Session 9- Digital Fluency Intensive - revision

Wow! how 9 weeks flies. It has been a great nine weeks with lots of new and interesting learning

Today our Kaupapa word was Ubiquitous. Ubiquitous learning is about the ability for students to learn anywhere, anytime, any pace from anyone.

This topic is so relevant at the moment with the student learning from home and online. An important aspect of ubiquitous learning is ensuring that learning is rewindable. This gives students access to learning opportunities for learning when they may not have had it at home in the past.

The Summer learning journey is an example of ubiquitous learning. It means that the students who take part are able to continue learning over the summer and don't experience the same summer drop off. As Dorothy spoke about, I will be interested to see if the students who regularly took part in our learning online comeback to school with less of a drop than the students who haven't engaged.

The next part of the day was our opportunity to set the Level 1 google educator exam. The exam was a bit intense with the time there and constantly ticking down. But I got it finshed and Passed. Yay!

Reflection of the DFI

I have loved being involved in the DFI I have learnt some many new skills and extended my knowledge of some applications too. There is so much much I could mention but here are a few things that stood out to me:

• Google Keep - I have used this a lot in my school work and personal life since I learnt about it in the DFI. I have ides it to make cloze activities of texts that students are reading, it helps with work flow being able to quickly save those web pages that you don't want to bookmark but will go back to later... and it is great for shopping list (especailly during lockdown beacuse it updates in real time and you can add collaborators)
• Mymaps - this was completely new to me, and while I need to explore its uses more I have enjoyed playing with it and managed to uses it in my online learning to show where ANZAC cove was in relation to NZ. One of my student blogged that he liked seeing the map which was cool.
• Sheets - Where do I start, I really had no idea of the functionality of sheets before that session. I knew how make and sahre a sheet, add text to cells and merge cells etc. But it is so useful being about to freeze cells, actullay do sums and create charts. It is so useful for data collection and I can't wait to explore how I con use this with my students.
• Mutli-modal texts - I had a bit of background on this from the beginning of the year with Kelsey but it was great to get into more and to have a play. I also enjoyed hearing about the theory behind using multi- modal text. During my online learning I have tried to use mutli-text using slides. My students enjoyed being able to get information in differnt ways. I ensured that I always included the text, a listen to version of the main text a a video.  
• Maniakalani pedagaoy - I have really enjoyed the time each session spent getting to learn more abut the pedagogy behind Maniakalani. It really reinforced why we do the things that we do in our classrooms and online. 

Here is an example of some of the multi-text slides I have created.

I am looking forward to getting back into the classroom and digging in with the things I have learnt.

Until next time,

Sarah

Digital Fluency Intensive -Session 8 - Computational thinking

Today our connecting with Maniakalani focus was about Empowered learners.

The idea of empowered learning is that the device is not just a tool, it is used to transform the learning experience for students and whanau.

It was eye opening to hear about the daily challenges that many families in low decile areas face, I am sure we have some students in our community who have to worry about some of these problems.

The empowerment of learning gives students the opportunity to take control of their lives and futures. Students becoming digitally literate also gives families opportunities to find control.

Our big idea today was Computational thinking (learning to think like a computer scientist).

This was about empowering students to be digitally fluent and able to use their skills to enable them to be the creators/innovators rather than just the consumers.

We looked at the DLO's from the new digital curriculum. Then we looked at the future of tech which showed  us the future our students are heading into that they types of thinking that they will need to be able to adapt to.

https://studio.code.org/s/mc/stage/1/puzzle/1

In our exploring coding session I chose to look more at the applications/sites we can use as I have had experience to things like CS unplugged. I enjoyed the opportunity we had to explore different websites and ideas we can use with the kids. The block coding was fun and very addictive. I am going to look into Minecraft and similar coding games to link into my literacy programme because I have a group of boys who love Minecraft!

In our create session I chose to have a go with scratch. I had played a little in the past but always felt quite confused by it, so it was great to have a good amount of time to explore the tool and get a grasp on a few of the basic skills so that I feel comfortable to teach my students. Below is a like to the scratch I created. 
Going for a walk scratch

Thanks for reading.

Until next time,

Sarah