What is knowledge?

This year I am completing a Post-Graduate Certificate in Digital and Collaborative Learning through Mindlab. Our first task was to share our reasons for doing this course and to then choose a response we connected with. This was the one I chose:

We then discussed the concept of knowledge. It is surprisingly difficult to define as it is such an abstract concept.
First we brainstormed in pairs:

Next we made a 3-d model to represent our thoughts and teamed up with another group to combine our ideas and make a video:

We also learned about the importance of followership. Here are some qualities of an effective follower:

• Think for themselves and evaluate the leader's decision before accepting it
• Are active
• Have positive energy
• Give full support if they agree with the leader
• Challenge the leader and offer constructive alternatives if they disagree

Sharing and Google sites

Dorothy Burt joined us via Google Hangout to talk about Learn, Create, Share.

Sharing has been happening since the beginning of time - think cave paintings. Technology has allow students to have an authentic audience in class rather than just a compulsory audience. The audience is now global.
As a teacher, it is important to hook students into the learning because the thrill of a new device does not keep them engaged in the long-term. This can be achieved through the use of multi-modal teaching materials.

We practised creating a new Google site incorporating multi-modal material. Here is my gardening site:

I am planning to update my class Google site before the start of Term 2 to make it more engaging for students and whanau.

Digital pepeha and Youtube playlists

We spent the day in beautiful Taipa today with a guest speaker from Point England School, Kent Sommerville.

I used Google slides to create a digital pepeha: 

I learned to create a playlist on Youtube which I can them embed into my class site for students to access.

My first playlist is focused on swimming strokes so we can learn from some experts before we head to the pool.

I can now confidently use the snipping tool to take screenshots and share them with others.

Google Keep and Toby

I was unable to attend the session this week as I was visiting the Gold Coast to celebrate my mother's 80th birthday. I missed the interaction with other learners, however, it was easy to follow the agenda and work through the slides independently. 

The most exciting discovery for me was how to 'tame my tabs'. I have added the Toby mini Chrome extension and set up a Morning collection:

This means when I get to work in the morning I can quickly open all of the tabs I need.

I have been using Google Keep on my phone for a long time (mostly for shopping lists!) but never really considered it for my laptop. I have now added the extension and I think it will be very useful and, once again, the collaborative nature of the tool is appealing to me.

We had School camp last week and I have been on leave this week so I have not yet had an opportunity to implement my new learning in the classroom. I am looking forward to using the voice typing next week in my reading rotation.

Learn, Create, Share

This was my first Digital Fluency Intensive Workshop with Manaiakalani. Kaikohe West School has been part of the Outreach Programme for over 3 years. The big kaupapa of Manaiakalani is the concept of Learn, Create, Share and this is easy to implement with the use of technology.

I was introduced to Google groups as an alternative to Contacts lists in Gmail. Google groups has many advantages, the main one being that it is collaborative. It turns out I am in a number of Google groups already including Global Read Aloud which includes teachers from around the world.

As my class are just starting out with Chromebooks for the first time I have learned a few tips and habits to make our learning easier. Including their initials at the start of a document name so it is easy to identify the owner, and having just one document for writing in Term 1 using the table of contents are ideas I will implement immediately.


Understanding how to copy and paste information without all of the irritating formatting (use ctrl, shift, V instead of ctrl V) will make my life easier!