Digital Fluency

A few Great sites that are worth a read when defining Digital Fluency.

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/building-tech-fluency-digital-learners-beth-holland

http://www.erintegration.com/2015/09/23/teaching-technology-fluency-in-the-classroom/

Creating Tech Reo Rich classroom

An Amazing presentation given by Gemma Stewart, so many ideas using Te Reo enhanced by digital technologies....a few points.

Most people fear of wrong pronunciation the Maori language, important to have support in the school

Needs to be conscious decision to pronounce Maori properly, don't get LAZY.

Some little Gems

• Toku Reo - shows, great to use, 100’s there, not a substitute however for teacher to sit back.
• Te Whanake Animations - used at university, cartoons plus apps with books. Can be a little costly when getting the books.
• Moari Dictionary App is very good app on iTunes (be aware of google translate)
• He Reo Tupo - great website with resources and lessons TKI
• Te Aho Arataki Marau i te reo Māori mo ngā kura auraki - Te Reo Māori Curriculum for mainstream schools.

Some common apps or applications that we all know but Gemma told us how we could use these with teaching Te Reo

• Padlet - a collaborative doc - nice idea to brainstorm, different ideas, wall of ideas.
• Storybird - create stories with pictures - can get it printed out, or just share
• Addtext - photos and using Te Reo

I loved the gamification of 'Heads Up' - cool App to use with staff and students, get them to act it out, no voice

How to capture Te Reo????

• Vocaroo - Speakpipe - great to use in class, get link and add to scoial media or shared docs Soundcloud has own cloud
• Tellagami - using avatar - don’t need to worry about privacy issues
• QR Codes around the class

Twitter#tereo

And below is Gemmas pinterest with great resources

https://www.pinterest.com/gemst/te-reo-m%C4%81ori/

John Couch
An incredible man who has achieved some amazing feats at Apple and in education....some of his statements that resonated with me below.

• School was for him about memorising his way through school.
• A Vision inspirational a mission is measurable
• Model for Apple was based on relationships, did not have traditional values of running a company
• Difference between education and learning

	Education	Learning
Overall paradigm	delivery	discovery
Social structure	hierarchy	community
context	classroom	world
environment	simulated	real
content	fixed	open
assignments	recipes	frameworks
activities	Consumption and repetition	Construction & creation
infrastructure	Administrative focus	Empowerment focus
assessment	Teacher driven	community-driven
process	standardised	personalised
motivation	extrinsic	intrinsic
expectation	Grades & certification	Skills & experience

• Ask your self: Why does you school exist...not what
• Youth now are Digital native not digital immigrant
• Tech for students is an environment, not extra tools, as they were born into it. Tech is only technology to those who were born before it.
• iPhone - 2007, iPad 2010
• Students now expect "Feedback in real time"
• Apple new vision in 2008 saw classes as relevant, creative, collaborative and challenging 
• Challenged based Learning - like project but students pick the challenge/question 
• Book - The end of average, how to succeed - Todd Rose
• Company called eSpark - unpacked every education app - https://www.esparklearning.com/
• apple.com/nz/education/everyone-can-code - coding is the next stage.
• Look at Swift application - real coding - https://developer.apple.com/swift/
• 5 000 000 jobs going in USA cause they can’t find anyone that codes

1986 - TPACK began its evolution - http://www.tpack.org/

Tech was brought in, it was about the tools and how this assimilated into our teaching.

Booker has added another circle which makes TPACK now TPACK+ This is the Special Character of the school - the vision, community, special interest it has, uniqueness of the school etc

He also suggested playing with size of the shape? Shape - change the size dependant on your knowledge of each one

2016 and I am at the uLearn conference in Rotorua. It is a chance to keep in the loop with what is happening in education, see how the environment is changing with the implementation of digital technologies and how this is forever changing and challenging. However at the base of all the bells and whistles that we are sure to see it is important to have the right lenses on...that see how we can authentically use what we find to enrich, empower and add to the students learning.

Check out my uLearn16 Page and Twitter feed.

Blogging in Education

What is Blogging? Why use it in Education? How do we do it?

These are the questions I asked when myself and a colleague were looking at using 'Blogs' at our school.  Especially......Why use it?.  I hope this post may help you start this blogger journey or get a better feel for Blogging in Education.

What is Blogging?

Before this the question we need to ask is "What is a BLOG?".The word comes from the expression 'WEB LOG' and is a discussion or information entered as 'Posts'; this is published on the World Wide Web.

When you work on a blog and using all the skills when editing a blog you are BLOGGING. Blogs can be personal or corporate and organisational and come in many media forms: for example written, photos, sketches etc.

Most of us in education use a CMS (Content Management System) to help use create, edit, manage and publish our blogs on the World Web. If we didn't use a CMS we would have to deal with coding every page....and as educators we have no time to deal with that.

Below is a good link that looks at some of the best CMS for creating a Blog.

http://web.appstorm.net/roundups/self-publishing/the-10-best-blogging-platforms/

Word Press is the most popular and has plenty of add ons and extras that make for some very high level presentations.

I have found in NZ Schools, due to many using Google and Google management systems like 'Teacher Dashboard', use Blogger. It is hosted and is very easy to use, perfect for schools.

No 1.  

No 2.  

No 3.  

LMS (Learning Management Systems) also provide the chance for students to 'Blog' as well.

Why use it in Education?

Blogger utilises many skills and is a very 21st Century resource to learning. Students need to learn the skills of blogging, the technical skills, communication skills and visual presentation skills.

Then it's Blogging for a reason that supports the learning experience happening in the class.

Before starting we did a lot of work and had plenty of discussion around 'What is Blogging, and being a digital citizen when contributing and being part of a huge community of online contributions.

There are also age recommendations. Wordpress says 13 years of age. To have a Google account you must be 13, that is why schools with Year 8 students and under really need a school domain. Recommendations for Google+ and Blogger is 13+ I am lead to believe. 

Why we implemented Blogging:

Our pedagogy was driven by a lot of Guy Claxton's work (which I have talked about in other posts) and one of the fundamental traits students should exercise to build learning power is REFLECTION. 

Reflection - covers the aspects of learning that are to do with strategic management and self-awareness. They include planning, self-evaluating (revising), looking for further application (distilling) and fluency in the languages of learning (meta learning).

Therefore, we were going to use Blogs as a way for students to reflect on their learning.

How do (did) we do it?

This needs to be answered with two separate questions:

1. How do we implement it into our class program?

2. How do we do implement it Technically into our class?

Implementing Blogs in our class program was just one part of our whole google vision or plan. it was one piece of the jigsaw. We spent plenty of time with both teachers and students working on Google Drive applications before we started with Blogs.

 The process or long term plan of getting our students effectively blogging.

1. We ran what we called a 'Discovery Week' where we had a context and students could personalise their learning around this. Communication was the key word specially looking at different types of media, messages, beliefs, opinions and how they are conveyed. Great place for them to start understanding the power of the word and the many ways available to us to have our voice, thoughts and interests heard.
2. We then introduced what Blogs are and what is 'Blogging, and how personnel blogs were a great way to write reflections (we had discussed already on what 'Reflection' looks, feels and sounds like earlier in the year). We brainstormed why Blogs are such an exciting and useful tool to use for reflecting on ones learning:
• Add photos
• Add Links
• Video reflections
• Diagrams
• Graphs
• Websites
• Youtube etc etc
• Sharing/feedback
3. We had Friday rotations over the Term. One of the rotations looked at the technical skills of setting up and personalising a blog (front loading).
4. Before long the students were away and laughing!

Its also important to note we also got the staff to reflect on their own learning/practice to use for their own Professional learning and Teacher Registration documentation.

Now this was the big one for me ........  How do we do it Technically? I will put this into a separate Post. Have fun and please comment or point readers to other places for information on blogging in education.