Digital Fluency Intensive

MEDIA DFI | WEEK 3

Learn, Create, Share

Dorothy spoke to us about Manaiakalani pedagogy, and we focused on 'create' this morning. I really resonated with Dorothy's kōrero, particularly around creativity being a vital part of our hauora and well-being. She provoked thinking by asking if our students know they are coming to school to create and share their learning, or if they're just coming to school to learn, learn, and focus on the teacher.

It made me think about teaching online and my students working from home. I had a year 8 male student ask me over a Google Meet: "Miss, how do you make our learning so fun?" In my experience, lock-down was a great opportunity to experiment and encourage my class to be creative with both online tools and practical, physical resources that they have at home. I noticed the engagement level of the boys in my class rise over the lock-down period, simply because they enjoyed being creative at home. This has compelled me to think about how I'm going to continue such incredible creativity now that we have returned to school, and Dorothy's kōrero has really impacted me this morning.

"Creators of content, not just consumers."

Dorothy shared some quotes with us this morning, and then encouraged us to watch Sir Ken Robinson's Ted Talk, that asks the question: "Do schools kill creativity?"

1. Creating is a real purpose for learning. Case study teachers (with higher achievement shift) spend more time creating than in other classes. - Dr. Rebecca Jessen

2. The individual must be capable of creating something with the knowledge that they have worked so hard to obtain. It is in creating that the individual gains purpose. - Michael Fullan

YouTube

Gerhard then talked us through the importance of embedding youtube videos into our class sites, instead of sharing youtube videos to our students directly. There are so many reasons for this, including privacy, adds, and child-appropriate content. When sharing learning videos with my class, I usually insert it the videos into my slide, which I then embed to my site. This way, the students visit our class site and simply click the video, and it will play on our class site and children don't need to visit youtube at all. Gerhard shared two slides with us: Youtube Channels | Youtube Playlists

Google Drawing

Vicki then walked us through the Google Drawing tool. There were some things I learnt, including selecting all the shapes and changing colour, fonts and size that way, instead of changing every one individually. Such a time saver! The explore tool is also useful to search images on the web to then insert into the drawing tool. This is new to me as I usually copy & paste from the internet browser, which can be challenging with copyright permissions.

Google Slides

Gerhard took us through a workshop on Google Slides, and I really like the idea of ditching the defaults and embracing the blank slides, as it allows for more creativity to flow through. Gerhard encouraged us to deliberately consider the way we present information using slides, especially as formats, colours and images can either support the message, or distract from the message. We then separated into groups and I worked with Latham, another Manaiakalani facilitator, further exploring the aspects and tools within Google Slides. One thing I really liked was, again, the explore tool because it also allows you to select a new template (not the defaults) and it automatically templates the entire slide deck for you! These time-saving, efficient tools are my favourite!

Here is my Pick-a-Path that I have started to created using Google Slides: