DFI te rā tuawaru

Today was focussed on devices. We had some time with a Chromebook and an ipad. This integrated well with the Manaiakalani kaupapa because the explanation covered why these devices are the choices for use with the Manaiakalani model. There was also 101 Hapara Teacher Dashboard, a play with the Digital Dig anda chance to register for the Google Educator exam.
We were asked to create a screencast with reference to one of the content areas of the Manaiakalani cybersmart curriculum. I looked at Smart Media because I think this topic is a really interesting area for students and teachers to investigate. There is a lot of content that can be used or adapted to fit the age, stage and delivery angle, and it fits into a variety of learning areas for secondary school students.

DFI te rā tuawhitu

Today's session was dedicated to the two new learning areas of the Technology Curriculum - CT (Computational Thinking) and DDO (Developing Digital Outcomes). We were very fortunate to have Vivienne from OMG Tech with us sharing lots of great resources and ideas for use to meet the PO (progress outcomes) of these two areas. These things should be linked to our Maker-y site so that teachers have a 'one stop shop'.

OMG Tech lessons is a great resource with lots of lesson plans, ideas, videos.
Hour of Code which I have used in classes for a few years.  The most wonderful find of the day was Minecraft in te reo Māori - change the language bottom right of the page.
Another activity highlighted was Kodable for pre readers. Teachers were advised to check which activities work on the ipad.
Scratch (Simple Maze Game example and 10 Block challenge) and Scratch junior were shown. You can now bring your own photos into Scratch Junior - add blank button then click top right, draw frame, tap camera, take photo. and it is automatically added.
Compute it for coding beginners.

Vysor is an extension for the Google Chrome browser that connects to an app on your android smartphone, enabling you to control your phone from your PC or Mac using the mouse/trackpad and keyboard. Everything happens via a USB cable, which you'll need to connect the phone to your computer's USB port.

Also covered were the Binary number system., ASCII American standard code for information exchange and Hex codes and how colours work from 00-FF.

Overall this was a very useful day to set teachers up with resources, ideas and a link to a company really working hard to empower teachers to empower their learners in this space.

DFI te rā tuaono

Data was the big topic today and the group covered Google Forms, MyMaps and Sheets. There was a great amount of content. The challenge was to use a 'create' tool to analyse data and then share the analysis on our blogs. I decided to analyse my blog post frequency over the last 4 years and think about the trends that the analysis shows.

Firstly, I investigated my total posts. I was a little surprised by the downwards trend, although 2019 hasn't finished yet. I looked a little closer at 2016 and was reminded that in that year I was totally new to Google Drive and blogged everything I learned so that my blog could be used by me as a tutoring tool when I forgot. I also reflected that since 2017, I have been carrying two major roles for Kootuitui ki Papakura so that was the most probably reason for the dramatic decrease in posts. Oh, and with this post, my 2019 total will rise to 12!
Secondly, I investigated the monthly data for my blog posting. The trend over each year is quite clear to me that most of my blogging is done between March and September, which is the 'meat' of the year. I don't do much blogging over the summer period and not while I am on annual leave. This is quite reasonable because I only use this as a professional blog, however, I will aim to try and complete a couple of posts over the 2019-2020 summer period to see whether I get views of these posts.

DFI te rā tuarima

Today we had our second day on Google sites. We had a very quick look at each other's sites and gave feedback on them using a Google form. It was great to hear people talking about their sites as they reveal what they think are the most important features of their sites. However, there wasn't enough time to look carefully through each site and to give robust, quality feedback. Maybe we could have separated into groups of four so that we could have worked in a small group - sharing, asking questions, in discussion and giving feedback. These groups would contain people at different stages of site competence so that there would be opportunity for ako among the members. Anyway, the gold nugget today was quiet time to get some of the Trust website pages up-to-date.

www.kootuitui.org.nz

DFI te rā tuawhā

Tohatoha - (verb) (-ina) to spread around, spread out, spread abroad, distribute, share, deal (cards). Not just LCS, but SLC, CLS and LSC etc. Today was about the use of a website to 'hook' (noun: matau) or entice people in, using a universal approach to designing learning and creating a multimodal website. I started a website with a focus on level 5 social studies, NZ history and Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Not having particular students in mind was the biggest disadvantage for me, but I have started gathering some text resources that may be of help to others. Click on the image to access the site.

DFI te rā tuatoru - kia awhiawhi hanga

Kia kaha te reo Māori. Whāia te ara poutama o te reo ka tohatoha ai - keep improving your language and share what you know. Ko tenei taku pepeha.

Let's Animate

At DFI 3 we spent some time focussing on animation. Four of us decided to create an animation that we could join together. We decided to use a plane flying through several landscapes. Above is my individual animation. While below is the video of the 4 animations playing one after the other.