DFI Day 8: Computational Thinking

Today was another busy DFI session and the last session before I plan to sit my Google Level 1 exam.

The Manaiakalanin connect session was focused around the kuapapa, empowered. Interestingly I have always associated this with learners however Dorothy made it clear that this empowerment also applies to educators. A great example of this is the empowerment that comes from participating in these DFIs!

The beauty of using digital devices such as Chromebooks with our students means they are provided with an exceptional way to empower us teachers and our students to meet the goals of the New Zealand Curriculum.

The word empowered was chosen over the perhaps more trendy term agency due to the possible misconceptions of what this word means in this context. The word agency can have a negative connotation with things such as Oranga Tamariki or Housing New Zealand and thought of as agencies that take over control.

Sadly Dorothy was able to give us many examples of how some of the families in the Manaiakalani cluster were not empowered and the disadvantages that this causes. These include:

• Low income due to things such as families on benefits or those on low wages - the working poor as Nigal Latta calls it
• Poor standard of housing
• Lack of means to improve living conditions, such as rubbish disposal
• Targeting by Loan Sharks
• Restrictions on Health Care
• Research shows that children in Decile 1 communities enter school with an average academic age of 3
• The same children have heard 32 million less spoken words than those in Decile 10 communities
• The transient nature of their community

Unfortunately, Dorothy's technology started playing up and she was unable to finish the presentation but I found it really interesting.

The next part of the day was a refresher for me on the updated Digital Technology Curriculum. Thanks to being apart of Manaiakalani Outreach I have felt confident in our preparedness to implement this especially in the area of Designing and developing digital outcomes. 

If the Digital Technolgy Curriculum is implemented to a high standard this will prepare our students for unprecedented change thus being the ability to learn and relearn as change occurs. This session also gave many links to explore in regards to successful implementation and I would like to explore these further for not only my own teaching but also from a school management perspective.

The rest of the day was spent exploring a variety of coding and computational thinking tools. I briefly looked at the site 'Lightbot' which was a very simple game in which you give directions to a figurine along a set of blocks with the game to light up certain squares. I thought this would be a really fun way to introduce the children to giving directions after completing some basic unplugged activities.

I then moved on to explore code.org and looked at 'an hour of code with Minecraft'. Once again,  I thought this would be really appealing to my students

Finally, I spent some time creating code using 'Scratch'. I have had some experience with this site before and it was great to have time to refamiliarise myself and learn a few hints and tips from Kerry. Kerry also gave several examples of how 'Scratch' could be used as a creative tool for my students to share their learning. Below is my very short example of how 'Scratch' could be used as part of a Cybersmart lesson.

Next term I am looking forward to exploring some of these coding and computational thinking tools with my students who I believe will be very engaged.

DFI 7: Devices

Today's DFI session gave us an opportunity to explore the devices our students using. Along with all Manaiakalani schools, we have 1:1 Chromebooks from Year 4-6, and our junior school students use iPads.

Unfortunately for many of us this morning the latest update of Grid View was not co-operating, however with a bit of perseverance and problem solving I was able to get back on track with today's learning. The up-side to all of this was that my understanding our how the Google Admin console operates is improving!

The first part of today was focused on Cybersmart, which was timely after a few issues we have had with our students this week. I love the saying "just because you can, doesn't mean you should" and is an important lesson for my students. I think the term Cybersmart is very appropriate as unfortunately, we can not guarantee that children will be safe using online platforms. It is our responsibility as educators who provide digital learning to inform our children about the best ways to reduce the risks that come with using online devices.

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Each year the wonderful Manaiakalani facilitators modify and adapt lessons for us to implement around Smart Learners, Smart Footprint and Smart Relationships. I know our facilitator Kelsey Morgan has spent many hours making meaningful content for our learners, reducing the workload for us as teachers. I didn't realise that in total there are resources for a total of 10 different Cybersmart content areas. My hope is that if Cybersmart is done effectively our tamariki will develop into teenagers and adults that can make better choices about how they behave online. Fiona did acknowledge that ideally, we would incorporate Cybersmart in our everyday learning programmes however I agree that in some cases some of the content needs to be specifically taught and then followed up within our teaching and learning programmes. The session was a timely reminder about the importance of our Cybersmart curriculum and that while I am involved in reviewing our school curriculum, this needs to be included.

The next part of the day was an opportunity to experience the devices our students use daily. Using a Chromebook I went through a "digital dig..." reminding me of shortcut keys and the layout the children experience on their device.

My digital dig using a Chromebook

We then moved on to exploring how iPads are used in the Junior school, mainly through the Explain Everything app (EE). This is an app that I have not explored for many years so it was great to see the changes. We were given the opportunity to have a 'play' with a selection of resources made for junior-aged students by Manaiakalani teachers. Below are two examples of the use of EE.

Our 'create' task for the day was to create or repurpose a Cybersmart lesson and use EE, Screencastify or Hāpara workspace as a medium for our creation. I combined two lessons within the Smart Surfing Cybersmart concept. I decided to adapt the task to fit in with a reading theme on Sharks I would like to create for my children. My aim was to provide my students with an opportunity to learn how to use Google to search for information using keywords and methodical way. Below is my Screencastify talking through a potential lesson.

DFI 6: Enabling access - sites

Our sixth session of DFI focused on enabling access with sites and was a continuation from last week's theme. I didn't feel I learned as much today as I have in other sessions due to my experience and confidence in creating Google sites. I did, however, have opportunities to tweak my class site in ways that I probably wouldn't have had the time to do otherwise.

Our connecting with Manaikalani was around the kaupapa word connected. The importance of our learnings and their whāuna being connected quickly became clear during our recent Covid-19 lockdown. Without the gift of Manaiakalani I wonder what situation our school would have been in, in regards to providing distance learning for our students during this time? By having a large percentage of my class having access to their own device and connectivity, along with the digital knowledge of using class sites to access their learning and participate in daily Google Hangout Meets, I was able to provide the best opportunities possible for my students to connect. This was not only with their learning but also with myself and their peers. It was interesting to see the media talk about what Manaiakalani refers to as the digital divide, and how many low decile schools were struggling to provide distance learning for their students.  Manaiakalani has proven that families with a low income do not need to be disadvantaged by not have connectivity. Several years ago I visited Pt England School where Dorthoy shared that the average family income in their community was $40, 000 (if my memory serves me correct of course!) This blew me away and was the proof I needed that if these families can provide their children with Chrome books then our families can too.

The rest of the day was spent receiving and proving feedback on our current class site and then making improvements to our class sites. I was pleased to receive positive feedback on my current class site although I certainly acknowledge that there are certainly ways that I could enhance my site. My goals for improving my site was to...

• Archive previous terms work
• Include more school-wide information such as the proper link to the school website, school newsletters and Facebook page
• Rearrange some of the content to make it more user friendly

I would also like to...

• Include a photo and brief bio about myself and my release teacher
• Copies of the learning progressions
• Make 'learn, create, share' more visible on my home page

DFI Day 5: Collaborate - sites

Today was the perfect weather day for staying home and participating in another digital fluency intensive. The focus of today's sessions was on supporting visible teaching and learning through building collaborative, multimodal Google Sites.

The pedagogical content today was focused around 'visible/ariari' kaupapa. For such a long time success at school was really just the ability to read the teacher's mind and know what answers they wanted to hear. Research now tells us that making teaching and learning visible is a component of accelerating learning for our students. The use of a class site allows learning to be visible to our students and their whānau as well as a wider audience such as our colleagues. Within Manakalani they recognise that the default setting for teaching and learning is that it should be visible and therefore our attention should be on what do we make private as opposed to deciding what do we make public. Two further benefits of making teaching and learning visible are that it provides opportunities for student agency as well as fostering student independence. This independence importantly allows teachers to spend less time giving instructions and more time concentrating on improving learning.

Gerhard also shared some great links to Manaiakalani Google Class OnAir and a teaching as inquiry site that I would like to explore further.

The next part of the morning was focused around multimodal design. This is an area of passion for me and I have been developing my practice in this area for the past few years. The presentation was based around 4 priority goals. The first goal is engagement and relates directly to 'hooking' the students into learning. Kerry reminded me of how as teachers we are competing with modern-day technology such as social media therefore our visible learning needs to look exciting and cultivate the desirer to engage in learning.  When I first started working in a class with digital devices I quickly noticed that behaviour management took a back seat as my students were engaged like I had never seen before. The devices alone have not been enough to continue this focus as the novelty is wearing off for many students. This has been a timely reminder for me as I reflect on some of my challenging students.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a learning pedagogy that relates to mutlimodal design and is one that I was introduced to some years ago. I would like to revisit the area of UDL as it has slipt off my radar.

A large chunk of today's DFI was focused around creating a multimodal site page.  I decided to spend my time creating a site page around my classes technology topic. My goal for my site (which I am still developing) is to provide material to encourage children to engage in the design process. I have included a range of text from websites, the online reading platform Epic and Youtube. I have also been reflecting on including...
a clear and easy to follow layout
clear incorporation of learn, create, share
Engaging material that hooks
Allows for children to explore information independently
Makes my teaching and learning programme visible
Provides literacy that is wide and deep
Links to SAMR model

Below is a link to my newly created multi model site

Link to technology site

DFI Day 4: Dealing with Data

Another busy week and another worthwhile DFI. This week's theme was 'dealing with data'. 

Today discussion on the Manaiakalani pedagogy was focused on share/tohatoha. As Dorothy pointed out sharing isn't something new and has been happening since the beginning of time. As technology has advanced so too has the platforms for sharing potential. the beauty of the advancement of technology is that our learners are now able to share with an audience beyond the school gate. I found it really interesting with Dorothy's definition of an authentic audience being 'people who choose to listen to you'.

An aspect of 'share' that I hadn't really considered before is that once learning is shared on a blog this gives a true endpoint to the product. This made me reflect on a conversation I had yesterday with one of my students. Pre lockdown this student was a very reluctant learner and needed a lot of prompting to stay on task. During the lockdown, with the support of his mother, this student was able to complete several pieces of quality learning which he shared on his blog. Since his return, I have sadly noticed a decline in his motivation and behaviour. This in itself is the topic of a blog post all on its own! In an attempt to chance tact yesterday I asked him to think about how good it felt to complete tasks to high standard like the ones he had done at home. He simply shrugged his shoulders at me. He genuinely seemed to not understand the sense of achievement of completing a task. After listening to Dorothy this made me wonder how many experiences this student has had of actually finishing a task? If he doesn't understand the feeling of finishing does this therefore mean he has no drive to finish a task? If success builds success how many experiences of finishing a task does one need to have to develop a drive to want to do this? A realisation I made a while ago, that Dorothy confirmed, was the importance of allowing specific time for sharing. Not only is this sharing of a final product but can also be an opportunity to gain feedback to improve their learning from an authentic audience.

The next part of the day was a brief discussion around hot tips for Hāpara. This included dragging and reordering students. This will be really helpful to have my children I need to watch all in one part of my screen as opposed to having them spread.

Our next focus was on using Google Forms. New learning for me today was...

• You can lock a page so students are unable to access Google - this would be great when doing quizes
• How to create multiple pages
• Information can be added to an existing spreadsheet

The following is an example of a form I created that I will look at using with my students. Thanks Makaore for the great idea!

Google My Maps was an extension I was unfamiliar with and I can see that I am going to need to continue exploring. Interestingly you can use data gathered from Google Forms and input this into My Maps. I would like to explore this further with my students by asking them to locate where they were born. I can also see that it will be helpful when making connections to places such as during my upcoming technology topic.

I enjoyed playing around with Google Spreadsheets and learned a lot from this session. I have some confidence with Spreadsheets as I use them regularly but I can certainly see I am not using it to its full potential. My key takeaways from this session was...

• Another way to Freeze columns and rows within the sheet
• Changing the direction of the font
• Creating alternating colours automatically
• Gained confidence at using formulas
• Different ways to sort data
• Auto filling information such as days of the week, months of the year
• Inserting checkboxes
• Imagine insertion
• Multiple links can be now added to the same cell
• You can automatically format cells colours according to your prerequisites

Below are some examples of my explorations of Google Spreadsheets

Once again this was a full-on day which confirmed lots of things I was already familiar with as well as some new gems that I am looking forward to making 'dealing with data' easier.