Session 9: External Recognition

 DFI done!

I am now a Level 1  Google Certified Educator! 

DFI has been great. A well paced,  thoroughly planned course that I have enjoyed. I was dreading 8am-3pm in front of a lap top.. However the variety, pace and usefulness of the learning really has made the time fly. It was a well timed course that I was able to use the skills that I learnt each week in my classroom and also in my daily life and workflow.

I look forward to using the skills that I have learnt in my teaching practice in the future.

Session 8: Computational Thinking

 My last blog as part of my DFI. It has been a journey that I have really enjoyed. Learnt lots of new tips and tricks and have enjoyed sharing them with my tamariki along the way. Thank you to Maria and our awesome bubble group for the support and guidance. I have enjoyed working with you all.

I have  signed up to take the google exam next week it will be a nice way to round off all our DFI learning.

Lots to think about today with computational thinking. How are we preparing our tamariki for jobs that don't exist? 

It was my first time exploring scratch. I found it both fun and frustrating! I knew what I wanted my outcome to be but actually found it quite hard to break down the steps and tell the computer what to do! As always when we are doing our create tasks I am trying to find a way in can use it with my class. I probably wont be exploring scratch with my class. However, will look into using scratch jnr with them.

Session 7: Devices

Today we got to have a closer look at Chromebooks and iPad and how our tamariki use them. It was good to have another play around with a Chromebook and familiarize myself with more shortcuts.

I enjoyed using Explain Everything. I haven't used it before so it was a good chance to learn more about it and play around with all the tools. It was really fun to use and I can see how the tamariki would really enjoy it too. I was able to insert audio of Greedy Cat to my whiteboard and instantly my mind was thinking about how this could be used during reading rotations. A fun app to explore that the kids will enjoy. 

During our create time today I had the opportunity to explore screencastify more. I decided to use my time to make a video about animating objects in Google Slides as we are going to do this in class this week. I am looking forward to sharing this with my class tomorrow which will hopefully enable the tamariki to follow these instructions and have a try at animating objects more independently…… I need to do a bit of editing as I decided to make the videos smaller so the tamariki will be able to watch a video then do it independently then watch the next video etc..

Session 6: Enabling Access Sites

Today we had a closer look at Google Sites.  We reflected on our current sites and looked at a variety of examples.

I have a class website but it is not something that I use with my tamariki very often. It was made as a starting point for whanau during lockdown where links were added so tamariki and whanau can access learning websites. 

After looking at my colleagues examples and the examples that were shown to us I quickly saw  how your class site can be a ‘one stop hub for learning’ where learning can be accessed anywhere, anytime and at any place.

I decided to make a literacy website that supports my Reading Recovery teaching and also literacy teaching in my school. 3 clicks to learning and not too much scrolling was what I had in mind when I started to create this new website. Using Google Draw to customize buttons was my starting point. I liked how you can select your own image or part of an image to create your button.  I made buttons to represent the different colours of the colour wheel. Also, a listening  station button where I  was able to copy the urls from my youtube channel that we created a few weeks ago to get books to add to my website. This a a great time saver.

Still lots of work to do on the website but I am excited to see how this website develops and how the tamariki engage with it.

Session 5: Collaborate Sites

I really enjoyed learning more and having the opportunity to  plan and create in Google Sites. I appreciate getting the time to make meaningful and purposeful things in our create time. My tamariki enjoys seeing what I learn each week and like to do the tasks I have made. I know that they will enjoy looking and working from the Google Site. 

I am familiar with Hapara and use that as the main tool for sharing work with my tamariki. I hadn't considered using/creating a site as a way of sharing information and tasks with them. It is something that I can see being really useful with our Inquiry units that we teach and a good way to share and collaborate within my teaching team. 

Session 4: Dealing with Data

I have used Google Forms before with my class only as a survey. I hadn't explored all the other functions.  I enjoyed making a Google Form for my tamariki to do where they have to first watch a video about our inquiry topic then complete the series of questions. I am wondering if I can get them to create a Google Form..??

Google Sheets is not something that I use very often. I know how to use the basic functions which gets me through what I need it for! So, I wasn't overly excited about using it today! However, I really enjoyed it and certainly did level up my skills. I immediately went into some data tables that I have in Google Docs and transferred them to Sheets added alternating colours to my rows and conditional formatting. These are two functions that I am happy to now have in my kete making my data clear and easy to understand.

We used our Google Sheets skills to do a data case study on a students blog. I chose to analyze Dyzon’s blog. First, we had to collect data on how many posts a month Dyzon did over his 3 year blogging journey. Then present these in a column graph. As you can see Dyzon has become quite a confident blogger!

Session 3: Media

 Create create create!

Dorothy spoke about the importance of placing learners at the center of learning. Where tamariki are the creators of content, not merely consumers.  

We explored Google draw and Google Slides  as a creative tool. Tips and tricks that I am going to share with my tamariki are:

• Mask image to make an ‘app-like’ image. I know they will enjoy inserting an image and cropping it using a shape.  

• Downloading images as a png - image only no background.

Using Google Slides to create an animation. Very simple and would work nicely in my classroom as my tamariki already have well established skills in Google Slides so not too much new teaching that will need to be done first. I look forward to sharing my animation with them and working along side them as they create their own.