Reflection Week 7

Todays session was about being connected digitally. Dorothy discussed how it is a way of empowering the learners and we can do it because the learning is shared and visible. It extends from the individual potentially to the world. This is an inclusive model and again, taps into the human instinct to SHARE and to be connected with other human beings.

Although the Manaiakalani schools are geographically close, everyone is way too busy to connect as often as we would like and the digital has enabled us to keep, in touch, abreast of what our colleagues are doing, teaching, thinking, and staying connected. I also feel it gives opportunities for our students to be connected with their extended whānau as well, as half of my class have asked me to add the email addresses of their uncle, aunts, cousins and older siblings so they can share with them what they are learning.

Dorothy discussed with us about how we have a shared language which is the pedagogy and kaupapa language. We are able to do this because we have made it visible which brings us back to what we discussed last week. Dorothy said "​If you are all paddling in the same direction, you have greater power, you are more efficient. There is an impact on the nature of teaching and learning because if the teacher and student each know what it is you’re meant to be focusing on you are more likely to reach your goals." I resinate with this because for the little amount of time that I have been teaching I have seen a huge improvement in the work ethic and students taking charge of their own learning when expectations are set and you agree on what they are.

When using videos ect, the obvious choice would be to upload it to youtube to share our learning and make it visible, however we have little to no control of monitoring comments on this so an easier way is to get students to upload their videos to their drive and then share it via that to their blog. This gives us more control of the commenting and the people who are seeing it.

After exploring slides with Vicki I am going to teach my students how to make animations and incorporate that into my reading rotation. My students are already really good at using google drawings an slides but I feel that animation will improve those skills and then extend their knowledge and provide a lot of opportunities for creating new content to share.

We were given the chance to create animations or pick a paths. I have created an animation previously so decided to create a pick a path to show my students as an exemplar for them to then create their own. It was really fun, however I picked up on a few things such as each time you add an option into the story that is an extra slide to add on.  Check it out below, however it us unfinished.