Welcome back to school for Term 4

 Welcome Back to Term 4 of 2022!

via GIPHY

It's been a long time I lockdown and we are all looking forward to Getting back to school. 

Today we tried our first interactive learning using Nearpod and managed to add our ideas for each of the following questions. Which helped us to begin thinking about goals for Term 4.

Here are my thoughts: 

1. Reflection on Lockdown. 

      What I didn't like about Lockdown was having to stay inside.

My mother turned 90 years old on the 15th of October and I couldn't go home to share her birthday with her. Fortunately family had small gatherings and celebrations for her and she celebrated all week!

2. What we are looking forward to when we go back to school. 

Yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing all my students and all their fabulous smiles when I go back to school. 

3. What we want to get out of school in term 4. 

I want to prepare my students for next year there learning in 2022 and have some fun at school.

Week 9 Final

This is a bragging right! At the beginning of the DFI course, I could barely do anything. A huge credit to the DFI team who have designed and work together to teach a fabulously practical course imperative to teach in these digital times. I have been privileged to participate in this course! Thank you.

DFI 8

 A fun day today learning focussed around Empowering students, understanding the communities that we are all passionate about, and especially through the Digital Curriculum. As a teacher finding my way through the sea of Digital Tech and meeting the curriculum requirements seemed like another chore. I am so grateful to Manaiakalani for the links to awesome resources where the big thinking has been done. I can now see where I am with the Digital curriculum and where my students need to focus their next steps! Yay! 

Here is a te reo maori resource I made in scratch. I have known of the scratch site for programming, now that I know the potential to custom make digital resources for learning, I am wrapped. Eventhough I don't want to reinvent the world, there are so many localised curriculum areas that need resource support. Ideally you should be able to click on the waka parts and you would hear a kupu maori recording for each part. So cool!

 

DFI Week 7.

 Seven weeks have quickly disintegrated! it is timely that we looked at screencastify. I have been looking for ways to tidy up videos from classroom google meet's during the week to add user-friendly instruction, working toward ubiquitous learning. My apologies for a boring video... But it's going to take a bit of practice and rehearsing to up my acting game... but I'm ready for the challenge!

A great app for learning through an iPad was Explain Everything. Here is an image I created and hopefully you can click on it and access the recording of my thoughts of this app.

Week 6 Website - Enabling Access

Learning today was focussed on making our learning website more accessable for students. We established three goals. My goals were: 1. Personalise Room 2's home page, add Room 2 flavour. 2. Make pages more engaging - Use images that entice students and make learning accessable. 3. Add time table and planning so students know what is planned. This is how much i have achieved so far. I am happy with the new look! Before:

After:

DFI Week 5

This week we had a look at website design and how to make the websites enticing and easier for students to manage. My topic choice was taken from a journal reading called 'Design for Good', which is about solving the fight against rodents in New Zealand's native forests. From this reading, I have created this web page for my year 5-7 class.

I really like how this webpage is more appealing to the eye, is uncluttered and simple to use. The students do not have to do alot of clicks and read alot to navigate to the task.

DFI Week 3 Reflection. Media

Week 3 Media was a great day. From this learning I have realised the potential of digital learning and how my teaching pedagogy is heading. I am excited about collaborative project based learning that enbraces student imagination and creativity using the digital format. As a teacher I have been stuck in the rutt of traditional teaching and using digital devices as word processors. This course is showing me the how to change my thinking. Learning is so exciting! I hope my class enjoys our next journey. Must book the ipads in the school to give the students more flexibility! Below is a graphic image of "inspiring quotes and ideas," I hope I am allowed to add to my bolg and everyday vocabulary! I created in drawings then downloaded as a JPEG then uploaded as an image to my blog. I am beginning to like my blog... yay! It's all work in progress!

We also looked at creating a simple profile.

So empowering! Look forward to more learning in DFI!

DFI Week 4 Dealing with Data.

Today we looked at Google Forms and I created a google quiz for the 7 times tables. However, I do want to learn how to use google forms for a wider range of applications within the classroom. Check this out here... 

We also had a look at My Maps which is an exciting google tool that I can't wait to use in my classroom as a maths project! I have had an idea about orientation and have been looking for a tool to make this exploration possible!

   

So much learning with Google Sheets... this is an application that is going to take definite use to learn all the tools! A goal is to use this program every day. I think I will use this for my planning! Today we looked at shortcuts and how we could create a spreadsheet more effectively, saving time. We looked at a great data activity for the students, graphing their blog data.

 

DFI Week 2. Blogging and embedding video.

 Week 2 DFL. 

Had a great intensive today. Lots of tips and tricks to soak up. One of my blogging challenges at the moment is to embed evidence of students learning into student's blogs and to give positive constructive feedback. In this session the task was to comment on the learning we could see, what was the learner's response, who responded and how did the response contribute positively to the learner.   

DFI Day 1. Core Business 30.7.2021

A great day for learning! After learning about the history of Manaiakalani today, the origins, the story behind the name, I have a deeper appreciation for the initiative and philosophy that underpins the pedagogy of Learn, Create, Share. I am able to modify my planning to incorporate the sharing through blogging that adds empowers the student's voice, and adds more purpose to student learning. 

I have used tools today such as Eyes on Text (independent reading task),  Blogging, Google Docs, and colour pic eye dropper and other Google extensions to create a choice board for my mathematics workshops in week 2. I look forward to also preparing my students to participate in the Maianiakalani Film Festival in the coming future.