Virtual Reality Project

This year as part of my role as WST I have been working with a team on designing a virtual reality of our new build school to enable a smooth transition when we move into our new buiding. The presentation below is where we are at in terms of planning:

DFI Day Nine Reflection

 Kia ora koutou,

Today we sat our Google Certified Educator Level 1 exams which went well but did remind me of the stress our students feel when sitting tests! I am glad to have it over and done with and happy I passed! 

The nine week DFI course has helped me learn and acquire more skills in digital technologies and the manaiakalani pedagogy. I have upskilled in a range of areas in google - docs, slides, drawings, forms, groups, sheets, maps just to name a few. I have developed a stronger understanding of the digital technologies curriculum and how to embed this into practice in unplugged environments and digital environments. 

It has been great having time to upskill in a range of new tools and apps such as Explain Everything, Scratch and MITappinventor etc. I hope to bring these tools back to my team, learners and the wider school to grow digital technologies and learning in our kura.

With the new knowledge I have acquired throughout DFI, I hope to support our school, staff and learners in digital technologies and the digital curriculum. This will enable us all to become more empowered through the use of digital technologies.

DFI Day Eight Reflection

 Kia ora koutou,

Today we looked at empowering teachers and learners to take ownership of their learning. We aim to empower our learners throughout all learning areas by giving them choice in the workshops that they choose to attend for reading, mathematics and writing. They also get to choose the text they read as well. We base our inquiry on their interests and get feedback on what they want to learn more of and this strengthens engagement and interest. I personally hope to use DFI to help empower teachers in digital technologies who will then also empower their learners. 

Digital technology curriculum

The digital technology curriculum that includes developing and designing and computational thinking. 

Developing and designing digital outcomes is a more hands on approach to digital technologies. DLO's (digital learning objects) such as google slides and drawings, animation, imovie, tinkercad are just some of what we use in our team with our students. 

Computational thinking is programming, coding, unplugged activities, robotics, spheros etc. It includes more opportunity for unplugged activities in terms of sequencing and step-by-step instructions, coding directions in real life that are ideal for junior school. 

Coding

Coding is something I had recently upskilled myself in as I tried to offer learners new learning through lockdown. I created a Scratch task for learners a couple of weeks ago in which they needed to code a chase game. Initially students found it quite challenging as they were new to scratch so I created slides with step-by-step instructions and then added in some youtube tutorials they could watch if they wanted to code further. 

Slides are below:

Here is one of our student's blog reflections on creating her chase game on Scratch: https://wpstinas.blogspot.com/2021/09/space-chase.html  

As I had already learned a bit about Scratch today I chose to attend the workshop on MIT App Inventor (https://appinventor.mit.edu/). This was similar to Scratch but had more tools and was a bit more complex. What is really cool about MIT App Inventor is that you can download a companion to your phone or tablet and then scan a QR code to try it out. I think this would be so exciting for students to engage in. Here is a short video of the app I created and then explored on my phone. 

DFI Day Seven Reflection

 Kia ora koutou,

Today we focused on Ubiquitous teaching and learning. This means teaching and learning is accessible anytime, anywhere, any pace from anyone. High quality learning that is rewindable so student's are able to access it outside of our 9-3 school hours and also access it more than once.

As we are currently in Lockdown due to Covid-19 having ubiquitous teaching and learning available is even more important. This time around I feel we have tried to make everything as ubiquitous as possible. 

• We use class dojo as one platform for students to post on (as well as student blogs). Although this is private to only our students and whanau we share the learning they post on there onto our sharing slides which are accessible to anyone on our class site. 
• Our learning tasks are available on our site
• We record our google meets and have made them available on our site too
• One thing we could do is add audio recordings (using mote or screencastify to our learning task slides. However we do go over our slides during our google meets and that recording is made available.

A barrier we have found is access to devices and internet which has impacted our learners. We gave out devices as soon as it was allowed however not all students had internet at home. 

Chromebooks

We completed a digital dig that student's do during cybersmart sessions today using a chromebook (or chromebook simulator). Top tips I learned during this are a couple of shortcuts:

• Ctrl L to select address bar
• Ctrl backspace to delete previous word

Ipads and Explain Everything

We had the choice today for our create task to choose between screencastify, Hāpara workspace or explain everything. I choose to look into Explain everything as it is something I had done some PD on years ago as a junior teacher but I found it quite tricky. We were taken through the steps to set up projects on explain everything that students can then use in their learning. I am mentoring a junior teacher at the moment who is very keen to learn new digital skills so thought this would be valuable to share with her.

I created a Kawa of Care for Ipads task in which students have to take photos showing the kawa of care and then record their voice saying the kawa of care shown. I added instructions in with audio and screenshots explaining the task on the first two slides. Screenshots of these are below:

After the instructions there are three pages like the one below for the students to add photos and audio on to showing the kawa of care.

It was really great to learn how to make projects on Explain Everything and I look forward to passing this knowledge onto our junior team.

DFI Day Six Reflection

 Kia ora koutou, 

Connecting through learning blogs, toolkits, sites and professional learning networks:

Today we continued talking about making learning accessible and ubiquitous for all learners so they can access it anywhere, anytime and at any pace through using sites. Ensuring teaching and planning is visible to allow students to know where they are heading in their learning. It is also important to make sure that learning is rewindable which allows students to learn at their own pace and revisit learning. Visible planning and teaching on sites allows scaffolding for learners through rewindable learning. Another tip shared was using a 3 click rule throughout your site so it's easily accessible. 

On our Kea team site we enable access through using google slides that we embed on our site. 

Evaluating class sites:

We had some time to look through class sites and evaluate them based on two criteria:

• Visual appeal
• User experience

It was interesting seeing the difference especially between primary, intermediate and secondary class sites. It's also important to consider knowing your learners when creating your site as what works for one class may not for another. Also taking time to go through your class site with learners to ensure they know how to access their learning.

Our team site: 

We had to come up with three goals to achieve by the end of the today to improve our own sites. Mine were:

• Update buttons on Literacy page
• Update banners for each heading
• Give access to some files

I tried to make the banners photos specific to the learning area. I updated the literacy page buttons and removed some we haven't been using. I also went through our site on incognito mode and changed sharing settings to everyone can view. Here are some before and after shots I took of our team site:

Before:

After:

DFI Day Five Reflection

 Kia ora koutou, 

Today we talked about visible teaching and learning. For the whole journey to be visible for learners, whanau, the teacher and colleagues it needs to include the planning and learning intentions. This is because we want our learners to know what they are learning and where they are heading to next. 

In our team we do planning on slides that are accessible and visible on our learning site. 

Multi-Modal Learning 

This was good to re-visit as it is something we have been doing as part of our literacy programme this year through t-shaped literacy. I did an example of a multi-modal t-shaped literacy task during our first DFI session which you can find here. Multi-modal gives learners the opportunity to be critical thinkers, is choice based and gives student's the opportunity to collaborate. 

Throughout our distance learning our student's have been using a range of different tools to create and share their learning. Last week we gave student's a challenge to create a rocket; some student's made straw rockets, others drew them, some collaborated and worked on minecraft.

Google Sites

Today we collaborated to put resources together that we could then use to create our own learning site. My groups focus was on New Zealand and War. I planned to create a site based on Learn, Create, Share for the Musket wars, Treaty of Waitangi and the Land wars but it's a work in progress. So far I've only put some of it together for the Te Tiriti o Waitangi page. This will be a great resource for our school to use when we focus our inquiry on New Zealand history. 

Click on the screenshot above to check out my site

DFI Day Four Reflection

 Kia ora koutou,

Today we focused on the share within the Learn, Create, Share model. Here is a snapshot of Share at Wesley Primary.

We focus on sharing with an authentic purpose such as our Market Day (to raise funds for school camp) in term one and our Science Fair in term 2. Whanau were invited to attend these and classes were either involved in presenting at these or coming through to get involved. We also share our learning at assemblies and celebrations such as language weeks and Matariki. Our students share on Class Dojo and their blogs across the school. Going wider than just within our school, some of our student's shared at the Ako Hiko toolkits and the Albert-Eden Cultural Festival annually. Within our team of Kea our student's create and share school news through Kea News which we share on our blog - Kea Team Blog  

Google Mymaps

This was new to me but I could see right away the great ways this could used in learning particularly in Mathematics. I used it to make the track we ride during scooter club twice a week at morning tea. As you can see in the screenshot below you can see the perimeter/distance travelled and the total area. 

Google Forms

We use google forms often at our school to collect data and have used it to collect Mathematics dispositions also. We also have it on our school site as a contact form that collates on google sheets. Currently we are using it for whanau to collect information on support needed with learning packs, devices and kai boxes as we are in Alert Level 4 lockdown again. 

Google Sheets

It was great to learn more about google sheets, particularly around the functions option as that is something I rarely use and it's super useful! It is definitely something I will be using a lot more in the future. It was also useful to revisit graphs/charts in google sheets. This is something we have done with our student's before when collating earnings from their Market Day in Term one; however going into further settings and playing around with how the graph looks, titles etc is something they would enjoy. I found this challenging especially when there was more than two parts to the data, eg: year, month and blog posts and how it looked when displayed. Here is my blog post analysis graph:

Commenting: Positive, thoughtful and helpful commenting is something we work with our students on doing and model this through our own commenting. 

Another great DFI session although I had to duck in and out a bit I've played catch up since! Looking forward to next week.

DFI Day Three Reflection

Kia ora koutou, 

Today in our third DFI session we focused on Create within the Learn, Create, Share model. Here is a snapshot of Create at Wesley Primary. 

   

As we have been using the Learn, Create, Share model for at least 5 years at Wesley I feel it is strongly embedded in the way we teach and learn. We encourage our learners to express their creativity and work collaboratively. Student choice is at the centre and we see how this empowers them as they lead their own learning with our support. 

Youtube Playlist

Here's a playlist I created with songs that our students enjoy listening to. Our students also do news every week that we share on our blog. I think it would be great to make a playlist of all of these as we are planning on watching them all at the end of the year. 

 

Google Slides 

We use google slides for all of our planning. I recently learned of the shortcut Ctrl+k (thanks Phil!) to add links to images/text which was a big timesaver. Today I learned the shortcut to order images/text in google slides - Ctrl+Shift+up or down arrows which has already helped me a lot when creating slides for our school's pepeha. 

Weteri Kura's He Pepeha Matihiko (Digital Pepeha)

I used mote to add audio to each slide here which is something that I will aim to do more of with google slides. This will make our learning slides more accessible for all learners. 

DFI Day Two Reflection

Kia ora koutou, 

Today in our second DFI session we focused on Learn within the Learn, Create, Share model. Here is a snapshot of what Learn looks like at Wesley Primary.

 

Our Learn is supportive, collaborative, integrated, authentic and student-led. The learn we provide is visible and ubiquitous (rewindable, always available) on our team site - Kea site. 

We enable our students to amplify and turbocharge their learning through offering student choice based tasks that allow them to use new opportunities through digital technologies such as tinkercad and minecraft. They often become the experts rather quickly and end up teaching each other and us!

Google Keep - an awesome takeaway from today!

This is an app I use frequently on my phone for personal use but that I have not yet utilised for work (besides the occasional to-do list). Being able to add what you've written on a keep note onto google docs is going to be extremely helpful when working on the go. The grab text from image and microphone transcribing is also going to be very useful and I look forward to utilising these in meetings.

Gmail 

We are signed up to receive notifications when our students post on their blogs or receive comments. With 70 children that ends up being a lot of emails to go through! With Jeremy's assistance I was able to organise those emails to go directly into a separate folder from my main inbox which has cleared out my Gmail nicely. :)

Google Meet and Create

We used Google Meet to share our thoughts around a blog post. Here is an example of a task a student did during lockdown that shows the Learn, Create and Share model.  

DFI Day One Reflection

Kia ora koutou, 

Today I had my first DFI (Digital Fluency Intensive) session were we covered a wide range of content. I really enjoyed the variation that was in the session today. We learned about the kaupapa and pedagogy of Manaiakalani (learn, create, share), google chrome, drive, groups and docs. We also had the opportunity to create our own poster/DLO using what we learned.

The manaiakalani pedagogy of learn, create and share has been embedded into our school pedagogy since my career began 6 years ago. The biggest learning curve I had initially with the learn, create and share model was the lack of devices and age of students I had at the time (Year 0-2) but after termly professional development through Ako Hiko I developed a stronger understanding and how it doesn't need to be digital and the empowerment creating and sharing gives our learners. 

Google Drive Workspaces

For me the biggest takeaway today was using Google Drive workspaces to organise planning and sharing slides for the current term. 

Finding things in my google drive is something that can be quite time consuming, I do have things organised by year and term but there ends up being a lot of folders! Being able to open google drive, click priority and scroll to workspaces when teaching in the classroom I think will be very helpful. 

I will be creating more workspaces for projects I am working on within our school as I think this will help me to stay organised and prioritise what needs to be done first. 

Google Chrome Shortcuts 

Two shortcuts I learned today that I think will be useful in the classroom are:

Ctrl shift b - to show bookmarks bar. This is something I find most new learners to devices do not have visible but it is a lifesaver for having links to your site and blog on.

Ctrl and number - to switch between tabs on chrome. I am guilty of always having many tabs open so I will find this helpful (even if it is only for the first 9 tabs)!

Google Groups

An amazing tool for teachers working collaboratively as it allows students to share work with all their teachers in one go. My team leader has already done DFI and had this set up for our team and it has been great!

Google Docs and Creating

After all our learning we had the opportunity to create. I created a document evaluating and integrating ideas around the theme of games that our learners will be able to use during Reading next week. It was great to learn and refresh myself on some tools within google docs such as explore, page set up, titles and headings. 

Click on the screenshot to view

This was a great day of learning, refreshing, creating and sharing with others. I look forward to DFI next week!