Talei's blog

It was great to be reminded today about ubiquitous learning and how much it helps learners to be able to learn anywhere, anytime, any pace. This year has shown how important it is to be able to have your teaching set up this way. I have really enjoyed experiencing and learning more about the digital tools that our children use. The most useful part for me has been to expand my knowledge about the multi modal learning. It has been great to see how much my learners have been enjoying their tasks as well as growing their self management skills. Today I did the Level 1 Google exam. I was worried about this exam and although I got confused during some parts I do think the DFI course set me up well to be able to complete it.  I am looking forward to having the time over the term break to use my new skills to set up some new and exciting lessons for the students. 

Today we focussed on computational thinking and the digital curriculum. It was great to have a chance to explore some of the computational resources that are out there. In particular, I would like to explore Kia Takatū more.  Looking at the future of technology and what is already starting to happen was quite interesting. Looking at the Moral machine was strange. To think that a driverless car may have to make life and death decisions when something goes wrong is crazy and brings up a lot of questions. How do they programme a car to make those decisions? Whose moral compass do they compare it to? How does it judge who is 'more important'? Should a driverless car be set to protect its passengers? I am pleased I am not the one needing to make those decisions! For the making part of today, I looked at Scratch and how it could be integrated across the curriculum. I had used Scratch a couple of times before today so did not know much about it. I enjoyed learning how you can get the ...

This week we looked at the pedagogy and kaupapa of Manaiakalani. I liked the talk there was about the positive cybersmart language. So instead of talking about being a bully-free school, talking about being a kindness school. It was also interesting listening to why Manaiakalani like schools to have 1:1 devices because it gives the students more ownership.  Today we looked at different devices that our students use. I found this really helpful as I have only used a Chromebook when helping the students at school. It was great going over all the different shortcut keys and different tools the kids can use on their Chromebook. I also tried using screencastify for the first time and the video is below. This is something I want to use more often with the kids as we ask them to use screencastify to explain their learning. I believe it will also help some of our learners by breaking down some of the barriers they may have. On the iPad, we looked at Explain Everything. This is a new tool f...