Another big day but feeling much more upbeat than at the end of our last one. Possibly due to having a bit of time after 3pm to finish off and digest info at my own pace. It feels luxurious to have NOT had to rush to a meeting!

Deepening our understanding of the Manaiakalani story with Dorothy Burt:

Oh, it was cool to understand the thinking behind the image depicting the Manaiakalani network – each circle at the edge of the bubble being one of the schools, with the colour telling whether it’s high school/primary/Catholic/Māori medium. Such an effective image – I would love to see that code extended to the other clusters, so that at a galnce you can see how large each cluster is, how many high schools and primary, etc.

Wondering if we have a glitch in the flow of info – have no knowledge of the event at KPMG on Friday – I hope our Lead Teacher has heard about it. Perhaps it’s not for us!

I know that we have a new facilitator in our area, I will check in with my in-school lead teacher about when we get to have him work with us.

I didn’t know there was one web page with all Blogs on it – seems a great idea – I will share this with colleagues – check out the RSS feeds (?).

I wonder if there’s a similar page for sites – are all the facilitator-made cluster sites hosted on one place?

Secondary events calendar – with Kerry – This is such an amazing resource, the discussions look so interesting – I need to share this with my friends at Westland High. And yes I will join some, too!

Dorothy encourages us to put all sorts on our blogs – not just DFI stuff – this is something I had not considered!! – e.g. things I am learning about, PLD, info from staff meetings, etc. Interesting.

Opportunity in term 3 – sharing proff inquiry. I will think about participating!

Talk with team about whether any of these would be useful: (from Dorothy’s Connected presentation)

Chalk n Talk: Leading Learning using Google Sites – with Kerry – Yay!

• My Learning hub represents me as a teacher. This is where I deliver my learning from. I like thinking about my site in this way. I also love Kerri’s suggestion to teach FROM my site, I don’t know if I do this enough.
• As I listen to Kerri, I feel i can make a site that caters for 70% of my ākonga but not at all for those who need to wriggle and move (constantly) – they simply don’t want to be online for my whole maths time, nor do I want them to be… wondering what solutions are here..
• “You can have your planning in the bottom of your site footer” – what does this mean?
• VISUAL HIERARCHY – keep in mind when designing site!
• I am just so impressed with the time management of the DFI team. Thye knew this would be a 20 minute rather than half hour session. (HOW???). You all are amazing!

Explore:

It was so useful to have time to critically explore other sites. A couple of my faves are this junior site because it is so clear and simple, and I love the buttons (made in canva possibly?).

We talked about giving credit if we use content/whakaaro from another site, yes this makes perfect sense. Ka aroha atu, ka aroha mai…

Remember to link our class site to school site and vice versa.

I am feeling really happy with how my site is shaping up:

Hāpara Workspace:

Could be useful?… not at this stage, for me, I think. Kāore āno – not yet…

CyberSmart:

Looked at Term 3 content: smart relationships. Viki reminds us it works really well with PB4L skills, and naturally lends itself to exploration when we are blogging. This is rich for learners.

Blogging Tips:

Responding to a comment – responding via email is not ideal as that isn’t shared on the blog. Best ways are to do via the blog post. Cool I will remember this.

Take-aways & Next Steps:

I have a bunch of awesome info to share with various colleagues:

• The class site examples with my own colleagues (maybe via our Lead Teacher)
• Kerri’s fantastic secondary connect series with my Westland High School colleagues
• I want to make myself an avatar – Pixton is student friendly. Bit emoji cool too – as an add on.
• Continue improving my awesome site, still want to get it showing more student voice and input.

Questions:

How are teachers keeping anecdotal notes? Any smart ways?

Anyone experienced with Numicon? Anyone found ways to merge it with digital learning?