Google Certified Educator Level 1!

We did our exam today and I passed!

We just had a share celebratory lunch and it is almost time to say goodbye to all the awesome educators I have got to know over the last 9 weeks.
This course has been most enjoyable. It is nice to work with a group of like-minded people all keen to learn new skills and improve teaching practice. I would thoroughly recommend Digital Fluency Intensive to anybody who is given the opportunity to do it.

Computational thinking and Scratch

We have been investigating computational thinking today and had the opportunity to investigate different programmes and resources.  One of our shared activities was to write instructions for a partner to follow. It was interesting trying to break a simple activity down into individual steps.

I had lots of fun working with Michelle to create our Scratch project about Manaiakalani kaupapa. Next time I would like to use actual speech rather than text.

I have been empowered by the Digital Fluency course to try new things. We are given time to play and investigate collaboratively. Networking across the cluster has improved my teaching practice and confidence.

My first map, some blog analysis and being connected

This is my first map created from a spreadsheet. My Digital Fluency class all chose from a list of places they would like to visit. I chose San Francisco, home of my favourite author, Christopher Moore. 

We learned how to analyse the statistics on student blogs. I chose Kohl-lee's blog because I taught her as a new entrant. She is now in Year 7 at Tautoro School and has had over 2000 visitors to her blog. Click on this link to have a look.



Today we talked about the value of being connected educators. I am lucky to be part of a Manaiakalani cluster as we are given many opportunities and ways to connect with each other. Connecting with each other is a great way to share resources and ideas. It gives me the opportunity to identify new strategies and refine my practice.
I also stay connected globally through Twitter. My twitter handle is @AmandaBingham4.

Enabling access with Google Sites

This week at Digital Fluency we worked on our Class Sites. I am trying to make my site more visually appealing and easy to use. 
We had an opportunity to present our site to the class and receive feedback so I took that opportunity.

We use a "Must do, Can do" programme in Room 3 so I have added some buttons to my site so students can easily access their "Can do" activities.

Screencastify, Chromebooks and iPads

This is my first attempt using Screencastify. It is a bit clunky but I can see it will be a useful tool in the classroom and I'm sure I will get better with some practice. I think my students will enjoy using this tool to explain their learning.

We worked through the Digital Dig which I talk about in my video and I learned some useful new keyboard shortcuts for the Chromebooks.  There is even a shortcut for seeing all shortcuts! 
Try it - ctrl + alt + /.

Khismira Lal, a year 1 teacher from Point England School was our guest speaker at the Digital Fluency Intensive Course today. She works in a 1:1 iPad class and gave us lots of new ideas to use in class. The best tip for me was to save everything as a video rather than a project so it can be saved to and used in Google Drive.

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!