DFI Course - Week 6

 Since Last Week

My reflections on how things have gone over the past week were much simpler this time, because I had nothing that hadn't worked or that I needed help with. However I had quite a lot to report on that had worked well for me over the past week:

I have finally spent time creating a Pick-a-Path story using Google Form, using a "concatenate" formula in Google Sheet and displaying the students’ results on my site. 

Here is a sample of the writing some of the students created:

My next step is to use this to help students use the format of narratives to create their own Pick-a-Path in Google Forms (very exciting … if not for them, then certainly for me). 

I also used charts in Google Sheets a lot last week - preparing for the Statistical Inquiry my Hurumanu class is starting this week!

This Week: Enabling Access - Sites

A copy of this week's agenda can be found here.

This week's focus was on Enabling Access through Sites, with specific sessions on:

• Manaiakalani's Connected Kaupapa
• Evaluating Sites
• Developing / Redeveloping Our Sites

Connected 

Dorothy Burt spoke about the development of Manaiakalani and the "outreach" clusters - one of whicht Hornby became part of (later becoming known as Uru Mānuka). This all started as 12 schools and kura in Auckland connecting and collaborating, and is now a network of 11 clusters comprising a total of almost 90 schools and kura.

The Learn, Create, Share pedagogy and the Manaiakalani kaupapa provides a shared language so that we can collaborate and share our resources and ideas. The vehicle we use to keep connected is our blogs. A good example of this was the newsletters that were distributed during Level 4 lockdown - these newsletters highlighted individual blogs, and help to remind us that even when we are separated by distance we remained connect by purpose.

Dorothy also reminded us that implementing the Manaiakalani kaupapa requires all four of its elements: Visible, Empowered, Connected, and Ubiquitous.

Evaluating Each Others' Sites

We then spent time reviewing and critiquing each others' sites, and providing feedback to each other on how to make them more user-friendly. At first I found this exercise a bit daunting ... what did I have to offer my colleagues with my limited experience ... and what will they say about the structure and format of my site?

The Hurumanu site I collaborate on.

Once I got over myself I really enjoyed the whole process. First I was partnered up with Rowena Clemence from Hornby High, and I had a flash-back about five years to when Rowena helped me to develop my first website, and I realised how far I had come. It was great to now have Rowena critique my current site, especially given her role as e-Learning leader.

Developing / Redeveloping Our Sites

During my discussions with Rowena and others I had a bit of an "aha" moment: when I created my first website it was a class website where I managed the site for my students, including sharing their work online (this was before the students had their own blogs). Now my website should be a teacher website with the purpose of delivering my teaching/learning to my students. Different owner, different purpose, different format.

My Teaching Site

With that in mind I made a number of changes to my site, including personalising it more to make it my site not my students'. I also made navigation of the site a lot simpler (three clicks maximum), including making links to the Hurumanu site I collaborate on. To make it easier for students to navigate to the current week's work I reordered the work on the sites' main pages so that the latest work is at the top of the page (i.e. less scrolling).

Conclusion

I'm pretty happy with the make-over of my two sites and I'm also pretty confident that my students will find it easier to find the teaching and learning material on the sites. More importantly though, I now have a lot more clarity about why I have my sites in the first place, which will guide me when I make changes/developments with my sites in future.

DFI Course - Week 5

Since Last Week
My reflections on how things have gone over the past week are:

1. What has worked for me since the last time we met?
We are working on a Statistical Unit at the moment, and the Google Sheets skills developed last week helped me to streamline the lesson so that the students can present their findings more easily

2. What hasn't worked (or made sense)?
Actually things seem to be all good at the moment … I’m just trying to find time to incorporate pick-a-path into my lessons.

3. What do you need help with?
Nothing at the moment.

This Week: Collaborate - Sites

A copy of this week's agenda can be found here.

This week's focus was on Collaboration, with specific sessions on:

• Visible Teaching and Learning
• Multi-Modal Teaching and Learning
• Google Sites
• MultiText Databases

Visible Teaching and Learning

"Visible" is the first part of the four-part outer ring of Manaiakalani's 7 visible kaupapa. Some of the key messages from this session included:

• We use blogs and sites to ensure that our teaching and learning is visible. As a teacher I use my site to ensure that my students have ease of access to the learning from my lessons, and my students demonstrate their learning in their blogs.

• Teachers use Hapara to view our students' learning on their blogs. However, if the blog posts are not shared in the correct folders the learning is not visible to us.

• Teachers ensue that we acknowledge our learners' work by commenting on their blog posts, as this is how we close the communication cycle by providing visible feedback.

Multi-Modal Teaching and Learning

Engaging, or ‘hooking’ our learners into their learning is the first goal of the Manaiakalani programme, and we are working towards:

• Learners who are behaviourally engaged.
• Learners who become interested in and excited about their learning.
• Learners who  are actively involved in their learning.

Initially, the introduction of technology in the classroom is engaging in itself, due to the novelty of a new vehicle for the learning, but as the learners become more used to the technology and they become more discerning consumers, it takes something more to "hook" them into the learning. In fact, today's learners are bombarded with competing and increasingly appealing alternatives to our lessons (e.g. an endless supply of Youtube clips). That's where Multi-Modal Learning comes in.

Multi-Modal Learning can be best described as "an inclusive, differentiated approach to teaching in a digital learning environment". It's how we make our teaching sites appealing and interesting for our learners.

Google Sites

Linked to the subject of Multi-Modal Learning, one of our challenges this week was to create a website that contained a multi-modal page on a topic of interest from the multi-text data base (see below). This is a screen shot of my finished product:

The actual site can be found here. When I compare this with some of my current webpages I have to admit that I am a little disappointed with the way I have set up some of the pages of my current site. I need to spend some time upgrading my site to look a little more like my "test site" (above).

MultiText Databases

So I'm a bit old-school when I hear the expression "database", because I get flashbacks of working with "relational databases" like Microsoft Access ... I break out in a sweat, and I need to sit down until the shaking goes away. Today when we talk about "databases" what we actually mean is a table of data or hyperlinks, usually in a spreadsheet, and I was pleased to discover that this was what the presenters were talking about. 

This is a screenshot of the MultiText Database provided by the presenters.

Essentially, we were discussing the source of teaching and learning opportunities that can be used to make up our multi-modal learning. This is an excellent example of a collaborative teaching model that allow us as teachers to focus on the "how" of teaching rather than the "what".

Conclusion

I found this week's course very practical, as presentation is quite important to me (no, that isn't an admission of an OCD diagnosis). I have been thinking a lot about how best to structure my teaching site for the possibility of remote-learning should we be forced into another Level 3 or 4 COVID-19 lockdown. This week's session has given me a lot to think about, and a lot of tools to use to "hook" my learners into my lessons.

Perceptive readers (yes both of you) will have noticed that I have also migrated to the Manaiakalani template for my blog.  I believe this format is a better structure and makes my blog more engaging for my readers ... but what do you think?

DFI Course - Week 4

Since Last Week

My reflections of my development with all things Google over the past week using the three key questions are:

1. What has worked for me since the last time we met?

I used Google Drawing in the classroom this week, including the exercise “Working with Shapes, Texts and Images” with 90 kids and teaching students to incorporate remove.bg to create innovative digital art. I have also started to use voice typing with a headpiece.

2. What hasn’t worked (or made sense)?

Trying to get an attractive layout in blogger is often difficult and takes a lot of time to get a more appealing “magazine” type layout. Dorothy Burt's comment to me was that this can be sorted through the use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) which is beyond my current ability level or by paying someone with those skills to do this for me which is at the point where I lost interest!
Also, I often work at night at the dining table in my lounge and the TV sometimes contributes to my voice typing. I know this is a first world problem but it is worth working at to make sure that I get the most benefit from voice typing. Practice, practice, practice!

3. What do you need help with?

Nothing at this stage.

This Week - Dealing With Data

A copy of this week's agenda, along with links to presentations etc are here.

The main focus for this week's programme was "Dealing with Data" and this included sessions on:

• Manaiakalani's "Share"
• Google Forms (surveys/quizzes)
• Google Sheets (spreadsheets)
• My Maps
• Analysing data from student blogs

Share

This week we delved into the "Share" part of the "Learn, Create, Share" pedagogy, including looking at the concept of sharing throughout history. In the past I have thought of "Share" being the same as "publishing" ... where students display their very best work in a "finished" state.

This all changed for me a couple of years ago when I started to consider the prospect of a fully-digital, paperless learning environment where students are encouraged to create examples/evidence of re-windable learning and posting it in a location that is easily recovered. In essence: digital exercise books. 

This means that (contrary to my previous misconceptions) students should share their work/learning even if:

(a) it isn't finished

(b) it isn't all correct

(c) it isn't perfect.

This was supported in the session on "share" this week, including this slide where we discussed the notion that the only difference in sharing in the digital age is that we can/do share our work with the global community, but we don't share with the sole intention of making it available beyond the learner. 

Rowena Clemence (one of Hornby High's e-Learning Advisors and a fellow participant on the DFI Course) reinforced this at a staff briefing during the week.

Google Forms

This week we looked at Google Forms in some detail, and while I am reasonably familiar with this app there were a few tips and tricks I had not picked up yet, such as using the "Go to section based on answer" function. 

This is great for personalising questionnaires for students (e.g. when you have a composite class and you want to ask both year levels different questions).

Google Sheets

In a former life (pre-teaching) I was a Chartered Accountant employed in the health sector, and one of my most regularly-used tools was Excel spreadsheets. Since then I have transferred my skills in Excel to Google Sheets, where I regularly use advanced tools such as sort, filter, conditional formatting and pivot tables. 

Again, there were some tip and tricks that I wasn't aware of, including:

• easily freezing rows and column using the bars on the top right-hand cell header
• saving filters to use at later dates (i.e. rather than having to select a range of filters manually)
• moving graphs to "own sheet" for ease of editing
• embedding charts/graphs in blogs so that the data is live (i.e. the graph is updated as the data updates).

My Maps

My Maps is useful little app that enables users to create their own map using personalised locations on a map very similar to regular Google Maps. In the example below I have added my favourite South Island camping destinations, and My Maps enables me to calculate the time and distance between two locations (e.g. Home and Westport) and download directions to travel between these points (by car, walking or by public transport).

I wish this app was available to me in 2013 when I took a class of Year 7/8 students to Wellington for a week. Being able to identify walking routes around various Wellington destinations each day would have been brilliant, and would be a great way for students to share their camp/holiday in an interactive way.

Analysing Data from Student Blogs

As I showed under the heading for Google Sheets, we also spent time looking at how to analyse individual students' blogging over time. In the example below I created a table to show the number of discrete blog posts a particular Year 9 student posted since she started blogging in 2016.

Some interesting observations here are:

• the pattern of increase in November
• the peaks in December 2018 and January 2020 from the Summer Learning Journey
• the beginnings of a drop-off in March - May 2020 (caused by lockdown?)

Conclusion:

While there was a lot I already knew I was really pleased with the new skills I have developed this week. The timing of the Google Sheet session is brilliant, as I will be working with my Hurumanu class on Statistical Inquiries over the next few months, and this is a timely reminder on how to create charts/graphs easily in Google Sheets, including a few tips I wouldn't have been able to teach the class if I hadn't been at this session!

I'm also keen to introduce My Maps to my Wānanga class to see how easy this is for the different year levels to pick up.

DFI Course - Week 3

Since Last Week

As usual we were asked to reflect on three questions:

What has worked for me since the last time we met?

Using Google Calendar better - it now sends me reminders to my Apple watch so I never miss a class or a meeting. Also using Onetab successfully. It was good to practice Google Meet last week, especially if we need to work from home again.

What hasn’t worked (or made sense)?

I haven’t had/made time to practice Voice Typing or setting up Google Keep (I'm still using Notes in IOS).

What do you need help with?

Getting more familiar with Google Keep (I think I just need to set aside some more sandpit time).

This Week - Media

A banner in the Learning Commons
in the new Hornby High School (HHS)

A copy of this week's agenda can be found here.

The main focus of this week's programme was "Media", i.e. making life a bit easier for us and making us more efficient in a digital world. This included sessions on:

• Manaiakalani's "Create"
• Tips on using videos and streaming
• Youtube channels
• Google Drawing
• Google Slides

The Creative Excellence mural being
added at the tail end of HHS's rebuild

In this session we discussed the "Create" side of "Learn, Create, Share", including the value of learners being creative. Hornby High School's aspirational vision of being a "Centre of Creative Excellence" was also highlighted as part of this session.

I particularly like this quote from MaryAnn Kohl (an art educator and author) where she emphasises that creativity is about forming original ideas, and that it is about thinking, exploring, discovering and imagining.

Videos and Streaming

In this session we looked at a wide range of topics relating to videos and streaming, including settings, lighting, green-screen, the importance of using tripods, live streaming, and film festivals.

Youtube Channels

This session focused on the practice of using Youtube channels in the classroom - both by teachers and learners. The presenters emphasised the following points:

1. For learners, Google Drive is the default source to share videos from. Video can be embedded in a blog from Google Drive, where learners connect with their audience via blog comments. As administrators of these blogs teachers are able to monitor content and interactions through their email and Hapara Teacher Dashboard.

2. The blog is the default platform for our learners to share and connect with their audience. Manaiakalani recommends that all video content is shared publicly via class and individual blogs rather than via Youtube channels.

We then looked at how to embed a Youtube video in our blogs and how to create  a Youtube playlist.

Google Drawing

During this session we were introduced to some of the finer skills in successfully using Google Drawing, before we worked through some practice activities. I found this to be reasonably easy as the functionality of Google Drawing is very similar to creating drawings or flowcharts in Microsoft products (e.g. Word and Excel).

We were then given the task of creating an "About Me" sidebar image for our blogs. This is the results of my labours, which I have now added to my sidebar.

Google Slides

We were given some great tips on how to create some creative slides with SISOMO (SIght, SOund and MOtion) to draw attention and enable access to learning. This included "Pick a Path" literacy challenges (which I really must try) and creating stop-motion animation. One of my students spent a significant part of his lock-down time working on creating a 256-slide animation, and I know there are other students who would like to try this as well.

Conclusion

Again there was a lot that I was already familiar with this week, it was great to pick up on the finer details of these tools. This made the day very worthwhile, and I came home motivated to try a lot of the tasks and tools.

Mark Maddren gave me a tip to help me with my Voice Typing issues - to buy headphones with a built-in microphone, so on my way home I popped in to Noel Leemings and invested $40 on a cheap set and tried it out straight away. WHAT A DIFFERENCE!! It worked really well, and could be the game changer for my inaccurate, slow two-finger typing. Watch this space!

Create