DFI- Week 4

This week there was a lot to take in for the DFI program. We learned about several different programs that will assist us in our teaching practice. This included Google Forms, Maps, Google sheets, and Blogger Stats. 

Challenges: 

• Google sheets is one of the tools that I am less experienced with. This was a learning curve for me however I feel a lot more confident using this tool. I use it for assessment normally but it's great to see other ways that it can be used. 
• Google Maps was a new concept for me. I think that I am going to need to practice Maps a little bit more. I did see the positive benefits of this program and how it could be used for our inquiry topic of 'Culture'. 

Highlights: 

• Latham took us through using Google sheets and how to insert graphs. I feel as though this tool would be incredibly useful for a statistical inquiry unit at school. It is great to find news tools that my learners will enjoy. 
• It was fantastic to have a visual representation of student blog posting in graph form using Google Sheets. I was surprised how quick and easy it was to create so many different styles of graphs. I analysed the data from a girl in my class and I was interested to see the drastic increase in blog posts and sharing over the lockdown period. I have attached the graph below in the results. 
• Google Forms is an excellent skill to have mastered and something that I can see myself using in my year 5/6 class to gain student voice and ideas. 

Results: 

My Google Form

The increase in blogging over the lockdown period.

                                         The dream holiday destinations of the DFI cohort.

DFI- Week 3

This was another week of learning new skills and ways to improve our digital fluency.
One application that I was really excited that we talked about today was Google Draw. Google Draw is a platform that a lot of my colleagues talk about but I was yet to use. I feel like I will use this tool when making buttons for my class site which I am very excited about.
It was cool to talk with other facilitators such as Cheryl and Gerhard.  With Gerhard we talked through Google Draw. I was excited to see how this could be used in the classroom and I know that a lot of my students will enjoy some art based activities using this application. I liked the idea of using Google Draw to create self portraits and I think this is an art idea that I will use in the classroom.
Cheryl taught us about making a slideshow representing a song which I have embedded below. I feel a lot more confident embedding slideshows into the blog now which will help myself and my class.
I'm looking forward to week four of the DFI.

Tools that I think I will use:

• Word Art 
• Londrina Font
• Google Draw 
• Searching for images using png. 

DFI- Week 2

This week was our second week in the DFI programme. The theme for this week was Workflow.
We learned about several different programmes that could help with our workflow.
I'm really enjoying the way that the DFI programme is set up where we click another link to join a smaller group of people. I wish that I had thought of this at the start of lock down because I feel as though this could have been a great way to set up group work.

Programmes that I enjoyed:

There were several programmes that I enjoyed learning about and believe will improve my workflow. One of those was One Tab. I often leave too many tabs open that I don't need, One Tab allows you to organise your tabs and come back to them later.

I also enjoyed Mark's rundown of Hapara in our group as I realised there were other capabilities of the site that I wasn't accessing. I think that I will find the 'Unshared' folder particularly useful when finding student work.

Google keep was also a very useful tool. Especially if i'm taking photos in class for blogs. I know that they will go straight to my laptop. The Grab Image text tool is so valuable as well and something that I wish I had known about at University!


To work on for next time: 
There are still some skills I need to work on such as creating an email signature.

Connecting:
It was really nice to connect with Katie a new entrant teacher at St Francis of Assisi school. Together we discussed blogging and how we have been teaching during lockdown. I have included a screenshot of our learning together.

DFI -Week 1

Today marked the first day of professional development with DFI. New Learnings: On this first day of the program I learnt a lot of new skills that I believe will benefit my learners as we work together online.After learning about the history of Manaiakalani we explored different online tools, with a particular emphasis on Google Docs. Something that might be quite basic to some but that I really needed to improve was the way that I create tables on a Google Doc.I think that I will use the tool of voice typing in the classroom to help with children's punctuation. The fact that you have to actively state what punctuation you want to use, I believe, will benefit children in my class. I used my new found skills and knowledge to create this P.E challenge for my learners next week.

There are still some skills I need to master but that is all part of the learning journey. I'm looking forward to see where the next phase of the DFI journey takes me.