Digital Fluency Intensive Day 4

The day began differently with us all sharing our digital Pepeha that we made last week.  It was interesting to see the connections we had and the variety of slideshows that this creative group had made.  We had to each chrome cast our Pepeha and then disconnect so as usual in every task there is learning for us as well.

This week to connect with the Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy we looked at the "share" side of "Learn, Create, Share".  To share, is an important part of creating relationships.  Sharing is as old as time but what has changed is the mode or method of sharing.

Since 2005 the biggest change in digital sharing has been the speed and amplification of the sharing.  With Youtube, Twitter and Bebo, sharing has become something our students have all grown up with.  They readily "share their lives" with a huge audience around the world.  It is not only the young who use this method of sharing.  Polititians and the rich and famous have taken advantage of the fact that they no longer need to rely on the media to get their message across.

The connect and share way of interconnections are ingrained in their way of life so working  "with learners to establish authentic audiences for their learning outcomes" could be another hook for their learning and lead to raised achievement outcomes.

It is not an "either, or" way of looking at things but an amplification.  You can still publish children's work by putting it on the wall, include their work in a Year Book or in a newsletter but children don't usually have a choice and the "audience" is constrained by time, place and people.  You need to be at the venue, you need to listen and you have no choice who you listen to.

By choosing to share digitally it brings in an audience beyond the local school or community to a world wide audience.  Grandma who lives in the Cook Islands can link directly into her grandchildren's lives watching a live performance of the Kapa Haka group, look at the grandchild's blog to see what they have been doing and watch a movie the child has made about a class trip.  The sharing and connections have a two way purpose and benefit - Grandma is an authentic audience of the child's learning and the child soon learns she has an appreciative audience for her learning by looking at the comments that are left on her blog.

Children need to learn that just like in times of old when sharing was not digital, sharing can cause trouble if the rules on how to share are not followed.  They need to learn how to use a secure space  that is legal which is why our children all have a blog that is owned by the Board of Trustees.  The audience is generally not unkind and leaves positive, thoughtful and helpful comments.  As a school we try to enforce "family values" and hope that the children take these values with them into being a positive Cybersmart citizen who has a conscience.

.

As Teachers we like to get things finished.  To be able to blog and show the world a finished piece of work is an important life skill.  If you are someone who never finishes work, people won't want to read unfinished work and employers won't want to know you.  In pre digital days work was done in books or on worksheets which were often not pasted in books or it was lost before it was completed.  This learning was in books that children only had access to at school.  Now learning can be accessible any time and any place.  It could even be at a later time when a thoughtful comment could trigger further learning.

Learning any time has become an important factor in helping to eliminate the "summer drop".  Over the summer holidays many children lose the gains they had made over the weeks prior to the end of the term.  The Summer Learning Journey programme has children blogging through out the holidays.  Woolf Fisher research has shown that these children who participate in blogging twice a week will maintain their learning and those that blog three times a week will actually increase their learning.  This shows what a powerful learning tool sharing is.  The writing of posts, sharing and receiving positive and thoughtful peer assessments links directly to how you can connect and supercharge learning.

Even for my Year 1 learners they love to share their learning.  At present we have a class blog where many aspects of my class and their learning are posted so family and whanau can share the moments of success too.  Photos are taken of children's writing, learning and certificate winners, movies are made of activities and school wide activities are blogged about.  The children love visiting the blog to see who is on it and reliving things we have celebrated.  It is very special when someone leaves a comment.  I hope to be able to get some children blogging on their individual blogs towards the end of the year to increase this "sharing" and for the children to have more choice in what is shared.

We also looked at Goggle Sites and how to make our sites engaging and multi modal.  A teacher who excites and captivates her learners by exciting "window dressing" will encourage her learners to be excited about and participate in their learning.  Our children are at school because it is compulsory - they have no choice so we need to be creative to hook them in to learning.  Each term the Pt England teachers have an immersion assembly to hook students in to a new terms inquiry topic.  We dress up, make movies or act out scenes much to the children's delight.

Digital devices are a hook for learning but after a while the novelty wears off so we need to create engagement that lasts the distance.  If children are left to their own, they tend to gravitate to off task behaviour.  They need to be on task on the right place at the right time doing the right thing.

Children also learn in many different ways.  So teachers should provide opportunities for all learners to connect with the learning through many ways.  It can be acting out a play, watching different versions of a play, to recreate an aspect which is important to them through video, graphics or sound files.  This leads to a higher chance of most learners becoming engaged.  If it is just book learning then only those who respond in that manner will benefit from the learning.

Fiona mentioned the importance of starting with a new folder before commencing to build a new site.  Sites.Goggle.Com was the starting point for us to create a new site.  Pages were added for different subjects and these could be disclosed or hidden if necessary.

 

We collaboratively created a site, learnt how to embed items, add slides and duplicated them.  Using information from TKI about the science of growing things, Khismira and I took the opportunity to make a resource about growing food to use with our healthy food Inquiry topic for next term.  We incorporated familiar resources in reading such as PM readers that the children already use and on a sub page we put stories that the children can listen to about growing things.  In maths we created some problems that the children could solve and found prompts that the children could use to write about.  It was a valuable time of learning as well as creating a useful resource we maybe able to use next term.