What's in a Site? DFI- Day 6

The greatest learning I think that we can have as educators, is to learn from one another. Whether that be by looking at something someone has created, watching a video (tutorial), talking in person, or reading instructions. The list can go on.....

Today was really beneficial to me as I was able to look at a range of different Learning Sites to see what was visually appealing and also to see what works functionally.

After looking at our Collaborative Site, it was clear to me that I would need to work on a few things:

1) I needed to make all of my content visible. There were a few things that others were not able to see as I hadn't set those visibility settings right back at the Google Drive level.

2) I learnt that you could put a twitter feed up on your site, so have done this so that the children will be able to see things that are happening in the Te Ara Tuhura Cluster (in live time).

3) I set up Google Analytics, so now I need to go and look at how I can put this onto my Site / Blog as well.

4) I wanted to create some buttons for our Site to make it a little more appealing to the students as well.

How blessed are we to have this time to have a look at these things and to be able to put some things into action!

Here is our Collaborative Site- check it out here. Please feel free to comment with other suggestions that we could do to make our Site even better!

DFI Day 6

Some of my key learning's / take away's from today are:

* To make a connection, we need both parties to share- communication is the key. If there is no backwards and forwards then how can we make a connection?

* I learnt that Google Plus has become 'Currents'

* I picked up on a few tools that I want to look into a little further (after looking at other's learning sites)- Visuwords, creating a Padlet with learning activities on it, Slidesmania, Spell Zone

* I want to look further into Hapara Workspace's and look at some of the resources that my bubble group facilitator Venessa shared with me

* I want to add a photo album to our Collaborative Site, as well as a Whanau Page

* I learnt more about dealing with SPAM on Blogger

* I want to look more into Student Dashboard

It has been another great day full of idea sharing, collaboration and reflection.

Collaborate with Sites- DFI Day 5

It is always interesting being in the 'student chair' and experiencing what our learners experience in our classrooms. The task alone of finding resources and texts that we could use on our Multi-Modal Site, led me on a warren of discovery. I found myself getting distracted and going off on a number of different tangents. I found myself being pulled in a number of different directions and couldn't decide where I wanted to go with my Site.

This highlighted for me the planning part that is so very important, when designing learning tasks for our students. Having a broad topic such as 'Lest We Forget' was great, but I needed to narrow down where I wanted to go and what reading skills I specifically wanted to teach through this unit of work.

But as we know there is more than one path to get to the destination and the learning that took place along the way was beneficial.

So here is my Multi-Modal Site that I created. I definitely need to go back and adapt/ add to this, but for the purpose of being able to create a site easily and for having a go at finding texts that appeal and engage both behaviorally and cognitively, I think I am on track.

The texts selected have all the elements of having a main text, scaffolding text, complementary text and of course a challenging text. In relation to UDL, there needs to be more work put into this site, but this is a start.

DFI Day 5 was full of learning again and some of the things that I will take away from today are:

* I need to have a go at the DFI Google Sites Challenge, so that I am prepared for the Google Exam.

* When creating a Learning Site, it's important to limit the links.

* Hapara has a Parent Portal! Wow, I need to look into this more as I feel this would be a game changer for some of our families.

* I learnt that in Teacher Dashboard, under the 'sharing' tab, that if there is work in this folder, then the children have not put this work into a Google Drive Folder. This is something I need to chase up on Monday!

* I was able to look at buttons and how I can use Google Drawing to create interesting buttons on my Site.

 I am feeling so blessed at the moment to be able to be part of the DFI and to be learning alongside others who too, are wanting to provide the very best learning opportunities for their students. But for now, my head hurts from thinking, so I must sign off.

I would love to see any other Multi Modal Reading Sites that others have created. Please feel free to share below in the comment section. 

Nga mihi nui, Amber

Blog Post Frequency Analysis- DFI Day 4

 

 

Firstly, I would like to acknowledge Mele from Panmure Bridge School in Auckland, for her inspiring post on analysing your blog post data. You can find a link to her original post here. 

As you can see from my data, I have a lot less data to share when it comes to blog posts. This has really highlighted for me that I need to continue to build my blogging frequency.

DFI Day 4- Dealing with Data

So today's DFI session didn't go quite as planned. I take a glance up, as I was about to learn more about Google My Maps (something I have never previously encountered) and my poor wee kitten is frothing at the mouth! This is my very first cat that I have owned, so must admit, I did freak out quite a lot. I headed straight to the vet and one injection later, he seems to be a lot more settled. Thanks to rewindable learning, I will be able to catch up on that learning later in the week!

There are a number of takeaways for me from today:

* I have learnt more about Google Forms and feel like I have a greater handle on using them. It was fun to see that you can specify what information you want to collect and in what format (Google Drawing, Image, Audio, etc). I liked too that you can import questions from previous forms into the form you are currently making. A cool thing too is that you can shuffle the question order for students so that those with shifty eyes can't copy off others.

* Google Sheets- well I must admit that when you say "Google Sheets", my heart tends to race and I need to sit down! I have learnt a lot about sheets and smarter ways to create and utilise information within them. I learnt about conditional formatting and filters and can really see how useful these features will be when collecting and analysing data. Must I say it..... but it can even be fun! The cool thing is that you can also use the 'explore tool' to search up anything you are unsure of doing.

* I learnt how to create a 'sparkline' in Google Sheets and am going to taker this new learning back to my school to show the teachers and children.

* I also learnt how to insert a link into my blog comment. Another fantastic thing to show teachers and students back at school. Just insert this link here into your blog comment: 

<a href="insert URL here">Insert display text here</a>

Then copy the URL of the link into the space where it tells you to!

So I am very much looking forward to consolidating some of my learning and trying out some of these new tools. As always, a real pleasure to be a part of the Manaiakalani DFI.

My Town....Maths for Real! (DFI Day 3)

What I love about the DFI is that I get to create new things and learn new skills (personally), but can also can envisage how these new skills and tools can be used in the classroom to support my learners.

I have always found that Maths is the one area that I stumble on when it comes to designing learning tasks. So I was very grateful to attend Latham's Workshop Bubble, focusing on Using Google Slides to support Maths. 

Here is a simple but very effective task focusing on Geometry and creating your own town. 

The task meant that the student learnt more about using slides to create, but also consolidates what they know about Mathematical terms such as perpendicular, equilateral, etc. It definitely has the elements of problem solving too!

Engaging? Yes indeed. I could quite easily go back and continue to add to this and most possibly will!

So what were my main takeaways from today?

* Hapara- you can physically drag the priority students to the top of your group so that you can see them instantly!

* You Tube- I learnt how to set up my own You Tube Channel and make sure the settings were appropriate. I learnt that you can embed entire playlists too.

* SISOMO- Sight, Sound and Motion- I need to reflect on some of the tasks that I am setting for my students and check that they include these elements.

* Google Draw- I didn't realise that you could simply drag the Google Draw Canvas to make it bigger or smaller. I also want to try using the crop tool to crop an image into a certain shape.

I enjoyed using Google Draw to create my own personalised 'All About Me', to put alongside my blog in the Gadget Area. You will see it to the top right of my blog. 

So, in summary: 

We can create to learn, create to share, learn to create, learn to share.....

It is not a linear process at all and we can jump in and out of each of the LEARN, CREATE, SHARE stages throughout the whole learning process.

A fantastic day once again and very much looking forward to Day 4.