9. Revision and Reflection

Reflection of my DFI on-line experience

What I benefitted from the most:
-DFI was great for my personal upskilling. I am now more confident, especially with my general google skills. 
-It is wonderful to now understand more fully the kaupapa of Manaiakalani and feel more in line with the rest of my school.
-The opportunity to do DFI online was fantastic and a great transition after Rāhui. The thought of being in a Meet from 8-3 was daunting at first but the day was so well timetabled, varied and well-paced that the day just flew. I was very impressed by how the coaches and presented all adhered to the timetable. :-)
-There were so many 'tips and tricks' that we were given that have made my daily tasks much quicker and have made me more efficient. There were many 'light bulb' moments, as I realised that I had been doing many things the hard way in the past.

What do I need to do from my own learning from here:
From my personal viewpoint as a Year 0-2 teacher, I loved seeing the potential for learning across the school but I kept on putting barriers up for my own class. The new entrant video that we saw on our first DFI session, involved the teacher using her break times and evenings recording children, taking pics and uploading to the blog herself. I felt that this would be a step back for our children who already use 'a private platform' independently to show their learning to their whānau. I totally understand that this doesn't meet the goal of ubiquitous (but we take highlights from this and put them on our class blog). I find it a big jump from teaching children to recognise their name to teaching them to log into a class site etc. (Yes, you can see all my barriers going up! :-D) I am keen to make this work for the children in our class with shared technology but obviously, I need more encouragement and guidance with this. We have received wonderful in-class support through Manaiakalini for our Year 2 children who have 1 to 1 iPads (which we are very grateful for) but at the end of this week, they will be moving into the next class. I'd love to be inspired by seeing how another Year 0/1 class uses a class site with shared devices.

8. Computational Thinking

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

Through creating with programmes that I haven't used before, I am gaining an increased empathy for the learners in my class. This week I used Gamefroot mihi maker to create a visual mihi and last week I adapted part of a Manaiakalani activity using Explain Everything. I don't expect things with technology to be difficult and was surprised when I found both rather tricky to use. I'm finding out more about myself as a learner. When I can't work something out using my past learning or my intuition, I become frustrated. If I miss part of any instruction, don't understand part of the tutorial or can't find something, I'm tempted to just give up. It is great having the coaches to help and I'm happy to ask one or two questions in the group situations on Meet but then I'm reluctant to ask for further assistance when I become stuck again. I'm conscious of 'hogging all the help' and taking up other people's time. 

I wonder how many children in my class feel a similar way when learning something new. Many children wear their hearts on their sleeve but I'm curious as to who else may also be struggling and want to avoid these feelings of defeat. 

Well, I know for sure that persistence pays off and fighting the urge to give up means that I've experienced varying degrees of success in the end.  Even though it's taken me longer than I would expect and I've needed more help than I feel comfortable with. 

(Use your arrow keys to run through my pepeha.)

NB The 'blackout' portions were the sections for completing details of iwi and marae, which I didn't feel comfortable completing as Pākehā. I will seek guidance on this. 

Session 7: Devices

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?
Using Explain Everything to adapt a Manaiakalani lesson was an interesting task. First of all, Gerhard led us through a Chalk 'n' Talk session on iPads. I found this a most purposeful activity as we have shared iPads in our studio.

Our first mission was to use the tools to replicate a slide that he had made. I didn't end up finding this as easy as I initially thought and my intuition didn't really serve me well (I'd even go as far as saying that I found editing shapes was rather frustrating). This is my first time using Explain Everything, so I'm sure it'll get easier the more I use it. In the past, I have used the Show Me app with my 5-7 year olds, which was simple and easy to use. I somehow added the audio to the middle of the page.

After having a play with some literacy based activities that had been created by other teachers, I created some supporting activities for a Manaiakalani lesson. I desperately need to know how to make images and txt boxes square on the page... as I seemed to make things 'skew-whiff'' whenever I move them and now they are all on funny angles. I haven't found a solution on google yet.. 

Session 6: Enabling Access

What did I learn that could be used with my learners? 

Today I created a new T shaped literacy slide to connect to my site. I love that once I've published the slide, any updates that I make are also automatically updated in its connection to the site, so I don't need to create new links. One downfall I found was that I had initially used one of the tutor's slides as a template... it probably would have been easier to start from scratch.
I also discovered that our free class membership to EPIC has expired. EPIC was such an amazing resource during Rāhui for children to follow their passions through audiobooks, text and video clips to support their chosen topic. I'd be keen to find an equally awesome replacement site.

My favourite part of the day was playing to create buttons for my site using google draw. I personalised them by including pictures of our children and using remove.bg. I just used photos that I could find quickly, so they don't necessarily match the purpose of the button but I like the overall effect. I was happiest with the first photo as it has the clearest outline.

Next Steps:
I'd like to get some inspiration from some other New Entrant - Year One classes who use a class google site with shared iPads.

Session 5: Collaborate - sites

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?
Today I worked with others to brainstorm the ideas from a theme for literacy using padlet. I had not used this before and I found it a great way to collaborate with structure.

In the workshop, I created a scaffold that I would be able to use in the future with our Year Two children. The content may not be so useful for me right now, as I currently teach our new entrant children for reading. It was great to consider the effect of multiple texts and I will definitely be using this format in my planning in the future.

I have been in awe of several colleagues' multi-modal sites in the past. Now I understand how they created them.  I only set up one path - literacy - pigs - Term 2 Week 2.


https://sites.google.com/rawhiti.school.nz/nc-sandpit-rmt/home?authuser=0


I attempted to use the techniques that I'd learned in our first session to format a slide using a table. This looks neat and tidy... but not too exciting.  Making a site and slides that have a 'hook' will be something for me to work on.

As we have iPads (but not yet 1 to 1), I wonder how I can use Google Sites in my Year 0/1 class effectively.

Session 4: Dealing with Data

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

I enjoyed the session on google forms. I've used them a bit in the past, so this was a great time to play and try to add a few things that I hadn't used before.

I also picked up some new tips and tricks about google sheets:

• reducing column sizes all at one time;
• putting headings on an angle;
• making graphs from the data; and
• saving the graphs as their own slides.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

Using google my maps was great fun. I plotted my past travels and then my future travels (which was a little less fun due to having to postpone my April trip to Vietnam due to Covid19).

Next Steps:

My next goal is to work with my colleagues to encourage our whānau to continue visiting our class blog in level 2 - now that they don't need to access it for their home learning. It was great to look through the stats and make some assumptions/conclusions from these. I also found it particularly interesting to see how our blog was accessed. We use another platform for the children to share their everyday learning at school - so had just set up our class blog for Level 4, to align with the rest of our school. We sent out the link to our class blog each week for our families to access the home learning information and options. We did this through a variety of methods and now through the stats section, we can see which were used the most.

Session 3: Media

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life? Today I created two pieces of work (that are still in draft form) that I will be able to use for my professional learning. One was from a workshop with Latham, where we created a digital pepeha using slides and then made it into a movie using Screencastify. This is a draft for three main reasons. 1. You can hear the clicks when I select play in the audio.
2. I still need to know how to alter the timing of the slides without needing to change it each time I present. I googled my problem but I couldn't seem to get it to stay using the timings in 'publish to the web' either. I'm sure one of the coaches will be able to help me with this in our next session though (hint, hint) :-D.
3. I'll also need to try to record the audio again without making any mistakes... so much pressure!
There may also be other errors I need to correct, so if you're able to spot any it'd be great if you would leave a comment so that I can make changes before my 'final take'.

   

The second thing I did was create a figure using shapes in a workshop with Mark on Google Draw. I have to say that I was thoroughly inspired by the Chickenzilla created on Google Slides but I doubt if I would ever get up to their standard. I enjoyed it but it was quite fiddly and took me a lot of time.