Session One : Digital Fluency Intensive "Core Business"

Today was a very beneficial day full of lots of new information and tips and tricks that I did not know about previously.  I am proficient already using the technologies that I need to use in my job as SENCO but today I found out things that will help me to do my job more effectively that I had not even thought about.  It was a very eye-opening session today.

We started the day learning about how Manaiakalani came into being and the steps taken to get where we are today.  It was interesting to hear about how children engaged with the technology merely as a tool for their learning and how even with minimal technology available the children engaged with it and the increased their achievement.

New learning for me was around the use of Google Groups and how these can be used to streamline emailing and sharing of documents.  Previously I had been using groups within my email contacts but can see the benefit of being able to share a group with others so that they also can respond to the whole group.  I have already been in contact with my principal, (who is also on DFI) to discuss the possibilities for this.  I think using this feature will make many of my admin jobs easier.

Despite using Google Docs on a daily basis I learned a lot from the session.  Making the poster using a table was an idea I had not used before and was really impressed with how easy it made to the finished layout. (See below for my poster).

I can see myself using Google docs when I am teaching to present the work to the children in different ways.  One of the demonstration slides showed an example of where a teacher had included a variety of different activities for the children to choose from and attached hyperlinks for the children to click on for more information.  This is something that I can see myself doing when working with groups of children. 

Voice typing is an essential tool for many children with special needs and while we had a brief look at this today I will need to spend some more time trialing it with some of the students that I work with as another platform to enable them to get their ideas across.

A really busy and informative day, my head is buzzing and I am looking forward to trialling some new learning next week at school.