DFI Day 9 - EXAM DAY

 

So Day 9 of my DFI experience was EXAM DAY! All week I was hitting the notes and practicing when I could to revise as much of what I have learned over the past 8 weeks.  It has been a very long time since I have sat a 3 hour exam lol...... suffice to say I had got just a little worked up about it all :-)

I am pleased to report that I finished the exam with about 1/2 hour to spare and answered every question.  It was a challenge but I really enjoyed it.  Going over the scenarios was a way of remembering what I had learned and jogging the memory as you worked through them.

Thank you to my facilitator Vicky Archer who has been an amazing teacher and support person throughout this journey.  Not only is she a wonder of knowledge but a very very patient person too.  Being able to share ideas and listen to others in our little digital bubble was just great, and I loved how well we got to know each other and how much at ease we all were as the weeks went on.

I have a much better grasp on the Manaiakalani Kaupapa after listening to Dorothy each week introduce all the concepts and have a real appreciation on the impact this has had on our school, our teachers and our students learning.  Digital technology is ever-changing and Manaiakalani work so hard to keep everyone up with the latest info.

Upon reflection of the past 9 weeks, I was very sceptical about coming away from my office once a week and honestly thought I was way past the 'learning gag' however I am so pleased my Principal gave me the opportunity to be involved and I have gained a huge amount of knowledge, a new profound appreciation for our teachers and students and their online learning, and have met some really lovely people along the way.  My challenge to myself now, is to implement some of that new knowledge in my daily practice and to endeavour to keep up with my new Blog.   Watch this space......

I am now celebrating my new qualification earned My New DFI Badge - so proud of this and it was such fun earning it to.

Day 8 of my DFI Experience

Computational Thinking!  Wow.... so as we got into exploring the concepts of computational thinking I quickly came to realize that is some ways I am, and have been for a while a computational thinker :-)

Looking into the many aspects of this concept is really quite mind blowing especially to see what is available to our teachers as resources to implement great learning environments with their students. Not only on line but offline (unplugged).  This gets our students using 'Algorithms' i.e. step by step instructions on how to reach a desired outcome.  The scope in using this is huge. Developing digital minds in our students, and ourselves is imperative in this ever changing digital world of ours. I have high praise to all you teaches out there and how hard you work to get all these resources to be available to your students

The Future of Technology is pretty scary, especially looking at it from the 'moral' point of view and we played around with that concept in a deep dive with Maria, which gave us all a great deal of 'food for thought'.

Once again, it was neat to touch on the Manaiakalani Kaupapa and today it was around empowered learners and teachers. As always Dorothy was full off interesting and pertinent information for us to take on board

Vicki talked us through the steps of registering for our 'exam' next week and gave us a few tips. Thank you Vicki.

Last, but definitely not the least we looked at Coding, to be honest I think I will leave the teaching of our wonderful tamariki to the experts.....our awesome teachers...... this coding thing takes up way too much brain power lol.  We spent some time creating with code. I did not get too far into it but here is the start of my experiment with coding, which has huge room for improvement and maybe I will find some time to improve on it.  1st Coding effort

Day 7 DFI Experience

So we had some fun with an IPAD looking at just how CLEVER our students are.  We also spent some time on a Chromebook looking at how it functions.  My conclusion is our kids are just awesome to be able to work with these devices!

First attempt of Drawing on my whiteboard on an IPAD and first attempt at recording

We also spent some time learning how to screencastify, an interesting tool that I could see teachers and students benefiting from - a played around with this concept on some of our ncea credit information ​ 

We heard some more words of wisdom from Dorothy on the Teacher Hapara Dashboard and Fiona Grant shared her knowledge on the Manaiakalani Pedogogy around Cypersmart for our learners.

We then looked at the manaiakalani journey for chromebooks and how they worked to implement this concept in our schools. There was some very hard work from the manaiakalani team to get people onboard with the concept, not so much the students and their whanau but the outside world.