DFI: Connected

It was a bit strange to study up on this week's Digital Fluency Intensive without the great team from Cohort 2. However, I have been lucky enough to have been teaching in a Learn Create Share school for a while and have had the privilege of having the Maniakalani passion filter down and out to the staff.

As a junior teacher in one of the first outreach clusters it was interesting to observe the change in philosophy and the connection developing between teachers within the school. Over the years these connections have grown, collaborative classes and shared thinking is now the norm. Learning successes and ideas are grown together. The highschool and primary have more symbiosis. The clsuter has pulled together and relationships developed through inter-school partnerships and PLGs. Blogging has been a huge part of this with children now following their peers at the highschool, commenting on blogs from the cluster up on Twitter and building relationships with buddy class blogs.

As humans we are designed to be connected. We are grown connected to our mothers. We have no humanity without relationship and so it follows that one of the most powerful reinforcements to learning is to be connected to others.

The learning that I stumbled onto during this DFI is my role as a playmaker. I can aid the children's connection with others. I can raise the status of the less known and give them the connection or recognition they need by passing on their blogs, emailing it our to others, and commenting.

The other key part of this week's learning was based in one of  Google's more recent acquirements, Youtube.

Youtube

We use youtube in the class for so much research, reading and learning through sight, sound and motion. But, I had only basic knowledge of using youtube, uploading videos and building playlists.
it was good to refresh this knowledge and be pushed to develop new knowledge in readiness for the Google exam.

One of the pieces of information that I found most relevant to my everyday teaching and learning was the consolidating the boundaries and expectations for a teacher's and student's use of youtube. Essentially, the students never need to use youtube except for viewing. Their videos can be created and uploaded directly to their drives where they can imbed them into most platforms.

Here are the Maniakalani guideline for youtube use in the classroom:

Thank you for popping along to have a read today. I hope you have found some of this useful. I would love your feedback so please feel free to leave a comment below. Ka kite for now.