DFI: Help! It's Hangouts!

Kia ora again,

It's good to have the reflection time to catch up with you all here and unload the hefty amount of learning that is pumped out for each of our Digital Fluency sessions.

Here's a shout out to all our great leaders and support crew that ran the session!

Workflow is one of my main weaknesses in my digital fluency journey. This started back in the junior school when I was teaching Year 2s with a limited amount of ipads in the class and enviously stressing over how to build a site and create rewindable and accessible learning while it seemed as if all the answers were being poured into the senior school. I am now sheepishly having to undo some of the bad habits that I have impatiently stumbled into at that stage.

I am desperate to increase the productivity of my design for teaching and learning and hope to start in the following areas addressed today:

Hangouts

As in all social situations, etiquette is important. Some of the etiquette of Google Hangouts is...

When group calling:
- use headphones
- mute your mic unless you are talking
-don't laptop share ( you end up too far away from the laptop to both be in the screen and this creates unnecessary sound feedback)
- always have your video turned on this is recognised as being part of the chat ( If you turn of your video it is as if you have walked out of the room.)

At the end of the day, we had a session where we had to create a google hangout with a small group of people to put into practice the skills that we learnt through out the day.

New knowledge and skills were leaping out about in my brain and in a near panic I managed to organise and capture a few following thoughts:

Quicktime player can be used to record your screen. Screen Castify is what I would normally use as this is what they children and my self are most familiar with in the classroom. As a teacher when using the internet and recording your screen using a non web-based program like Quicktime will be less of a drain on your streaming and internet usage.

It was interesting how members of the team responded to Mark and Stephany's instructions differently. I was internally feeling the need for support and validation and once again felt grateful for the reminder of what it is like to be a student. To feel what my students feel and understand the healthy 'stress' of gathering, remember and applying newly taught knowledge with the 'imagined' pressure of having to get it correct the first time.

It was also interesting speaking to others with the team muted. The lack of verbal validation and feedback was an interesting experience and made me consider how much I look for non verbal and verbal feedback when having a conversation. It also highlighted the familiarity with filming themselves that I notice in my children everyday and the lack of practice I have in filming myself and having conversations online.

The Maniakalani Pedagogy with Dorothy Burt

Prior to this practice session, we again had the privilege of hearing and interacting with Dorothy via Google Hangouts earlier in the morning.

She took us to the heart of teaching and learning by breaking down the 'what' and 'why' of LEARN.

This begins with accessing and engaging with exisiting knowledge ( in a digital learning environment), recognising effective teaching and accelerating learning with the consideration of moving teaching and learning pedagogy into the digital world without disrupting current learning ( not throwing the baby out with the bathwater) and even accelerating and improving learning outcomes within the digital world.


She highlighted the need to recognise effective practise - What is it that teachers are doing that is effective? How long do I spend noticing the practices others engage in? Do I look for good practice?

Google Class on Air

Effective practice is then to turbocharge the new learning practice by extending it in multiple ways. (SAMR) Rewindable learning is a big part of this: everything accessible and fast paced.

It was noted that these seven actions were synonymous with effective teaching practice.

Embedding effective practice in  technology enables us to remove barriers and provide opportunities for children that have never been possible and will not be possible within the schooling system. It allows solutions to problems in way that were never before considered.

 
Below are a collection of notes and learning from the day:

Things I've learnt from my colleagues:

• Focus sessions on Hapara con be set up through using 'Highlights' to lock certain students into a set screen. I have a lovely little autistic child in my room who 'stims' by setting timers that countdown, and will search bells and his favourite youtube songs in seconds when not monitored. This is going to be a great setting to help remove the distractions/ barriers to his learning.
• Right click on any open tab and select ' pin tab'. This feature remembers your tab and reopens it whenever you open chrome. I am going to teach this to the children tomorrow.
• 'Colour Picker', 'Eye Dropper' and 'Colourzilla' are all extensions that be used to selct specific colours. This is a tool for designing slides, DLOs and sites where the designer wants to match a background with a particular colour in an image.

Google Hangouts:

1. Create a new event in Google Calendar.
2. In the 'Advanced Settings/More Options' select 'Add Conferencing'.
3. Choose 'Hangout Meet'
4. Select the meeting url and paste it into an accessible location ( ie. shared document, site, or minutes)  or personally invite members by email.
5. Enter the Hangout link and admit any members who are joining.
6. Mute your microphone and message the group with a greeting.
7. To share your screen click on the screen to get your action toolbar within google hangouts and then click on start presenting - allow your entire screen to be presented. Move into the desired page. Don't forget to unmute at this point when you start talking. Click on stop presenting then mute when finished.
8. It is good protocol to have a member of the group act as MC. in essence chairing each meeting, prompting, providing feedback ad keeping the session on time. 
9. The entire conversation can be recorded. ( Quicktime is the best non internet program for doing this.)

Google Keep:

• Is the place for taking notes!
• use labels to keep track and organise your notes
• Install 'Google Keep' on your phone. Images can be taken on your phone and turned into text using the camera in Keep and selecting the three dots after taking a photo. Use the 'Change image to Text' option.
• Use Keep for reminders. Keep can send you reminders for birthdays, or, if a location is added to a note, will send you a notification when you are in a location that is connected to said note.
• Once Keep is installed it becomes an optional side bar in your documents. You can use it to ...keep... canned comments or stickers for adding to children's learning as feedback. ( Shoutout to Murray).

To wrap up, I hope to keep this learning fresh, integrating it in everyday use and coming back to this post to revisit my thinking and learning. I hope you will do the same!