Thursday 28 March 2019

DFI Presenting: Otaki....Remotely!

Today I had the wonderful pleasure of presenting to our Otaki whanau in the Kapiti Coast. This time I did it as way of a Google Hangout, which was quite the experience! It is a weird feeling talking away to your computer, looking at some faces, hearing nothing but your own voice (because of wearing headphones) and not sure if you're connecting with your audience.

As always I enjoyed working with Vicki and her team. They are an awesome bunch who are passionate about their teachers and learners, who they serve. I am always left so inspired working with these guys and learning from their expertise in Te Reo Māori!

Some key thoughts from this session:
  • what policies and procedures do you need to have place to be able to 'go live' in the classroom
  • what CAN you live stream and what SHOULD you live stream?
  • what should you stream via delayed coverage?

Wednesday 20 March 2019

Google Spreadsheets: Data Analysis Using VLOOKUP

I thought it would be worthwhile reposting this as it relates to what I'm working on this year.
A few years ago as part of my inquiry into teaching I had been looking into ways I could better use assessment to inform my next teaching steps, especially to jump on opportunities sooner. However, when ever I got anywhere near formative data it was spread out across a range of different places -
e-asTTle, NZCER, etc. I needed an easy way to collect this data. Aha! Use a spreadsheet someone told me. However this meant doing hours of copy and paste from other spreadsheets to then have it collated in mine!

This lead me to look at using some of the features of spreadsheets. By using a simple VLOOKUP formula I have been able to set up each sheet to go looking for data for me. There is no more need to copy and paste a whole lot of information anymore!

Check out the below screencast of me explaining the setup of a spreadsheet and how this has streamlined my data gathering and analysis.

DFI Presenting: Northland


Today I went to the beautiful paradise of Taipa in the Bay of Islands to help Kerry with the Northland Digital Fluency Intensive. I travel up to this part of the country often to holiday with my family in Coopers Beach - so this was a very nice change to the normality of Auckland!

Kerry is doing an awesome job leading this DFI course and is very blessed to have Vanessa working with her to deliver content. I thought that they worked well as a team.

I had the pleasure of not only delivering the deep dive into How To: Live Stream but also to present the Manaiakalani connect portion of the day - Create: Manaiakalani Pedagogy for DFI 2019. A couple of key points and ideas that struck a cord with the teachers in Taipa were:
  1. It's all about the hook - a significant driver for engagement has been the intentional use of modern technologies to enable creativity.
  2. We want out children to be creators of content - not just stealing/borrowing work that has been made from the internet.
  3. This quote was hugely impactful and was a perfect conversation starter: “Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.” John Dewey
  4. Site, Sound & Motion: how can we better use this as a teacher tool to help our children engage with learning?
  5. If our children create they can then share...and by sharing they are now connecting with a real audience who can learn from the post, comment and help develop the thinking of our children.

Click photo to see entire Create Presentation.
Attribution: Dorothy Burt & Manaiakalani Team

Thursday 14 March 2019

Google Apps for Education - Tips for Efficiency



In light of what I'm trying to achieve with my blog this year I thought that I would repost a presentation that I created with Dave Winter. This presentation to help make your use of the Google Suite more efficient.
Tips include:

  • Shortcuts for making a copy of a google doc
  • Using quick view instead of opening a doc
  • Shift Z... it is your friend
  • Create a shortcut to search drive
  • Create table of contents....then a document outline
  • Many others!