Today it was good to be reminded that sharing and the desire to share is part of the integral human experience. Dorothy’s talk on ‘Share’ also reminded me of the importance of meaningful or relevant sharing, not just sharing for sharing. And that that in itself can be motivation to learn, or complete tasks. So it will be important to work in a variety of learning tasks to promote the desire to share.

As I work with juniors currently, most of the practical learning today will be used to support my own workflow. I particularly benefited from the learning around sheets, as I often come across them, but had not known how to interact or utilise them. The freeze columns or rows will be instantly useful, and I have already used the new learning about the drop downs to update my class digital timetable!

In regards to what could be used with my learners, we could use my maps to show where we and our class mates are from, or where they have traveled to, to help them to get a better understanding of distance ( a map could be printed and glued in writing book). It would also be great in the sharing of pūrakau, particularly those that speak of migration or travel across the country.

Personally, again I think the google sheet learning is what I will get the most use out of. However, I have a large extended family, so google forms for planning get togethers may be on the cards!!

Once again there is so much to digest.

Today’s session on Media can be applied to all aspects of Learn, Create, Share. Getting more of a taste and understanding of the application of these digital tools to use for creating was again, inspiring. Being able to utilise Youtube by having a channel with play lists to link to teaching and learning topics will be valuable. 

My main takeaway from today is some of the ways to encourage and allow learners to share. While some things are easier or more accessible for older students, by using recording instructions (rewindable artifacts) in slides and embedding them into a class learning site for younger students to refer to, they will be able to develop skills that will set them up for more independent activities. I will also endeavor to get students to record themselves sharing about their learning, explaining what they are doing or have done, to share to the site, so that they can see themselves and their progress more easily. 

The tip about ensuring time is set aside for Create and Share, although it seems obvious now, is great, and I have a better appreciation of the importance of it and how I might achieve that in a meaningful way, after today’s session. This had been a bit of a struggle for me with junior learners.  So the first few weeks of term there will be a lot of modelling and supporting students to capture themselves and their learning on their ipads. This will be supported by rewindable learning in the form of ‘how to . . ‘ slides that I had some practice making today.

The skills from today will support my workflow; through knowing short cuts for not having to do everything from scratch; having a growing bank of resources that support student independence; and not having to go back and change sharing permissions!

I look forward to more opportunities to use these skills and tools over the coming weeks and to see which of my ideas work for this group of learners, and which need to be adapted further.

Today’s session ‘workflow’ was incredibly helpful. There was a lot of new learning around google apps and functions that I had interacted with superficially before and some that I had never heard of before. I have a better understanding of how to use some of these tools more effectively now, and what they are actually for. I also appreciate how helpful the others will be going forward. For example, Google Keep. 

Initially during the deep dive on Keep, I thought it was simply another organiser. However the further along the session, I began to see more and more applications. A key thing for my work flow will be being able to utilise it for more efficient publishing of students’ work. I wish I had known about this as a uni student. This and the tasks function on Calendar will, be of great benefit for me. I will be using tasks to organise and document my class release day more coherently and effectively. As well as setting up reminders for tasks during the week. I still tend to lean towards analogue methods or organising, however it tends to become untidy. So I am setting a goal for myself to use these tools more. 

I can see how the DFI uses the Manaiakalani pedagogy of Learn Create Share. Experiencing it, rather than just reading about or discussing it (but doing that as well), especially just before the school term, is opening up ideas, inspiration, resources and the ability to use them, to finish off my planning. The opportunity to have and record a one on one discussion, and use what has been taught to embed the recording into a blog, also gives me the confidence to start blogging for the class sooner and more regularly, which I didn’t have before.

Today’s session on core business was packed full of interesting and useful tips, tricks and functions. I am going to focus on docs functions of smart chips, using tables to create more attractive and cohesive layouts and how to utilise these through my class site and blog to promote the school – home connection in a more meaningful way. This has been a challenge for me as a beginner teacher with year 1’s.

I have used some of the learning today to (begin to) build a home learning google doc that will be sent home, but can also be accessed on our class site. The benefit of this will hopefully be that whānau can support their tamariki to do small bits of learning at home, but they can also access more resources to support the learning through the site. It also means tamariki will be able to show their whānau what they have been using at school and some of their own work. I hope that this will support families to engage more with their students’ learning, and give my students a sense of purpose and pride in what they are doing.

The other side and or purpose of doing this is to improve my effectiveness with planning and providing opportunities to share what is being explored and learnt about in class, as well as being a record of my professional development. This is a goal I have set for myself for the first two terms of this year.

I would like to make this template more attractive by adding callouts to use as text frames. I will also add more images. Each week I will copy and update the template for the site, and make a copy with no background colour to print and send home with ākonga.

I will need to further develop the layout and content, adding links to sites and resources as they become available. But I can see where I want to go with this idea, and excited to use some of the other learning from today in my planning and teaching.