Online Digital Fluency Intensive: week 1

For term 3 of 2020 I was asked to take part as a coach for the Online Digital Fluency Intensive. This is Professional Development offered to teachers who work within a Manaiakalani Outreach School. It is a fantastic opportunity to join a professional learning group to learn together, following a programme designed to meet these four key goals:

• Our teachers are supported to acquire fluency using the basic tools our young people use for learning
• Our teachers are supported to acquire fluency using the basic tools required for effective teaching, planning, assessment and professional learning
• Our teachers are supported to understand how digital technologies used effectively can have a significant impact on accelerating achievement outcomes
• Our teachers are supported to understand how the Manaiakalani pedagogy and kaupapa has been co-constructed over more than a decade to maximise the impact of effective teaching and learning in a digital learning environment. https://dfi.manaiakalani.org/

I am working with 5 teachers in a 'digital bubble'. They are from different schools and different year levels all across New Zealand. 

It was a full-on first day, but highly enjoyable. They learned lots of new things and I did too.

Post Lockdown ponderings and Professional Development

Over the lockdown period I took some time to re-evaluate my skill level and decided to do some online courses. 

I decided to start off with something that is relevant for my job as a Manaiakalani facilitator. Something I would use, teach and support others to use. I started working through the modules in  Screencastify: Class is in session 🎓. I finally did the test today and achieved the Master Screencaster certification.

The other one I am working through at the moment is the Apple iPad Certification. This has been valuable for me getting familiar with the new iPad I have purchased. It required me to learn about tools I had never used much, such as Keynote, Pages and iMovie.

Some other ones I am interested in doing are Scratch Jnr: Teach and any other coding ones I come across, as some of my teachers are wanting to focus on coding next term.

KEN Orientation Day 2020

Learning Together is Empowering

The 2020 KEN Orientation day started off with Kerry presenting "A Taste of Manaiakalani" and providing information about implementing Learn, Create, Share within the classroom.
We talked about the importance for students about being connected, ubiquitous, empowered, and visible.
The primary focus for the day was around Google Sites, and supporting new teachers in setting up their class sites. Chrissy Smith (teaching DP Paihia School) and Jess Henare (teaching DP Kawakawa Primary) presented their class sites and how they use them within their teaching practice. This was quite valuable for the new teachers to better understand how they themselves might use sites in their own classes.

Explain Everything 101

Today I attended an Explain Everything workshop presented by Khismira Lal, a year 1 teacher from Pt. England School.

The workshop PD was initiated for the Te Hiku and Kaikohekohe Clusters to support teachers who are new to using Explain Everything.

I have been using EE a lot this year, and supporting teachers and students within the classes I facilitate in with using it. It would have to be one of my favourite applications for Learn Create Share due to its interactive nature which enables both "the teacher and learner to create and share learning artefacts"

I am really enjoying being able to take part in this PD, and especially supporting my teachers on their journey into implementing EE within their teacher practice.

Up-skilling with DLO's

I have been taking some time lately to up-skill and teach myself different types of DLO's (Digital Learning Objects). The reason I did this was because I had reflected on my own practice and realised I was lacking in this area. I felt quite behind in comparison to the other Manaiakalani facilitators and decided I needed to act on it. I made contact with some facilitators who happily shared their planning with me.
Today I decided I would teach the collage making using Google Draw. I really enjoyed learning it and teaching it. All of the students and teachers I worked with enjoyed it too.
I even came home and taught my son, practice, practice, practice!

Below is one of my completed pieces, Tui.

Design Thinking

During the 2019 Term 3 Manaiakalani Facilitators hui we took part in some Design Thinking activities run by KPMG. 
"Design thinking is a problem solving approach that focuses on users and their emotional needs while experiencing products and services". It is a structured process to find solutions to complex human problems.

This was a foreign concept to me, and was interesting to look into. There was an aspect of stepping outside of my comfort zone, but it was not as daunting as I initially thought. I was interested in the focus on empathy, and it made me think about how this can be incorporated within a teaching practice.

Toolkit Te Hiku: Term 2

Te Hiku cluster held their toolkit sessions and I was asked if I would like to run one. So going with something I was comfortable teaching I ran a GIF making session. I have been teaching this in several classes and felt this was something I could deliver without fumbling. Although only 2 people signed up for the toolkit, the session went really well. The teachers who attended said they really enjoyed it and thought it was something they could use in several different ways within their teaching practice.

As a little side note, I wrote this post using the Manaiakalani Blogger App on my iPad. It was the first time I had used the App, and I found it was so straight forward and user friendly. I have emailed the lead teachers at my schools recommending for them to try using the app.