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.