DFI Session 7 - Devices

Ahiahi mārie koutou,

Today we kicked off our DFI session by taking a 'deep dive' into being cybersmart. In this digital age it is incredibly important for our students to understand what this is and how they can enact it in their online life, both inside and outside of school hours. Just as we teach positive classroom behaviours through PB4L, we need to explicitly teach positive cybersmart behaviours. Manaiakalani facilitators have created specific cybersmart lessons for teachers to use in their classrooms to teach these behaviours. However, it is important to recognise that cybersmart should not be a stand-alone subject. Instead, it should be integrated across the classroom programme.
Last year I was lucky enough to have the in-class support of our fabulous Ako Hiko facilitator, Phil, who regularly came into my class and taught these cybersamrt lessons and modelled effective practice for me. I have tried to continue this in my classroom this year but I am finding that I'm not integrating it as well as I could/should. This is an area that I'm looking to improve on over the latter half of the year.

We then took a quick look at Screencastify and Hapara Workspace. I became familiar with Screencastify last year during lockdown and found it SO helpful! Because we went into our first lockdown so early in the year, we hadn't used the iPads very much at all and the majority of my students didn't know how to use their Google Drive or navigate the class site. Thankfully, I was able to use Screencastify to record visual and audio instructions and talk my students through how to access their learning. 

Next up, we moved into taking a look at ubiquitous learning and teaching. This refers to learning and teaching being accessible anytime, anywhere, by anyone, at any pace. Last years lockdowns were a prime example of why this is so important. Through my class site I was able to deliver learning to my students despite us not being able to be in the classroom together. This learning was shared mainly through Google Meets, (some) Google Meet recordings, Screencastify and Google Slides. This is something that I am quite proud of, especially as I was only in my first few months of teaching when we went into that first level 4 lockdown. Something I regret from that time is not remembering to record ALL of the Google Meet sessions I ran. While I did have a decent turn out of students at these Meets (most days), there were many students who weren't, for whatever reason, able to make the scheduled Meets. Having all content recorded and these recordings uploaded on the class site would have been incredibly valuable not only for those learners who missed out, but for students who wanted/needed to revisit the learning and instructions in their own time. Fingers crossed there won't be any lockdowns in the future but if there is, I will certainly remember to hit that record button.

Later in the session, we stepped into the role of the student and explored the devices they use in class; Chromebooks and iPads. It was a good reminder of how apps and programmes look and operate differently on different devices. This is something that became VERY obvious to me during lockdown when some students were using school iPads and others were using their own devices. We ran into quite a few problems during the first lockdown because of this, so I had to think carefully about the tasks I was creating, as well as how and through which apps I was getting students to complete these tasks. It was a steep learning curve for me, that's for sure. 😅

Although my students use iPads, I found doing the Chromebook 'digital dig' task particularly useful as I've never used a chromebook before - what a great way to help children get familiar with navigating and using their device! This is something that I'd love to do with my junior students at the beginning of the year, when they are first learning how to use their iPad.

One the iPads, we looked at Explain Everything (EE) - an interactive online whiteboard. Thanks again to the fabulous Phil, I was introduced to this programme last year so my students and I are quite familiar with it. Today, we played around with some of the basic tools to create our own EE project. Check out mine below. 😊

The last task of the day was to repurpose a cybersmart lesson using one of the tools covered in today's session. I choose to use EE as this is what I use in class with my learners. I chose to focus on the idea of being a 'Smart Surfer' and knowing how to effectively search for information online. Here is the task I made a start on creating for my kids. My next step will be to add audio instructions to each slide.