DFI Week 6 Enabling Access

I have had a very enjoyable day today. It is always lots of fun being able to create and spend time on something that will be of value.

Manaiakalani

The link today was the work CONNECTED.

There is strength in coming together. As the weeks go on and we get information about Manaiakalani and it is all making the bigger picture very clear. The Manaiakalani programme was designed to connect people. "Connected learners share". The most important way of connecting is through sharing. Having the children in my class sharing means they will be able to connect to each other and others within and outside of the school.

In my previous school I was one of our Kahui Ako in school collaborators and it was very interesting to hear that it was born from seeing the Manaiakalani programme. I can see there are parts that have been taken and used but with not as much success as the Manaiakalani programme has. 

I like the idea of "Tuhi Mai, Tuhi Atu" - write to me, write to others.

Having the children link up with children in other schools and sharing and commenting will be a very neat way to keep them engaging and valuing theirs and others work.

Google Sites

I was very nervous to share and talk about my site. I am in a year 1-3 class that is not currently 1-1 digital. At the beginning of lock down with the idea that all children would be getting a device we (the junior teachers) were tasked with creating a site for our classes with learning that our children could work on from home when they received a device. I spent a lot of time playing and creating and had a great time. As the time went on it became clear that our learners were not going to receive a device anytime soon so an expert teacher created a junior learning website for all of our junior classes and put it with a link on the school site. This way we all know there was some similar learning that could be happening while the children were at home without having a way of checking in or seeing what the children were doing in the way that our senior teachers were already set up for and doing.

It was disappointing that my site then just sat unpublished as I really liked it and was quite proud of it. So over the last few weeks I have taken aspects from it and the children have been using them on our shared class laptops.

Being able to share this for the first time with anyone other than myself was daunting.

I didn't know if it would be good. Being able to give and receive feedback about our sites was really valuable and I got some comments that were very positive and also so useful ones about size of text.

Being able to spend most of the day going back to this site and updating it for use when I move to a senior class that is beginning to be 1-1 digital was so worthwhile. 

I have been able to create buttons that actually look fun and inviting. I have taken away the clutter and made my slides for the learning tasks a lot bigger and more user friendly. I am now looking forward to adding in the T Shaped literacy ideas that we are now beginning to create within school.

I am now super excited and ready to get going with being 1-1 digital. Using sites and blogs and Hapara is going to be fun!