We made it! - DFI Session 9

9 weeks of DFI have now come to an end. This truely has been an amazing learning opportunity. Connecting with others, learning online via google Meet and sharing a lot of laughs along the way.


Our final session with Dorothy about the Manaiakalani journey highlighted ubiquitous learning - anytime, anywhere, any pace and from anyone - such an important aspect of the Manaiakalani kaupapa! Ubiquitous learning significantly amplifies the opportunities for learning. 

Over the last 4 weeks ubiquitous learning has been possible for our all our learners, and many of them have engaged with their learning through their class sites and attending google Meets. I've made more screencastify videos in the last few weeks than I did in the whole of last year, providing opportunities for my students to learn on their own (or their family's) schedule.

Lockdown has challenged me to consider how I deliver content to my learners. How are the students in my class choosing to learn? It will be worth asking my students how they think the lockdown has impacted on their learning. I've seen a child who often struggles to focus for long periods really engage in our google Meet sessions. Another who has become far more confident with sharing his ideas and what he has created with his peers in an online space. I've even seen my learners grow with their patience and tolerance when things don't always go to plan.

Rewindable learning allows for the school day to be flexible and extended - so important to have this option for our families as our students attempt to learn at home. I know that there are some families who have tried to maintain routine with learning at home from 9 til 3 with breaks, while others attend our google Meets in the morning, spend time with their families in the afternoon, then jump back online to engage with their learning after dinner. Some students are even working on tasks in their weekends!

Having devices in homes has allowed for so many barriers to be removed. The digital divide across the nation has been significantly highlighted during our time in lockdown. Fortunately for our learners, our school communities were in a space that we could not only provide distance learning, but also have the digital capabilities to maintain relationships with our learners online.

When I reflect back on the teaching and learning space that we've been currently working in some of things that I'm most proud of are:
- the fact that I am part of a Manaiakalani Outreach School and that we were in such a good space to deliver distance learning
- the resilience and determination that teachers and staff have displayed when dealing with this pandemic, putting wellbeing first but also ensuring that learning could still happen
- that I chose to continue DFI. It has been such great learning opportunity doing it online, but it also means that once we move back to alert level 2 that I will have Fridays face to face with my class.

I regret not getting my Year 4 learners up to speed with how to use their chromebooks and gsuite. Many of them have struggled to do online tasks because they need more practise at navigating the class site, creating a new doc, filing it or making a copy. It has made sharing their learning on their blogs even more of a challenge! (I have given all my learners the option to do tasks with pen and paper then upload photos/ videos).

Moving forward into the ‘new era' of schooling I will definitely be making more rewindable learning opportunities, ensuring that my instructions are clear, and collecting more student voice on how students learnt best at home during the lockdown.


A large chunk of our session today also involved completing the Google Certified Educator Level 1 Exam. I'm pleased to say I passed (after some last minute dramas with registering!) Having used google drive daily for a number of years I found the practical tasks relatively easy (tip: if you don't use google classroom, have a quick explore prior to the exam!) The multi-choice questions were a bit tricker - like everyone said, it really is a reading comprehension test!

Thanks to all the Manaiakalani Facilitators, particularly the Auckland ones - Gerhard and Dorothy, and the latest addition - Phil! Your enthusiasm and support made the course even more engaging. I'm leaving this course feeling empowered and connected, and of course I've already revisited content that we've covered over the last 9 weeks (ubiquitous learning in action!)


Regardless of where you are at on your digital fluency journey, the Digital Fluency Intensive caters for all!

Computational Thinking & The Future of Tech - DFI Session 8

Today's DFI session explored computational thinking (part of the revised technology curriculum) which is timely as all schools are expected to be integrating this new aspect as of 2020. Being part of the Manaiakalani Outreach Programme means that our school is already teaching some of this really well. Our next step is to move forward and look at where we can go next.

Part of my role as the digital team leader will involve me mapping out what our teachers are currently doing across the year levels in relation to the progress outcomes and then how we can amplify this and do even more. As I currently have a bit more flexibility with my teaching schedule this will be something that I prioritise and start to work on next week.

So why are we teaching computational thinking? 

Because behind programming and coding is PEOPLE. We want to empower, equip and give our learners opportunities to develop technology in the future. It's not just about being consumers of tech, but also creators and innovators.

Slide taken from DFI New Digital Technology Curriculum - Computational thinking 

This also means that our teachers need to be fluent with digital technology so that they can empower and turbocharge teaching and learning. Empowering teachers initially will have huge flow on effects with helping to empower our learners and their whānau. The digital fluency intensive has been a great way to upskill teachers. Over the last 8 weeks I have learnt a lot enhancing my own digital fluency, and I certainly feel more empowered! I'm looking forward to being back in the classroom face-to-face with my learners.


This slide from Dorothy's empowered session really resonated with me - the device is not just a tool. It transforms the way we learn!

A great example of this is completing our DFI sessions online. The learning that we have been able to do in our own homes over the last few weeks with our devices has opened up a world of possibilities and removed a lot of barriers!


There are a lot of great resources online to support teachers with the revised curriculum. I've seen a couple of them but haven't really had the time to sit down and look through them, particularly the exemplars on TKI. One of my favourites was this one from the Raranga Matihiko site which breaks down the progress outcomes into student speak. I think sharing these with teachers will also help them to develop their understanding of what each progress outcome entails.

It was also great to spend a bit of time playing around on scratch. I have a long way to go with developing my digital fluency with this tool, but I need to to persevere and keep working on it. Thanks to Kerry for letting my remix her animation! I managed to add a second sprite and programme some text to appear. Still a work in progress but a lot of fun mixed with lots of learning!

Definitely keen to give this another go with my students, however I think I'll wait til I'm back in the classroom with my learners to teach this!

And finally, a question that stuck out for me today was "How are we empowering kids with remote learning?" I have a lot of optional tasks on my class site for students to complete and have tried to vary the create aspect. Every single child in my class now has a device and the internet at home so they can all access their learning online. Yet at the end of week 3 only half of my class have engaged with their online learning... Perhaps I'm not giving them enough agency? I know there are some other factors out of my control, but this is something for me to consider as I prepare next week's online learning tasks.

Delving into Devices - DFI Session 7

Today's session kick started off with Fiona Grant (aka the Cybersmart Queen!) sharing the importance of empowering our learners to be positive and proactive. She highlighted the importance of making the "positive" the norm. Using positive language - when we're creating or exploring content online, the words and text that we interact with and use should be positive, thoughtful and helpful.

Cybersmart is a behaviour that we want instilled in our learners. Just as we would explicitly teach classroom behaviours in a positive way (think PB4L - Positive Behaviour for Learning) so should we teach cybersmart values. With that being said cybersmart lessons should be specifically taught, as well as embedded into other curriculum lessons, AND retaught when there is a need. (Particularly at the start of a new school year, or even once we've moved back into alert level 2 and are all back at school!) A good starting point would be to revisit the Kawa of Care by reframing it as a positive question: "What will I see you doing?"

Another of the key takeaways that I took from Fiona's session was that anything we share is personal - we need to help empower our learners differentiate and make decisions about what personal content they share.

I've also picked up some questions to ask learners (both students and teachers) to stop, think about and reflect on their cybersmart behaviours including:

• What is the power of creating your own content here?
• What does our digital footprint convey about us online?
• If I googled you in 10 years time, what would I see?

I briefly explored the cybersmart copyright lesson under smart and legal as I've noticed some learners copy and paste content and try to pass it off as their own (knowing your learners well means it's pretty obvious when they do try this!) Below is a brief reflection on what I thought about this lesson and how I think it could be used in my classroom.

We also explored the basics of Hapara (Teacher Dashboard). This is a great tool that makes teaching in a digital environment SO much easier. While I'm pretty familiar with the basics, there were some tips that Dorothy mentioned to help me improve my workflow.

Tip #1: Don't get students to share their work with you - it will end up staying in your drive (I already have enough trouble finding what I need!) so this will definitely help minimise the files I search for.

Tip #2: There should be no docs under "Unshared" in Hapara. Get learners into the habit of filing everything - it may even need to be built into our SODA tasks (Start of Day Activity). At present, 26 out of 27 students in my class have more than 25 files that are in that unshared space. Eek!



I've always looked at other schools who are not part of the Manaiakalani programme and wondered how on earth teachers cope when students can BYOD. I look back on my own journey with a switch from a PC to a Mac in 2012 when I began teaching at May Road School. It was a huge learning curve to get my head around how to use software like Pages and figure out how to change the settings so that they worked for me. I can only imagine how teachers cope (or don't!) when they have to deal with technical issues for a multitude of different devices that students have brought from home. It really is a Bring You Own Disaster scenario and I am grateful that all my learners have chromebooks.

It was interesting to learn why Chromebooks were the preferred option for Years 4-13. These devices allow for the three principles of the Treaty of Waitangi:

• Participation - ensures equity for everyone
• Partnership - between google, fusion, students, whānau, schools
• Protection - through a cybersmart curriculum

I found completing the digital dig was a worthwhile task in today's session. Quite often I forget the shortcuts or keys for how to do things on a chromebook and will often ask other students in my class to support their peers. It was great PD for me and it will be something that I will be getting future classes to work through at the start of every academic year. It will be a great refresher for those who are in the second or third year of being in a chromebook class, as well as being a great way to upskill students in their first year as well as providing them with their own resource for rewindable learning. 

It was also great to have a play around with Explain Everything. While this is an ipad based app, it was interesting for me to get an insight into how teachers utilise it in their 1:1 ipad environments (Years 1-3).  Here is a recording of my second attempt at creating using Explain Everything.

A lot of great tips and tricks in today's session as well as some food for thought around how I can support other teachers with enhancing their teaching and learning programmes using digital technology. I will be highly recommending the DFI to all teachers at my school! 

Enabling Access - DFI Session 6

The theme of today's DFI session was enabling access through visibility. Particularly fitting as we are three days into term 2 where students are learning from home and teachers are teaching from home due to our nationwide lockdown!

While the Ministry of Education have put in place supports for those students who don't have access to devices and internet connections (such as home learning packs and Papa Kāinga TV), I feel confident that the majority of my 27 learners will be able to utilise the class site access their learning for as long as they need to be at home.

Over the school holidays I had been tossing between how I was going to structure my class site so that it would be visually appealing and user friendly (particularly for my Year 4 students who are in their first year of being in a chromebook class and have had their devices for less than 7 weeks!). I made the decision to have a page for each curriculum area so that I could get as much relevant learning content out to students... needless to say it was an epic fail! There was too much content and the feedback that I received from some parents was that they weren't sure what their child needed to complete. Judging by the number of students who completed tasks, I think it's also fair to say that even they were confused about what they needed to do too!

Yesterday I explored some of the class sites from other teachers at my school. Interestingly enough I found that a first year provisionally registered teacher had achieved in her site exactly what I wanted for my own class site. It was both visually appealing and easy to navigate - both for her Year 2 & 3 ipad learners and their whānau. I emailed her to praise and acknowledge her efforts, as well as give her a heads up that I was going to revamp my class site using her one as a model! Her response was that she had looked at my class and initially borrowed some ideas from it - evidence that making our class sites visible and being open to sharing what we are doing helps enable all of us to be highly effective practitioners.

Taking the time to examine my colleagues' class sites during today's DFI sessions was a worthwhile task as it provided me with some other ideas for how I can create make my site visually engaging. It is also challenged me to consider the functionality of the class site (no more than 3 clicks), the nature of tasks (using the SAMR model, providing multi-modal and multi-textual resources, student choice and opportunities for collaboration) and ensuring that rewindable learning is available (the latter being incredibly important right now while distance learning is in place).

Gerhard's slide (from the Chalk'n Talk session - Leading Learning using Google Sites) sums up nicely what it is that I want to achieve with my class site.

My goal for today was to create a specific distance learning page for each week. It's still a work in progress, but I'm pretty pleased with how things are shaping up. I even managed to create a button so that it's super easy for my learners to access this week's and next week's content. I use bitmojis a lot with our start of day activities (SODA tasks) so thought this would be a fun visual for my learners.

I wish I'd had the foresight to take a video of my site before I started making the changes. Here's a short clip of the home page of my class and how it's currently looking.



My next step for this home page is to tidy up the buttons at the bottom of the page. At present I think they are really clunky looking. I'd also like to add an introduction video for those kids who haven't engaged with our google Meet sessions this week. Once we're back in the classroom I'd also like to get some photos of my learners and use them as a backgrounds for the learning area buttons.

Over the next week I'd also like to get some feedback from learners about how the site is working for them. The site still has a long way to go, but I have a clear vision and "recipe for success" which will help me to design a site that is relevant, engaging and easily accessible for my learners and their whānau.

Stay tuned for an update on how everything turns out!

Visibility using Google Sites - DFI Session 5

Today's DFI session focused strongly on the concept of visibility. Making the planning, learning process, outcomes and assessment all visible and in the process, removing barriers to learning.

Visible for learners so that they can access their learning and next steps, visible for whānau so that they can participate and be involved in their children's learning, and visible for our teaching colleagues so that we can share our knowledge, ideas and resources. This is something that I aim to do with all my learning and teaching with my class, however I could extend it further with my own professional learning journey. Moving forward after DFI I think I will need to schedule time into my week that is designated for blogging.

We also examined the terms multi modal and multi textual as part of T shaped literacy and were challenged to consider how we can engage our learners so that they begin to take responsibility for their own learning. By personalising learning, we are empowering learners to become confident and competent. But we need to engage and entice them first!

As term 2 approaches we need to consider how we can utilise google sites and different media to engage our learners, particularly as some of them will not have the same adult support usually available to them during this lockdown.

Creating a multimodal site around a theme or big question for learners was a challenge for me today (possibly too many distractions at home, I struggled to focus and stay on task!) I know the basics of google sites and can definitely see the benefits of mapping out a site using good old pen and paper prior to building it. I found that I had way too many tabs and it was difficult to select relevant, appropriate and engaging texts and then arrange them on the site in a user friendly way!

The landing page of the multi modal site that I created for sustainability.

All a great learning curve and definitely a work in progress. I'm sure the more I create, the faster I will become!

A steep learning curve - DFI Session 4

What a crazy week! The COVID-19 situation in NZ over the last week happened so quickly - we moved from level 2 on Saturday, to level 3 on Monday, before hitting level 4 at 11:59pm on Wednesday night.

This has had huge repercussions for our whole community. Luckily for me (and my learners) being part of a Manaiakalani Outreach Cluster has put us in an excellent position to allow our learners to continue with their learning (even if it is from a distance!)

I was thrown into using Google Meet pretty quickly this week with giving our senior students (about 20 out of 90 attended school on Monday) a crash course in how to access a meeting. This was swiftly followed up by a crash course for staff on Monday afternoon.

Our Friday DFI also needed to be rejigged so that we could all stay safe and attend this PD from home. While we're at home over the next 4 weeks I think this is a great way to utilise my time by up-skilling.

6 clusters, 20+ people in a Google Meeting!

I learnt a LOT today. It was challenging having a split screen on one device, using a second device for viewing slides and a third device for asking for help! But we did it, and it will only get easier from now on.

I've never used Google My Maps before so today was a great introduction to this tool. I found it relatively easy to use, and think this would be a great tool to use in the classroom. Some of the possible uses could be:

• to map out where students went during their holidays - they could annotate their favourite memory or add their top tip
• as part of an inquiry topic, plotting where ancestors travelled from before they settled in New Zealand
• calculating distances between locations, calculating how long cross country is
• pinning different countries that students in the class are from
• mapping out the fastest (or most direct) route from school to a school trip destination then seeing if the bus driver follows that route! 

I think I'm utilising google forms pretty well, particularly to collect student or teacher voice and keep tabs on where students are at with the learning. I'd like to explore pick-a-path stories once we're back at school. 

Google sheets is another tool that I use - it has so much more to offer so it was great to have the opportunity to run through some of the other features. Lots of handy tips (particularly how to filter data) and extensions to explore over the next couple of weeks to hopefully increase my workflow! Tracking student progress and completed tasks is definitely another way that I can see this tool being utilised across my team. 

I really loved Robyn Anderson's blogpost about using student's own blogging statistics to look at trends and patterns. This real world maths would be so engaging for my own learners - I could see it benefitting my new bloggers as something to aspire to, as well as motivating those learners who are in their third year of blogging. 

Another aspect from Robyn's lesson that really inspired me was the amount of blogging that students completed. In comparison, my learners (particularly those who know how to blog) are really not getting the blogging mileage that they should be. This is also reflected in my own results. 

There is definitely room for improvement here! Very early days for 2020, but we're nearly at the end of March and I've done zero blog posts, which is a stark comparison to previous years. I have been out of class a lot this year, however I'm going to aim to write at least one blog post a week for my class blog. Modelling and posting some of the Summer Learning Journey activities in December may also support students who need an exemplar.

While my Year 4's are learning how to blog, I'll be working with my Year 5's and 6's to analyse their blogging frequency. I like Robyn's idea to display the graphs in class, as well as sharing them online. I believe this will keep students motivated to blog and hold them accountable for completing their learning tasks.

Online sharing will allow for amplification and for instant connections to be made. In saying that, here's my class blog. Now that I've shared it on here and have stated my goal, I'm making myself accountable!


Kia kaha and stay safe NZ!

Enabling Creativity - DFI Session 3

Learn, Create, Share

Those 3 words are at the core of  Manaiakalani's pedagogy. In today's DFI session we focused on the element of CREATE. For a lot of teachers, opportunities for students to create were lost due to National Standards and yet creativity develops problem solving, collaboration and communication - key elements of the New Zealand curriculum.  With national standards no longer a barrier, it is now time for teachers to become more creative with their lessons and provide opportunities to enable creativity to empower learners.

Using google slides to create an animation was something that I had seen before several years ago, but had completely forgotten about. I was absolutely blown away by the level of creativity from Martin at Grey Main School and his place value animation, not to mention Tanner's Indo Rex animation!

These examples of creating got me thinking about what I could get my own learners to create - particularly at a time where schools may need to close due to COVID-19. I created the animation below as an example of what learners in my class could create at home as a follow up to our trip to Taumanu Reserve to clean up our coast. I'd like to see what my learners can create to demonstrate their learning from the experience and then use it inform others in our community.



I also picked up some great tips for how to enhance my slides presentations - I'm running a parent workshop next week and am starting to plan out how I can "tell a story". I'm also super keen to get in there and tweak some of the great themes from slides carnival! This will save me heaps of time and also provide me with templates that work for me and that I can use for teaching my learners.

Another idea that I'd like to explore with my students is creating some digital artwork using google drawings - I think creating self portraits are a great example of creativity and resilience whilst exploring line, colour and shape.

With possible school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, google slides and drawings are great tool for learners to create at home and share some of their learning.

Managing Workflow - DFI Session 2

Talofa lava,

Another great session at DFI today with lots of new learning for me!

Google Hangouts was an interesting learning curve for me and one that I am still getting my head around. I found it challenging to focus on what Dorothy presented at the beginning of the day as it was a totally new experience (I'm so used to someone presenting being in the same rom!) - however some key points that I picked up were:

1. “If its worth teaching its worth capturing, if its worth learning its worth capturing” - D Burt
Sharing what we're doing in our classrooms is how we as educators are going to get the best outcomes for our learners. I love looking at and reading about what others are doing - I often borrow ideas or use these to springboard off to enhance my teaching and learning programmes.

2. Effective teachers + digital affordances = accelerated learning
Recognising, amplifying and turbocharging what we are doing in the classroom will help to ensure that we are effective practitioners.

Practise is definitely needed with navigating, casting my screen, creating and inviting people to be part of a google hangout. We had some technical difficulties with recording our hangout today, but I'm hopeful that the record option will get rolled out for our domain soon. A lot of new learning for me but I'm keen to explore how I can use this with my students and collaborate with other classes.

Attempting to use google hangouts AND record the process. 

Exploring the settings in gmail was mind-blowing for me - both for my personal and professional life. At the beginning of the day I had 100+ unread emails in my inbox, not to mention numerous folders (I'm currently down to 78 - yay!). I constantly feel overwhelmed by the amount of "work" that I need to do. I think the priority inbox will work well for me and I'm keen to get started on this tonight while its still fresh in my head!

Google Keep is another tool that is amazing - I already use it to replace the stickies on my mac. I love that I can have it on my phone and computer, switch between my accounts easily and that it updates super quickly.

Grabbing the text from an image is going to be extremely useful for my literacy programme. Another way that I'd like to use it is to take my handwritten notes from meetings, take a photo and then grab the text - fingers crossed it will be able to decipher my hand written scrawl! Another tip that I picked up is to create a comment bank in google keep to use when giving feedback to students. This could be a great time saver!

I can also see some great benefits with google keep in my personal life. I've already created a grocery shopping list and shared it with my husband. I just need to figure out where the supermarkets are on his commute home so that it will notify him to pick up the items!

So many great tips today and I'm confident that they will help with my workflow!

Digital Fluency Intensive - Session 1

Kia ora,

Today marks the first day of my involvement in the Digital Fluency Intensive. Three teachers from my school have already attended over the last 2 years and as the Senior School Team and Digital Team Leader I thought it was timely for me to engage with this programme too!

My journey with utilising chromebooks and Learn, Create, Share started in 2015 at May Road School. 5 years down the track I am still teaching in a 1:1 chromebook class (now at Hay Park School). Both of these schools are part of the Ako Hiko cluster based in Mt Roskill so I had a good understanding of the Learn, Create, Share pedagogy and developing visible and ubiquitous learning, and empowered and connected learners. Dorothy's presentation of the Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy highlighted the importance of partnership, protection and participation. What I wasn't aware of was the early years and the challenges involved in establishing the Maniakalani Education Trust. It always fascinates me that we are 20 years into the 21st century and yet there are some schools who have very limited access to devices!


I've been using google drive for several years (both professionally and personally) and have just started using the priority workspace area this year. Today's session was a good reminder about the basics of google docs and I learnt how to quickly format docs using headings - definitely a handy tip to work smarter not harder! I like the suggestion of using a template for students to write in with a table of contents and is something that I will consider. At present, I use collaborative writing docs called writers circles with a table of contents for students to navigate to their work easily.


There were several extensions that were shared that I am keen to explore with my learners. Some of my favourites are:

• Word cloud generator - would be a great visual for students to notice key words or which words they overuse in their writing. I'd like to trial it next week with my class next week where they list words/ characteristics/ traits that describe them. The fact that we can add it to their blogs and print them in class would be a great way to share some great vocabulary.
• Docutube - is another extension that I am keen to use with my class in the next few weeks. In the past I have found that some learners are easily distracted by other content that pops up when they are directed to youtube to view a video. I think docutube would be a great way to help focus students. 

A site that blew my mind this week was remove.bg Its simplicity makes it incredibly user friendly for students to use. We take a lot of photos at school of our learners and this is a great site that I will be sharing with all teaching staff (including our junior teachers and learning assistants) as the creativity possibilities are endless. 

My next steps are to manage my accounts and tidy up my bookmarks bar! I hadn't realised it but there are lot of sites that I type in every time I need it (eg: gmail, drive) that I could easily access through just one click!

I'm excited to further explore some of this new learning over the next week!