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.