Today we reflected on the Learn aspect of Manaiakalani and I was reminded of the rich opportunities provided to us in our digital world.
Of course we are also reminded that it is also a matter of searching online to find good quality resources and contexts for learning, and those which also provide and respond to the needs of our specific children at our schools and in our classes.
One of the most important aspects I reflect on now are the important relationships we have with our students and how that impacts on their learning. Those who are coming from families facing a myriad of challenges may come to school with an entirely different set of needs everyday. Knowing and understanding our families and students is so important. Then being able to provide supportive learning environments are key to effective learning. Engaging with students and the importance of allowing time for discussion, engaging with existing learning and knowledge are such important aspects of effective practice. The flexibility of rewindable learning environments provided to us and our students through a digital world are some of the gifts of technology that allow us to respond and learn best when the time is right.
Today I also spent time developing my own skills in the digital world and though I didn't use Meet when working with my students online during covid I did meet frequently with staff and others so it is timely to develop skills in this area like recording and presenting my page and setting up meetings etc.
I already love using Keep and for example frequently grab text to use in more appropriate fonts and formats for my Year 2 and 3 students; and sharing more applications of its use was most helpful, both in my professional and personal life. I now have a place for all those recipies!
Using Gmail I am reminded of many useful settings and also some new ones I have often wondered how to do but hadn't had the time to discover, such as undoing send to add an attachment and archiving more material and using Keep and Calendar more in conjunction with gmail.
As I frequently have many tabs on the go I am keen to begin setting up and using Toby mini. In the classroom that will be most helpful as I jump frequently jump from one document to the next and having groups means I can access things much more efficiently.
Now to just have the time to set it all up and get familiar with these new tools...
Delia, it is encouraging to see you growing your skills by recording while presenting on google meet. You and your buddy had very clear dialogue. I could tell you had your list of questions ready to respond too. I think you would be now able to transfer these skills if you ever needed to have a 'meet' with your class and having prepared questions would give you confidence or an edge to make the 'class meeting' flow.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good work and smile.
Kia ora Delia,
ReplyDeleteThank you for such a reflective post! I so enjoyed reading through it and getting a sense of where your thinking had gone with this week's online DFI. You approached the Google Meet with a wonderful can-do attitude and have created an in-depth reflection of the learning task the learner has shared and of the comments they received. Well done. I can see you have some tools you already use well, including Google Keep - I'm so interested to hear about transferring text to a more appropriate font - what a wonderful idea! I also enjoyed reading that you have found a personal application for it with the recipe storage, which was an application for it that I had forgotten about but was inspired by as well. I admired the focus you maintained on pedagogy throughout your reflection - Manaiaikalani Learn, create, share is all about pedagogy and it's heartening to hear you reflecting on how the tools can be used in purposeful ways that will enable and progress student learning. What sort of websites/documents are you grouping together within your Tobi Mini for your teaching sessions? I'm interested to hear more about that. It sounds like a really effective way to maintain the flow of teaching and learning in the classroom when you are working with your small groups. I wonder if it would be useful to add a Tobi mini link to your class site, if you have one? Have a wonderful week and I'll see you at Friday's Digital Fluency Intensive again, for day three!
Amie