DFI Course - Week 9

 Since Last Week

With the change of my teaching timetable at the beginning of this week (yeah, don't get me started about why we would change our timetables in the second-last week of the term!) I spent a lot of time over the week revamping my site to make it more accessible to my students and using more templates on Google Doc to help scaffold student reflections. I'm not finished yet (is anyone ever really), but I'm quite happy with what I've done so far.

I also spent quite a bit of time reviewing the material for Google's Level 1 Certified Educator Exam that we sat today. Speaking of which, our topic for this final session of the DFI Course was:

Revision

While "Revision" was the official topic this week:

(a)    it was too late for any actual revision for the exam; and

(b)    there was more discussed about Manaiakalani than there was about revision for the exam.

The specific sessions held this week covered:

• The Manaiakalani Pedagogy: Ubiquitous Learning
• Sitting the Certified Educator Exam (3 hours)
• Manaiakalani Opportunities

Ubiquitous Learning

I first heard the word "ubiquitous" when Hornby High first became part of the Manaiakalani Outreach that later became Uru Mānuka. At the time I thought it was one of those unnecessarily technical-sounding words like pedagogy, affordances and efficacy. Someone had described "ubiquitous" to me as meaning "any-where, any-when", and as I've gotten used to the Manaiakalani kaupapa I have actually embraced this definition. 

Today I learned a new way to define it: "Anytime, Anywhere, Any-pace (for Anyone)", and I like the "learning at your own pace" addition to this definition.

When she was presenting this session, Dorothy Burt challenged us to reflect on the following:

In light of (the) COVID 19 ... Lockdown and YOUR readiness for ubiquitous learning

• What are you proud of?
• What do you regret?
• What have you taken forward into the ‘new’ era of schooling?

After considering these questions, my responses to these questions are:

• Proud: I'm quite proud of the contribution I made to the Year 7/8 Working From Home site for Hornby High School - in particular the Maths Hurumanu (unit) I created called "Making Ends Meet". This was engaging, multi-modal and delivered in a ubiquitous manner.
• Regret: I wish it hadn't taken a pandemic to bring this change in my teaching method about.
• Taken forward: We all need to be ready for remote learning at any time if we go back into lockdown (God forbid). It shouldn't require a separate lesson-plan or a stand-alone Hurumanu, but rather simply a move to presentations by Google Meet with the planned Hurumanu continuing. That is, we need to plan all our teaching/learning to be ubiquitous.

Certified Educator Exam

So, three hours of our day was spent taking the on-line exam for Google's Educator Level 1 course. As with every exam of value, this was a stressful time for us all, especially with the unexpected technical issues some of us experienced. I was lucky enough to just finish in the time allotted (the timer actually ran out as I was writing the very last part of my last question).

As to whether I passed the exam, I guess I'll have to wait up to 14 days to find out. Philosophically, I know that my learning in the DFI is not dictated by my ability to pass an exam (a pass mark is 80%), but I really hope I have passed - if not I intend to resit the exam during the holidays. The Level 1 "qualification" will be, to me, a tangible outcome from the past 9 weeks that will reflect the depth of learning I have achieved over this time.

Conclusion

I have thoroughly enjoyed taking part of the DFI course, and I have learnt a lot from my participation. Taking time out of a busy teaching job to learn how to perform that job better has been a great use of my time, and I feel that every teacher in every Manaiakalani Outreach school should be given the same opportunity. Our students deserve it.