Session 9 - Digital Fluency Intensive "Revision"

 Oh my, what an experience sitting the Google exam was this morning!!  It was not the content that seemed to be the issue, which was pleasing to note, but rather the admin at the start and the end of the exam that caused me a headache.  Firstly I had trouble getting my camera and microphone to work and then at the end when I submitted the exam I was not able to reload the page to get to the survey they wanted us to complete at the end.  Hopefully my exam results are saved in there somewhere?

I did not find the actual tasks in the exam too bad.  All of the scenarios really just required following my nose to do what they were asking me to do.  The only thing I was unsure of was the questions around Youtube as I did this in my own account, the other people around me who signed in under Proctor U got kicked out and were unable to complete that part of the exam.

Looking back over the past nine weeks I have learned so much and now feel much more confident in using Google both professionally and personally.  

One of my regrets while completing the course is that I am no longer working with a class all of the time.  In fact none of the time really as I spend my time with individual students or small groups of children.  The ideas and the activities shared made me want to have a class again so that I could try out some of them.  This does motivate me to think outside of the box to how I can best use the new skills I have acquired on a whole school level or with our school community.

One idea I have had is to start a site which has solely activities and information around decodeable texts which can be shared with all of our teachers to use with groups of learners.  I am also thinking of having links on my site especially for the children that I am working with to work through when I can't be with them during the school day.  My aim would be to not only help the learners but to lessen the workload for the teachers in my school.

I am proud of the new learning that I have acquired and that I did not find the content in the exam too challenging.  This gives me confidence that I will be able to give other things a go in the future and understand what  am doing.  This confidence is something that I can take forward with me into the future along with making sure that I am making use of my skill as much as possible.  If we do happen to have to learn online again I will feel much better prepared to teach the children that I work with on an online environment.

Session 8 - Digital Fluency Intensive "Computational Thinking"

 As with other weeks, week 8 was full of information and I have come away from the day feeling slightly overwhelmed.  This is not helped by the ever-looming Google Educator's exam that we are sitting next week.  I have set aside some time in my calendar this coming week to go over the information we have learned and to run through some of the practice exercises to make sure that I am as ready as I can be.

I found Dorothy's talk in 'Connecting with Manaiakalani" very thought provoking this week.  As I work in a lower decile school I could definitely relate what she was talking about to many of the children and families that I work with on a daily basis.  Working in learning support it is becoming more and more apparent that children are not entering school with the skills that we assume they will have or that children had in the past.  The statistic that children from lower economic backgrounds are hearing fewer words than other children definitely confirms what we are seeing at our school.  I have been looking at oral language programmes to use with some of our children.  I have decided on using the CAOS programme and a team of our teachers are going to be teaming up with an SLT and special needs advisors from the MoE to look at making oral language and social skills the main teaching programme for some of our children.  Being able to integrate technology to this programme will be a key way that we can get engagement from these children.  

Looking at the new technologies curriculum was reassuring for me.  When I looked through at the website Computer Science without a computer it showed me what this was all about without having to worry about the technical jargon.  Some of it is skills that teachers would have been teaching children anyway without technology, eg. coordinates and plotting on graphs,  so is not entirely new. It was good to have the time to go through and have a look at what children have to learn and achieve at each level and it was clear how each level build on the one before it.

The ethics and moral questions that occur with the advancement of technology is something that I often try not to think about.  For me, it is a scary thing to think that one day computers could take the place of people in many areas.  The Moral Machine activity was interesting and I did struggle to answer some of the questions.  My results showed that I tended to favour fat people......... maybe because I can empathise!!!

I have had experience with simple coding before at school.  I have run a coding club with groups of children before but found that very quickly the children's ability was far superior to mine and meant that I had to leave them to it.  At school, Minecraft and coding with Beebots and Spheros are really popular and we are lucky to have access to the equipment to enable the children to do this.  

I spent my create time today completing a simple Scratch conversation between two characters.  It is very simple and feel I need more time to have an explore of exactly what is available in the programme.  As with anything if I am not using it regularly I lose my knowledge and skill quickly so will have to ensure that I come up with ways that I can include coding into the work that I do with the children in my groups.

Session Seven - Digital Fluency Intensive "Devices"

 Today was a rather frustrating day due to having many technical difficulties during the day.  It started with being kicked out of all of the Meets which meant that I did not get to hear all of the morning's information.  As we were working on Chromebooks and iPad I also had to familiarise myself with how they worked and what the passwords were for each device.  However, I managed to get to the end of the day and I am still standing!!  It was a very busy day where I did learn many new things.

We started the day looking at the meaning of 'Cybersmart' and how Manaiakalani has incorporated this theme across all of the work that they are doing with children around New Zealand.  It is so important for us to be teaching children about their digital footprints and to really think about what information is appropriate for them to share.  For most teachers, this will also be a new concept as we did not have these worries when we were children or teenagers and it is important to keep this at the forefront of everyone's minds.  Having a clear plan around cyber safety is really important to share with parents as, like teachers, they will not have been exposed to being online as kids.  This is something that scares a lot of people and can make a parent anxious about their child publishing online.  Getting the children to realise that every time that they present something online it is personal and to empower parents and families by making them feel included were key messages I took from Fiona's presentation.

Today I spent some time having a play with Explain Everything and Screencastify.  I have had a try with both of these tools in the past when I was a classroom teacher.  I used Explain Everything a lot for my children to explain how they could solve particular maths equations to prove they were using a particular strategy.  I would get them to write the equation and their strategy on the whiteboard as well as recording them explaining what they have completed.  

I did get some further ideas by looking at some of the shared children's blogs that we were able to access.  This has given me some ideas of things that I can do with my literacy learners and also when I am releasing other teachers.  With my junior learners, I will be able to use Explain Everything to either explain something to them or I could get them to show me that they have attained the knowledge and/or skills that we have been working on.

I find Screencastify a bit more tricky in that it seems that you have to be ready to record all in one go.  This can get difficult if you are a perfectionist, like me, as it means that I spend a lot of time ensuring that I get the perfect take.  I do like being able to use tools such as the pointer and the pencil though.

One thing I have been struggling with during the DFI sessions is that it takes me quite a while to see what the purpose is of some of the things that we are being shown.  As I don't have a class of students and a class website that I can directly relate back to I sometimes feel that I am missing out.  This is motivating me to get a learning site up and running for my special needs learners.  I also know that if I am not using the information that I have learned about then I will not know how to do it in the future.