Thursday, August 27, 2020

Week 6 - Enabling Access - Sites



Being connected



The ability to connect is extremely powerful and being able to go digital has made such a difference for us personally as well as a school community. We all know how important it is to connect with our students. This is another layer of being able to do this especially in terms of what has happened this year with the lockdowns. However, we can be thankful for the richness that having the ability to connect through Google Meet has bought to our relationships with some of the students and their families.



Here we are on a Google Meet during the lockdown.

Being part of the manaiakalani group brings a different dimension to making connections with other teachers. It strengthens our professional relationship and builds collegiality. The shared language of "learn, create, share" brings us closer together as well but it does need to be a two-way street and there are lots of opportunities to share, e.g. toolkits, cluster sites, twitter feeds etc. that we can use.


Why use a Google site?

A well developed and thought out site will contribute to causing accelerated shift!
It is a -
- Purposeful approach to the visibility of teaching.
- Can provide rich multimodal opportunities
- Allows a degree of student choice and collaboration
- Empowers learners that can access learning at any time

A few things to consider on a google site is the consistency across the school, how visually appealing it is and to make sure that it functions well.

Evaluation of sites
We then looked at a number of sites as well as looking closely at our own studio site. My goals for this session was to make sure that the site was inviting, to check all the links, to embed slide shows instead of using the raw link and to check with my studio team as it is our website for our learners.
Studio Site


Hapara hot tip
Student dashboard - great tool to introduce to the Year 7/8 and upwards. Learners have the power of seeing what their own workflow looks like!

SPAM
Get this under control by marking any obscene comment as 'spam' and follow the process to try to reduce any unwanted comments on our blogs.








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  1. Sharon SpraggSeptember 2, 2020 at 3:09 PM

    Kia ora Helen,

    Great to read about the connections you are making between the power of being online and how important relationship/connection is. Lockdown is an interesting beast and certainly has helped many of us reflect on our own practise in the classroom and in life.

    I love that your site has a picture of your students. It makes it feel personal and connects me to your learners. I'm glad the session was helpful and has given you some ideas in which to move forward with.

    Love the spam picture! Terrible stuff ... ;)

    Ngā mihi,
    Sharon

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