DFI - Week 4

Welcome to week 4 - our focus this week was dealing with data!

The focus of my blog post today is Google Sheets. 

Google Sheets is a tool that I find I am using more and more often in my teaching life. I started diving deeper into sheets last term as I was handed a piece of PAPER to track student attendance in a literacy programme I am implementing in my classroom. The stress of not losing the attendance sheet each week and then having to go back and count all the ticks made me think... in 2022 there must be a more effective way to do this!

I've decided to use Google Sheets as a way of recording this data for myself and my colleagues. All our data is now visible and easy to manage. Wooo! 

I learned a little about Google Sheets as I problem solved my way through trying to make the Google Sheet work in the way that I wanted. 

I found today's session was very helpful as I picked up a few tips and tricks that I've now used to tidy up this Google Sheet and make it more effective. Here are the three things I found most helpful:

• freezing the first column/rows (so that the children's names or the categories are always visible wherever you are working on the Google Sheet). 
• protecting sections of the spreadsheet (permissions can be given to particular tabs etc.) 
• grouping data (so that it can be hidden or viewed in groups e.g. classes, year level, gender) 

I have recently started using Google Sheets for my classroom planning. I find it very helpful to have all my planning in one place. It is so easy to flick between the tabs for each curriculum area. I pin this sheet to my top toolbar so that it is easy to find and refer to during my teaching day.  I also like how I can add a comment to a cell if I have something to reflect on from that particular lesson/small group. 

I'd love to know how other teachers are using Google Sheets for their planning... do you have any tips and tricks to make using sheets for planning more effective?

Photo of the DFI Term 2 Cohort. 

DFI - Week 3

This week was an online week for DFI. We worked on Google Meet for the day! 

The theme of today's session was Media. We learned about many different types of media, within Google and beyond. 

Here are my three takeaways for the day: 

Youtube Playlists:

My class enjoys singing and dancing along to YouTube videos. They are such a handy tool to have as a teacher. 

I've now created a playlist that includes many of our classroom favourties. If you are a junior school teacher and you haven't heard of Loopy Tunes Music, go and check them out. They are always a winner in my class! 

Google Draw: 

We made a slide for our blogs or class sites today called "All About Me". 

A trick I learnt that I didn't know before was just the masking tool to turn an image into a shape and the use of the shift key to keep the image or shape correctly proportioned. 

Creating a personal slide theme:

We learnt how to create a personal slide theme in Slides. Creating a personal theme was a simple as opening a blank google slide, clicking on slide and then "Edit Theme". 

I can now use these slides for my lessons as the slide theme includes all the templates that I think I will need for the lessons in my classroom (and if I change my mind or think of a new idea I can always edit the theme later on once I have used it in practice). 

As a side note, something that I always find challenging as a junior school teacher is finding a good font for my children. Very few fonts are simple enough and with the letter correctly formed (no added flicks or "funny" letter a's or g's). Any suggestions would be much appreciated? 

Kia kaha!

DFI - Week 2

Workflow 

In this blog post I am focusing on three different aspects of today's learning. 

1.  The "Learn" phase of Manaiakalani's Learn, Create and Share cycle. 
2. Google Meet
3. Google Keep. 

Learn

Today we focused on the Learn phase of  Manaiakalani's Learn, Create, Share cycle. We learned about the acronym R.A.T  as you can see in the image below.  R.A.T. describes effective practice in the digital world.  I think an important point to remember was that what learning looks like is different in each school but effective practice will be underpinned by these principles. 

R is for recognizing effective practice. Examples of effective practice in my classroom are my implementation of the  Better Start Literacy Approach (structured literacy) and Heggarty (phonemic awareness). 

A is for Amplify. We can ask ourselves,  how could these effective practices be amplified with the use of digital technologies? Examples of this in practice in my context are the BSLA Facebook group, taking part in Zoom calls with teachers from across the country to learn how to effectively implement BSLA  or the sharing of resources on TKI (phonics plus books and teachers guides) or on websites like teachers pay teachers. I am interested to discover how technology could be or is being used by teachers with their tamariki in this BSLA context. 

T is for Turbocharge.  This means that technology is being used to create learning that was not possible in an old-school paper-based classroom context. This links in with the S.A.M.R model. Learning that is turbocharged charged fits within the Modification and Redefintion phases (or above the line) in this model. An example of this would be meeting with lecturers from the University of Canterbury online alongside other teachers from across the country. Something not possible in a paper-based or face to face context (especially in a pandemic). A question I have for my own classroom practice is, how can I better use technology in my classroom to modify and redefine learning for my tamariki? 

Google Meet

I found that the learning and exploration that we did today with Google Meet was most helpful as this was an area of Google that I haven't had much experience with. It is surprising that I have made it this far in a pandemic without running a Google Meet, but here I am!  I have only ever participated in other people's Google Meets, but today we were set the challenge set to run our own Google Meet. We had to create a meeting, use our Google calendar to invite the attendees, share our screen, and run the meeting. 

Google Keep

We were introduced to Google Keep. I am planning on using Google Keep to manage my workflow by keeping things organized and in a place where I can find them. I have added Google Keep to my bookmarks so that it is easy to find. I like that it is integrated across Google (Mail, Docs, Sheets... everywhere!). I have begun to collect all the website links and documents I use for my planning each week and organize them using Google Keep. Fingers crossed this makes my planning life just that little bit more streamlined and gives me back a little bit more time.  

Kia kaha! 

DFI - Week 1

Manaiaklani Digital Fluency Intensive  

Over the next 9 weeks, I am taking part in the Manaiaklani Digital Fluency Intensive, aka DFI. It is aimed at increasing teachers' digital fluency and confidence. 

We opened with the story of Maniaklani. It is a story that I have heard told many times over my years teaching at Glen Innes School, which is a part of the Manaiakalani cluster of schools in Tamaki.  It was refreshing to be reminded of the journey other educators have traveled before us and the "why" that collectively drives us all to support our tamariki to be the best they can be. Manaiakalani was the word gifted to this kaupapa. It means a hook from heaven. A hook to engage our learners. Digital technology is our hook. It brings a sparkle to our children's eyes and engages them in learning. 

Throughout the day we learned many tips and tricks to use  Google Apps (Drive and Docs) and Chrome to use ourselves and pass on to our learners back in the classroom. 

Organizing my Google Drive (a Marie Kondo moment!)

I've used folders and colour coding to organise and easily identify my files. 

I aim to name my files with many key words so that they are easily found using the search tool. 

I have used numbers/letters in a strategic way to get the folders into a sensible order.

 Voice typing in Google Docs rather than typing. 

For someone like me, that isn't the fastest typer or the best at spelling this will help save me valuable time. 

Just open a google doc, click on tools, voice typing and then select the New Zealand English option. 

The voice typing tool could be used in a classroom context to support children in their writing or to create more opportunities for children to increase their reading milage. 

Google Docs to collaboratively write and send emails.  

This is a building block new to docs in the last few weeks. Simply open a doc, go to insert, building blocks and then click on email draft.

 

It will open something that looks like this in your Google doc. It is then able to be shared and edited like a Google doc and when it is ready to be sent simply click the mail icon and it will open and send through your Google Mail. 

I am looking forward to learning more over the next 9 weeks of the DFI course and taking this learning with me back to my school to share with my colleagues and my learners.


Nga Mihi Nui