DFI week 9 - Revision and reflection

This week was the final week of the Digital Fluency Intensive. I sat the Google Educator Level 1 exam and feel so proud of myself for doing it. We don't receive our results for a little while, however I'm not so worried about the result, as participating in the DFI course in itself taught me useful skills that I can use with my class. The exam had many scenarios that I needed to complete which required knowledge of all areas of the Google Suite - it made me realise how much more confident I am now with using all of the tools in Google Suite. 

Upon reflection of DFI, I am very happy about how confident I am at not only using the tools in Google Suite for teaching, but I am also now more aware of how to use G Suite the most effectively and efficiently for lesson planning and teaching lessons. I feel like I am able to be more creative with the way that I plan, present material and teach lessons since I have been given the time to be exposed to the ways that other teachers use G Suite. For example, I wasn't making us of Google Forms before because I wasn't aware of all of the different purposes it can serve as I didn't know about all of it's functions. I feel like I can be a bit more creative and use it as a tool in every day lessons like reading and maths - not just as a way to take surveys.

Something else that I liked about this course was the time that we were given to explore and to be exposed to other teachers' work. I liked having the time to explore other class sites and to watch Class OnAir episodes. There are always endless ways that we can be inspired by other teachers to improve our own creativity, but it's just having the time to see their work that is tricky! I appreciated having time set aside just to do that. I also appreciated being given the time to practice using the new skills that we learnt and having the support from our facilitators. Thank you Amie!

In light of lockdown..

I am proud of our year 3 class site and how easy it was for students to navigate it for home learning. I have my colleague Clarelle to thank for the way that it was set up and organised! We had a Google Meet with our students every school day for both lockdowns. There were times that we felt discouraged when holding the Meets as there were days that not many students showed up, however I am proud that we didn't give up.

The one thing that I regret about my teaching during lockdown is that I could have done more lessons that were topic or needs specific. There were a few days where I had a one on one Meet with a student and his parent when I got to listen to him read to me while I presented his book onscreen. It was awesome because we don't usually have that quiet, uninterrupted time in the classroom, so I'm glad I made use of that opportunity. I did a reading lesson with a small group of students that were all reading the same level on day as well. We had a good group discussion about the book and students took turns to read aloud for me through the Meet. I do wish that I made better use of the opportunity to listen to students read aloud and have group discussion about our stories. If we have another lockdown, I will organise times each day for levelled group reading and maths lessons. We have the digital technology to do this and I just need to make it happen!

Something that I will take forward into this new 'era' of teaching is rewindable learning. During the first lockdown, I created and shared maths videos each day that taught a certain strategy. Students were able to play these videos over and over at home while they completed their task. During DFI I was challenged to make my learning on the site more rewindable. I plan to share more videos on my learning pages so that students can have a better understanding of strategies and concepts whether they have been absent from school, late for a lesson or need to hear the same lesson again to understand it. I am looking forward to becoming more creative and efficient in the way that I use technology to teach!

DFI - Computational Thinking

 

The focus of DFI week 8 was computational thinking. We learnt about the new Digital Technologies Curriculum and the Manaiakalani principle of empowerment. My favourite part of week 8 was having the opportunity to explore different coding apps and sites that students can use. The websites/apps that I enjoyed learning about the most were Lightbot, the MineCraft Hour Of Code Tutorials and Scratch Junior.

I also enjoyed having the opportunity to look into a couple of teacher's Class OnAir sites to see how they have been teaching computational thinking with devices. I looked into my colleague Clarelle Carruthers' Class OnAir site and found it useful seeing how she has used Scratch Junior in class with students of the same age. It was also useful to watch her teach the class how to code using the Codey Robots as I would like to teach my class how to use these as well! 

 

Above are photos of my students beginning to learn how to use Scratch Jr as well as the Scratch Jr activities site that we have been following.

During DFI week 8, we were given the opportunity to choose a break out group based on the coding programme we were interested in learning more about. I chose to learn about Scratch Jr as I have wanted to use this in class however wasn't confident with it. We were introduced to the activities section on the Scratch Junior site, which not only helped me to learn how to use the basics of Scratch Jr, but were also so helpful to use in class with my students! Over the course of the week, I went through the activities with my class. Although many have had practice on Scratch before, it was a great way for them to learn a lot of functions they hadn't used before!

After going through several activities as a class, I planned a lesson for my students to create an animation of their own. I read them a story called Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road by Jim Dewar and Simon Williams. As a follow up activity, I asked them to choose to characters from the story and animate one part of the story. It was a lot of fun! I'm looking forward to getting creative and using Scratch for future follow up activities or as a fun whole class activity.

A tool that I learnt about from my fellow teacher Clarelle last week was the Classroom app for Apple. During DFI we have been learning many handy tips on Hapara (Teacher Dashboard) for example, how to view students work. I realised that not all functions on Hapara work the same on iPads as it does for Chromebooks - for example, viewing students current screens. I connected all of my students iPads to the Classroom app on my iPad  last week and it has been incredibly useful! I would highly recommend it to any teachers whose students are on iPads.

DFI - Devices

 

Screenshots from the Digital Dig on a Chromebook

This week for DFI we had some hands on practice with iPads, Chromebooks, Explain Everything and Screencastify. 

Although I don't teach with Chromebooks as my class is a 1:1 iPad class, it was useful to learn tips for Chromebooks as I may teach with them again in the future. In previous years, I taught older students using Chromebooks and wasn't always confident with some of the questions students asked when they were stuck on their device, so today was handy! I liked doing the Digital Dig as the keyboard shortcuts were useful and learning about how to magnify the screen was helpful- I've specifically had issues with the zoom function in the past on Chromebooks.

The above Screencastify video was made using the Manaiakalani Cybersmart site. I practiced using Screencastify by choosing one Cybersmart area that I would like to work on with my class - and that is quality blog comments. I haven't personally used Screencastify before and realised how easy it is to use when explaining how to do something on screen. I loved how quick it was to save and upload the video. I will definitely be using Screencastify with my class! In the past, I've had children use it to record themselves reading a story and uploading it to their blog, but I would like to personally use it now.