DFI- MEDIA

DFI- Media 
We started today's session with a google hangout with Dorothy. She discussed the importance of connecting with others and how connect goes hand in hand with share. She shared a slide that showed the Manaiakalani mantra of Connected..ubiquitous..empowered...visible. It was interesting to hear her state that if there was one thing that schools are most likely to not do as well at it is the visible. I totally agree with this as I am one of those teachers that would always be the last to share their links and make pages visible. It is not that I don't want to share any of my ideas but there is something about knowing that anyone can go in and look at my planning and lessons that I struggled with. I am getting alot better but I guess it is just a new way of education that we all need to get used to as I know I am not the only one who feels this way. I guess no one wants to be judged..... I totally understand the importance of sharing and I think as time poor, hard working professionals the more we share the easier our lives will be and the richer the experiences we can give our tamariki. Funnily enough children don't seem to have the same hang ups that adults do with sharing everything on the internet. It was interesting to hear how the technology behind twitter has been used to get manaiakalani blogs out to even more people. Blogs are powerful tools for connecting children to outside world.
LIVE STREAMING 
The next thing we did was another google hangout with Kent from point England School. WOW! Its very impressive what he is doing with drones and live streaming. I loved the idea of streaming their sporting events and showing parents when they are having cross country and they can't see the children. This is definitely a goal for the future ... I can see so many opportunities to be able to connect whanau even more as well as the rest of the world. But first I must learn how to use a drone!! You Tube We also explored Youtube today. I already had my own channel set up which I had done at a GAFE course but I learnt how to make playlists today which was very handy and also how to embed them into a site which was very useful for the classroom especially as it stops the problem of things popping up or extra videos running on after children have finished. It is a much safer way to share youtube clips with the kids.

OOGLE SLIDES
After this we looked at google slides. Google slides are something that I use quite often for planning and sites so am quite confident with them. We also got a chance to play with animations using Google slides. Creativity was lacking in me today but I did manage to create something. Slides can also be used for pick a path stories or quizes. This is something I would like to explore with the kids sometime as it can be done on ipads easily.


GOOGLE DRAW
Google draw was another tool we looked at today. we saw some amazing art work using tracing and colouring which is another activity to explore with the kids. I have always shied away from Google Draw as I found it fiddly but I am becoming more confident with this now and am finding it a very useful tool.

DFI Day 5

• What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

• Today was another session on sites which was good to have some extra time to really get into things and experiment. I found the discussion in the morning with Dorothy interesting particularly when she brought up about "old school" teaching was alot about success going to the kids who could participate and anticipate what teacher wants. I had never thought about how we used to teach being like this. It highlighted just how much rewindable and visible learning makes learning accessible to so many more kids at different levels. One thing I did think about though was with all our learning so visible those children who love to learn could be providing extra work for teachers as they will be the ones that go on the site and complete the weeks work in one day! I understand that even though all whanau do not access In a our sites and in a perfect world they would but it can be a little disheartening when the majority of parents don't go onto the blog or site when you put so much time into it. I have found that sites are alot more pertinent in senior classes than junior classes. They still do play a role in juniors but I am yet to have it direct learning and be the crux of learning like it is in a senior class.What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

• I redid my class timetable today for my site and was frustrated when I the columns cut off half of the sentences so I was able to google how to make the columns in a sheet bigger and make the changes. Having the time to take today to look through other blogs and have a play with sites which has made me more confident to create and change sites. It just highlighted that with all of our DFI things it just takes time and practise to master things.

• What did I learn that could be used with my learners?  

• It wasn't so much what I learnt today that I could use with my learners but rather a reminder that I need to make my juniors be more active participants on my site and use it better to as a teaching tool. It would make sense for the children to be more independent with their learning which they could be with the site. I found moving from a chromebook class to a class with ipads I lost the need to use sites as a daily teaching tool.
  What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

• I think from today I created more work for myself as I got alot of ideas from different sites that we explored but I think the experiment time allowed me to get faster at using and creating sites which in the long run will save me time. I must try the site challenge this week !!!