DFI week 9 External recognition

 This was our final week on DFI with the online Google Educator test. Happily, I passed:

Certification Exams

Hi Ian,

Congratulations, you're a Google Certified Educator!

You have passed your exam and will receive final results within 3 business days from gfe-certifications@google.com.

Yours in Education Google for Education Certification Team

We were well prepared for the test thanks to our awesome facilitators. I also completed the feedback on this course and am happy to share my response summary:

Goal 1: How well did we do this for YOU? *

Goal 1: Our teachers are supported to acquire fluency using the basic tools our young people use for learning.

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Completely missed the mark						Every day was another step closer to this goal

Goal 2: How well did we do this for YOU? *

Goal 2: Our teachers are supported to acquire fluency using the basic tools required for effective teaching, planning, assessment and professional learning.

	1	2	3	4	5
Completely missed the mark						Every day was another step closer to this goal

Goal 3: How well did we do this for YOU? *

Goal 3: Our teachers are supported to understand how digital technologies used effectively can have a significant impact on accelerating achievement outcomes.

	1	2	3	4	5
Completely missed the mark						Every day was another step closer to this goal

Goal 4: How well did we do this for YOU? *

Goal 4: Our teachers are supported to understand how the Manaiakalani pedagogy and kaupapa has been co-constructed over more than a decade to maximise the impact of effective teaching and learning in a digital learning environment.

	1	2	3	4	5
Completely missed the mark						Every day was another step closer to this goal

Let us know how this opportunity to attend the Digital Fluency Intensive has impacted you positively. *

We are thinking of the whole package here - the digital, the group, Manaiakalani, learning using the LCS pedagogy etc etc

Having time to take the time to specifically learn and be exposed to the various apps and the Google suite has been extremely valuable. Learning about the underpinnings of Manaiakalani has been very worthwhile.

Are there any highlights that have impacted your life, your practice, your workflow... *

All has been valuable but more specifically the Google suite has been a highlight.

Let us know how you think we could improve or do this better to support the next cohort. *

N/A

Is there anything else you would like to say or let us know?

Thanks to our wonderful facilitators for sharing your knowledge and expertise.

I would like to express my thanks to the facilitation team and the other colleagues participating in our DFI course. I have learned a lot and have much to explore further! It is reassuring to know that help and assistance are only a click or an email away. The collaboration and professionalism within the course have been exemplary and I am pleased to have been a part of it.

Nga mih nui.

Week 8 DFI: Computational thinking.

 Week 8 DFI: Computational thinking 01.12.21.

Today's session on Manaiakalani Kaupapa focussed on empowerment. This has certainly been on my radar recently following our NZCER wellbeing survey. Our students overwhelmingly commented that they wanted more voice and influence in their learning and school life. From this feedback, we are currently looking to set up a student council to help us shape up 2022. This will be totally new at our school. We will also be enrolling our students into the Summer Learning Journey to give them the option to engage in learning over the Summer. Within our classes, we will be looking for students to have greater input into how their learning is delivered. I reflected that our students really had a great opportunity during lockdown to extend their learning by closely connecting electronically with their teachers during check-in time for example.

The Digital Technologies session was valuable for me as this was a new area to explore. I found the decoded 4 learners a great resource that I will access in the future. The wealth of material available on Technology Online was wonderful and a real eye-opener as to what can be achieved. The comment was made that many of the targets within the digital curriculum can be/ are met during many other activities covered within the wider curriculum. For instance, giving instructions to others. Integration is a key aspect to focus upon during planning.

The afternoon session was with an aptly named app called Tinkercad which was a new experience for me. During the exploratory session, we were tasked with creating a Whare (house) here is my attempt:

 

I enjoyed the Tinkercad session and I look forward to exploring this further in the future. I can see that it could be useful in future projects at our school for both students and staff. This is something that I have never had the opportunity to explore before I can see that it is very engaging and hard to put down!

DFI WEEK 7 24.11.21

This week's theme was on devices. I have always been a laptop user and until this course, my default setting was Microsoft office. I have really increased my repertoire during this course with the Google suite. The Chromebook has also been a new device for me previously unexplored until DFI- thanks to the course I now know a lot more about it. IPADs and Mac in general is less familiar but I will look to explore those in time.

Today's information regarding Manaiakalani linked very well to our success during this year's lockdown. The A4 explained by Dorothy was certainly well utilised during the lockdown at our school. the 4 A's were explained as anytime, anywhere, anyone, and anyplace. The rewindable learning not only helped students and families during time away from school but also once we were back. 

A good link was made to the evidence around the summer learning journey and the positive effect for students who undertake sessions over the long break. I have added this to our agenda for later today. I will certainly be pushing our students to become involved during Summer 2022.

Vicki unpacked the Cybersmart curriculum which was a wonderful check up for our school. I will be using this to check in with our staff and ensure we are rotating the topics throughout next year as suggested. I will also incorporate this into our annual plan.

A couple of things improved my confidence this week. The first was further guided exploration of the Chromebook, especially the shortcuts, and becoming more familiar with the keyboard shortcuts.

The second was slightly off  topic as I had to step away to meet with my appraiser to have my sign-off for my first year as principal. This was a big celebration for me as the appraiser and our board chair both gave me very positive feedback after a very challenging year. I have included a picture below to celebrate!

DFI week 6 Enabling Access 17.11.21

 This week saw us delving into enabling access within our digital spaces. Dorothy focussed in on connecting via the Manaiakalani lense. I certainly identified with the challenges of networking even within the local geographical area. We have been trying to foster connections between the 5 Catholic schools on the West Coast this year. With the sheer volume of existing meetings we have found it difficult. Perhaps using digital connections with video meeting could be a way to achieve this connection more easily.

A further point was made regarding support structures. Within my current reality, we have a shared Board of Trustees with our neighboring high school which is interesting. To save time I suggested circulating an agenda with all documents hyperlinked. All BOT members were able to read approve, comment or decline. The actual face to face google meet lasted less than an hour. This was well received by members and is something we will use in the future. It certainly saved time.

In terms of my workflow and capability today was wonderful. Spending time developing my site really enabled me to focus in and gain confidence and enhance my skills- more on that later,,,,

My learners and teachers will be able to access my site with a few more tweaks. I was pleased to be able to continue to develop this today as it links well with our PB4L journey. We set self goals around the site development today and I was able to achieve two of mine within the given time:

Overall goal: Update Friendships site made last week and further integrate to PB4L and possibly sports

1.  Add friendship content- multimodal

2.  Add PB4l content

Here is the link to my developing website which has moved on since last weeks post:

Friendships

On reflection, I can see that I will need to separate it a little more effectively with regard to the friendships and positive behaviour guides as it is not well defined for each area. In terms of workflow, I will be asking my student leaders/ staff to develop the content for the positive behaviour guides as we are all developing them currently. I can see that there is an opportunity for a variety of mediums including video, text and photo for example.

DFI day 5 Collaboration

 

DFI day 5 Collaboration

Today's session on Maniakalani Kaupapa struck a chord with me with regord to simplifying communication to our school teams as much as possible. When we are within the learn, create, share space there is a whole wealth of material to work with. As principal I think the idea of no surprises for my staff is absolutely key to our success. Where possible everyone should have full knowledge of what is going on. that being said our presenter today also highlighted the importance of being specific and targeted with what we are sharing- being clear about why it is being shared and attempting to reduce and simplify as much as possible. 

In terms of improving workflow I think the above is important whilst also starting to generate shared multimedia speardsheets on a variety of topics. This would enable the various teams within school to contribute and develop our share kete's of resources and thus reduce the amount of additional work.

The website session was interesting and a totally new area for me. That being said I made a leap from the topic of celebrations to friendships as we are currently engaged with implementing PB4L at school and have just completed our annual wellbeing survey. The multimodal approach shared today enabled a wide variety of mediums to be accessed and shared. This enables access for learners in a variety of mediums which should increase engagement, learning and understanding.My site is not complete but I am hopeful it will become a useful resource for our students. Here is a screenshot:

and the link: Friendship

I feel my confidence and capability with the Google Suite is improving and it is becoming a little more automatic. The value of this course so far has been developing a network, using the excellent guides and most importantly having the time to delve and explore with the support of mytutors and new online colleagues.

DFI day 4 Workflow

 Kia Ora, I found today to be action-packed and gained a lot of new knowledge in Google Sheets. In terms of the Manaiakalani Kaupapa which focussed on sharing knowledge and thoughts. It was interesting to step back and think about sharing prior to the digital age and how much easier it has become with the advent of electronics. Care is required to ensure all of us including our learners are able to share valid and meaningful information. A key role of this course and the Manaiakalani approach is to enable our learners to do this capably whilst choosing appropriate content and reason for sharing.

I have been using Survey Monkey for a number of years so it was really neat to explore Google forms which will be of great use with my staff/ students and families. I was able to create the following survey during our time together today (it does need tweaking a bit further):

Staff form

We spent some time looking at maps and it was great to see some of the imaginative ways they had been used as well as hear some of the groups ideas for holidays!

Our look at Google sheets was again valuable. Historically I have used Excel so again it was nice to have the chance to explore and learn some new shortcuts. The data manipulation tips were well received and I particularly enjoyed my new ability with the ability to use conditional formatting to highlight various scores.

We again used sheets to analyse our students Blog posts and this is an area I will be looking to exploit. Here is my example:

DFI day 3: Media

 Today's session focussed upon a wide variety of media. The majority of this was very new to me. The linkage I made to Manaiakalaini kaupapa was around 'share' and making the material fit for the audience concerned.

I could see an immediate use for the youtube channel we created in terms of sharing selected content to my teaching team or learners. The drawing app was also good value for creating new buttons and links in the first instance. The key to this was being able to gather images from the net and adapt them. 

Slides were an interesting space today. I gained a better insight into Google slides and how they could be used for not only presenting but also as jump off points for learning. I gained a lot from the app creation in slides. The copy below is not finished as yet but I can see the app I created could be used by our students to assist with check and connects during the day. This may encourage positive self-management and give an option which encourages students to talk to an adult earlier rather than later. It also links nicely to our new journey with PB4L as a school.

Overall I enjoyed today and feel that the content has enriched my own knowledge as well as giving me some new tools to use with my students and my staff team.

Workflow

Today's sessions were all about improving workflow using t he Google suite for email/ calendars/ meets and tabs. I found my emails to be well organised based on what was shared today.

Connecting with Manaiakalani today linked very well with the new professional development our school started this week relating to Assessment For Learning. During our first AFL session we began to explore student agency and one of the key messages I stored was what does learn look like at St Patrick's? So this will be a future area of exploration for our team. The work we covered on the learning pit  triggered my thinking around this.

Our school also runs very well on the calendar- our mantra is if it is not on the calendar it does not happen. Recently I have been using the colour option to greater effect as the calendar is very busy.

In future, I would like to use the video option on meets to share massaging to our students following today's session. I also realised I have much to learn about the Hapara interface.

The Tab management is a new space for me. I am lucky as I have 3 screens so don't tend to run out of space but I will certainly be looking to explore the tab features more closely.

Overall this was a very good day with lots of new areas for exploration and further learning in the digital space.

The video clip below was the result of exploring Google meets and calendar invites. From this w were able to invite colleagues and record and share the meeting. The item I explored was related to a year 8 Blogpost about writing blogs. As I was working between 2 devices I was unable to share the student's blog in this video example:

DFI day 1: Core business

It has been wonderful to start the DFI course today. 

On reflection it was interesting to realise my prior involvement and connection to Manaiakalani listening to Dorothy. I realised that I have absorbed a reasonable amount of insight during my years as an RTLB without being directly involved as I am now. I now have a fuller understanding of the Learn, create, share approach our school is using and why. I know we have Hapara at our school but as yet I have not used it so this will be added to my to do list.

During day one I have become more familiar with with the features of the Google suite. In particular the editing functions in documents were very helpful. The work we did around titles and subtitles as well as explore were previously unknown to me. I have also found the voice to text works for me best in the UK English version!

Previously I have used the colours in the calendar but did not know how to do this in folders. During the day it did seem my file format is well set up. I think colouring the folders is probably the next step in refining and improving my system for the future.

My creation for today involved me using some of my newly acquired skills to begin formatting a dual school leader poster and interactive guide to assist our school in implementing our PB4L rules and student leadership roles as well as enhancing playground behaviour.

This term our school has started our journey with PB4L. My hope with the above idea is that the students can create hyperlinked content to support developing school leaders in their roles. This is particularly important during break times. 

As yet we have not refined our school rules but we do have our strong faith values which will underpin them. With the poster I intend to switch out clip art for actual pictures of students modelling the key words. 

In time i'd like the students to create video clips that we can hyperlink to each keyword. The videos will demonstrate students exhibiting the required behaviours. Any extension of this could be video guides to playground games and activities.

Today has provided me with a greater insight into the Google suite which will assist me at home and here at school. I grew up using MS office and whilst over the years I have become more familiar with Google it has been fantastic today to have time to explore it more fully with our expert course guides. I have been conscious for a while that I needed to upskill so this is a great opportunity.