Google Certified Educator- Level One

 Super excited that I was able to achieve my Google Certified Educator, Level One. It's great as now I can join my Syndicate Team with the Certification. Thanks to Manaiakalani for supporting us with the DFI and also giving us the skills required to be able to sit this exam.

Google Certified Educator Exam and DFI Day 9

Today for me was all about sitting the Google Certified Educator Exam and hopefully joining my colleagues in the Year 7/8 team at my school with this achievement.

If you would like to know more about becoming a Google Certified Educator, check out this link here.

I must say that some of the parts on the exam I flew through and there were a couple of questions where I did have a wee bit of a panic. I marked them for review and then at the end was able to go back and complete them. I think it was more of a panic around running out of time that made me feel like I couldn't answer the question, opposed to not being able to answer it.

Being on the online DFI has been an amazing experience for me for a number of reasons:

* I was able to connect with a wider range of facilitators and gain useful learning and expertise from each of them

* I was able to connect with other teachers and see what they are doing in their classrooms and with their learners

* I have further developed my toolkit with useful tools, tips and smarter ways of doing things

* I have the rewindable learning material that was shared on the agenda's, that I can go back to at any stage and revise what was taught, and reflect and adapt my practice

Where to next?

For me I want to continue to share the things I have learnt with staff and students at my school and in my interactions with others. I want to look further into becoming a Hapara Champion Educator and to look at other opportunities where I can lead and develop as an educator and a person.

Thank you to Manaiakalani for the support you have provided over the course of the nine week DFI and a special thank you to Venessa who has been so amazing to work with. You have been supportive, knowledgeable and an empathetic ear and it has been fantastic. Thank you!

Code, Computational Thinking and Micro bits- DFI Day 8

Great day exploring and learning and grateful to be able to have this time to have a play and learn. So many applications for the classroom and for my code club back at school. Thanks Manaiakalani. 

Today was a great opportunity to be able to have a play around with Code. I was able to give a Minecraft code project a go through Hour of Code. What a fantastic and easy way to teach the students code. Great step by step instructions to guide you in bite sized steps. You are able to follow the steps and then problem solve to figure out where your code is taking you wrong.

Here is the link to my Mine craft Code project that I tried first in Hour to Code. I even got a nice wee personalised Certificate as evidence of my work.

I also had my first wee look at the Microbit. Very exciting that you can utilise Scratch and this site to help you to create your own projects. I am very excited by this and will definitely be looking into this further. Here is the microbit project that I created with the simple heads / tails coin flick.    

Children will see flashing images and some sounds, before they are needing to have made their heads or tails decision. Heads being the skull and tails being the umbrella. Have a play and see what you think. Push 'A' to make it start.

But for now it is time to revise and sign up to do the Google Exam..... wish me luck!

Taking my learning into the classroom

My class have been learning about Statistics for Maths, so I taught them how to use Google Sheets and how you can create graphs using this data. Prior to doing this activity with the children, only one child had ever used Google Sheets.

I replicated what I did in the Digital Fluency Intensive with my class and they have created some pleasing blog post analysis'. It was interesting getting them to think about the why. Why is it that you did lots of blog posts here, but didn't there? What is your average number of blog posts last year, compared to this year? What do you think your next steps are? Why?

As you can see they did a pretty good job. 

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.

Video Feedback on Blogpost- DFI Day 2

Create Task

Today's 'Create task' involved delving into a student's blog post and discussing what the teaching design was behind the post. We also needed to discuss what the learner's response was to the task and also to look at who commented on the blog post and how this contributed to the learning experience.

Here is my korero with Alicia Langton from Tamaki Primary School, about Lily's blog post (from Grey Main School.

Please jump on and comment on Lily's blog post as she has done a wonderful job! You can find her blog post

DFI Day 2

It is always fantastic revising the pedagogy of Learn, Create, Share and in particular 'Learn' today.

Today's DFI has cemented and highlighted a number of things for both me in my teaching and learning journey, but also for the students in my class. 

* Quality Teaching is at the core of everything!

* Learn is about 'accessing and engaging with existing knowledge'- so like today with our create task, we engaged with the knowledge we were given (how to use Google Meet to record, create calendar invites for Meet, Embedding our Videos onto our blog, etc),  to give feedback on a students blog post. All the while, reflecting on the effectiveness on blog posts and looking at how comments are an important part of the process. Comments enrich the learning and has scope for the learner to feel empowered and valued.

* We discussed the Higher Leverage Practices (HLP) and it sparked a thought regarding the children in my class and how I really do need to get them talking! (Talk moves here we come)

* Google Keep- is such an amazing tool at our finger tips! I do currently use this however it is underutilised. I have now shared our grocery list with my partner. I am going to use the grab text feature to be able to work with pieces of text. I can move notes from PD sessions and then copy it all to Google Docs. I can even make a voice memo to myself! The feature of setting reminders when you are in the vicinity (location setting) is also very valuable.

* I have learnt about organising my Gmail account and will go back to class and teach the children how to create folders in their Gmail so they can organise and keep their important emails.

* I can share documents from my drive in a Calendar invite, so no more sharing multiple emails to my Pedagogy Focus Group.

* Toby Mini is a fantastic extension and I have now created a collection that has all my students emails on it. I can imagine this being very handy for the EOY processes (sharing of blog links with next years teachers and then inviting them to their new student's blogs).

Here is the collection I created today with the links to my students blogs.

I think too, that it is really important to continually go back and revise this new learning, as I realised that there were a couple of things discussed today that I had forgotten about. A combination of old age and highlighting the need to have multiple opportunities to practice a new skill!

Once again a very thought provoking and empowering day. Loving the new skills and confidence that comes with being able to do things that you couldn't do previously. So for me, Learn was a definite winner on the day!

Digital Fluency Guru.......I think not!

Digital Fluency Intensive- Day One

In the beginning of our School Manaiakalani Journey, teachers would look to me for support and help to do things smarter, faster and more effectively (as I was one of the first teachers to have an in class Manaiakalani Facilitator working with me at my Kura). 

Everything prior to that point was learnt by 'Googling' what to do, or self taught. I was very blessed to work with Mark Maddren who taught me so much, however I definitely had the glaze over look (often) when I wasn't sure how to do something. Time was limited and the focus was mainly at the children's level. I was often going home to search 'the net' so that I could find out more.

Today's DFI session has confirmed to me the journey that we are on with Manaiakalani. How very lucky we are to be a part of Manaiakalani, especially with the support we receive as teaching professionals and also for our students, whanau and communities. 

The Manaiakalani kaupapa is successful because of the vision, the people, networking, research and resourcing. But not only this, it's effective classroom practice.

So what did I learn today that will support my confidence, capability and workflow as a professional?

Today I learnt many things that will help me in my work:

* I learnt how to make separate profiles rather than adding in many different Google accounts. I made the massive mistake of having a number of different personal and professional accounts open and then created blogs! Let's just say that it was a nightmare to sort it all out and I had to keep signing in and out of Google accounts trying to sort it out!

* I learnt about the benefits of having Google Groups and the differences between 'Groups' and 'Contacts'.

* I had time to organise my Google Drive and learnt tips on how to do this more effectively (changing folder colours, giving the folders numbers so they pop up to the top)

* Things that I need to teach the kids- folder permissions, naming your docs- initials and then the document name, no underlining in titles (ooops), making headings and table of contents, hyperlinking, using the explore tool, etc

* Using a Google Doc to create an info graphic (I didn't even think this was possible!)

Speaking of info graphics.....check out my creation here:

It's funny because we only know what we know, until our eyes are opened and until we are challenged and taught other ways of doing things. 

Thank you Manaiakalani for supporting me in my Professional Learning Journey and I'm sorry, for being one of those teachers who have been teaching things the wrong (least effective ways)!

I am feeling confident that I have learnt lots of new things and now is my job to retrain and rethink the ways that I do things and do things smarter!

Personally, I am just looking forward to being able to move between profiles and not having to log in and out again! 

I am very much looking forward to the DFI Day 2.