Today's first session wiped those fears and anxiety away. The 8 am - 3 pm day programme was not daunting at all. The day was very enjoyable and I felt very empowered. Considering this is the first day, I am so eager to see what else the DFI team have to offer me for my teaching, practical and personal life.
Dorothy, retold the story of how Manaiakalani came about and I felt a sense of gratitude for these principals who met in Novemer 2006 and decided to do something for this area of Decile 1 learners. I have been in the Manaiakalani cluster since I started my teaching career 11 years ago. I know and have met a lot of the names which were mentioned today which adds to my gratitude for being in this digital learning whanau. From the story of how Manaiakalani came about, one word strongly comes to mind, EMPOWERING. The Manaiakalani pedagogy empowers not only the students but also the teachers and our community.
I can see myself using Google Groups at school for our school sports teams, clubs, cultural groups and my class leaders. It will save me a lot of time in corresponding with the students. I tried to find voice typing when I was writing my reports earlier year but couldn't. Now that I have learnt how to access voice typing, I know my report writing will be much more manageable and enjoyable. I can also envision many of my students using voice typing for their learning activities. I am so eager to put the use of voice typing into action in my practice.
The session which I really found fascinating today was the Google Docs session. I have used Google Docs for a long time and have just learnt about some features today. For example the table of contents and using the different headings. I will implement the use of these features with my students when they are writing information reports and explanations. I will also use the Explore tool more in my teaching as I found it was very useful and practical to use today.
For our create activity today, we had to create a tool using Google Docs. I created a resource which my students can use next week in our Inquiry learning. First I changed the page layout to landscape and the page colour. I then created a table with three columns and three rows. I then merged the first row for the title. I also hid some of the lines for the table by changing the line colour to the page colour. I changed the remaining table lines to white. To insert the Youtube clip into my doc, I took a screenshot of the clip and pasted it to my document. I then linked the Youtube link for the clip to the image. I did an image search for an Iphone and a Chromebook then took away the background using Remove.bg. The rest of the resource, I just added more images and text. Mark our group leader suggested I put all the images into one row of the table which was a good tip for visual presentation.
Kia ora Amy,
ReplyDeleteThank you very much Aimee for what you added to our group today. Your knowledge and experience of Manaiakalani over the time you’ve been with them is going be valuable for the rest of our group.
I am not sure about you, however I find hearing the history of Manaiakalani and realising what we are actually involved in is adding amazing value to education in New Zealand. This I find personally very empowering.
The DFI is certainly great for giving educators a chance to stop and dive deeper into tools that they may have used in classrooms at a surface level. With just a few tweaks to our practice and a bit more knowledge about the tool we can take our teaching from substitution into redefinition.
Looking forward to nexts weeks DFI and our wee bubble.
Nga mihi,
Mark
Talofa Mark, thank you for the comment. Yes I agree with you about the value of us being involved and adding value to education in NZ. I found a lot of value in our small group. Great to be able to collaborate and have you there to help us through the activities. Was just thinking about your tip regarding the exam too :). Have a great week.
DeleteAmy