THURSDAY 13 SEPTEMBER
Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Intensive - Week 8
What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?
LeeAnn Lindsey, a member of the ISTE Standards Core Leadership Team says . “When taught in a positive light, digital citizenship introduces students to the wealth of opportunities afforded to them via technology, and helps them navigate effectively through the digital world resulting in healthy interactions, a positive digital presence and increased learning opportunities.”
In the classroom Vicki has created blogs for the students to use. They have started posting items onto their blogs to share with others. Part of this process is understanding what information is appropriate to share with people other than family and friends. The class has had a few lessons on what is suitable to share, and personal information like addresses and last names is not suitable. Another part of being able to interact with others and leave a positive digital footprint is the type of comments that are suitable to leave on blog sites. This has been a good learning curve for both the students and myself. The poster showing the types of blog comments to use has been really helpful. Blogging and the classroom website has absolutely supported students to "learn, create and share. To empower students to become connected citizens and make their learning is visible and accessible, anytime, any place, at any pace. Which in turn enables our young people learn to make smart decisions and understand that every time they connect, collaborate and share online"
Manaiakalani Cybersmart by Manaiaklani based on a work at https://sites.google.com/a/manaiakalani.org/cybersmart.
What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?
I have discovered that using videos, google slides, google forms, spreadsheets that produce graphs and google documents in my planning and delivery of lessons is producing more engagement because some of the learning barriers have been taken away. For example the inability to spell words that tends to stall the creative thinking in writing. Children producing a published piece of work that they only need to use drop down menus, search in explore and clicking a mouse. The results are always fantastic. Children seem to understand that the limitations are only in their minds not in their ability to spell. I have also experienced the children's ability to learn new maths concepts and improve in their basic facts which has come from using the different google programmes. From observations the children learn at their own pace, are able to rewind the learning, be included in the classroom where everyone is using the same tool to learn, even though the content is different.
My goal next week is to interview children and allow them to voice how they feel about the use of devices in the classroom and what barriers do they see blocking their learning, or what barriers have been removed to help their learning by using devices.
What did I learn that could be used with my learners?
The class did a digital dig at the beginning of the year and it was a great way to list all the keyboard shortcuts. The children were totally engaged with this activity because it was almost like a treasure hunt trying to find shortcuts and work out how to do certain skills on their chromebooks. This activity also lends itself to goal setting or next steps in terms of digital fluency.
Digital Fluency starts with the ability to use the device. The Digital Dig should be included at the beginning of EVERY year at EVERY level.