Ubiquitous Learning

Anytime - Anywhere - Any pace from Anyone.

I really like the idea of any pace - being able to rewind learning (if it is worth learning, it's worth capturing to make it accessible to more learners) to suit yourself and being able to speed it up has been so very helpful and I can see that is a huge benefit for my learners. Not only has my confidence grown I feel pretty proud of how much I have learnt over the last 9 weeks.

The benefits of ubiquitous learning is evident in the data showing that students who have the access to a device and internet is huge. Technology enables.

Reflective questions:

What are you proud of? 

I think I am most proud of how much I have learnt in such a short time. COVID helped me in that was as I had to upskill pretty quickly to be able to provide the online opportunities to our students. Also I was so pleased to have had a years worth of Manaiakalani training under my belt. I think it was very fortunate that we were in such a great programme. I know a lot of teachers who in no way felt as prepared for the online world as I felt I was.

What do you regret? 

I feel I worked very hard over the first Lockdown, through the 'holidays' and then into the new term and then back at school. I didn't feel like I let myself have a break and that may be what is contributing to how exhausted I feel today (maybe that was the exam - but who knows) I wish i'd taken time to smell the roses!

What have you taken forward into the 'new' era of schooling especially to support ubiquitous learning? 

I think all the skills I picked up over the lockdown time have continued as we have come back to school and strengthened as I have done the DFI.

Level 1 Google Exam

That was an intense 3 hours! I had 10 mins to spare. I felt reasonably well prepared and was able to navigate most of the questions but I felt quite frustrated as things wouldn't load which took up time and added to the stress of it all but apart from that it was not to bad! I have certainly learnt a lot both today and over the last 9 weeks.

Week 8 - Computational Thinking

Empowering children and whanau to change their circumstances is important. The devices are not "just to tool." It is about overcoming barriers of distance and time (NCZ)

Empowerment is about voice, ownership, and choice. If they didn't like what the teacher was offering they simply don't engage. This is also true about face-to-face learning. This is when you are dealing with behaviours and other actions that students display when they didn't like what the teacher was offering - how do we change that? We have to look at ourselves as teachers as that is the only thing that we can change and then in turn empower and change our students.

It is important to think of the things that disempower families and then in turn our students? Some include ... money, renting or owning, health, education etc. All these things are out of our control as teachers, so we need to look at the things we can control to make the difference!

Becoming digital was a potential game-changer for people to be able to take control and be empowered.

Ping-pong - if we teach our children 5+ a day challenge - that is children to have 5 interactions during a conversation. Training the children to do this is important - it improves oral language. Blogging is a wonderful way to practice this.

Computational Thinking within the new Digital Technologies Curriculum 

For students to tell their story, have their voice and be creators and directors of their own learning.

If we have digitally fluent teachers we will have digitally fluent students and being agile, able to collaborate with others working side by side working together.

The Future of Tech and what that means for our tamariki ... so interesting seeing all the massive leaps that are being made right now. I was particularly disturbed by the treatment of the dog robot (obviously to show what it can do) but am unsure why it evoked such a strong feeling. This led into the moral machine activity - another equally disturbing position to be in! Not only do we need to have digitally fluent students, but ones with good character!

Getting creative with coding!

First I tried coding with Minecraft. I thought I needed to get my head around this, as this is what my students are so into at the moment. It was much easier than I thought and I can see why they love it so much. In our Digital Bubble we talked about how the students get into that flow and now I can see why some find it so difficult to stop when it is time. I will take that more into account from now on.

Next, I had a go at Flappy Bird - that was great. I think that I will be trying that as a Choice and Challenge (opt in activities) session next week.

Flappy Bird in action!

Week 7 - Devices

Today we talked about the devices available to the students in our studios as well as the tools that they use on them. We looked at Chromebooks and iPads which was really valuable for me as we have both devices in our studio - Year 2's have iPads and Year 3's have Chromebooks. We also looked at the Cybersmart aspect of the Manaiakalani programme and how important it is that the students understand that they are leaving a digital footprint for all to see.

Cybersmart
This aspect of the Manaiakalani programme empowers our learners and introduces them to the use of powerful, positive, and proactive language and the impact it has on their audience.
It is all about keeping our students secure and making sure their actions are positive, thoughtful and helpful.
There is a huge focus on the positive - be internet awesome!

Cybersmart is a whole school focus on smart learners, footprint, relationships which grows over the years. Students are learning to connect and collaborate as they create their digital footprint. Students have a responsibility around sharing content that they are proud of and that their whanau is proud of when posting and commenting. It is great to see that what they share has value and it is important to include and engage parents in the process.

The idea from this programme is that they can take all they have learnt in the cybersmart programme through the years into their adult lives.

The focus is on the POSITIVE - this then becomes the norm.

I am getting better at navigating Hapara. 

The new tips and tricks for me today were:

Smart Share - send files directly to a learners drive.

Class info - a quick look at the email address, changing passwords and add or remove students easily.

Work smarter - if you want to use the teachers' workspace then find one you like and copy it.

One child one device - it is a matter of equity!

Partnership - need to rethink the partnership idea as there are so many different partnerships that we can develop.

Participation - develop our fluency so much more quickly when we all work on the same device.

Protection - with the help of hapara and the Cybersmart programme we are protecting our students as well as empowering them.

The one thing that challenged my thinking here was the removal of the device from a student who is found doing the wrong thing, on the wrong website etc. Maybe it is more important to stress what they need to be doing, focus on the positive and allow them to continue working on their device rather than removing it from them.

Chromebooks 

After not really knowing much about Chromebooks and trying to do a lot of troubleshooting with the students on my MacBook instead of dealing with the Chromebooks I realise how difficult I actually made it for myself. It was really great to do the Digital Dig - a first for me. I learn a lot and became really familiar with the Chromebook and think I can help the students a lot more without feeling the frustrations that I was feeling before.

iPads 

Need to set up good routines and iPad safety. Referring to the Kawa of care is a great way to do this and using Explain Everything to create lessons to support your teaching of this is a smart way of introducing both things at the same time.

Explain Everything I still find it quite tricky to get it to do exactly what I would like. It seems a bit clunky but I just think I need to practise using it more. I could not work out how to erase the recording that I was not happy with but I will explore that more as I think it is important to have that as a feature for the things I create (rewindable) as well as for the students to use easily.