DFI WEEK 4 - Sites

Today has been about 'sharing' and also creating using google sites. I have been using sites for my class ever since we went to Chromebooks in 2014. I use my class site to share daily planning, learning activities, photos of activities and trips, as well as for sharing links, for example to student blogs and sites we use frequently.

Over time, my class site has evolved and changed, and I am frequently making changes to try and make it more user friendly for both my students, parents and myself. For me, my site has made planning have a purpose and it is far more useful now that it is visible and not just written in a daily plan book.

Dorothy spoke this morning about the different ways of sharing and the importance of sharing to learn, as well as sharing to finish learning. I found the discussion around 'authentic audience' was also valuable as it is so true. We often talk to and expect our students to create a piece of writing or complete an activity for an authentic audience, but it is so often just the teacher or the class who have no choice. When the sharing moves to blogging, people can choose to look at a child's or person's site and therefore it does become a more authentic audience as the viewer is making a choice.

From my own experience within the classroom, I have found that when my students are sharing to their blogs, the standard of their work increases significantly. A most recent example of this would be on my class blogs. Students who in their daily writing often never use paragraphs have posted pieces of their work with clearly defined paragraphs, each one introducing and explaining a new idea.

We have also spent time today looking at Multimodal texts and how we can use these with our students. In recent times, I have been using MMTS to introduce and hook students in to a new topic or area of learning. Providing them with a range of texts (video, audio, written, visual) has meant that all students can access information on a topic at a variety of levels. I have found these text sets have really benefitted the struggling learners in my class, as they have access to information in a video or audio format. They have been able to show deep thinking through discussion and follow up tasks that had they only been faced with written texts would have been a challenge. I also find that by using these MMTS, students are far more engaged in the learning tasks they have been set and I am having a higher level of work completion across all students in my class.

This afternoon, we were encouraged to create a new site that incorporates MMTS. I chose to create a site based on the novel I will read to my class either later this term or next term.  I created my base site and then used slides to create a MMTS on topics found within the novel, for example homeless children and Indian slums. This is not yet finished. Currently, I am sharing my MMTS with students via Hapara Workspace. I had not thought about putting them in to my site or a site, and am not sure if I will change this practice or not. I like the idea of Workspace from the perspective that it enables everything (including student work) in one space, but sites are more visible publicly. Definitely something to think about!

MMTS Site