DFI: Making it Visible

via GIPHY

Welcome back to another Digital Fluency Intensive. Our speakers today were Dorothy and Clarelle supported by Mark! Shout out to you all!

Dorothy started us off again by encouraging us to be visible. This is an uncomfortable place for me and has been the subject of many colleague discussions as it requires us to be vulnerable with each other and our whanau and students by opening up our planning and teaching ideas to criticism. Possibly jut imagined criticism.

What is being 'visible'?

This comes down to one big questions: Can you see it or can you not? There is no room for grey areas, foggy or cloudy vision. This is a straight forward idea. Can it be seen?

This is not only about the learning journey being visible to the learner but also to the wahnau and colleagues. A lot of the past failures in the non-digital age has been because much learning journey processes have not been visible to learners. Dorothy relates this to being in a maze and guessing where you are going.

For too long success has gone to the children who can figure out the teacher's mind. They were the ones who could succeed. The cultural capital and those children who have received a lot of interaction and discussion with adults and experiences have a head start in this area. This links to Jodi Hunters PD last week about ability and status. Are the children who lack the ability simply the ones who do not have an elevated status because of the experiences, cultural capital or ability to relate with the teacher? ...These are difficult questions to ask of oneself.

Sharing WALTs and learning intentions over the past yers has made a big difference however this can be taken a lot further with digital technology. The young person should be at the centre of the learning and everything should be visible around them. Manaiakalani has found that visible learning is one of the key factors that make a difference to learners success.



We shouldn't kid ourselves about where the children sit in terms of their assessment data. They  already know where they sit in relation to the class and we can't keep this hidden. We need to be prepared, open our minds and genuinely think about what needs to be kept private and what doesn't. Is there any reason on earth that a maths lesson plan needs to be kept private?

Sites are a way of recharging the whiteboard and making the learning fully visible and Hapara has opened the visibility up for teachers.

Following each others blogs, opening up professional enquires and sharing what we do in classrooms breaks down walls between colleagues and professional staff also. Power and imbalance changes.

Posting and sharing learning has changed the way that children view learning and connection.

The difference in writing where the children make huge gains in writing is where students have visibility in their learning.

Why do we share with others and on our blogs?

• To communicate with a real audience and purpose in mind.
• To inform others about my learning.
• To enlist others to my point of view.
• To get others to think something they never thunk.
• To make a difference.

Visible Teaching and Learning

One of things that concerns Dorothy in the digital environment is that it is possible to lock parents out of the learning process like never before. Now that we are in a digital environment there are barrier systems to parents locating what their children are doing... let alone understanding how to navigate through a world that they have far less experience in than their children... BUT by making everything visible and having no problem with it being visible then allows for an augmented connection with whanau, colleagues and learners.

Working on Sites

The day continued with Clarelle sharing her site and other sites from Maniakalani. She encouraged us to think critically about how we organised our sites; the accessibility, visibility and movement through our site.

Nothing should be seperate from the other. Blogs, planning intentions they all come together in a process of learning.

When you're making a class site you need to think about what has come before. Is the pathway clear ad continuous. Do they understand how it works from using it the years before?

When working on a class site think:

• Who are the learners?
• How are they going to access the site? Making a site for a chromebook is very different from making a site for ipads.
• What is the theme of the site?
• Why are they using the site? This will be different based on the way you structure your schol and classroom.

Clarelle's Presentation Slide 

So....

After Clarelle's Chalk n' Talk we all linked our sites to a shared document and put our sites up on the big screen. We had to do a speed talk through our sites and everyone responded with feed back on a google form. It was interesting to be put in the hot seat in front of the group and  put myself in the shoes of a learner once again.

Here are some goals that I need to follow up on and some great ideas that have collected from other's sites.

Make a parent portal on my site:
Welcome video
A navigation video
Links to notices and hail

Re-engage with maths:
How is this going to be organised?
Check out others maths pages on site. Kaupeka 2019
Use the format on the writing page and match it for maths to enable clarity and consistency.

Link Planning
Link all planning to my blog with the same planning icon.

Stolen Ideas: Thank you Sharers!

Ipad Ideas:
Its not about the number of apps its about how you use them.
Blogger, Sunshine Books, Explain Everything Drive and Scratch

Keeping up with Goals
On a google sheet put up criteria and as children complete learning tasks that demonstrate these areas they link their work eg. using similes - children link up the learning task that they did that showed hat they learned similes.
eg. 'You need to hyperlink ____ in before you go for lunch."

Check Your Site Functions
Check that all your learning and planning is visible by going into your own site incognito.
Command + Shift + n for an incognito window.

Writing with Google Forms
Use a google form to put up a 100 word challenge so that children can write at home too and submit their learning. This makes it easy to view, collate and publish.
Check out Terry's site for linked and collated sites and material.

Keeping in Site
Each year make a copy of your site and label it as that year instead of writing over it. This is a good record for ERO and for teacher registration.

DFI: Getting to know our Devices

It Tuesday and we are back again at Maniakalani's Digital Fluency Course.


Today started off with a refresher of the Cybersmart Program. Its always a good reminder for me to be newly aware of what the Cybersmart curriculum contains as so often, like the children, I easily slip into bad habits.

It was good to get a reminder about children managing their chromebooks and having the knowledge to sign other children off their chromebooks, (not have other children signed in on their chromebooks in the first place) and respecting the capability of the device.

Being visible is at the heart of the pedagogy of Learn Create and Share.
Visible - nothing is hidden or secret, everything online needs to come with the understanding that it is freely given and shared with no strings attached.

There should be nothing that I do on the internet as a teacher that the students don't see.
Digital Citizenship and being Cybersmart is all about children being educated to live in the and with the internet well.

When I'm googled there should only be positive things that appear.

Hapara

Wow, there is so much that Hapara is capable off that I didn't know. One of the things I have struggled with in managing blogs is the visibility of easily seeing and accessing blogs and comments and up till now checked the children's blogs by individually scrolling through and accessing each blog. This is a slow process. The ability to see all the blogs at once, those finished and those still in the editing process is a treat.



Highlights is another important and underused feature for me.

Some of the things I need to follow up on are:

Sharing links with students: Remotely type in up to 10 site links and it will get those tabs open for them. They might then need these bookmarked.

Using guided focus sessions - Often  docs. google.com and drive.google.com need to be included. Think carefully about all the sites that need to be accessed within that session. PATs could also use focus sessions which will allow the students to only use the PAT test.

Filtered Browsing may be better than creating a guided focus session for children type in the sites that you don't want them to access eg. block youtube.com

Activity Viewer - hover over the yellow/ green bar to take a snap of all the children's screens. These get deleted after 7 days, however if it is something you need to keep you can email it to yourself.

Workspace - works a bit like google classroom. You can create different workspaces and set up learning to be accessed at different times. Children can submit work and time out of the workspace. Eg. Time a unit so that children cant rush ahead in the unit.tHe benefit of workspace over google classroom is the fact that everything is visible. In google classroom the children would need to share everything with you whereas if a child has just started some work and has not submitted it it is still visible.

Hapara is not a monitoring and filtering tool. It is to support teaching and learning. First of all children should be in the right place in the right time. It is just for the teacher to have full visibility to the children's learning as they are the care givers and have the responsibility to ensure the best learning possible at school.

A student's drive is like their bedroom they need to regularly go in there and keep it tidy . Set up systems like the 1 minute morning email check and do the same with drive. Set the timer and get the children to tidy their drive at least twice a week.

It's really important that children's drives are ordered and put into the Hapara folders before the end of the year. All documents get archived but the archived ones are shared with the children so that they can get their old document out of shared with me. Personal folders don't count... they will be deleted.

Chromebooks

Protection should be seamless. Every students and every piece of work should be visible. This is supported by the cybersmart curriculum where children should self-mangage and make good choices about their learning. Kids will very quickly learn how to bypass a school network. They need to have the intrinsic values and not just firewalls.

The fact that everybody has the same device makes it easier for everyone. ( BYOD - Bring your own disaster) In the case where parents kick up a stink it is usually IT parents: the solution to this difficulty is saying that the child can have that device at home but at school we will provide them with a chromebook.

Deep Dive shortcuts to remember:

Always use 'Command + F'  or 'Cntrl + F' to find keywords in a document.

'Cntrl + L' on a chromebook locks the screen (eg. It takes them back to the sign in page) Show this to the children and get the to use it when they walk away from their chromebook or pass it to someone else.

Remind the children to use ' Shift + Command + V' ( Once again this removes the formatting and pastes the content in the font that is currently being used.)

Ipads

The same thing that happens for chromebooks should be happening for ipads. This is set up by fusion and needs to be done right following protocols. It should be set up with exactly the same icons and exactly the same place. Mistreating equipment - there should be consequences for children who mistreat the equipment.

Get the children to begin using 'Explain Everything' again. Especially for maths modelling.

Screencastify now has draw tools which can be used for maths modelling in a document. Here is a screencastify that I made for my children this week and as a practice session for using the draw tools.



Every Tuesday I am consistently reminded to keep learning, keep creating and the wonder of shared learning.

Nga mihi everyone,
Alethea

The Theory to Viral Attraction

Just thought I would share a little something that I stumbled across today that seems very relevant in a society vying for everyones attention.

Another DFI: Computational Thinking

Welcome back to another blog full of tidbits of Learn, Create and Share.

Please explore the resources that you find below as a wealth of resources and information was shared today that will change the way you think and teach as it has for me.

Notes about 'Share'

Human beings thrive on connection. We need connection with each other for sustainability and fullness in life.  Connection is sharing.
...it has been happening since the beginning of time.

The digital social media platforms that began in 2005 all hooked into the tag line of human instinct to share. (eg. the caveman drawing himself and mammoth for the more developed man to view hundreds of years later.)

Social media has brought speed and amplification to sharing. Viral posts are an example of speed and amount of people who can access the subject you are sharing in a short amount of time. Amplification of sharing is through feedforward and feedback often via commenting.
Applied to learning this is far more powerful than the once common practice of a child sharing their learning by taking it home to their parents.

In order for learning through sharing to be as effective and validating as possible the viewers need to be an authentic audience.


What is an authentic audience?

There are those who are 'forced' by their responsibilities, job or situation to be a part of a shared setting. This created space is artificial. (eg. picking on a child to read aloud creates an  artificial audience as they are 'forced' to listen and do not do so by choice.)

An authentic audience on the other hand listens and responds by choice.

Learn Create Share has also had an incredible impact on students finishing their learning. It is so pertinent for children, as they develop, to have the success of finishing, especially as they go into the workforce. This is not only to accomplish life skills but to gain validation and self- empowerment.





This is different from the past where the purpose of finishing was to park a finished task in a book. Sharing allows for the beginning of new learning and gives a joy, power and purpose in completion.

Reading and commenting on peers' blogs is shown to raise achievement. Sharing is a powerful tool.

Time to Reflect

Pedagogy

Today's session reinforced the need for me to continuously upskill. My pedagogy and theories of learning need to be alive and wriggling with all the latest learning and skills in order for my children to have the best possible platform for life. 

Kia Takatū ā-Matihiki is the basis for developing oneself through independent course and PD. It is houses a wealth of resources that support the digital technologies curriculum and incorporates tikanga Maori.

Digital technologies curriculum

My next step is to read and become familiar with the digital technologies curriculum. Dive in and explore Kia Takatū ā-Matihiki and be prepared with the knowledge i need to teach our tamariki in the best way possible.

Confidence, Capability, Workflow and Passion

Scratch:

Last year I became passionate about the idea of Genius Hour. Children had a 2 hour session every Friday to explore and create in workshops that they opted into. One of these was a Scratch Coding group. This was run by a group of expert boys who were very adept and taught other children how to create and design on Scratch. I explored in a limited way and made my own account on Scratch. 

Today my learning has been extended. I am now far more confident and very grateful for the time and direction given during this session. I realised that having the time to explore, create and learn through creating is so critical to embedding knowledge. 

Things I achieved from working on Scratch today:

- ideas for how literacy, numeracy and computational thinking can be developed in this platform.

- personal knowledge of how the game works, basic refresher and extra skills.

-confidence to teach and modal coding in front of the class.

- knowledge to set up a class account and student accounts

Check out the game that I built!

Calcifer's Maze

The Wonder of Hands on Programming:

I was blown away by the possibilities of hands on practical discovery and creation and the blending of digital programming into all areas of learning. ( ie music) 

Makeymakey shop link

Instant Ideas for the Classroom and follow up tasks:

Introduce an Hour of Code into the classroom share Code Combat with the learners.  Personally investigate Toxic Code, Silent Teacher and Compute IT to introduce to the students.

Get children to promote their blogs for more views. Every visitors who lingers and visits promotes a child's blog higher in googles search ranking.

Investigate and implement the Digital Technologies curriculum in the classroom through using the lessons and resources on OMG Tech.

Make a teacher and class account on Scratch

That's all from me today. Please try out the Scratch game and share your own thoughts or ideas in the comments below.
What has your journey into digital tech been like?
What tips and tricks do you know?
...and... have you learnt anything new from this post?

Nga mihi,
Miss D ;)

DFI: Creation is the Beginning

We need to ensure we focus on the opportunity to create. 

Creation is everything. Without creation we have nothing to share, nothing to offer. We are not empowered or validated. We are purposeless and limited, feeding off the creations of others.

Dorothy Burt did not call creativity lacking teachers purposeless life suckers, but she did stir an inner flame of creativity in the members of the DFI cohort today. She put creativity back on the platform of 'things that make the world tick'.

Quora succinctly described creativity by stating, 'When someone is creative they turn imagination in reality'.

Have the children in my classroom had the opportunity to create today?
Have I had the opportunity to create?

These are the questions that challenged me. These are the question that I should be asking myself everyday. The thought that niggled at the back of my mind while Dorothy shared was 'I need to be what I teach'.

I constantly need to be raising the bar in my own life. The children aren't mimicking or seeing the skills that I learnt before, the limited knowledge that I had as a child or even as a beginning teacher. They view the skills that I have now. The behaviour that I am displaying everyday. If I am encouraging them to be mindful am I demonstrating this in the classroom each day?

And so it follows:
Am I being Creative each day? What have I created today? As a teacher is it just new knowledge that I create? What about all of those other rich areas of creativity? Am I using these? Am I including them in my classroom everyday?

What is to stop us going back and re engaging with the richness of creativity of time and exploration?
We need to leave behind the old mentalities behind, as the weight of responsibility to 'do it all' becomes just too much to carry. Dragging old school approaches along within the phase of change fills me with a weight of guilt  and incapability. There is world of creativity waiting. In the building of new sites, the creation of new resources, the discussion and sharing of ideas. We should be excited and inspired by this and not overwhelmed.

What I love about the Maniakalani approach is the gathering of collective knowledge and the richness of meaningful experience. This gives such a genuine and grounded view. It is an old school view of the community carrying the knowledge. This is worth applying and hanging onto. It's another one of those 'things that make the world tick'.

Another point that resonated for me was something that I have been guilty of doing many times before. Dorothy went on to explain that...'Teacher's often expect that they plan for learning and the teaching of this incredible learning will go straight to the child's brain. Very few brains work this way. Most humans need a conduit to allow that information and skills to take hold. Something needs to happen to be done and this is the create process. All of these conduits can be amplified and are contained in digital technologies. An example of this was Lachlan's blog post. The head boy at a local high school who created and mixed multiple pieces of music, captured these with the digital processes and used his online platform to share and publicise his creativity to a wide audience.

Dorothy continued to explain that great shifts in learning and acceleration comes about when teachers intentionally plan rich tasks for children to create.

We can empower students through:

• choice
• information and knowledge
• developing skills
• building capacity
• scaffolding

Many of us create to learn. But learning and creation are synonymous. Learning comes from creation. The creation of a hook, event, assembly, moment, site or object can be the spark which ignites the learning. They are interconnected.

An example given in one presentation today explored the idea of starting learning with a hook. Teachers created plays, special assemblies and information videos to share with their learners the creation that the children would soon be partaking in. I considered wether the hook might the game away? Does it remove from the children the choice and the development of something new?
Why is it purposeful to learn prior knowledge if the task is already designed?

I am challenging this example because I accidentally discovered the richness of 'creation' when my class and I decided to build a canoe to learn about the process of paper mache. The project grew into its own beautifully unplanned rich inquiry. Experiments regarding, weight , balance, displacement, bouyancy, materials and all manner of cooperative learning ensued. because of this 'aha' moment I am always wary of the downfall of intentionally planning locked in content.

We can fall into the trap that one size fits all. This is the opposite to universal design for learning. I have fallen into this trap. I have been guilty of planning to use a special site, a special app, a technique or process without carefully considering the limitations of the 'create' section in my planning.

Dorothy explained it in, reffering to Chrissy Butler's work in universal design for learning, in words similar to this: As educators now, we cannot deny that everyone is different and unique. We know that learners don't learn the same way. If we give them one tool that they love and engage with even then it limits them to just one way.  The default used to be myself, starting from what I know - this is no longer true. There is no default. There is only multiple opportunities and modes and we need to use them.

It would be a scary downside if leaners and people simply consumed ( opportunities and technologies)  rather than created.

Dewey said, "Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results."

Leading companies have hooked into the creativity-less vacuums and theories and systems are beginning to emerge and flourish. Free tools are not only available but rampant. There are no barriers and anyone with the time to dedicate can access and create powerful ideas and methods of connection. Children are empowered by creation and the imbalance of power between children and adults is diminishing. But this is another curious social development altogether.

In finishing, I would welcome your feed on the thoughts, questions and reflections that I have shared here. Also, dear readers, this particular post was prompted by the Maniakalani Digital Fluency course in which Dorothy Burt presented via google Hangout.

Nga mihi



(The following notes are in reference to the DFI course and the new  tools and techniques I hope to action this week.)

Things I learnt:

• Make a new google site in a folder by just clicking on the plus button and selecting new google site.

• Get funky with slides: Change the html from 'present' to 'edit' to 'copy'.

• Sharing resources and the weight of creating multimodal learning pages is a treat. Thank you to all the amazing teachers who have shared their hard work and knowledge. I will be calling into the shared Excel document, adding to it and referring to it to boost, develop and create my own multi modal docs, slides, drawings etc.

• Sites can be used not only as a platform form class learning and planning but to collate information greater than can be contained in a multi modal artefact ( I don't know if this is the correct term.

• I am currently working on a Sight Sound and Motion sight to collate the vast amount of tools and creation possible fo our learning this term.

Things I have learnt and am definitely sharing with my learners this week:

• You can change the size of a google drawing by going, file > page setup > custom > pixels, and changing the size of your drawing by inputting different values.

• Don't go to google and find the image! Create the image: make it yourself!