DFI Session One - Core Session

Today has been a stimulating and engaging day. Just having the time to think about and process information, away from school has been valuable. I found Dorothy's introduction to Manaiakalani and the why 'Learn, Create, Share' was introduced valuable. Too often we hear that Manaiakalani is all about the Chromebooks, when in actual fact, the Chromebooks are just one of the many tools associated with Learn, Create, Share and the pedagogical knowledge that sits behind everything we do. Learn, Create, Share comes in many forms. One thing I think we do need to work on, is convincing parents that when students are working on Chromebooks to do daily writing activities, or using voice to text tools, they are still 'writing'. I am still frequently dealing with parents who feel that because their children are not writing by hand, they are not 'writing'. Explaining to parents that writing is about more than just the letters on a page and how tidy their child's handwriting is, it is actually about the child's ideas and how they share these.

I have found it really valuable to be reminded of some of the amazing add ons, extensions and shortcuts that are available for us with google and google docs. While I have used some of these add ons before, I had forgotten about them which is so easy to do as we get on with daily teaching. One of my takeaways from today is to ensure I get some of the add ons pushed out to my students and that we begin to use them on a regular basis, up skilling them as well.

One I am very keen to go away and try is the Talk and Comment Doc add on, that will allow me to use voice notes to give students feedback. I have used Kaizena in the past, but found it became very hard to manage, so I am keen to give something new a go. I am also keen to use Driveslides as a new way of sharing images on my class site and class blog.

I had never really thought about using google docs as a design tool, so having a play with different aspects was fun and made me think about how we could use this in the classroom as well, when students are presenting information or in order to make tasks for students more interesting. I had a go at creating a doc for a gratitude journal template as this is something we do everyday in my Homeroom class, but have a paper version and if students had a digital version, they could also do it at home (we currently keep paper ones in the classroom so that they are there every day). While this was just a play, I would need to keep in mind how I could make it appealing to all class members, and to give them options for personalisation.