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.