Thursday, May 23, 2019

9 Weeks Done


Day 9 of DFI: Computational Thinking

Today was really interesting we thought ahead today about where we would be in 10-15 years from now- we talked about the ethics of driverless vehicles. It was good to have the outside coaches come in and gave us an idea of what is expected from a teacher now- that Technology is part of the curriculum. Here is a link to the slideshow the presenters shared. Here is the link to the Digital Workbook. Code Studio is great to get children learning to give specific instructions or coding.
Here is the link to the agenda for today.


 Great little activity below to do with children- to get them to understand how computers work. Even number -half the number of rows and tapers off.







Like A Boss!





Friday, May 17, 2019

Day 8 of DFI: Revision Day

Today is Exam day where we have been given the option to sit the level 1 exam- I have decided on catching up on DFI Professional Blog postings instead and will aim on doing the test in the weekend or after school some time.


Friday, May 10, 2019

Day 7 of DFI: Learners' Devices: Putting ourselves in their shoes

Today we used ipads and chromebooks to complete a set of tasks to get an idea of what it feels like to be a child in our class using the device to complete set tasks given by the teacher.

Using the chromebook was interesting as some of the buttons and shortcuts I take for granted on a mac are not available or transferrable to a chromebook. We had the task of completing a Digital Dig- there were a lot of shortcuts that I knew I wouldn't remember so it was good to have a place to write them all down.

Overall an interesting experience that has gotten me empathising with my learners when on their devices more!

Here's the link to my DIGITAL DIG.




Friday, May 3, 2019

Day 6 of DFI: Class Sites

Today we learnt about creating class sites so that it becomes an effective tool empowering students. I have a Room 10s' class site already. Today was a review of making sure children's learning is no more then 3 clicks away, how to make your sites look appealing (buttons/images) and something children can relate to, and a reminder that class sites are an effective way of making teaching rewindable. I have found class sites effective in class especially with children who have missed a day or so of school. I direct them to the class site to a particular subject area/video/set of question etc so that children can go back and revisit what they missed out on. This is very time saving for me as well as less teacher heavy as the child can go away and work by themselves or with a buddy to figure out what they need to do to catch up. 

While the opinion being spread was that buttons and tabs for subjects along the top of your website was a big no-no, I feel like for my class site pictured below- it works. Children know where the subjects are and how to get to them and find what they/their group is meant to be doing. I personally did not like the buttons as I find getting a uniform look tricky. However, I have seen teachers at GTS who have used buttons quite effectively. 



The SAMR model below is one I have come across before and it is a good reminder to try and move beyond the substitution and augmentation stage to modification and redefinition. 

Thursday, April 4, 2019

Day 5 of DFI: 05/04/19: Google Sites

Today was all about google sites, hooking our learners and sharing.

Here is the Agenda.

It was good to have the time to explore google sites and create a "sandpit slide" to play around with. Here is a link to my Garden To Table site for learners. It was good advise to plan our site out first because I very soon discovered that things got out of control quickly with ideas and related topics popping in every second.

Because I have created my class site and I am currently using it to enable children/whanau to access my plan for the week and various subjects- I knew how to create a site. However it has been good learning to create a site to motivate and facilitate childrens' learning.

Here is my plan- and you can see I had to merge pages to stop getting my audience overwhelmed.

Planning for the site


Thursday, March 28, 2019

Day 4 of DFI: Google Sheets, Forms and Maps 29/03/19


Here is the Agenda for today.

Today was full of new learning again. We focussed on google sheets, google forms and google maps.

Some great ideas to use in class:

-Pixel art

-Getting children to analyse their blogging data from previous years and create a graph on google sheets as well as embedding it onto their blogs to share. They can try and justify the fluctuations in their graphs or ask questions.

-Creating a google form for statistical process and inviting their buddies from Mangonui School to answer it

-Choose your path using google forms -Alien Invasion Example

-Google Maps for finding the route we walk to school etc.



Blogging Spread Sheet

Thursday, March 21, 2019

My Pepeha

Day 3 of DFI: Google Slides and Draw: Reflections and Possible Notes

Here is the agenda to todays' session.

Today was quite interesting in terms of the learning- focus being create. We had a special guest come in early into the session who talked to us about live streaming using drones and HD cameras- very exciting and impressive examples of what you can create. Here is a link to the presentation. I wonder if GTS has any of these equipment..

We looked at google slides and google draw in detail. It was fun learning how to make an animated slide show. I am planning on teaching my children how to do this and showing them my simple animated slide show. I am sure they will love it- and hopefully not laugh at it. 

Here is CHICKENZILLA! :)

We had an option of learning to do animation or a cartoon portrait- I chose animation because there is a tutorial that I can look at to learn how to do the portrait. I am sure my class would love to do this portrait. I will try and introduce and model this either in the coming week or next week- depending on how packed our timetable is. 

Here is a link to my Pepeha slide show that we are presenting next week.


Thursday, March 14, 2019

Link to My Class Site and Blogs

Glen Taylor School: Class Site: Room 10 


Glen Taylor School Class Blog and Students Blogs

Day 2 of DFI: Google Mail and Google Hangouts 15/03/19: Reflection and Possible Notes


Todays session was a lot about managing the different google drive apps in order to make our work life a little bit easier. 

Here is a link to our agenda for today.

I found the gmail labelling and sorting quite handy. This is because I have been inundated with emails from students blogs and the commenting from both mine and the buddy class. It had come to a point where finding, responding and being aware of emails that are more important from staff and management got lost. I have created a label for the blogs emails and it has gotten a bit easier to manage emails.

We also walked through video calls with hangout. We worked in teams to share our screens when discussing and sharing. Towards the end of the day we used Quick Time Player to record our hangout call and sharing. This method of sharing can be easily used by students to connect with buddies in another class as well as our buddies from the Manaiakalani buddy up.


I am planning on teaching my students how to make a hangout call and inviting our buddy Manaiakalani class for a chat.


Excited! I am sure the kiddos will be too :)


Our hangout call in our small group was a bit of a fail as the video was blurry, people were disconnecting and once the video was done the audio was not clear- hopefully these issues will not pop up for my students due to having actual distance. 


Handy check list of skills: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qAWvq9f66FFEDNgH-7B3BcaI0-hS0OxcGxxPdWDUXKM/edit#heading=h.5nux5hqo4gp6

Thursday, March 7, 2019

Day 1 of DFI: 08/03/19: Voice Typing, Google Docs, Reflection and Possible notes:

Today was an awesome intro day. It was good meeting a large variety of people with such varying expertise in different areas. I found the day pitched just right so I did not feel bored or that things were moving too fast- great effort from the facilitators. 


Some new things I learnt: 

 1)How to properly use headings/subheadings on google docs so that you can later on create a table of contents.

2)Introduced to add-ons, extensions and scripts- wow! And I thought I knew everything there was to know about google docs and drive. Looking forward to exploring and using these.

 3)Command F is a great short cut to look for something on an online pdf etc.

4)Organising students work -using 1 doc for writing/reading/maths etc. with dates and headings as well as contents page to keep from making hundreds of docs.

5)Voice Typing: great app so that children can work on Oral Language skills- instead of just reading and writing.

6)Micro Teaching whole class how to get onto their drive create a folder-name the folder - open a doc in folder and name the doc with name initials first. 

7)Paper to digital: A game to teach children how to share docs with each other: get a piece of paper- T dictates a sentence starter and child finishes the sentence- the paper gets folded swapped around and T gives another sentence starter- fold and swap again, repeat a few times- children read the story out loud. Do this on drive sharing docs with the person next to you etc. 

8)Using google docs to make posters, parent notifications, invitation cards, data sharing, graphs, summary of learnings etc.

9 Weeks Done