Inspiring Colleagues

It's hard to believe that two years ago the awe-inspiring world-class innovating Teachers of Google's ClassOnAir were in the same seat as my colleagues and I. Today we had Matt Goodwin come in and share with us some of the technicalities of recording and sharing his pedagogy for his ClassOnAir episodes. Their courage to lay the design for learning that they have created for their learners for a global audience is the ultimate visible learning experience and fulfils the SHARE piece of the Manaiakalani pedagogy by making their plans available for anyone to use, 

giving back to the community by sharing their take on what is effective teaching within their context for their learners. Knowing that we might have the opportunity to do this in a year and a half's time is SCARY but inspiring.

Snap Happy

Google Photos - Collage of Maungarei

Todays session had two elements to it. For the first part of it, we explored parts of the Cybersmart curriculum and talked about the difference between being Cybersafe and Cybersmart. The main point of difference for me I guess, was the fact the being Cybersafe has a focus on the preventative measures one should take to remain 'safe' online, where as being Cybersmart focuses on empowering the device user. A point that really stood out for me today was when Fiona Grant was speaking about creating a Smart Footprint. Her point was that when a learner is new to their own device, it is like their own private world, they are understandably, with deliberate teaching, are unaware of how visible every move they make online really is.

The second element of today was the focus of using still images and the accessibility and transfer of these from and to iPhones and Macs. We explored Google Photos and the creation of collages, as well as the ease of creating photo slideshows with Youtube. The collage is comprised of images I took of Maungarei and the youtube Slideshow...well, please view to see!

I am looking forward to utilising this new skill of creating REALLY EASY Youtube Slideshows to put on our Hub site as well as sharing this new knowledge with my learners!

HTML

Today completely changed my perspective of all things technology. Prior to joining the MDTA, using technology in innovative ways was a concept that seemed quite far-fetched. Things like creating QR codes, creating your own site, embedding things using HTML seemed like something only experts would be able to do. Now I see that these things (and a whole universe more) are easily within my grasp when I know what I am looking for, have experts to turn to, and Google at my fingertips!

During class today we experimented with Google Sites and had a go at embedding different kinds of resources on to one page e.g. videos, audio files, images and files (sheets, docs, slides, etc.) Below is a picture of my Sandpit site!

It was tricky at first, but evidently, the more I played around, the easier it got. The picture above is  while I was (and still am) 'in the process' of creating. What's exciting is that there is still so so so so so much to learn. The challenge here is to think about what I am doing with my learners at School that I could do more effectively using Google sites. Up until I now I have been using a site called Blendspace, which is great at creating a one-stop shop for my learners but in using Google Sites, I can keep all the learning in one place, making it more easily accessible for my learners. It also looks more aesthetically pleasing! (personal opinion). I really enjoyed building on my knowledge from todays learning by watching this slightly lengthy (but surprisingly not boring) introduction video to HTML.


           


Looking forward to next Friday!

Digital Upskilling: Google Sheets and Google Forms

In Digital Immersion this week we delved a little deeper into how to use the Apps Google Sheets and Google Forms, as well as having a play around with Add-ons to use within Google Sheets (there are so many Add-ons!).

As part of our learning we made a quiz on Google Forms, which as some of you may or may not know exports all the individual input to a single Google Sheet! Using the Add-on Flubaroo in Google Sheets we were able to take any number of answers, set the default (correct) answers and then Flubaroo went ahead and marked all of the answers for us!

Another part of our learning this week was sharing the ways in which our schools (previous and current) use these apps. Some of these innovative ways sheets are used are:

• Student progression sheets - A table format for students to inform their next steps, and a place to link in their evidence to justify their understanding of a specific progression. 
• A booking system where students can book in a time with the teacher to get more support in a particular subject.
• Weekly timetables
• A place for students to link their blogs so that Teachers can access all of the blogs from one place

Some ways Google Forms are used in the classroom are:

• Collecting Student voice
• Collecting Student prior knowledge

That was all in a few hours! I am really looking forward to taking the time to explore these apps further. The 'creation' part of todays session was to have another play with Google Draw and create another graphic representation of the days learnings and wonderings. My reflective question for the day was "How can I use these tools to manage existing documents and information more efficiently?" so not only thinking about what amazing and innovative new things I can come up with, but also think about what I already have in place and how I can improve them using these tools.

Digital Immersion: Week 2 Reflective Graphic 

Digital Upskilling: The sharing basics!

Okay everybody, here are a couple of tips that are bound to change your teacher lives!
Who knew that instead of going into each individual document to change the privacy settings so that learners and parents can view your documents with the link, you can just change the default privacy settings for every folder so that every new document you create within the folder automatically takes on the default privacy settings.

Let me break it down.

Here is my Numeracy folder in my Google Drive.

Select the drop-down menu on the right of the folder name

                           

Mine is already set up, but what you are looking for is the "Advanced" Button on the bottom right.

                         

Has certainly changed my life! Hope it makes yours a little easier, too!