The Final DFI

The Final DFI
Today has been a day to reflect and look back on what we have achieved over the past nine weeks. Over the last term it has been amazing to witness the growth of our group of teachers and the distance we have travelled in the digital world. A three hour exam did not put us off....it showed us what we can do well and what we still need to work on> Does that sound about right? Teaching as inquiry for professionals! I have learned so much and am looking forward to using all of aour Google apps with my students in the coming years!!

Go Manaiakalani!

Google Apps - Work Smarter not Harder!

Working Smart

Today was all about working smarter, not harder. There were lots of handy tips and apps to use to make a teacher's life a little easier! We looked at Google Calendar, Google Hangouts and Gmail. Although these were tools that I have used in the past, I was not using them to their full potential!! Obviously this was a huge surprise!!

Google Hangouts was something I used to chat with colleagues and I had never joined a group hangout before and it was so much fun. Screen sharing is awesome and I can't wait to share this experience with my students!! Learning and lots of fun!! This would be a great way to share learning!!

I had begun to use Google Calendar more this year to help me stay on track with my meetings and commitments. I have been creating events and inviting people to meetings. This taught me a few new handy hints and let me change settings and themes. Google Calendar has become a tool I use all of the time.

Gmail is something that I use all day everyday! It was great to go into settings and set up new labels and delete labels I have never used. Using labels has become so much easier than when I first started using Gmail. I found it very user friendly!!!

It was a really great session today and I am feeling confident using these Google Apps.

Manaiakalani DFI My Google Site

Manaiakalani DFI My Google Site

As Part of our DFI session today, we had time to spend on our Google Site. Time for this is precious and hard to come by in the early days of working with Manaiakalani and developing pedagogical knowledge! The best part of the day was looking at other teacher's Google Sites. They are so inspirational and motivating. I want my Google Site to be as amazing as those!!! All I need is time and there is no shortage of inspiration!

I set myself a goal today of updating my Google
Site Reading and Maths pages... and guess what? I actually achieve my goal! Go Google Sites. I can't wait to use my site with my students on a daily basis! Visible learning is awesome for students and whanau.

Visible Learning Using Google Sites

Visible Learning Using Google Sites

It was fantastic to spend time working on Google Sites during this weeks Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Intensive session. Just having the time to spend on a Google site was great. There seem to be so many ways to develop and design your site and the possible content is only limited by your imagination. I thoroughly enjoyed looking at many Google Sites that have been developed by other educators.

I look forward to developing my site and being able to adapt some of the ideas I have seen during our session today. I have had several conversations with parents this term during which they told me that they have no idea what their children are learning, as they never tell them anything about their day at school. it was great to be able to say that this would be changing as we move towards having our learning visible on Google sites! This seems to be very timely! Our whanau want to know what their children are learning and indeed, how they are learning in our modern learning environment. Visibility of learning is the way forward!