DFI Session Three 2021 - Media

Another week of learning tricks and tips as well as useful tools that can be used to enhance the learning experiences whilst using digital technology.

Providing our learners with the opportunity to create and demonstrate their understanding of concepts learnt is a great use of the many apps through the digital platforms.

Being creative is something that is naturally found in our ākonga and somehow we stifle that creativity by following generic art or activities that have a pre determined outcome.  I do wonder whether teachers have, potentially sub consciously, gone down the road of searching for tasks instead of being creative themselves because of the hecticness and the busyness of our profession. We need to be brave and allow our children (and ourselves) to be creators, provide them with opportunities to take risks and showcase what they are capable of.  

Digital platforms provide an exciting opportunity to be creative.  The breakout session  - pick a path - allowed us to be creative, we had our brief but what the final look and outcomes was all us.  Not one presentation was the same as the creative process was all that of the individual.

As has been mentioned, we need to provide opportunities to create so it allows for creative and critical thinking to be a driver of engagement and that our tamariki are the creators of content not just consumers of it.  

DFI Session Two 2021

 Connecting with Manaiakalani: Dorothy

The Manaiakalani Pedagogy: Learn, Create, Share allows for a common language across school, but allowing for the differences / individualism as school's have autonomy on how they use learn, create, share.

The message that rang clearest was that of when moving into a digital world we can't lose focus on effective teacher practice. The ongoing argument of digital devices and screen time vs the use of traditional methods is a thorn in many educators / leaders of learning as we justify the use of digital tech to enhance learning. We all need to realise that good practice should be recognised as good practice and without good practice in any learning area, student achievement is seriously hindered or lacking.

The challenge for all of us as we move further into digital technologies as a key learning area, is to be able to identify effective practice and share this with our whanāu and community so the benefits of effective practice with digital technology is understood and appreciated and acknowledged as a key driver in amplifying / turbo charging learning.

The wero set by Dorothy was that of identifying and articulating our school's learning model - What are our beliefs about how learners learn? What are our foundations of learning? Are our teachers / learners able to share this when asked? This provocation digs deep into our belief systems of teaching and learning and is worth exploring deeper with teachers, learners and whanāū.

Chalk and Talk  / Deep Dives:

These sessions again provided us with handy tips that can be used in our busy every day lives.  Being able to organise Gmail, calendars and Tabs is extremely useful.  While I'm comfortable with labels etc in gmail, there is definitely room for improvement in the other areas.

Google meet is a tool that we became familiar with during lockdown.  It is a platform that is used to communicate when we all can't be in the same room.  The continued upgrades provides us with reassurance that when in use we are getting the best possible platform to operate from.  

The record function is one to be explored further, particularly when using the tool with small groups as a way to make learning rewindable and accessible at anytime.

Videoing is such a powerful learning tool for either front loading or future follow ups.

Blogging and embedding videos is still something that I need to do more regularly to become more familiar with the in's and the out's of this.  The more practice I get the better I will become.

Unfortunately, the meet recording from my discussion partner did not work, but here is a digital assembly video from our school's time during the alert levels.

 

DFI Session One 2021

DFI Session One Reflections:

An excellent day of integrating the 3R's - Reconnection Revising and Reflecting.

Reconnection:

It was great to reconnect with the pedagogy and the history of the Manaiakalani programme and it's journey to date to provide equitable outcomes for all akongā / learners. The key message that learning is ubiquitous and that our most vulnerable learners are afforded the same learning opportunities as those who are deemed to be more fortunate. The Learn, Create, Share pedagogy allows all learners to have the opportunity to challenge themselves with new learning, allowing them to create either digitally or by more traditional methods and then through the power of technology and the innovation that is the internet, they are able to share their learning success with a wider audience through digital platforms such as Blogger. This allows for a vast range of feedback from peers, whanau and teachers. The spin off of using this pedagogy is that it provides our akongā with an authentic audience as well as an engaging way to access and develop new learning skills and knowledge.

Revising:

The 'Chalk n Talk' provided the opportunity to revisit many tools that are used all the time and provided a few new tips and tricks to be used within these platforms such as the explore tool and short cuts to speed up productivity. The 'Explore" session allowed an opportunity to reacquaint with those tools that have only been dabbled with briefly. The speech to text function has many benefits for those who struggle with putting pen to paper and for those learners who struggle with reading fluency and articulation. So, while it was a revision session, there were some very handy new learning that occurred.

Reflecting:

From this session, it was evident that like the classroom there were a range of abilities and skills. We are all at different points of this DFI journey. It provided us the opportunity to put ourselves into the shoes of our learners and to feel the uncomfortableness of entering the learning pit. We all play an important part in providing the support required for all "learners" to emerge from the learning pit. Through our discussions and collective knowledge we can support each other through the challenges that lay ahead!

'He waka eke noa - We're all in this together!'