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.

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.

DFI te rā tuarua

Kia ora te whānau. Rāmere, 6th Hepetema, he DFI te rā tuarua. He reremahi ko te kaupapa. He pai ki ahau te taupānga Kūkara. Ināianei, i te mahi ahau te wātaka Kūkara, mahara Kūkara, īmera Kūkara, hui ataata Kūkara me te ripa rorohiko.
The create task was to use Quicktime to record a hangout meet and discuss a blog post. For some reason my internal microphone was not working and I only recorded the video with no sound, which I deleted. So, then I did a bit of troubleshooting and discovered that I needed to give Quicktime access to my camera and microphone, which was strange as I only used it about 2 -3 weeks ago for the Online Toolkits. Anyway, then I did a short test which is attached.

Smart Relationships

Here are some learning activities that I put together for one of the teachers I am supporting this year. Resources have come from Manaiakalani and Google, as well as my ideas. Only a few students got really into the Pick-a-Path story, which I thought would be very engaging but wasn't. The reason for this I think was that I probably needed to do some prior work with the students on algorithmic thinking so that they were in a good position to understand the planning process required for this activity.

Smart Relationships

Here is an online book I made with Book Creator. It works easily on chrome and is now good for chromebooks as well as tablets. There are many choices of colours, fonts, shapes and backgrounds, as well as the ability to upload images, record and also read aloud.

Cybersmart Smart Relationships

Click to read this book, made with Book Creator

https://read.bookcreator.com

Term 2 Digital Footprint

This is the resource I have put together for term 2 cybersmart - digital footprint. I started using this with five teachers last week. All classes have a slightly different version of this resource because I decided to make separate copies for each school to provide a similar base of content and then to cater for the differing needs of teachers and students. I expect that over the course of the term, the content will change further as I work with teachers and continue to co-construct.
Week 1 started well with discussing what happened recently with facebook. Many students thought that facebook's user data had been hacked, so we had some great discussions about what really happened and then why it is important to be aware of age restrictions for social networking sites, as well as how to keep your privacy settings up to date.
There are some things I still need to add including students making an up-to-date blog profile and building in blog posting and commenting - positive, thoughtful, helpful.
Two of my year 3-4 classes are still back working through a few more term 1 items and then I will begin an age-appropriate digital footprint curriculum for them.

Putting my Google Calendar on my blog

Here is a great example of a teacher using a website to show students how to embed a Google Calendar on their blog. Thanks to Jason Borland who covered this with one of his year 9 ICT classes, I watched his screencastify on his class website and followed his instructions.
There were a couple of issues to overcome. The first is that for all the items on the calendar to be visible, the calendar must be set to 'public'. If it isn't then people from outside the users organisation will not be able to see these. The second is the name at the top of the calendar. As you can see, it shows the full name and we would like to avoid that with students. To change this, teachers would need to make sure that the name of the calendar is just the first name of the students.

Kootuitui's first Unconference

At the Leaders' PLG in Term 2, the idea of an unconference for Kootuitui was raised and discussed. It was decided to go ahead with our first in Term 3. The format would be slam down 1 followed by a 20 minute workshop, a Kahoot quiz for everyone and then slam down 2 followed by a 20 minute workshop. The top presentation is the slide deck that was used to gather offerings for the 20 minute sessions. Dave Winter, our wonderful Manaiakalani Outreach Manager, prepared and ran the Kahoot. Two of the school leaders sourced prizes for the Kahoot winners. These were one chromecast from Cyclone and two portable wifi storage devices from Noel Leemings, Papakura. Papakura Kootuitui Trust sponsored sweet treats. The second presentation is a range of photos taken at the unconference.
About 80 teachers/personnel attended with 19 individuals offering workshops.
How did it go and what was the feedback? The location of the high school was very good. Everyone gathered in the hall and it is a large enough space to accommodate everyone. The workshops were held in different classrooms. The original plan had been to have the workshops in the hall. However issues such as noise and the lack of portable data projectors and screens, necessitated a change of plan. It seemed to run smoothly and meet most people's needs. Some feedback included:
- it was good to have everyone together for clustering and networking
- keep the same venue for subsequent unconferences
- maybe a few of the workshops could be held in the hall next time so that people could find it easier to move from one to another within the 20 minutes
- the 20 minutes was a good length of time to have a discussion or get information that I could then look at later in my own time
- prizes were great
- I wanted to go to two in the first session and none in the second
- there wasn't anything for complete beginners
The Leaders were buoyed by the overall positive response and are now planning another unconference for Term 4. There will be a few tweaks to the first as we want to provide a way for attendees to express their interest in learning about certain things rather than being the receivers of predetermined workshops. The first time through we considered providing afternoon tea of some kind and decided that it would take time from a very tight schedule. However, having tea, coffee and biscuits available may be a way around this. We also need to ensure that all schools are clear that their staff bring their laptop with them as some teachers claimed they weren't told to bring one and so couldn't fully participate.
It certainly was an excellent way of gathering for a purpose - learning, creating and sharing, and it will be interesting to see where the idea heads over the next year. It has been suggested that unconferences happen once a term and replace one of the sets of Toolkits. It has been fantastic working with the Leaders on this and achieving something much bigger as a group than any one of us could alone.

PowToon

Interesting app. Not too hard to use with lots of options for creation and music to add. I still have to experiment with a voice over. Embedded on the blog fine too. I think students will really like using this creation tool.

Animation

The class of children that I worked with to create their animations was really keen and interested to do these. They were studying magnets in class so I used this as the context for the animation. The class were taught how to animate one slide using the 'insert animation' feature in google slides. They learnt about putting in a background and using images with transparent backgrounds to make the setting look authentic. Then they learnt how to use the 'explore' function to select and add images which they then animated. They also learnt to animate text boxes. Learning also included the need to animate objects in the order that the creator wishes to have the objects move. Then I put all the individual slides together on one slideshow and embedded on my blog. I also showed the teacher how to embed this on her blog.

Uploading a movie (.MOV)

To do this the file needs to be less than 100MB. If so, it can be uploaded straight into a blog.

Chatterpix

This is a simple app that can be used on an iphone or ipad. Easy instructions and a video can be created in a matter of minutes. Neat result too!

Story Builder

This was my first attempt with Story Builder. It was easy to use with a Google account. You really need to decide who your characters are and then start typing the dialogue among them. After this, you can add music and then finish. It was a bit tricky to change spelling mistakes because to edit it seems everything written under the edit is removed and needs to be retyped. Students could write their story in any language that uses letters of the alphabet or maybe even in other language scripts if their device is enabled. This needs more investigation but quite a neat tool.

See the story

Quality Blog Commenting

Today I leant how to write a comment on a blog and then make it a better comment by using our class padlet ideas. 

I liked doing because it was fun looking at Room 10's blog and then writing a really quality comment. 

Now, I hope that I get a reply to my comment. I will wait and see....

I posted this as an example to a class that I was facilitating in of a piece of finished work with an embedded DLO and a short reflection.

Replying to Comments

Today in class we learnt about how to make good replies to blog comments. "Positive, thoughtful and helpful" are the buzz words here.

This is an example sentence I gave students to put under their DLO, "I found this interesting because it will help me write good replies when I receive comments on my blog".

In modelling this, I was also reinforcing with students how to embed a slide presentation on their blog.

My Word Cloud

I was learning to make a word cloud about quality blog posts. I thought it was easy because we helped each other. Choosing the colours was fun.

This was a piece of work that I completed with a year 4 - 5 class to show them how to post a blog that has a title, labels and a short explanation of the writer's learning.