Part 2 of PLD for 2020

 I attended a meeting in Term 2, which was run by Karen Evans and explained how to make referrals and the role of the new Learning Support Co-ordinator role.  Here is the link to the powerpoint from that meeting.

The Grey Main PLG's for the term were based on te reo and I attended meeting on the 3 and the 10th of June.  The learning from this was particularly beneficial around te reo for pet day.

Mamaku Hub moderated reports on the 23 June - soemthing that helped me to complete reports in the Grey Main Way.

I signed up for and completed te reo puawai maori course to help build my te reo use in the classroom.  I have also downloaded some common sayings and am practising these with my class.  Here is the link to the learning I got out of this course

Term 3

4/8/20 a running records workshop

5/8/20  PLG on Ero Indicators

27/8/20  Toolkit on 'Creative Collage for descriptive writing'

7/9/20 Problem solving in maths -  more that just words.  (webinar)

I had also completed two toolkits in term one.  Game boards on 10/3/20 and Using creator studio to animate slides on 12/3/20

PLD so far this year

I hadn't recorded any of my PLG for the year so thought I would make this post to keep it upto day.

In term 1 2020, I attended a PLG around behaviour of boys, we had a discussion around it and the take home for me was to ensure consistency and to make sure I used positive reinforcement.

I have joined the PB4L subcommittee at GreyMain and have been part of setting up a positive reinforcement plan where students get ME awards and can get acknowledged at assembly if they are one of the top three in the class.

The whole staff attended a T-Shaped literacy TeacherOnly day in January. and this is something I will implement as my inquiry for 2020.  I have already started dabbling in this and we will continue with planning Tshaped literacy lessons as a hub.  Our inquiry will be around using TShaped literacy with a small group of students and monitoring their progress.

I have also had Laytham Martin in my classroom twice so far this year.  The session last week, I used for him to assist students new to blogging.  I also got him to offer suggestions on how to use the handin sheet and how to stop students from typing in fields owned by others.

In addition to the PLD stated about I also attended the DFI for 2 weeks before and then during level 4 and 3.  I have blogged about this separately.

DFI Day 9 Revision and Exam

Today was the last day of the DFI.  What a lot of learning and experience I gained during this time.

Yesterday I sat the Google for Educator Level 1 exam and I have received an email saying I had PASSED.

It is exciting that we are now in Level 2 for the Covid 19 and that school will reopen for all students on Monday.  It will be fabulous to see all my students again and to use the skills that I learnt during DFI.


As the DFI comes to an end I can say that I have learnt some valuable lessons.  I know the importance of the learn Create Share philosophy and have made many changes to my learning site as a result of this.

A real take home message for me is that
A digitally fluent teacher leads to A digitally fluent student

Another valuable part of DFI was making connections with other teachers from around NZ who want to better themselves in a digital environment

DFI - day 8 May 7 - Computational Thinking

Todays 'Connecting iwth Manaiakalani session was around empowering our learners.  There was a discusion around the use of the word 'empowering' instead of 'agency'.  It was mentioned hat people in  lower sociao economic groups often have negative connections with the word agency.


This session reminded mea bout wanting ot create a graph around my students blog posts.  This would be a good activity to do for tomorrow's lesson on blogging

Next we had a session Intro to computational thinking and Hangarau Matihiko
There are some fantasic resources in this slide.
A key mesasage is that digitially fluent teachers lead to digital fluent students - just as well I am doing the DFI.

Some resources i want to go back and look at in more detail

• CS Unplugged - Party Magic
• The vocab used on slide 15 - good to introduce this vocab to students
• slides 16 and 17  have WALTS in kids speak
• Kerry has also linked the Manaiakalani cybersmart curriclum to the New Digital Technologies Curriculum
• Slide 19 links to the exemplars and snapshots from TKI

I signed into Kia Takatu a Matihiko.  I had already signed in last year at Karoro but believe it is probably a good time to redo some of these toolkits.

I had a play on Microbits.  Here is the link to the project I made for Paper Scissors Rock

The rest of the day was spent exploring coding.  I have take an note of quite a few which I will use with my class.  I will give one to my students during Home Learning next week to explore

Here are some of the ones I liked

https://lightbot.com/flash.html                          https://studio.code.org/s/aquatic/stage/1/puzzle/1

                           https://studio.code.org/flappy/1

https://game.kodable.com/play?hc=1&type=home&user=vfwn3fm&showSpace=world

DFI Day 7 30 April - Devices

Our day started with Fiona talking to us about being cybersmart.  I search the TokiPounamu site while she was talking and decided I would run online lessons next week around Cybersmart behaviour.  In particular on creating DLO's, adding posts to the class blogs and how to attribute images.

Gerhard introduced us to hapara.  I have been using this for a number of years and had self taught myself. A couple of things I had missed during my self teaching.

1. I can drag and drop the students into an order that suits me meaning I can put my target students together or at the top - very useful
2. I can track blog posts in hapara and see what comments have been made on individual blogs

I liked Gerhard's idea of giving them 10 minutes before morning tea on a Friday to make sure everything in the unshared tab in hapara is filed correctly.  Once filed individuals can go to early morning tea.  

An interesting thought from this session was around the use of highlights and to continue to be respectful to students.  Just because we can put highlights up on the class tv and instruct students to be in the right place, doesn't mean we should do this.

I learnt quite a few shortcuts for the Chromebook which will be useful.  In particular:

1.  ctrl B to get off full screen.
2. ctrl O to restore zoom
3. ctrl shift t to open closed tabs
4. ctrl backspace to delete the last word
5. lock screen - search l

We had a look at explain everything.  The app on the class ipad is not up to date and probably not worth using.  There is an online one that the students could use. Although there are a limited number of projects that can be created.  I had a play and created a very simple Explain Everything project to see if it worked.  Here it is here.

and this is the link to the site whiteboard.explaineverything.com

DFI 24 April 2020. Enabling Access - Sites

We started today talking about being connected with our learners and with each other, which is particularly important and in many ways more difficult during these Level 4 Covid 19 times.

An interesting activity that was suggested (and I plan to do) is to look get the students to look at the Manaiakalani Twitter feed and chose 2 or three interesting blog posts to comment on.  Then to reflect on why they chose those posts and post that reflection on their blog.

The Toki Pounamu and full Manaikalani twitter feeds can be found by clicking here and here
            

We spend some of the day evaluating other classes sites.  We considered the visual appeal and the user experience for each site.

Gerard gave us lots of ideas to make our sites appealing and easy for our users.  The site is for our learners and we should ask for their input into how they find it easier to navigate.  He suggested we set a task for our students to explain how to navigate the site.  There is an example of this here

The rest of the day we spend in our small group exploring each others class sites, giving feedback and improving them.  I created new literacy and maths pages, at this stage I have hidden them from navigation, but when the students click on the weekly plan, it will take them to the new page.  I am happier with this navigation.  Here is the link to my site.  It is evolving.  At some point I would like to have separate pages for each literacy and maths group, however the students are not used to navigating this way and I would prefer to introduce these changes face-to-face when they are back at school.

The final tip for the day was around adding a gadget to the class blog to show all the students blogs and the activity on them.   My class blog already had these on it, however the gadget was too far down the page so I moved it up.  It looks much better now.