Wowzers, that was a tough exam, worded in a way to confuse or make you think twice about your answer. Regardless of the fact that I didn’t pass THIS time, I’m still so proud of myself! I got 72% on my first attempt. Being someone who was completely new to using all of these tools, I don’t think I did too shabby.  I look forward at taking the exam again in the next few days.

My overall time spent on the DFI course has been a positive one. I have learnt so much during my time spent here and I would highly recommend this course to any person not fluent in digital technologies. I will miss our “bubble time” it was a great space that felt safe to share, ask questions and communicate with one another.

The DFI course was a great stepping stone into the right direction and I look forward to applying all of my new skills in the classroom.

This morning we took a deep dive into technology and how life has evolved. Technology plays a large roll in our lives both personally and professionally. As someone who has come from a third world country, its been quit a culture shock since I’ve emigrated to New Zealand a year and a half ago. Its taken some time for me to get used to the amount of technology used in the classroom and I can happily say, that I am now finally able to use these different types of technologies to their (almost) full potential. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no professional yet but sooooo much better than where I was a year ago.

We had a look at Generative AI and some of the productivity tools, some of which were chat gbt, magic school, TeachAid and diffit. Out of all of these tools TeachAid really stood out to me. We had some time to go through this tools and I took my time to get familiar with TeachAid. TeachAid seems really great, I love the fact that it has the New Zealand curriculum loaded onto it. TeachAid would be very helpful in helping set up lesson planning. It can create multiple choice tasks, paste links and it will set out questions according to your link and organize your work into an easy to manage task.

Lastly we went on to coding. This was my favorite and I can see how this can gain and hold a students attention. We went off into different groups. I went into the dance party group. In this group we spent an hour learning about coding and creating a dance party with different characters. It was so much fun. I really enjoyed this and would love to plan a lesson where my students could have the chance to code their own dance party.

Overall it was a great day, with a lot of interesting content.

Day 7 of the DFI course.

Today we touched on a number of topic’s namely:  The importance of rewindable learning, being cyber smart, learning the term ubiquitous (existing or being everywhere at the same time) and how its linked with Manaiakalani’s pedagogy,  class on air, explain everything, working through Chromebook’s and all the tabs with their meanings and where they are positioned and lastly creating a slide show and linking  it with EE (Explain everything) task on the Kawa of care.

Today has been very full on and a lot to digest, especially being someone who has never used/heard of these app’s before. I felt that I lacked some of the foundational knowledge that the others in our group had to their benefit.  I felt a bit confused today and not very certain of things/expectations, but with time not being on our side I tried to manage myself and just push through.

I enjoyed watching the video of the Kawa of care, it was so cute and so cleverly made.

Class on air seems like a great site and I shall definitely go and visit some more classes on this site during the holidays. It was great seeing other teachers ideas and how they model their lessons.

Below I have attached a screenshot of our play around with explain everything where we wrote our names, took a photo, used the shapes to create an iPad image and then used the drawing tool to make the explain everything icon. Then secondly there is a video recording which I made through google meet. We watched a video on a lesson on “class on air” a year 1-3 class about describing and continuing a repeating pattern , we then had to make a recording of ourselves giving feedback regarding the video and how it could help us as teachers.

“Hey diddle diddle,

The cat and the fiddle,

The cow jumped over the moon.

The little dog laughed,

To see such sport

And the dish ran away with the spoon.”

Write a second verse to this popular nursery rhyme.

roar the tor torn the top of the horse,

Dora the explorer drove over the dish and the spoon 

And the cow eat the dish and the spoon.”

Today we focused on our own class sites.

It was great being able to have time to go through everyone else’s class site, being able to see all the different formats and eye catching displays was great. I found it very beneficial and helpful as I have never had a class site before. Our current class site has not been updated in quite a while. I decided to start the process of creating a new class site from scratch, as I will then get the opportunity to learn, create and share my ideas within my own school.  I first made a layout plan on paper which I’m now in the process of using to help create my vision on my new class site. I was so grateful to have my coach near to help guide me on the correct process of creating a button, adding it correctly to my site and then linking a page with the related topic to this button. ( A reading button) I will now continue making more buttons on all the different learning areas that I would like to add.  I look forward to having the time to continue creating my site and hope to have it up and running soon.

Todays topic was about google sites.

I enjoyed todays session. I found it very informative, it was great being able to work collaboratively within a group to get a taste of what was expected and how to think and create a site that was both engaging and  informative for our learners.

We then had the chance to go and create our own site. The site that I created was about raising awareness about pollution and the different types of pollution you can get. I had so much fun doing this. Once you start you just can’t stop. There are always so many different ideas that pop into one’s head. I loved how easily one could create this site and how nicely the information could just flow on it. I had videos, pictures, definitions, songs and read aloud text books to pick and choose from. There’s still so much more that I would like to add and incorporate but time was just not on my hands today.

Manaiakalani’s “learn, create, share” pedagogy can really be seen and felt through today’s session.

Animation toolkit activity. I enjoyed this toolkit activity. It built on perfectly from my previous google slide session on DFI two weeks ago. It was great fun and think its a wonderful tool to use.

Our topic today was dealing with data. 

We were introduced to Google forms and how many benefits Google forms have. Google forms can be used for staff meetings, making quizzes, finding out dietary needs and many more. I enjoyed creating my own Google form. The topic that I chose was called “What is your favorite fruit?” People could choose from a variety of fruit that was listed below. They were allowed to choose more than one fruit. After selecting the fruit, the following task was to  write in a paragraph how they could use their favorite fruit in a dessert. I love that we could design and personalize our Google forms to our own preferences. I enjoyed being able to give it my personal touch and changing the theme to match with my topic. I like the idea of being able to use Google forms to make quizzes or spelling tests. I like the safety feature of being able to lock the form so that no other tabs could be opened. I liked that tests could be shuffled so that Children could not copy their friends’ answers next to them and that all answers were the children’s own choice. I like the variety of options available when creating your google form and being able to set my Google form to either have a short answer, a paragraph multiple choice, checkboxes or a drop down. 

Google mind maps. Google mind map lets you customize your map allowing you to track or plan your journey, measure the distances and add Place markers. I enjoyed creating my own map which was about ‘exploring the west coast’ and all the beautiful places to visit. Most of them I have done myself and would highly recommend these places of interest to any other person wanting to come and visit our beautiful West Coast .

Google sheets. Oh my goodness I truly had my hands in my hair. I was really stressed out and feeling very overwhelmed when we did the deep dive part but I was very grateful that we were split up into smaller groups according to our strength and abilities. I was grateful for our coach (Amie) who worked slowly through most of the topics. She explained the variety of tools in a great way and showed us practically how to use them.  I loved the practical example of having all the students’ data entered so that you could then break it into smaller chunks according to information that you would like. For example the conditional formatting. Being able to identify and mark children who were doing very well with a certain color then being able to identify through conditional formatting children who were not doing well and needed support and selecting a different color and being able to identify children who were in between, all on the same spreadsheet. It gives a great visual. Making life so much easier.  I benefited from learning how to wrap cells so that text would not overflow into other cells as this was a problem I was experiencing. I also enjoyed learning how we could freeze certain cells so that we could move data along the page and not lose our heading. 

For our create task, we had to choose a blog of our choice, enter the data onto a spreadsheet then use this data to create a chart. We then moved this chart onto a google slide doc. I enjoyed playing around with word art, adding text to a shape and just customizing my document to my own taste. 

I’ve once again learned a lot from today’s session and look forward to using these tools effectively both in and outside of the classroom. 

Today’s topic was media.

Todays media session was very insightful, we were exposed to a variety of media tools. My favorite tool was google draw. I enjoyed working with this tool and learning about its many features. Google draw is not that complicated and easy to use. This is a tool I would be able to use in my classroom. I can already imagine all the wonderful projects that I will soon have to scan through.

Google slides:  This seems like an AMAZING tool to have. I have never used this tool before but I do look forward to learning more about it and being able to use google slides to its full potential. This is something that I would be able use daily in my classroom, especially when we are doing our Good Morning session on the mat. As I mentioned above, I’ve not used google slides before so I was grouped into the slide skills session this afternoon, which mainly focused on working with shapes, text and images. Once I’ve got the basics under my belt, I would like to venture further and learn more about the animation aspects on google slides. I’m sad that todays session could not be split into two parts, so that next week we could build off of the basics from today and increase our knowledge on Google slides.  I feel being a primary school teacher, this is something that would be of great value to me, which I could use to enrich my lessons.

After todays session, It really has opened my eyes to a complete other side of the world that I’ve not had much exposure to. There is still SO MUCH to learn, but wow. I am amazed by what I’ve seen and experienced today. Those slides which were animated by children were amazing!!

I thoroughly enjoyed the DFI course today. I feel after last week’s session that I have a base to work from. I’m finding it much easier to navigate myself through all of the topics today. The pace of the work was much easier, I felt more confident and not as stressed out as day 1. I enjoyed learning more about Manaiakalani and their “learn, create and share” pedagogy.  This quote of “If it’s worth teaching, it’s worth capturing to allow rewindable learning” stood out to me. 

Google keep – This was such a revelation for me. I can see myself using this and it would be so helpful in everyday life. I loved all the options and uses available on this app. The notification that pops up if you have you location set is AMAZING!!! Being a teacher and mum of 3, I tend to get very busy and can forget some things at times, and that notification that pops up as a reminder for eg: driving past New World and get a notifications about a list of items I needed would be great. Making life so much easier.

Google meet- wow there was so much to learn, at first I was a little overwhelmed with all the do’s and where’s. But after being put in pairs and doing a DFI create activity, I realized it wasn’t so bad and just had to calm down and not stress about the small stuff. I’m so happy that we managed to get it done successfully. I am now a lot more confident and look forward to using google meet in the future. z

I loved all the useful hints and tips given out today. VERY HELPFUL!!

Today was my first day at the DFI (Digital Fluency Intensive) online with Manaiakalani. Having come from South Africa, where things tend to be very old school, I’ve not had much experience using a lot of digital technology before. I’m excited be a part of the DFI course and look forward to broadening my horizons. Today’s course was very informative, a lot of information to digest. I look forward to being more confident as the weeks progress.

I loved the quote ” Future focused learning in connected communities” it really stood out to me and made me feel inspired as a teacher who is new to my school community. I look forward to being able to use the tools handed to me through this course to the best of my capabilities to empower successful learning.

I am most grateful for the wonderful facilitators who are so calm and who are always there to help in a step by step process.

I have learned a lot about google docs today. I feel more confident using it.

Today we did cybersmart and we did editing images and putting images in shapes and putting images in our names and I put the grimace shake (that’s not dumb) and croping images that fit in shapes

We were learning to resize, crop and fit images into different spaces

Kia ora!

I made a simile poetry piece based on cats.

Here it is:

    Cats

Like a ninja, sneaking stealthily and slinking through the night.

Like an assassin, ready to kill on sight It’s unsuspecting prey.

As ready as a soldier when going to a fight.

As agile as a ninja, to his enemies dismay.

Like a ninja standing firm, nearly purrfect balance.

As fast as a pelican, at 30 mph speed.

Paws as soft as wool, when he walks, there is but silence.

Like an assassin or a ninja, a formidable foe indeed.

I hope you liked my poem.

haere ra!

Ezra.

   This is my duck poetry  it is a cinquain

This term room 4 has been learning to write animal poetry here’s mine the zebra one wet nose one skinny tail four skinny legs eating grass,running,sleeping fast,jumping. slow as a turtle well some turtles. Medium size of a baby horse okay have a good day bye.

Dholes are a different type of dog and are fun to learn about. 

Dholes – pronounced “doles” – are twenty inches at the shoulder and are the size of a german shepherd but look more like a large, long-legged, bushy tailed fox. Dholes are great runners, swimmers and jumpers and excellent hunters.

 In a pack there is a male and female that has pups and the rest of the pack hunt for the pups. When the pups get to an age they can hunt for themselves and the rest of the pack can hunt for themselves .

Females can give birth to up to twelve pups. Males mostly stay but some of the females tend to leave when they are older. 

Dholes are endangered which is sad because they are so cute. We need to look after these animals.

https://www.canva.com/design/DAFqbscJMPE/8jCAkjPip98hvd-PM9dvhw/edit

Last term we had a school disco. The theme was Winter Wonderland. Here is my costume.

   Here are people who got best dancing.

Here are the people who got best dressed

Here are some more photos.

Last term we had a school disco it was so fun.