This lesson day was interesting and fun for a couple of reasons.

Coding:

It was cool, simple (for someone like me who’s skills are at the beginning of his digital journey outside of emails, reports, youtube and instagram hehe) and broken down via clips and videos that describes how coding works, what the purpose of it is and how you can use it in activities and class.

I had fun with the alphabet mat and can see how students would get into it as they would thinking it was a game rather than actual work. The minecraft coding game would definitely hook my students as they’re fans of video games so I can see them gravitating towards that particular activity. But the most fun I think I had was with code. In code your basically creating a routine dance from the ground up, adding characters, their types of dance, the stage and background even down to the music, this is another thing I think my students would get into (probably need headphones though especially with 23 of them in the 1 class.)

Overall, I can definitely see the relevance of coding and how it goes hand in hand with chromebooks, especially if in the future one of my tauira ends up wanting to become a computer tech of sorts.

Computational thinking:

As mentioned, and obviously the reason I did this course, this is the beginning of my online journey using sites more often and having chromebooks as well as being 1 to 1 in class. So this got me thinking and noticing a lot of different things that you could do with students, not just the ‘add slides’ or ‘make a presentation’ or even just using docs. This has got me thinking about how to create or link ideas to my students, sharing what I think could benefit them overall as well as creating our own unique class site, one that even they would be proud of.

I have the tabs still up on my laptop even as I type this blog up just so I can remind myself of what I can do with my tauira or some of things I want to do with them and I can’t wait to explore with them.

Todays lesson was fun, in a matter of speaking.

I got to play around with the chromebooks that my students get to use in class.

I want to say this, my sausage fingers didn’t help me whatsoever, however the fact there was a presentation on how to use certain aspects of the device was really fun and innovative and it was very very helpful. I can’t wait to show my students what I do know or to show them what is possible and so on. It also opened my eyes to what they have readily available to them, seeing why we have such things as kawa of care and being cybersmart.

It also opened my eyes to see what the real differences are to ‘our’ work laptops too, although the students are limited by our laptops standards, I can see how using chromes will help them prepare for the future, even today.

Today we went over our own class sites so heres the breakdown of how that went:

We went over our own class sites and were adding to them, I myself am at an early stage of using chromebooks in class, so this was a cool lesson in which I got to work a little more on my class site.

Class site:

There is still so many things that im learning about class sites, I have done them before but now that im a senior teacher the use of a class site and chromebooks is more prominent over ipads and using devices sometimes.

*I was a junior teacher up until recently so the devices used in class was mainly Ipads.

There are still little things I need to go over so im more confident in creating or adding to my class site but I am having fun for the most part.

Feedback:

I didn’t mind the feedback from my core group today, in fact it was really welcomed. I was nervous about it but I was willing to put it out there to get feedback and it was awesome. I also got some tips from todays lesson about my class site too eg the 3 click tip, the accessibility for students as well as colours and how they capture people into exploring the class site. I look forward to further play around with the things we can do on the class site.

Multi modal:

Ive had a little explore around multi modal and I definitely like the idea behind it, giving more than one option for students learn, create and share their ideas. Though I have a little more to learn about it, im probably already doing it myself unknowingly. The idea to use different forms of media excites me due to the fact that students respond differently to different things, and as such they should be treated to different ways of learning and doing things.

class sites:

Ah yes.. the bane of my digital existence hehe (jokes) anyways, this is still fairly new to me, ive made a site but that was awhile ago now, and since becoming a senior teacher its evident that I know very little about the different tools. (Which is also a good thing seeing as im on this course to learn how to use various digital tools.) I have a basic understanding but id like to grasp a better understanding on how to do certain other things that are there too, eg embedding, I got a little frustrated trying to do what others might think is pretty simple but I haven’t given up just yet.

creating a class site:

This was fun to an extent, but not because of anyone else, the topic of space is so broad so it was a struggle to begin with, but afterwards it was a matter of what skills I don’t have yet that held me back.

All in all it was a fun day, by next week, with the help of my facilitator I should some of these skills down pact.

Forms:

This morning I got to actually have a proper play with forms, I have made 1 or 2 in the past but haven’t actually had a proper look at all the different options you have available. It was fun and I can’t wait to use forms to inform me of what my students interests are.

Maps:

It was interesting to see and know that theres so much you can do with maps, in fact I found myself playing around with all the different options and buttons to see what they could do or what would happen, then my sausage fingers kept swiping up or zooming in or out too far.

There is so much I could do with maps especially with my students, I look forward to trying some activities with them using maps eg. distance, pinning locations for dream holidays or locations to see and visit, to just drawing lines.

Sheets:

Sheets was probably the harder of all the lessons for me today, but I will get there, having to play around will let me know what is what and how or what to do when I use them in the future, also, there is so much to take in too. What I did enjoy though were the shortcuts, glorious glorious shortcuts, they save so much time especially if you have to do things such as names, or months, that was definitely one of the things I did manage to remember.

Where to from here?

Well, im going to keep playing around with sheets and see where I get to, although I found it a bit hard to grasp everything that was happening I managed to list down a few things I want to get better at so watch this space!

For our second day at DFI what I took away were some tidbits I have been playing around with as well as refreshing my memory and up skilling on what I already know.

One of my favourite things I have been playing around with is pinning tabs especially since I usually have a lot of tabs open at once and the ones that I feel are important like E-tap and gmail are the ones I have pinned so im not having to scroll through my many tabs and are always there, especially when I have to update my lappy as well as when its running slow sometimes. Pins! pinning everywhere!

This week it was a bit full on for me but it was very useful none the less.

I made a youtube channel. (for the lesson, not for.. yeah.. haha)

We navigated through making a youtube channel going through the settings and the expectations of what the purpose of of our channels were about.

I went down a rabbit hole, a really big rabbit hole, got lost, found my way back, got lost again, and again and managed to open lots of tabs of the same thing and had a minor meltdown!

In the end I found my way and made sure never to ever do that again, but the lesson in itself was great, I can see how much effort is put into ones channel.