Digital Fluency Intensive - Session 4

 Session Four - Dealing with Data

Sharing

“Every person on the planet has the potential to live life as the star of their own movie -  not only sharing the daily minutiae, but also the commentary, the analysis of it and creating collections of feedback and feed-forward.”- DJ Burt

Human beings have an instinct to share; how can we channel that instinct into genuine learning experiences? 

Allowing students to share their learning creates a community of engagement, and gives students a sense of pride seeing how other people engage with the work they have been doing - it also encourages students to create work which is thorough, properly finished, and writing descriptions for their blog also gives them time to reflect and summarise their learning experiences.

Giving students the opportunity to have an authentic audience (i.e edublog) will help them to raise achievement outcomes, and for students to develop a real sense of pride in the work that they have created, and the learning they’ve done. An authentic audience, as defined under Manaiakalani, are the people who CHOOSE to listen to you.

Sharing with;

- One another

- The class

- The school

- The local community

- Global communities (digital age)

Blogging was the  choice for students to share their learning for different reasons;

It resembles the spaces our young people want to be on (youtube, facebook, etc.)

We are able to provide legal, safe, secure provisions for students

Used by teachers and students

Allows for engagement, and interaction between creator and audience (going back to authentic audiences)

Spaces like Facebook, while useful, are open, and not safe for students to share personal information.

Allows for students to create a SMART digital footprint.

We share to show the process, but also to help students understand what “finished” looks like; that it is ready to share. A life-long lesson to learn, we use the acronym FIOP at Pt England for our learning; to finish it off properly. 

Google Forms

Google Forms is something I am very familiar with, we used it frequently in my time as a high school teacher;

Quizzes for students, and allows for easy collection of date - transferable to Sheets so collation of data is helpful

Feedback about what they found difficult, challenging or needed help with.

Use for interaction with families - to gather information, find helpers, get feedback etc.

Useful for gathering information quickly, and is more engaging than just responding to an email when getting into contact with adults who can be busy.

Google Sheets

Google Sheets is very similar, and has a lot of the same functionality as Microsoft Excel which is helpful as I can use a lot of my prior learning/knowledge to help.

This is a very powerful tool when organising, filtering data, particularly when creating groups based on reading age for example, or to arrange students into priority groups based on test results, or feedback from a Google Form.

In a digital age it is so important that we allow tools, like Sheets, to assist us to use critically important data to guide our teaching practices; whether that's for organisational purposes, for streaming students, or to identifying outliers who may need further assistance, or pushing depending on where they fall on the spectrum of results.

Here is an example of data that has been turned into a table; comparing two student's blog posts between 2015 and 2021. As you can see the Y Axis does not show accurately the number of posts, however it is useful for making comparisons between two different elements of data.

Digital Fluency Intensive - Session Three

 Today's session focused on the element of the "Learn Create Share" model that I am most excited about to take on in my journey teaching primary - CREATE!

We started today's session with some reflections of last weeks session; how our workflow has changed, and how it has helped us. 

Links to emails for efficient organisation of calendar as well

Helps to keep things organised by topic.

Google Draw

Google Draw is such a useful tool for allowing kids to be creative in a number of ways. Creating infographics, as well as presenting information in a visually creative way. Using Google Drawing to help create buttons, and banners for Class sites to make navigating pages easier for students, as well as create visually interesting and engaging pages for students.

Check out the sweet ride I created using the Polyline, and curved lines tool, as well as a small infographic about me!

Hapara

Using Hapara is a way of making student’s learning visible for us, as long as things are filed in the right folders. Emphasise the importance of filing student’s work in the correct place.

Media

Media plays such an important role in modern learning environments; we have so many different ways to empower students to create and share their ideas with others; making sure they have the opportunity to share their learning through a variety of different mediums. 

Using their chromebooks is a ready made studio where students can record video, audio, and take still images. Green screen applications will give students the ability to create videos with different backgrounds and interesting effects.

Podcasting is another great tool to look at for reciprocal reading; potentially used post-RR sessions to reflect and share their collective ideas in a less structured way (allowing for more open conversations?)

Youtube

Youtube is a tool to be used with caution - kids are not to set up accounts, but I can use it to curate playlists of useful videos, music for kids or myself to work with, and saves you having to search through videos again to find useful ones, which can be a big time saver in the long run.

Slides

Slides are a tool I have become very familiar with in my teaching journey, a wonderful tool which allows for a huge variety in uses, for both presenting information, navigating learning, and for students to present their work in ways which is engaging and interesting. The pick-a-path session was particularly interesting as it opens a whole new world for creating narratives, and making quizzes for each other in interesting and new ways. I started with a quiz format as a trial, which you can check out below, but stay tuned to this blog to see how my adventures in creating narratives go!

Digital Fluency Intensive - Session Two

WORKFLOW

Learn

We began today's session with a presentation from Dorothy Burt which focused on the "Learn" element of the Manaiakalani "Learn, Create, Share" model. Developing an intentional, focused, and evidence based programme that works to help with teacher effectiveness and accelerating learning outcomes for our students. The "Learn" element focuses on the acronym RAT; to recognise, amplify and turbocharge our practice.

Connecting this to my inquiry into Reciprocal Reading I will continue to look at ways in which we can use different digital tools to encourage student discussion and conversation, as well as continuing to develop our dive into T-Shaped literacy in which we give students  different text types, and learning opportunities which can allow students with a variance in learning styles to work in a way which suits their strengths.

We also focused on developing a better understanding of how we can apply more smooth, and deliberate workflow choices in order to use our time more efficiently, as well as help us organisationally. 

Google Keep

A helpful app that can allow for quick note taking in collaboration with the other apps that we use

• Making lists (to-do, students to see etc.)

• Adding images

• Using a voice recorder to quickly make notes that will be transcribed, and recorded (helpful!)

Gmail

A reminder to use the filters and labels to organise incoming emails so that the main inbox does not become overcrowded

• Allow dynamic emails so I am able to interact with comments, and docs directly from my email

• Include a signature for ease of use & a more official appearance to emails.

Google Calendar

Using Google calendar is an excellent way of tracking, and planning events 

• Synching calendars with notifications allows for better time management

• Following other calendars means it get easier to organise meetings/google meets with others by being able to see when they are free without asking.

Priorities

Google Drive has a function where you can group different docs/files from Google Drive organised ahead of time; it will be of particular use when writing reports, and planning using online sources.

Google Meet

Over the last two years we have used Google Meets for our remote learning program. It is something that I have become very familiar with over the last two years, but it was good to experiment with the breakout room feature which we did not use a lot, due to the fact that the rooms cannot be recorded. It may be something I look into doing more of in class as it means students can still be observed.

Here is a recording that we did in which we discussed some of the work that was done by Manaiakalani students during the lockdowns in 2020.

Digital Fluency Intensive - Week One

 Today was the first of 9 sessions in the Digital Fluency Intensive program, organised by Manaiakalani, and run by Dorothy Burt. The course is focused on 4 Goals;

- Teachers are supported to acquire fluency using the basic tools our young people use for learning

- Teachers are supported to acquire fluency using the basic tools required for effective teaching, planning, assessment, and professional development.

- Teachers are supported to understand how digital technologies used effectively can have a significant impact on accelerating achievement outcomes.

- Teachers are supported to understand how the Manaiakalani Pedagogy and kaupapa has been co-constructed over more than a decade to maximise the impact of effective teaching and learning in a digital environment.

The course is designed to ensure that we are not only digitally fluent, but also that we model, share, and teach our students to use those same "Learn, Create, and Share"  skills. Students may be digital natives, but we should ensure that they can use their preexisting skills to have a more positive impact on their lives.

Today has been a very eye opening journey; from learning about the history and challenges Manaiakalani went through to provide this for our cluster, to a very cathartic tidying of my Google Drive, I have renewed vigour in my approach to how we use digital technology in the classroom.

The most interesting, and challenging idea was the conversation we had regarding voice typing. This challenged a lot of prior ideas I had about how we get students to present their ideas in the classroom; if we're restricting their ability to share their ideas by adding a spelling, or typing limitation, are we really seeing their best work? I will continue to reflect on this, and experiment with how I use voice typing in the future to encourage those students who are resistant to writing.

If you would like to read more about what we do each day, in depth, please check this out!

I look forward to continuing to develop my understanding of digital technologies in combination with the Manaiakalani pedagogical principles - I think it is crucially important for teachers to accelerate our own learning in the digital space so that we are able to keep up with students who are digital natives, and push them to learn, create, and share their learning in new and innovative ways.