DFI Day 6 - Sites (Enabling Access)

 This week for DFI we learnt how to enable access on our class sites.

It was such an interesting day as we explored other class sites of all different year levels and evaluated them with our group. It was a good opportunity to reflect on the class site that my hub uses as we spoke about what makes a great site and what is not useful to students. We learnt about the two main criteria that makes a site successful - visual appeal and functionality. In terms of visual appeal, I learnt how important it is that the site connects to the learner with relatable and fun images, that it is simple (not overcrowded with information) and that it is bright and bold. In terms of functionality, the key points that I learnt were that learning should be easy to access within just a few clicks and that the site should be easy to navigate for anyone. That is, a parent should be able to find their child's learning, timetable, teacher information etc without someone needing to guide them through it. These are criteria that I feel really proud about when it comes to our year 3 and 4 class site which my colleague Clarelle Carruthers created this year. There are 3 teachers in our hub and we all contribute individually on our levelled learning pages. Next year, I would love to contribute more to the creation of our class site to put what I have been learning into action!

Upon reflection of our site, I didn't want to change anything on the home page or main skeleton of the site as that is not a decision that I can make on my own and I am happy with how it looks. Instead I found something to change on my own learning pages. Each week, I put all of my planning on slides for maths, reading and writing. Usually, it is one slide per week. Dorothy reminded us that the learning on the site should be rewindable and it should be easy for anyone to understand (eg parents). I realised that my maths slides were not rewindable and need an explanation from a teacher as to what each activity is for and what order to do them in. When I say rewindable, I mean that it is not easy to flick back to a specific maths slide several weeks, months or years later and understand what to do with it. Today, I clicked on one maths slide and couldn't even remember what each activity link was for and what the main learning intention was behind those! So I changed the way I do my maths slides so that there are titles, images, videos and explanations (if needed) so that anyone can look at the slide and find it not only more visually appealing but easier to understand. I plan to also make my reading slides more multimodal by adding more videos and images to them as this is something that I haven't done in a while.

Below are screenshots of what my maths slides looked like before and after.

Below are screenshots of our class site for our year 3/4 hub which is called The Block.  These screenshots are of 2 things that I like about our site. The first screenshot shows the home page where the main learning buttons are bold and easy to find at the top of the page. The second screenshot is the page that you land on after clicking the writing button. What I like about this is that the children's names are under each button so they know which group to click on. This makes is really easy at the beginning of the year when children are learning how to navigate the site or later in the year when their levelled learning groups are changed. Learning from previous terms are also linked at the bottom of the page.

DFI Day 5 - Collaborative Teaching and Learning

 

Click here to see the Google Site that I created today.

Today we learnt about collaborative teaching and learning through the use of multi-modal texts on Google Sites. Dorothy reminded us of how important it is to keep learning visible - and a great way to do this is by moving teaching online. Digital learning gives students more choice, engages them and opens up new ways for students to collaborate. One way that we can make great use of digital learning is by creating multimodal Google Sites. Dorothy explained that multimodal learning is when teachers provide several different types of resources to enhance a lesson. For example, instead of just providing one book about a topic, we can provide videos, images and supporting texts from a variety of books and websites to support the main text.

The above image is a screenshot taken from the Google Site that I created today. We were given a topic in small groups and shared resources with each other online through a Jamboard. Jamboard reminded me of Padlet. As I have had experience creating Google Sites before, I felt pretty familiar with the basic set up of the site. However, my main take away from today was how to create a site button through Google Drawings. I haven't made buttons before as I wasn't completely confident in making them, so today was really useful to have a good amount of time to practice creating them. I found it a bit tricky at first so I was glad I had the time to play around and work it out. On the 'read' page, I shared several reading resources which are both online and offline. I used the 'watch' page for Youtube videos to support the main texts (Katie's Butterfly and The Classroom Caterpillars). I also created a 'create' page where I could add several activities to the Google Slides deck on that page.

Overall, today was a good reminder for me to make learning multimodal so students have wider and deeper learning opportunities. 

DFI - Day 4: Data

This week for DFI we learnt how to deal with data.

The main tools that we learnt how to use were My Maps, Google Forms and Google Sheets.  

I found it really useful learning how to use forms today. I appreciated the time we were given to practice creating our own form as I had never created a form before! To be honest, I'd never used forms with my class because I wasn't sure how to create one. I feel so much more confident at creating a form now and am looking forward to creating quizzes for class with forms. I enjoyed learning all of the extra tips and tricks with the settings in forms too. I also learnt how to embed a form on my site, which is something that I will put to use! Learning how to use forms has come in good timing - I'd like to create some forms for my students to fill in during lockdown to jazz up their online learning.

We learnt how to create our own personal map on Google Maps today. I always wondered how people personalised their own map. I had a lot of fun creating a map of my favourite places in America and added personal photos to the places that I pinned, along with icons. I think it's awesome that you can also link data from a form to the map - I'm keen to try this out. I think I could get a lot of personal enjoyment out of creating my own maps!

As seen in the slide deck above, we learnt how to use Google Sheets. This section of today's DFI was definitely the most useful to me. I do all of my planning/reflections and keep all of my data on sheets and have only known the basics of how to organise data. I really enjoyed learning all of the tips and tricks, for example shortcuts to save time and ways to make the sheet easier to read with colours and filters to sort it. I also created a chart from sheets for the first time today - something that I also have never done before! Please see the above slides to see screenshots of my main takeaways from Google Sheets lesson. 

DFI Day 3 - Media

If you can't travel, why not create a scene and imagine you're there!

Today our focus for the Digital Fluency Intensive was Media. 

When Dorothy was speaking about the 'Create' part of the 'Learn, Create, Share' pedagogy, I was reminded of how important it is to get creative with my planning and provide students with the opportunity to either create with physical materials or with digital technology. In my year 3 and 4 class, my students all use iPads and I want to get better at making use of this technology to make learning more fun.

Today I learnt how to create a 'scene' (seen above) using Google Slides and Remove.bg. I already have experience using Google Slides, however found it useful learning extra tricks and enjoyed practicing how to arrange images on the slide. I am really enjoying learning how to use Remove.bg. I would have never thought of creating an animation on Slides using an image of myself because the thought of getting rid of a background seemed too difficult, but Remove.bg is super easy! 

This term, Pt England School is learning all about the world - my class is specifically learning about famous landmarks. Since my year 3/4 class is using iPads, I am going to work out how to do the above activity on Slides on iPads or adapt it to be done on Explain Everything. Either way, I'm excited for my class to use Remove.bg and create a scene of themselves at landmark that we learn about this week!

Today we also learnt about how to use a YouTube account and how to use Google Drawings. I have had experience using Google Drawings, however it is useful learning more tricks on it so that I can become more confident to create good buttons for my class site. It was also great learning that I can use Remove.bg paired with the shaped cropping tool to create a profile picture on Drawings. 

I will share a students blogpost of their own 'scene' once completed - fingers crossed it is successful!

DFI Day 3 - Google Drawings

Today we have been learning how to use Google Drawings as part of the Media segment of DFI. Here is a profile of myself that I created on Google Draw. I will add this to the 'About Me' pane on my blog.