Wendy- Professional Blog

  What a blast this was today. I am not sure I ever thought I would become so absorbed in Minecraft, Flappy Code or Kodable to the point of not wanting to close the tab and get back into the main meet. I'll make the most of the code.org site and the tutorials, videos and planning on How to Plan Your Hour of Code    It was good to have another dip into The New Digital technologies Curriculum. The TKI Technology on line resource was really good, (thanks Kerry) and it's a relief to have the links between DFI programme, Digital Tech Curric,  and TKI for us and our students. The plethora of resources shared with us today links into work we've begun using Bots, Scratch Junior and non digital computational thinking projects. Once again the biggest issue is time, although the upcoming 5 day break may be an opportunity to dig deeper. What will I use with my class - definitely Hour of Code - super brilliant to have such a great resource!

 Well, I played around with Mote again today (instead of Screen Castify!) on my very basic slide about accessing Google Apps. Vicki very gently reminded me would Screen Castify would work on any rewindable learning I wanted to share with my akonga.  Ok, that's my next step! Time to give it a go, as it should cut down the time I spend revisiting and reassuring my students who are still not confident with Google apps. Of course it will be great for rewindable learning too. I noticed last week while watching the others who have shared their work, that the placement of the video on screen needs to be done thoughtfully so it's not covering important aspects on the screen. I suspect the voice over is probably going to be my "go to" for rewindable learning. It was awesome to dig into the Cybersmart resource this week too. I have a better understanding of how to use it now. The sandpit time was great - time to read and delve into the support docs and videos.

 

I'm sure this will be a usefull tool for ipad users who have the paid version. 

These days are a bit mind blowing - there's always a pile of interesting snippets thrown in alongside the main events as well as references to cool tools from the last few sessions, e.g. the drop down button alongside the agenda, Jamboard replacing Padlet, and the reminder to go back and raid the slide decks and prior sessions for more information. I'd taken notes about the Reading to Text activity but had parked that in favour of getting a couple of multi media slides onto my class site. Thanks for the reminder Jason from our bubble and Sharon Gibson (work colleague) who commented on how that was going well in their classes. The sandpit time with class sites was brilliant today. It was helpful to listen in as Meryn and Fatima got tips, it helped to get me a little further along the track with this. There's still a heap to do! However, I have decided to just focus on literacy this term. Planning, building and getting a clear well functioning site is my goal. It was great...

  https://sites.google.com/paroagrey.school.nz/takutai2021/home

 

 Busy full on day again today, glad I wasn't the only one who got a little bit befuddled along the way. Again, thanks to those hosting and supporting - I'm grateful my questions are not (hopefully) driving you to despair. Sandpit time is more and more important to try and get this learning into practise and get my class site actually running and being purposeful.

Wow this week was again a bit mind blowing! Hats off to the DFI crew. Really enjoyed the Google Maps session, great way to share our own stories and adventures and has heaps of prospects for our classes. I'm thinking that mapping out the EOTC options in our school may be really inspiring to our students and help them value what we have in our backyard before they head out into the wider world. We talked today about the value of modelling and leaving enough sandpit time to explore, make mistakes and share the learning. It's something I will take with me into the classroom - more sandpit time and more sharing time. Thanks Maria for an inspiring session - great experience seeing you thinking outside the square, persevering and patience from my perspective as an adult learner. I enjoyed dipping into Google Forms - never done them before but got a few ideas e.g. spelling test was an interesting idea. I'll think of using forms in different contexts as the term progresses and con...