary

CS Unplugged

Coding- Presentation
Hour of Code- A site to have a go at coding games. These take one hour.
Toxiccode (ComputeIT)- more advance coding
Scratch
10 block challenge and Maze

Junior Coding- Scratch Junior and Hopscotch
 

Kia Takatu- Digital Readiness
This is the Curriculum that will need to be taught next year (2020).

Links- OMGTeach!

Circuits and Robotics- Ideas
3D pens- $30 Ali Express, Makey Makey is $25 on Ali Express.
Cardboard robot "Stumblebot"- Adafruit will have a tutorial but will also be on the OMGtech! website. $8 each.

Reflections-
Today I felt like a big kid. It was fun having a play with the different coding sites available to be used. I enjoyed playing around and figuring out how the Scratch site and Hour Of Coding sites. We made a maze game that we coded to get a character through. We thought we could make a game up for our storytelling story this term, "The Blind Man and the Hunter", and the aim of the game could be to get the blind man through the maze to the rainbow bird from the story.
I do think this is above the capabilities of the children in my class however after speaking to Kawana from OMGtech! I was recommended 'Scratch Junior' and 'Hopscotch'. I will have to have a play with these sites to then be able to introduce these to my class, which I look forward to.
At school we also have 'Osmo'. We have the coding kit which is very junior level based. This is something my class has used in the past but I need to get out again. I was also suggested putting out large grid paper and getting the children to write instructions for each other. e.g "Move forward two squares, go right 3, forward 1, left 5". This would be a great intro to beginning to code before moving onto coding games to give a basic understanding.
Initially when Kawana started to talk about 'Binary' I could feel myself getting confused however I am pleased to say I got there. Woohoo!
Kawana showed us some great tools for circuits and robotics. WOW! This would be so engaging for some of our older kids and I would be keen to see how they would go with this. The Conductive paint may be great to play around with the younger students if it fit in with our topics.
It was interesting to hear from Dorothy this morning about how 'sharing' has changed. I had forgotten how far we, as humans, have come when sharing our thoughts, feelings and experiences. These tools we use these days seem to have become second nature with the addition of social media. It was good to be reminded of this and how as humans it is natural to want to share about ourselves. I remember the excitement of my first social media site on Bebo and I could see that this would be a similar experience for teenagers in more recent years, if not more exciting, due to social media being that much more common.
My aim for this week is to get out the OSMO coding kit to show my class to get them to experience coding.

Week 3-Time to Get Creative!

6.8.2019- Session Three

Focus: Collaborate Sites

Today was my Third session in the DFI (Digital Fluency Intensive) course. These are some notes and reflection from today.



Create

Create- DFI Slides -Edit version with presenting notes

Dorothy Burt- "It's all about the hook" 

Hooking children into what we want them to learn. 

How do we as teachers get children to create and engage them in creative learning experiences. 

Lifelong Kindergarten Group- Our Goal is to "create a world of playfully creative people"

Seasaw- sharing curriculum and researched based comments alongside pictures and activities from throughout the day.

ECE Quote- "Creativity focuses on the process of forming original ideas through exploration and discovery"

Why does "create" have to just be for ECE??

Creativity can empower learners. 

Create has always been in the NZ Curriculum- We need to focus on having create in our planning and teaching. Reflect- have my young people had a chance to 'create' something this week or do something creative.

"The heART of the Matter": You Tube Video- Young people in NZ talking about how as adults now, what it was like to learn through creativity. The death of the Importance of creativity was not just National Standards. Other learning areas became more important. We need to get back there.

Create is a doing word- "Exploring Create"

What does it mean to people?-People from around the world. From this a graphic was made to acknowledge the whole part of Create.

Creating explores the whole body.

Creativity can be dance, sport- There are many ways to be creative.

Most people talk about Creating in the brain. Creative writing etc.

Most people need a "conduit" to get the learning embedded. Doing something or creating something is the perfect way to do this. 

-Writing a song with a guitar

-Doing amazing moves on the rugby field

-Play dough creations

The digital world can record and document this learning can take us to places we couldn't before. The learning can then be shared. Children will provide content and not just be consumers. 

Empower children to be creative. We can create to learn instead of learning first. Creating a diorama can be the hook and through creating will encourage the learning. "Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking;learning naturally results" - John Dewey

Employers want someone who can create something, who can actually do something. If we can teach children to be creative then we can give them lifelong skills. 

Multi Modal

- using a range of modes to communicate due to the different purpose. 

e.g. I wouldn't send a Snapchat to Grandma, I am more likely to send an email or letter.

You have to decide how children will access the learning first. 

If we can engage children they're more likely to learn. This is where the "hook" can come in. 

Today we are constantly being bombarded with advertisements and engaging experiences in all areas of their life. It is important to have some "toolbox" options to hook children in or to 'sell' the learning to them. 

Hooking them in in a creative way we have the children already thinking about what is coming. e.g video, stage production, experiment. It can be dressed up to make it more exciting to engage children. The children are already engaged. 

You have to make it engaging and use a range of ways to engage. Videos all the time would not engage and excite them. They could try food or something similar. The device itself will not keep them hooked. 

Once you have hooked them- teach them. Engage with multi modal in a range of opportunities to engage with the learning and deepen the understand 

Make things more interesting for children to be engaged.

Things in these examples look like tables and look boring. Multi Modal site can engage. They have text and videos that are interactive. If it is something you will access again it is valuable to make a multi modal site and put in the time and effort. 

Multi-Modal exploring- a lot of these sites have been created for Inquiry topics. They may have been made for Junior classes or older kids. These sites have slideshows, You Tube videos, suggestions to read a text with follow up activities, pictures, quote related, online books and tasks. 

Are they too engaging? Not engaging enough? - some seem to be quite full on. I think some children may become disengaged. I find most of these are based at higher levels. If you were doing this for Juniors you may do it in a slideshow with a video they can press play on and it would be very simple. You may also record the learning through a slide show that they can check back on. 

Chalk 'n talk: Google Sites

Introduction to Google Sites

Having a 'sandpit' site to play around on can be very beneficial to play around without publishing on a live site that several teachers may use. 

Making a Google Site

Think of the purpose- Who are our learners? Young children would have buttons or pictures and older children may have a toolbar. 

What is your theme? e.g. flowers- all headers etc will be flowers

Planning your site- how many pages? (reading, writing, maths, other)

Have a Play- We got a chance to make our own Google Site.

One key thing I took away was to make sure you have a folder with share settings for "everyone with the link can view" so everyone can see the images etc. Often you will go to a site made by someone else and the links they had put on going to google docs etc do not work due to sharing permissions.

Make a header- Custom-1000x250 pixels

Download as PNG

Drag from downloads bar to the header or change picture and upload from your computer

Make Buttons- 250x250 pixels

Purpose of buttons- Ipads need buttons to make these accessible, particularly for Juniors.

To make a new page-Hover over the page and insert page or insert sub page. You can then hide from Navigation and the button can hyperlink in the page. 

Jess's Sandpaper Site- My Sandpaper Site will be used so I can have a play around on Google Sites before putting things onto my Live Site. 

Explore- Creating websites to share and collaborate.

 I created a Slideshow for a reader I love called "A Lucky Day for Little Dinosaur.

This link takes you to what I created.

We were to make a Multi-Modal Site for us to share with each other. We have International Talk like a Pirate Day coming up. It is one of my favourite weeks at school that we celebrate with the kids every year. I made a resource that children can use related to this. This link takes you to my slideshow. I chose to use a slide show because my level of children use Ipads. 

How I can make this an option for my Reading Programme;

Wigram School give out the same "create" task for each group. Link

For Example- Show what "Hauora means for you"- create using any medium- e.g. play dough, blocks, pen and paper etc

You would share the evidence of what the children have made on a class blog or "Seasaw" account. 

Slideshows- To take a slideshow from 'present' to 'edit' by deleting back to the side bar. You can also delete back to type "copy" so it forces kids to take a copy.

Reflection- I really like the idea of creating a multi modal resource for my children to use. I have to figure out how to best utilise multi-modal document with my class. The one I made today took me some time to put together. I think as I become more experienced I will be able to whip these resources up quicker however I would not want to make one for every reading group (8 of them) for every week (2 books a week). I do like the Whole Class Activity that Wigram do. All reading groups have the same follow up task. These tasks would be shared on Seasaw. You could make it compulsory to have a photo taken of your work to give ownership.
I have really enjoyed making Multi-Modal sites and activities for my classes this week. I can see how easily the children would be able to access this material by making buttons. By adding videos to the slideshow I am making it so the children will not have to leave to an external site. These resources I have made will be able to be used again, by myself and colleagues, and people in my cluster. I have shared the resources I made with the Uru Manuka Cluster and in the DFI Cohort 2 page.
I look forward to seeing how I can further use Multi-Model resources in my class and sharing my ideas and resources with my school and syndicate.