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