Coaching as part of the DFI team

 It was only last year that I got the opportunity to be a participant of the DFI programme. I thoroughly enjoyed reinforcing what I had learnt throughout the years I have been in the Manaiakalani cluster but most of all reflecting and being grateful for where I am in my career because of the many professional development opportunities and being part of a great vision for the tamariki in our area.

Back track a little bit, I became a teacher because I wanted to empower our Maori and Pasifika students in education. I have always been passionate about education in my family, church and wanted to spread this passion to my community. When I graduated, I first applied to be a teacher in Mangere. Although I had a good chance of getting the vacancy, I made a decision not to go through with the application process but instead applied for a job in Panmure. Little did I know then, it was the start of a career of empowering myself, meeting highly professional and passionate educators and also being a part of a team who have a vision to empower tamariki in their learning. To learn locally and think globally. 

Through Manaiakalani, I have been an MDTA mentor teacher working with a beginning teacher at the time who is also very passionate about education and a very effective teacher. I have been a CoL within school leader and now a CoL across school leader. 

This year, for the past two terms, I have been coaching in the DFI team and also working with teachers in my school on my second day of release. For me, it is a wonderful feeling to share what I know and learn with other teachers about teaching in this digital age. We have so many tools available to us but how we utilise these tools to be effective and safe for our tamariki is a very vital part of our learning. 

I don't need to remind teachers about last year when we had to go into our first four week lockdown. Some teachers shared their frustrations and anxieties on social media because they did not have the tools to connect with their students during this time. It was not the case for Manaiakalani schools. We were set up ready to go on the first day of the lockdown. 

Through the DFI journey, I worked with many teachers who are dedicated to implement and utilise digital learning in their classrooms. They are all at different levels of their learning journey but the willingness to learn was there. It is always great to see when teachers are keen to learn and implement what they learn in their practice because I know that is how we are empowering our learners in this digital age. 

I strongly advocate for teachers to do the DFI course. It will be an empowering experience which will enable teachers to be more effective in their teaching practice. 

A great opportunity arises early 2021

This year I am working as a CoL Across School teacher. It is a role I have aspired to have for a long time. I applied for the role in 2020 and was appointed at the end of 2020. 

One of my first responsibilities is to be a facilitator for the DFI (Digital Fluency Intensive) Course for the first cohort this year. To be a facilitator is an exciting opportunity. I have to admit, I was a bit anxious at first when I found out I will be a facilitator but I surely was ready for the challenge. 

Today was our first session. I lead a bubble of six wonderful educators all up skilling in how to use digital technologies in their practice. Although, I did the course last year myself, I find I am also learning and reinforcing a lot of skills during the course this time round. 

I am very proud to be a Manaiakalani teacher. I have been in the Manaiakalani cluster since I started my teaching career and can not imagine teaching outside Manaiakalani. Being a facilitator in the DFI Course is highlighting a lot of the reasons why I have enjoyed teaching in Manaiakalani schools. 

Sharing my knowledge, skills and experiences with my bubble is very rewarding. I also learn a lot from my bubble members. We have a great team where we collaborate and help each other out during the day.

I am excited for next seven weeks of the course. I also forgot to mention that I am working with a great team of leaders and facilitators who I am learning so much from. 

The end of a wonderful DFI journey

It has been a wonderful, full on term with DFI learning every Tuesday. I have learnt so much during the DFI days. 

My confidence in using digital tools in my practice has increased and my appreciation for digital tools and how we can use these to empower our learners is stronger than ever. 

The exam was a good challenge. It was also fun to put what I had learnt to action and also challenge myself to problem solve. I was very happy today when I received the results from the exam. What a great way to finish off the term.

I am very grateful to Dorothy and the DFI team for their support and awhi during the DFI journey. Special thank you

to our bubble leader Mark for his help and support too.

Where to now? Is there a DFI for level two? To anyone considering going through the DFI journey, I strongly suggest you do. It is an empowering opportunity for you as an educator. 

Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Day 7 - Devices

Another full on day of learning today. I am enjoying the opportunities to learn then create a DLO to share my learning.

The focus for today were devices. I had the chance to the a Chromebook and experience what it is like for my students to work on a Chromebook. Learnt some shortcuts which I did not know before. Below are the slides I worked through to familiarise myself in working on a Chromebook.

We also had to work with using ipads today. Devices which the junior school students use for their learning but it was good to use Explain Everything again. I have not used Explain Everything for a while and I can see the many learning opportunities the students can gain from using ipads. 

For my last create activity today, I chose to use screencastify to create a movie about one of the Cybersmart areas. I chose to focus on Smart Footprint.  I used the information on from the Cybersmart Site and created my DLO using google slides. After creating the google slides, I used screencastify to talk about the content of the Smart Footprint lesson. 

Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Day 6 - Enabling Access to Sites

I have to say today, I did the most practical work I have ever done since starting DFI. It was great to look at other sites to get ideas from. When we had to share our sites in our small bubbles I was shocked to learn some of the pages were not linked properly to the buttons. A little help from our facilitator Mark fixed this. 

The rest of the day I worked intensely on making my site more appealing and user friendly for my students. The buttons on the site were horrible with the background still visible. I changed this by making new buttons using Google Draw and ensuring the buttons were downloaded as PNGs. Below are the before and after screenshots. 

Before

After

I also changed the buttons and added dividers for the subject pages on my site. Before, I had all the buttons for the terms on the page. Now I have added new buttons and separated the other terms using a divider. I also did this for Writing and Maths. 

Reading page with new buttons and other terms separated

There are many more changes I want to make to my class site but for now I am very proud of how my class site looks now. 

"You can't CONNECT if you won't share" (Dorothy. Burt). 

I have gained so much from the sharing of other teachers and facilitators in Manaiakalani and other clusters. The above quote from Dorothy really emphasises the importance of connecting through sharing of our ideas and work as teachers. 

This brings me to my next point of discussion. VISIBILITY. It is important to ensure what we put online is visible for our students, whanau and colleagues. This a lesson I learn't today and probably will never forget. Viewing Incognito is helpful to view what others can see when visiting our sites.

I am quite proud of the work I was able to do on my class site today. I am glad we were given the opportunity to share our site with others in our small bubbles and receive their feedback. I learnt a lot from viewing the blogs and listening to our small bubbly members share their sites. We are all at different stages in our teaching and also teaching different year levels but we were able to take ideas from each other.  

Below are some tips for creating successful sites. 

Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Day 5 - Sites

Another great day with our Manaiakalani Digital Fluency group today. I was reminded of how important is it for our sites to be visible not only to our students but for our wahanau, colleagues and anyone else who would like to look at what we are learning in our classrooms. 

Kelly mentioned that the sites have to  be culturally responsive. I don't think my class site is very culturally responsive at the moment and that is now a goal for me to work on. I have to ensure my site represents my learners and the environment of our learning space.

We spent quite some time looking at Multi Modal texts today. The wide and deep reading approach as suggested by the Woolf Fisher Research Centre is one where we can really utilise digital technologies. The digital affordances are great but there is still the very important need for the teacher to ensure the students are engaged in using and understanding the resources. 

Our create activity today was on creating a site using resources our group collected. My group used a resource from the Connected series. The main text is called On the Move. We used Jamboard to collaborate in collecting our resources. When we finished collecting our resources, each of us had to make a visible, eye catching and multi modal site. 

Here is the site I created today for On the Move. My next site I will create is for our Mana Whenua unit at school. 

On the Move Google Site

Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Day 4 - Data

As Dorothy said today, 'sharing has been happening since time began'. I totally agree. Thinking about the Manaiakalani pedagogy of Learn, Create, Share, why create if we do not have the opportunity to share? We create so we are able to share what we have learnt or experienced. For myself, I post a lot on my social media because I want to share with my friends and family what is happening in my life. I share on my professional blog to show others what I am experiencing in my teaching practice. Therefore, I totally tautoko that importance of Tohatoha. 

Another important learning I gained from the Tohatoha deep dive is sharing as we learn and not sharing when we are finished. I will be putting more focus on this in my classroom practice. Students need to understand that sharing is in the process of learning. 

I use Hapara to manage student work, devices, log ins, activities but it was interesting to learn about other features I did not know about. One of the features was creating groups in Hapara. I am creating a group in Hapara for my target group with my Teaching as Inquiry. 

I have some confidence in using Google Forms. I use Google forms for surveys and also for quizzes. My students enjoy completing quizzes because it gives them their marks at the end of the test. I once created a quiz last year where I did not tick ONE RESPONSE ONLY. The result was me going through multiple entries from some students who wanted to get 100% for the test. Validity of data gone out the window! Learnt my lesson from that mistake. 

For our create activity in Google Forms today, I created a short quiz to refresh my students' memories about our class novel. We started the novel then stopped during Lockdown. 

Here is my Google Form:

The Google Sheets session was really helpful today. I totally agree that looking at data tells a story especially after my profiling mission last week with my target group with their writing results see blog Profiling by digging deeper blog post 

In completing my profiling last week, the content I learnt today about Google Sheets would have made my task so much more easier. I did not know about Conditional Formatting. That would have cut the time I spent formatting my sheets to a fraction. 

Our create task today was to analyse blog posts in student blogs. I first analysed one student from my class. I learnt last year, she did not make as many blog posts as she had the year before. This year, she has made more than double the amount of blog posts from last year by the middle of this year.

After working on Dwayne's blog, I decided it would be good for me to analyse how many blog posts all my students have made this year so far. First I gathered the data by finding out how many blog posts have been made in 2020. I then entered these data on a Google Sheet. I sorted the data from least number of blog posts to the most blog posts made. After that, I created a chart. Very easy to identify the students who have been doing a lot of blogging and the students I need to work with to give them more confidence and support with their blogging.

Here is the analysis for my whole class in a chart.

Great learning today and I am finishing off the day with a challenge to ensure the next time I analyse my class' blog posting, the chart will look much different to the one above. 

Putting my DFI learning into practise

Yesterday the Create part of our DFI course was so motivating for me. To think of the many fun and exciting activities my class and I will work through is just wonderful.

Post lockdown, I want to capture the students' feelings as they come back to school. I wanted to them reflect on how lockdown was for them and share their experiences. 

I created a Google Drawing with prompt questions for them to answer. I deliberately made the Google Drawing A4 because I did not want too much room for writing. I wanted the students to explain their responses in detail using screencastify.

Richie and Dwyane were the first to finish their screencastify. I am very proud of my students for their Learn, Create and Share work.

Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Day 3 - Media (Post 2/2)

The Youtube session was quite interesting. I use Youtube on a daily basis and my Youtube channel consists of family movies I put together for family events. I have always been cautious of listing the materials I upload on Youtube as unlisted. That was a great reminder today about our settings and setting the sharing settings to unlisted. I really value the reinforcement Dorothy reminded us about regarding the danger of Youtube for our students. Cybersmart is so vital especially with Youtube. 

It was wonderful to explore so many other ways we can use Google Drawings. My students, especially the boys enjoy using Google Drawings to create digital art. We have to have a digital art exhibition soon to showcase their awesome artwork. Below is my About Me, Google Drawing using Vicki's template. 

Google slides is an application I use more than any other Google app. I have confidence in using Google Slides for presentations and for teaching materials but like always my world was expanded beyond my imagination today. I especially enjoyed creating my Pick a Path Quiz today with Venessa. I have always wanted to learn how to create a Pick a Path story or quiz and now I have. I am really keen for my students to do the same. 

Today for my create activity, I created this homophone quiz. There are many little steps in making a pick a path quiz or story and I plan to make many more to be more confident and efficient in making these fun activities. 

Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Day 3 - Media (Post 1/2)

The presentation by Dorothy about the CREATE aspect of the Manaiakalani pedagogy was a very empowering session for me. As Dorothy was presenting, my mind was off in so many paths thinking about what I have been doing in my practice and how I can dive into more meaningful creativity activities with my students. 

The above quote is taken from a Pt England School poster. My interpretation of this statement is: our students are active participants in their learning to learn, challenge and create using the content they learn. Our students are not passive participants in their own learning. Like a waka, they are in the waka rowing with us. 

The above quote from Dr Jessen is very valuable. I have been thinking a lot about the Manaiakalani pedagogy of Learn, Create, Share and how I can better implement this pedagogy in my practice. I have also been planning my CoL inquiry in Writing around CREATING as it is the HOOK which hooks the learners. 

I will discuss my CoL inquiry around creating in Writing in a another blog post coming soon. Watch this space. 

Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Day 2 - Workflow

Today, our first session was about connecting with the Manaiakalani Pedagogy of Learn, Create, Share. 

The photo above taken from Kerry's slides today talks about the Manaiakalani programme being evidence based and highlights the use of and move from the analogue world to the digital world. It also highlights the importance of teacher effectiveness in accelerating learning outcomes. 

Throughout Kerry's presentation we were reminded of how important the teacher is and teacher actions are to the digital learning world and in accelerating the learning of our students. 

'Teacher actions are vital in engaging students in positive learning experiences'

The acronym RATE was also discussed which encompasses how teachers can be effective in their practice in the digital world of our learners. 

The four recommendations from WFRC are very valuable in my teaching practice. I am glad it was discussed in Kerry's session today. I have implement these recommendations in my practice to a certain degree but I know I can do more to be more effective in my practice. 

Last year as a CoL teacher, my inquiry was in Reading. Authentic texts to me is more than about students reading about topics of interest to them. It is about enabling students to have access to texts which challenges their current knowledge and enables them to read beyond what they know and how they read. The texts can be multimodal. As Aaron has shared wide and deep focus. A wide variety of reading texts with a narrow focus by zoning in to texts through discussions. 

The value of discussions are so crucial to how students learn. However, I feel there is a lot of work to be done in building an environment of inclusiveness where children feel their opinions are safe to be voiced and are valued. 

Again, I absolutely value the recommendations from WFRC and the data they provide for our cluster. 

Here are my learnings about the Google Apps we learnt about today:

Our last session today was about Taming our Tabs

I learnt today that you can delete the text when you are saving a tab to your Bookmarks and it leaves the icon to show on your Bookmarks bar. Great for saving space. I downloaded the One Tab extension and it is great. So much better to have a tidy work station/screen. I have yet to explore the other extensions Gerhard was presenting to us. 

For our create activity today, we had to create an invitation to a buddy from our discussion bubbles. My buddy was Elizabeth from Rawhiti school. We also had to choose a blog post from a selection of blog posts to share with our buddy during our Google Meet. I chose to share a blog post from Benjamin H at St Mary's in Gisborne. 

Here is a recording from my Google Meet with Elizabeth

In conclusion, it was another empowering day with the DFI team. Looking forward to our next session. For now, it is the putting what I have learnt in action.

Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Intensive Day 1 - Core Business

Digital Fluency INTENSIVE. The world intensive often makes me feel uneasy because it brings about a sense of urgency and a need to be competent to work at a certain speed to keep up. When I first signed up for DFI, I was very excited because I have wanted to do this course for a long time. However, when Dorothy starting sending through the correspondence I started to question if I was really up for this course.

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.