DFI Tuesday 5 May

Wow what a day!
I am exhausted but feeling inspired and motivated.
There has been a lot of new learning happening today in many areas.

Manaiakalani

First I have an understanding of Manaiakalani now and why and when it was created.
I started at Edmund Hillary School part way through Term 1 and have been to staff meetings when this word has been used and spoken about and it was like a foreign language to me.
Now I can confidently say I know what it is all about it.
A sticking point from the learning of Manaiakalani was

Pedagogy + Technology

Meaning how we are teaching and learning and embedding technology into this to improve schooling, especially literacy, for our tamariki.

Voice to text

I am looking forward to my class going 1-1 digital now and using the tools from this course.
One thing I will be using is the voice to text. Not just for the children when creating stories but also for myself. I learnt touch typing at high school so I can type well but voice to text will make life a lot easier when copying things or writing thoughts.

Google Groups

Second I have learnt about Google Groups. I know I am now in at least one google group - the DFI one.
It is an easier way to communicate with a group of people. I take a kapa haka group and a Kaitiakitanga group so being able to add the children to a group when they are in classes across the school will make communication a lot easier.

Google Drive

Thirdly I got a chance to tidy up my google drive. I now have colourful folders in an order that is easy to access and see.
For the children, when teaching, I will make sure to spend the first few sessions on setting up their drive so that their work is manageable. Naming docs with initials first and keeping things tidy for ease of use will be most important.

Creating with Google Docs

Lastly I enjoyed getting a chance to play on google docs when creating something. I do not normally like to use google docs as I can never make things look how I want. But I found there is a page setup function that has let me do the things I have always wanted to be able to do.
I had a wee play and put pictures with my pepeha. It is not exactally how I would like it, still needs some more playing to align and resize images to look tidier but here is what I created today...

When I have more time I will go back to the images with white backgrounds and remove then as we were shown today.

Summary

I have greatly enjoyed today and I feel like my brain is bursting with ideas and motivation now. I can not wait for the children to be back at school so I can start implementing some of the new things I have learnt. Especially looking forward to using the voice to text tool for some reluctant writer to hear their personal voice with their stories.

Looking forward to next weeks Meet.