DFI - Reflection 7 - Devices

Being Cyber Smart

This is all about empowering students and families. A part of this to encourage positive and pro-active language. Us adults need to be modelling appropriate behaviour online. 

Cybersmart is broken down into 10 categories: learners, footprint, relationships, media, surfing, money, values, teachers and parents. When teaching this, the language needs to be the same across primary and secondary schools. 

Children need to learn to connect with the Kawa of Care. They need to learn to stay in the right place on line, what to click, what pop ups to ignore, and when to approach and adult for help. They also need to make judgements about what to share online. If it is about you, it is personal so judgements need to be made about what you want the world to see. 

Empowering students is all about elevating positive action. This is all about comments being positive, helpful, thoughtful. 

Manaiakalani Journey

The ultimate thing is to make sure that children participate. Every teacher supported to become Digitally Fluent. Engagement occurs through device ownership. 

Provide the best device for the learning for EVERY young person. Ipads appropriate for years 1-3. Years 4+ use chromebooks. 

Digital Fluency starts with the ability to use the device. 

Chrome Books

It was great to have an opportunity to play on the chrome books to get to know what tools and tips will help the learners. The keyboard short cuts were great. Two of the best ones were:

• ctrl + f      -this is to bring up the find tab to speed up the process of searching for something. 
• ctrl + alt + /         -this brings up all keyboard shortcuts. 

Ipads - 1:1

Lots to think about at the beginning of the year. 

• Have all ipads set up so that they are the same. e.g. same app configuration. 
• All individual sign in on Hapara. 
• Labelled outside with name/photo.
• Classes to have Manaiakalani recommended ipads/stylus. 

Great apps are explain everything, imovie, google apps etc. 

Explain Everything

This is a great app which we luckily have on our ipads. Teachers have used explain everything to create reading follow up tasks, writing tasks, maths tasks etc. I know how to use this app to make things, make records but once I have made the activity, I don't know how to share it so that the children can then complete it. I need to spend some time watching some youtube apps to get to know how to save these so that children can access and save their projects on explain everything. 

This will be great for creating digital follow up reading activities. The limited amount of ipads in my room will still be a barrier but this is a start!

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. 

DFI - Reflection 2 - Workflow

So many new things learnt today that I will definitely use!

• Google Meet
• Google Keep
• Gmail
• Calendar
• Tidying Tabs
• Embedding a video onto a blog. 

Google Meet

Create via Google Calendar. Up to 250 people can access a Google Meet. 

Lots of etiquette to consider. It is meant for 1:1 use. If multiple people in one room, use headphones. 

Check angle of camera, lighting, hair etc.
It is definitely a good idea to record a meeting to look back on later on. Below is a video of a Google Meet completed today with a colleague. 

Sharing your screen is great. By pushing present screen, it gives you options (whole screen, google tab). Select the screen you want to present. 

 

Google Keep

This is great for making lists and setting reminders. A brilliant part of this is uploading a photo and select 'grab image text.' This copies all of the text for you so you can edit it.
You can use the App to record voice memo reminders. I don't think that you can do this via the computer.

Gmail

It was great to start personalising and organising my Gmail. I have now organised my emails that they show specific labels first. At the top are my important/unread emails, then my emails that I need to follow up come up, then the rest of them. This will help me organise emails better and hopefully remember to reply to specific emails later on. 

Unsend was a great part of Gmail to learn about. I now have 30 seconds to 'unsend' an email if I have been a bit 'send-happy.' 

Calendar

I never quite realised how user-friendly the Google Calendar is. You can colour code multiple calendars and you can select which calendars show on your whole calendar. This will be great to get into the habit of using as I do not always have my diary on me, but I do have my phone on me :).

Tidying Tabs

There are quite a few different options to tidy the many tabs that teachers have on their pages. Many tabs open at once causes a higher use of your battery power. Keeping less open at once is beneficial. 

We looked at:

• One Tab
• Great Suspender
• Tab Snooze
• Toby Mini
• Bookmarks
• Cluster
• Workona

I downloaded the One Tab extension. This moves all tabs on screen into one single table. This is displayed in a list format and you select the list to open all of the tabs. This will be great for digital planning as I have now saved all my planning tabs and titled them 'Weekly Planning.' Each week I can go into One Tab and select this to pull up all of my planning templates to have easier access to them. 

Toby Mini is another great tab organiser as you can share this with others. 

Embedding a video onto a blog

1. from video, select three dots, select open new window. 
2. select three dots, embed item
3. copy code
4. in blogger, select html, paste (can adjust size in here)
5. select compose

Overall another great day at DFI. I have downloaded many of these google apps and created a folder on my phone to try to encourage me to use these. Very keen to use Google Keep for writing reminders. Bring on never forgetting an event again!.......hopefully not wishful thinking!

DFI - Reflection One - Core Business

Today began with a recap of the history of Manaiakalani which was first founded in 2006. Focusing all about the model of Learn, Create, Share.
Today we went through a few different parts of Google Chrome.

• Google Groups
• Chrome
• Folders
• Docs

Google Groups - More collaborative than Google Contacts

This is a collaborative way to share and communicate. It is set up as a sort of blog and you add people to this via a single email address. You set them as either an owner, manager or member. Posts automatically send as emails. If people are added later then they will have access to all of the previous information. You can directly add people (they have no choice to join) or you can select to share invite which will send them an email to join. Sets default so that you do not have to see other email addresses.

Google Chrome - Making this your own

You need to keep your account separate from others by having it up as a whole new web page, not just on a new tab.
Use book marks for easy access. Select -CONTROL- and the number of tab to jump through tabs.
You can customize your Google home page with images.

Drive

Need to keep this well organised! When creating a folder, straight away select a clear title, Adjust permissions so everyone can see it and order this. 

Colour code files. 

Put * at the front of title to be the first one to come up. 

If folder is set to 'anyone can view' then all documents within will automatically be set as the same. 

Docs - Handy Hints

So many cool things that you can do with Docs! 

Handy hints: 

• When copying and pasting on the internet, select 'paste without formating.' This will paste it with the hidden code. 
• By using the title, headings, and table of contents, a large document is much easier to access and navigate. By selecting this the URL changes for each section for people to access. 
• Selecting tools and using Voice Typing is great. Make sure to adjust to the correct language. 
• Adding comments on the side. Add + then persons name to add emails. 
• Use tables to make Docs tidier to view. 
• Use Explore (bottom left) to access internet/drive search without leaving current tab. 

Remove.bg

Great website to remove background to pictures. This makes these much tidier to view and work with!

Thoughts: 

It was interesting to think about getting into the mindset of keep all Docs accessible to others. There is nothing to hide in teaching and it is important to make this accessible to others who want to share it. Sharing a very important part. "It's like teaching with your windows and doors open to protect yourself. 

Reminder to self: recap these new skills later. Practise them so I can remember where to find things and how to work this.