Getting Intense with Google

We kicked off out Term 3 Digital Fluency Intensive (DFI) today. We have more than 50 participants online with 10 coaches for support in small digital bubbles.

The course is definitely intensive and so much learning happens over the nine sessions. It is always great to start with a new cohort and to see where people are at and then where they get to over the DFI.

I'm excited to be working with Principals and Deputy Principals in a bubble for this DFI. We have started with the Core Business; some foundational learning to get us started. As school leaders there is the added layer of leading the learning as well as learning the content.

We use the Learn, Create, Share pedagogy throughout the DFI. We are using the same tools as the learners so the big people are blogging.

Blogs for my digital bubble:

Reflections on the Magic

Here in New Zealand we have come through lockdown and we are now out the other side. Hopefully wiser and better for the experience.

Below are some reflections of my experiences and what I observed as I worked with teachers, leaders and learners in Tairāwhiti Cluster, a part of The Manaiakalani Programme Outreach.

Shifts in Practice

As a team we meet weekly and we have the practice of focussing on a school each week that one or more of us are working in to see what is happening and how shifts in teacher practice are occurring. 

Our discussion in these meetings will bring in a range of pedagogy and ways to scaffold the learning for all learners. As we meet we give feedback to one another about both what and how we are modelling in classes for the hour we are there each week. We look at the evidence on class sites and individual learner blogs and we notice what shifts are happening in changed pedagogy when we are not in the class as this is what shows there has been real change. 

Sometimes the success stories from other schools challenge my beliefs about what could work in another setting. These discussions challenge me to learn further about a particular innovation or pedagogy. It might be something small in terms of an attitude shift on my part or it might be looking at the learning another way entirely. 

 One of the shifts I have made in one class is to using 'Create to learn' as a way to engage learners. Although I was fully aware of Create to Learn as a powerful approach I have to admit I tended to stick with Learn, Create, Share as a linear progression and seemed to work through this process with little variance. However in one class the Learn, then create then share was not working. Learners were not engaged and we were stuck on the Learn. This was brought home as part of our discussions as a team, particularly as I saw what another facilitator was doing and the learner outcomes. 

After discussion with the teacher whose class I was working in, I changed my approach and started with Create. Here is my example of Create to Learn on the class site.

 I had learners who had been unwilling to work and who had resisted engaging with the learning now coming to me asking, "What do I have to include in the creation to show the learning?" - a complete switch. When I scanned what learners were doing, they were all on task and were engaging with the content.

This was a reminder that I can get stuck in a teaching practice and need to keep challenging myself to change and that professional discussion is a great way to encourage this reflection and change.

DFI Online on a Thursday

It has been an encouraging experience to start a new Digital Fluency Intensive (DFI) cohort via google Meet. Teachers from across the country who are all part of the Manaiakalani whānau and are willing to jump into this intensive experience of learning and do it all online! 

We have 9 full days over 9 weeks. We have four main goals and we go for it.

Impressive that teachers are willing to take up the challenge. 34 teachers have stepped up. A range of support is needed but all are doing it.

In our Digital Bubbles - our small group - I have five keen educators and one more to join us in two weeks as she had started DFI before the lockdown.  It is an opportunity to get to know one another as learners and professionals - all while we are in a google Meet. We are comparing beaches and lockdown experiences. People are being brave and asking for help in front of others. It is exposing, it is challenging... we are doing it anyway.

Teachers as learners, you rock!

My Digital Bubble will be blogging about their DFI journey. You can follow their blog posts each week and make a comment.

Create

I decided to do the Create part of the day alongside the DFI participants.
It reminds me that while the task is simple and can be done relatively quickly, once I have the skills,  I also know I can spend a LOT of time getting the layout, colours just right, fonts, sizing...
I used the colours from the 30 Day Fit Challenge icon as a basis for my colour palette. I also added these colours to the Canva Colour wheel using my  Color picker eyedropper extension to get a palette of colours.

Yeah, perhaps I did go in deep but once I start, I find it hard to stop.

I did stop at choosing youtube clips based on colours - I do have limits!

Ghangouts

Google Hangouts

Challenging time recording in a Hangout.
Seem to be so many things to remember, including not having my headphones on when recording!

Great to see everyone having a purposeful reason to use Hangouts/Meet and the discussions were worthwhile.

One post we looked at was Ben's Summer Learning Journey blog post.

SLJ Summer

Commenters on the blog post were asking questions and one suggested that Ben could write more on his post. These supported his learning.

Day 2 of DFI 

People are already looking and sounding more digitally fluent! Great learning and great vibe.

The FOCUS when creating blog posts was magnificent.

Ka rawe tō koutou mahi.

Learning about our Core Business

It was exciting to welcome the new Cohort to Digital Fluency Intensive for 2020.
Great to see so much enthusiasm and willingness to give things a go.

Our focus was on the Core Business so we looked at Drive, Bookmarks, Google groups and Docs.
All good things to enable digital fluency and make things more efficient. We also looked at the origins of Manaiakalani.

Dorothy taught people to do things in a doc that we might never have thought of doing.

• Creating in a table
• Adding pictures using the Explore Tool - drag in and the attribution comes with it.
• Using remove.bg to remove the background of an image. 

In the doc below I have included the image found using the explore tool and the same image with the background removed as a comparison.