DFI Week 8: Devices

Today has been an opportunity to work with the devices our students are using, with Chromebooks and Ipads being available to us to engage with as learners ourselves.

For myself as an avid Mac user, using a Chromebook is an incredibly frustrating experience. However, when we first went Chromebook in 2014, both myself and Marion purchased our own Chromebooks as we both realised and knew it was important that we were familiar with the devices we were expecting our students to use. This enabled us to learn alongside our students, model the learning process as well as troubleshoot any problems that arose.

Doing the Digital Dig was a reminder of some of the simple tools and shortcuts we should be making sure our students know how to use, for example the ability to screenshot.

Ipads are not a tool we have access to at College, although I can see the benefits of apps such as explain everything in a digital classroom.

This afternoon we have had the opportunity to explore further the Manaiakalani Cyber Smart lessons and resources, as well as the planning and reasoning for this. For my Screencastify, I looked at the Kawa of Care. I think it is really important that we revisit this with our students and whanau as while they all sign this at some point when signing up for Chromebooks via the trust, I sometimes wonder how fully they actually understand this. I also wonder whether we should be doing some form of Kawa of Care beyond our Internet User agreement for those who are coming in with Chromebooks from other areas or that they have purchased themselves. I think that as a cluster/school, we need to be revisiting our parent evenings as our parents need support also in terms of supporting their children in their online use. While we did this previously, as time has gone on it has dropped off but with some of the statistics and information being released in the media about the rise of cyber bullying, the sharing of nude images by children as young as 8 and the increase in numbers of young people accessing online porn in various formats, the education of our parents is vital.