DFI FOUR - Devices, Friday 16th August

In the week gone, I’ve managed to customise buttons on the new Google Site I created, pleased with that.  Just need to check how to make buttons usable for navigation. 

Maria presented about being Manaiakalani feels it’s vital that children are at home in a digital world.  This means that being Cybersmart is paramount, and explicitly teaching digital citizenship and children’s understanding of their digital footprint is required.  How you behave online needs to be worded positively… when we are online we are kind, we are helpful, we are responsible. Fits really nicely with our schools PB4L kaupapa.

Rewindable learning allows learning to take place at any time, any place, at ANY PACE.  Learning is ubiquitous.

Manaiakalani help to implement the Kawa of Care in schools, so that across whanau, community, staff, learners and different schools the understanding and language used is the same.

Interesting to learn about what the Hapara tool can do. It allows the teacher to focus on the learning, rather than needing to manage the technology.  You have visibility into what the children are doing, you can give feedback, and differentiate what you ask children to do. Allows you to see in their Drive.  I like that you can hover your cursor over their docs and see a thumbnail of what they’re doing. Great for monitoring the speed at which they’re working, and of course insight, feedback in real time etc.  You can also read blog comments and delete any inappropriate content should you need to. You can send messages to individuals, or groups. So you may want to send a URL or clip to a particular group, you can do this through focus session.  Useful that you can reset passwords for learners if they forget, plus you can remove learners if they leave the school, or if other children come. You can reduce the view of a folder to one item, that way you can see all learners folders, so you can see who has and hasn’t filed it in the correct folder… say you want them all to pop an item into their Cybersmart folder, you can view it to see exactly who has and hasn’t.

Had a good session exploring iPads, specifically Explain Everything app which I am already familiar with.  Expensive, but sooooo many great features. The lasso tool for custom crop on Explain Everything is a neat tool to alter an image so it transforms into exactly the way you want it.

Got a lot out of Robbie’s reflections around the use of devices in schools, and being very conscious of the SAMR model, and where your programme is sitting when delivering teaching and learning in a digital environment.  So often teachers are heard saying, learners are putting it on their blogs. My wondering is though, how often is this purposeful sharing in order to add value, and connect with an authentic audience? Is the ‘share’ to add an extra layer of meaning… or actually are the lines blurred and the process morphs into sharing for accountability?  Something I was to keep in mind.

Screencastify has to be one of my highlights of the day - rather user-friendly tool and so handy to show your screen.  I’ve completed one of the Digital Dive we did, exploring all sorts of things using Chromebooks (so many shortcuts), and one showcasing elements of the Smart Footprint component of being Cyber Smart.

Huge thank you to Pia and Ange who we spent some time in a Google Hangout with.  Great tips on the Google Certified Educator exam, any help is appreciated so thank you!

Two other great takeaways: Internet Awesome and ‘make kindness go viral’.

Thanks for reading,