Digital Learning Day - Session Two

March 27th 2019
A different way to spend my birthday today but - a great change from the class on a wet and wild West Coast Day! Once again a heap of new learning and good to know that my brain cells are still serving me well. As Gerard couldn't land in Hokitika last night we made the most of modern technology and had a google hang-out. I look forward to meeting him on another occasion.

It was revolutionary to learn how to organise my emails with labels. This will really help me easily locate the important information that I constantly search for such as camp notices or special needs meetings. I like the fact that making use of the settings tool means I can respond and archive emails simultaneously.

I had forgotten how to use heading within a doc so it was great being able to quickly ask Nicola how I do this and I will now go back into class and show this to the kids.

Gerard showed us how to use Google Keep and I had a practice writing a couple of notes as below.

Google Keep Notes 

At this stage, I am not sure how I would take advantage of this app but will go back and re-read the slides to see how I can utilise this and if it would also be helpful for my students. Google Calendars is an app I haven't used either as I rely on the apple calendar. I can see however that using the app means that I can easily share with others so will make the effort to transfer my information over.

We were pretty proud of ourselves for managing to get a small group of four together and make our own google hangout.



We had a few issues with getting the Quicktime video working but we finally got it working! The important thing for me to remember was to invite the others who are in the meeting to a video conference and not just invite them to a phone call which is the mistake I made the first time around. It was great to also be able to help others a couple of times as it reinforces the learning for me and helps me see where the tricky parts may be for my students.

Digital Fluency - Session One

Well right from the very beginning of today's session I was blown away! So much learning and so many creative ideas just floating around the room. I thought that I knew about the Manaiakalani kaupapa as I have been on my digital journey over the last five years now. After hearing Dorothy speak today it was highly beneficial to have it reinforced yet again that the 'learn, create, share' philosophy is not just using digital tools.

After visiting Point England and Panmure Bridge Schools last year I came back into the classroom with much enthusiasm and eagerness to give my Year 5/6 learners far more ownership of their own learning. I feel very lucky to now have the opportunity to upskill myself now in the coming 9 weeks. My students already have many skills and I know I need to continue to enthuse them.

As a teacher who has been using Hapara and Google Chrome over the last four years, I know that I can easily navigate my way around these sites, but I can see that there are ways to streamline what I am doing. I spend a long time creating reading and math activities. By using the voice text to typing tool I can really help my students who struggle with getting ideas down. It has made me question the importance and emphasis that is put on spelling. Is it okay for kids just to be using voice to text? How would I implement this within the class so that is was not distracting to other learners? I am keen to try this tomorrow and give the kids the opportunity to see how much more writing they could do.

I realise that I need to be working smarter and more efficiently within my planning. What can I do less of that is better and far more engaging for my students? I am really looking forward to revising what I have learnt on day one and am really looking forward to the next session. I don't know how I am feeling about an exam in nine weeks time!