DFI Day 8

 DFI Day 8

Our second last DFI session was fun. We had a play with animations and coding. Because of my subject field I have not had opportunity to look at the basic coding apps that are out there for students.

Space man

We also registered for our Google exam that we will do as a group next week. I am looking forward to sitting the exam and gaining my Google Educator Level 1 qualification.

This has been an awesome experience, and I have benefited greatly form it. I feel more comfortable with digital lessons, and  setting up a digital workspace for my classes. My T-Literacy has improved throughout the DFI session.

DFI Day 7

 DFI Day 7

All the nuts are in the basket

Today we had a look at devices, and how to use them just like a student would. We covered Chromebooks and iPads, which are the main two devices used in digital schools at the moment. Chromebooks are familiar to me, mostly because of their similarity to a laptop. 

Mr. Potato Head

We had a play with 'Explain Everything', which is a whiteboard app that also allows you to create and record media. It is available on Apple devices and Chrome devices. 

I also had a go at creating a Hapara Workspace lesson. It is my first time doing this, and I can see the benefits to creating lessons with Hapara. Finding student work has been made simple, and there is a good level of control over your lessons.

Going forward I will be looking closer at Hapara Workspace. I would like to incorporate my Junior lessons onto Hapara for my own convenience.

DFI Day 6

 Day 6 of DFI went by exceptionally quickly. We had another online session, and it is becoming easier to work online. Our focus for today was improving our class site so that our students have an easier, more enjoyable experience browsing through it.

My Home office

I decided to start with my year 10 class site today by working through it so that no more than 3 clicks are required to bring the student to where they need to be. This forced me to re evaluate my layout of my lesson pages, and as a result my lesson page is now streamlined. In the future I would like to create a more attractive layout with some pictures.

Each lesson tab will take you to an online lesson. I managed to get two lesson re worked and updated. I will have to look at the rest later, but I am intending on getting all the lessons updated. In the future I would like to create something similar for my senior lesson to supplement the Unit Standards that I do with them with more Theory lessons. 

View the full site

I can already see how this will make my life easier. It can enable any student to complete the work from home, independently, or with a substitute teacher. I am looking forward to my next DFI lesson! 

DFI Day 5

DFI Day 5

I was smiling for the group photo, but my internet was lagging.

Today we had another great online DFI lesson. Our focus was on Google sites. There is a lot involved with creating a site that is clutter free and student friendly. First we looked at setting up a google site in the most basic sense. 

Gotta love those fans

This gave us the tools and knowledge we needed to go further into creating a Google site from a set amount of information. This set amount of information is called a Multi Text Database. We take the information from the multi text database and then create what is called a Multi Modal Site.

Rainbow Dinosaurs Everybody

I am sure that all the other attendees have learned a great deal today, as I definitely have, especially on how to set up a website to be more Learn, Create, Share friendly. Going forward I will be applying this template / style to my own class site, to help my students learn more independently and confidently. 

Thanks Ron, for showing me how to throw an icon on my site.

In the future I would like my theory focused lessons to be online, and independent of teacher input, so that any student can work through the lessons independently from anywhere with confidence.

DFI Day 4

 Day 4 of DFI was just as eventful as the previous lessons. This is my first lesson that was online, and I am impressed how well the information was presented and how well it was executed. 

Our focus was on "Share" for this lesson, and we covered different ways of sharing information with others. 

The one way of sharing information is with Google Maps. With the ability to customize a map and insert a hyperlink on a location creates new ways of presenting information to others. I had a go at showing off all the places that I have called home at some point in my life.

Because of our current climate, I had fun with my Google form. Feel free to fill it in. I can always use the collected data to illustrate how analytics work.

Link Here

Here is an example of how analytics could look. This is my breakdown of a students blog, mainly looking at his blogging activity. I am sure there is some way to look and analyze blog comments as well, and I will endeavor to learn how to.

My takeaway form today's lesson is to try and incorporate Google Forms into more of my lessons, and work with the student to create analytical data from the forms.

I am looking forward to our next lesson!

DFI Day 3

Day 3 has been just as informative as our previous lessons. We covered a range of different creative tools and platforms. For starters, I now have a Youtube channel where I can create playlists for my students to view videos that would cover specific lesson topics. I am planning to create my own instructional videos at some point soon, and now I have a platform and method for my students to view this content safely.

My new blog label with a custom image.

We also had a go using Google Drawings. This was challenging, only because it has a different layout to previous software that I used. I think there is more I can do with it, and would be keen to get my students to use it for creating illustrations for their achievement standards, instead of just copying an existing image off of Google images.

My small animation (Bird was donated by Ron)

Here is my short animation that we had to create during DFI today. I would never have thought to use Google slides to create a short animation. I would say it is a solid 5/10, but I would be biased. 

It was fun having a look at Create and Share using media with this DFI session. I have a better idea of how my students can create and share valuable information with other students, and would like to see them take full advantage of these methods.

DFI Day 2

The second day of DFI was fun. I am now the proud owner of a very complete and collective google calendar. It now consists of my personal school timetable, school events, all my DFI meetings and other school meetings. I am planning on showing how to plan out google calendar to my students to help them plan out their term better.

Here you can see me with my Google Meet buddy. This guy.

In addition of working on my google calendar, I have streamlined by chrome bookmarks and figured out how to filter my chrome tabs. This has its benefits when I am working with multiple student documents at the same time. This would also be beneficial to my students, as they struggle juggling multiple tabs.

My gmail has been cleaned up and organized, and I now no longer have to go fish for an email in my inbox. I have a group for my faculty and also all my senior leaders at Bay of Islands college. Having all these individuals labeled and grouped will save me time in the future, and I am pleased about that.

Our last task was to work through a student blog and break it down for a viewer.

The learn, create and share pedagogy was highlighted in the google meet blog breakdown section, where we unpacked a students blog.  We had the opportunity to learn from a students blog, create our own breakdown of their blog, review their feedback on their blog and then share our own blog about how we executed this.

I am looking forward to our next DFI meeting.