DFI - Reflection 6 - Evaluating Sites

Today was mainly based on reviewing our current sites and updating these. We looked at other sites and made comments about how accessible they were, were they appealing to look at, what learning opportunities are included on the site.
It was good to see the clear buttons and the simple fonts. It is important to organise a site so that you do not need to make more than 3 clicks to get somewhere. Also, are the sites visually appealing? Do you want to dive in and explore it?
We spent sometimes sharing our own sites with each other and sharing feedback on how we can adapt these. It is was great to see other people's sites to get many other ideas for potential future use.

Updating my site

I want this site to be purposeful and user-friendly for the six year olds that I teach. Due to the limited amount of ipads/computers in my room, a detailed site to the extent of others will not be well utilized in my room. Therefore, last week I began a site that made other websites more accessible to the children when they have completed other tasks. This started with buttons that led them to STEPS or Epic Books. This has been great as I have not had to help any children access these websites on the computers. 

Today I decided that I wanted this site more curriculum based with buttons that sent them to pages about reading, writing or maths. I can keep adding to these pages as I go. I also want a button that leads them to Seesaw so they can see what has been posted to their whanau this week. Over lockdown us teachers recorded many clips of teachers reading stories. I plan to create buttons that will link these to the site so that the children can listen to multiple teachers telling stories. 

This is site is still very much a work in progress. 

Issues I came across today

So many little problems today with such simple answers. I was trying to copy an image into google draw but it was inserting a black background. Instead of copying and pasting I had to insert image. 

Another issue was inserting buttons onto the site and then trying to attach a link. I need to remember that I can't insert the image from the drive. I needs to be inserted through saved photos on the computer. 

DFI - Reflection 5 - Collaborate Sites

I made something useful today-much to the frustration to the poor people around me. Thanks for the help everyone! May have to sit on my own next time.....😂
Today I made a Google Site. This will be a site to have bookmarked in the classroom to help my juniors navigate the websites we use during Reading Time. It becomes very time consuming to repetitively show the children how to get to sites such as Stepsweb and Epic books. Now the Site I created will be a homepage for the children to gain direct access to their login page without having to input a password - Hallelujah! Hopefully Helen likes this idea, if not tough, it's happening!

Things to think about when creating a site:

• Make a folder that is shared. This is where the site sits along with all the add-ons so that they are all in the same place. 
• Use Google Draw to create fancy buttons for the site. Before inputing these, the pictures need to be downloaded as a PNG and saved onto your computer. For some reason I could not add links to the images if I had retrieved them from the drive, they had to be retrieved from my computer. 
• It is important to plan how you want your site to look before you create one.
• Ensure that it takes no more than 3 clicks to get anywhere. You need to make this accessible for your learners. 
• Use a blank site to design.

I also learnt today that you can add these sites as buttons on the ipads. I am very keen to see if this helps my learners to access their sites faster and without adult assistance. 

Off topic - I briefly learnt about Immersive Reader. This is an extension. By highlighting text, right clicking and selecting 'help me read this' you get many different options to make text more accessible to you. It can change the font size and colour, can read out text, change the language etc. Very cool!

DFI - Reflection Four - Dealing with Data

Things that we went over today:

• Why do we use blogger?
• Google Forms
• My Maps
• Google Sheets

Why do we use Blogger?

Blogger is the chosen for children in schools because it generally has the same functions as the others sites used for sharing such as uploading, commenting etc. It is secure and teachers can easily monitor comments as there are three different ways to track it. 

Google Forms

This is great way to gather data. Its good to start with a blank template and adjust this after to add colours, images etc. You need to adjust the sharing settings so that your form is not restricted to your organisation. You can also limit the form so that people can only answer once. There are three different ways that you can share this form; email, link or embed. Embed means that people can fill it out via the site/blog. 

You can export the data from the form onto a spreadsheet to analise the data. 

When making the form select the type of question that will fit the response you want. You can make the question required which means the form cannot be submitted until that question is answered. You can add images to questions. Go to settings to adjust the colours/look of the sheet. Make sure to preview what it looks likes before sharing. Here is a Google Form I completed today. Answer honestly! 😁😂

One example of this was to use the quiz function for children to answer questions about a reading book. This was cool as the images inserted made this more user friendly for younger children. I'll just need to push for some more technology at my school to make this accessible for the children in my class. 

My Maps

This was entertaining to browse however it did test my frustration as I kept zooming in and out rather than moving around. It was great to measure distances between places, draw your own routes and personalising the pins. 

Google Sheets

This is a great tool for collating and analising data. Autofill is a great time saver. As long as the first three parts of the pattern is typed in, by dragging the little blue box, it will automatically fill out the other boxes. It was cool to see how to add formulas such as the sum, average etc. You can use the explore tool to look at different graphs that are generated from the data that you are using. You can protect the cells so that only invited/specific people can enter data. Today we used this to analise blog usage. Is there a way to use these graphs to analise reading data? Such as the childrens current level and movement across the year. I will have to have a play and look into this. 

Overall

Another great session. I can see that Google Sheets will be a hard part to remember as there are so many different ways that this could be used. I did get a bit confused with some parts, particularly as I only wanted to make a simple pie graph but could not make this work for me. I will have to keep having a play so that this becomes more familiar for me to use. 

DFI - Reflection Three - Media

This weeks focus was on the variety of different ways to present information.

• Creating a video
• Applying a green screen
• Podcasting
• YouTube
• Google Drawing
• Google Slides

Creating a Video

When creating a video it is important to consider the different ways to ensure that your video is a good quality video. 

• Check that the camera is steady.
• Landscape videos
• Check windows around the room for the optimal lighting. 

Different Video apps for both computers and/or ipads:

• Screen Castify
• Adobe Spark
• We Video
• Imovie
• Clips
• Quicktime

For live streaming:

• GoogleMeet
• Drones
• Youtube

Green Screen

Different methods to remove background:

• remove.bg
• keynote
• photobooth
• When including background it needs to be a block colour. Colour needs to contrast the colour of the person's skin tone/eyes. 

Podcasting

Could use:

• Song maker
• Online recorder - slideshow, screencastify
• Apps - Garageband, Camera app

YouTube

When discussing YouTube it is important to remember that children at school do not have YouTube channels as you need to be 18 to sign up to this. This is also a challenging place to manage and moderate comments.
For a Teacher's YouTube channel the upload needs to be unlisted. Commenting needs to be turned off. It is recommended that videos are shared via blogs/the drive so that children are not getting distracted by other videos that are popping up.
We created a YouTube playlist. To do this, under the video click add playlist. This will be great for choir when I am repetitively using the same YouTube clips. Under the video it says 'add playlist.' 

Google Drawing

This is a tool that reminds me of Publisher. This is great for creating images, posters etc. 

A great thing to do is to save an image of a film and link a screen castify of the task for the children to view. 

I need to remember to save the image as PNG - File - Download - PNG

Google Slides

A great presentation tool! This is great to make mini animations on, adding audio, images etc. It is important to remind children to ditch the defaults. Encourage them to embrace the blank slides. It is important to check that there is consistent formatting. 

You can embed slide onto a Google Site. 

Reminders for Me

I will need to spend some time this week using Google Slides and Google Drawing. I just need to refresh my memory with hoe to use some of the tools and shortcuts so I can do this at a later date.