Digital Fluency Intensive # 5

Looking back at the week that has been:

This week I have been looking at ways to use google forms and sheets to support our PB4L programme.  We already have ways of gathering data on behaviour using our school management system which is working well however we are not collecting data on the positives.  Google forms and sheets looks like an easy way to do this.

Collaborate with Sites - Week 5

The focus for this week is about using sites effectively for our learners.

Pedagogy Focus: Making learning visible 

Planning, process, assessment, outcomes all visible.  They day to day functioning of the teaching progression and learning should be visible.  This is about the equity of access for all learners.  There are two parts to visibility:

• The visibility facing the learner:  Google site is so our learners have one space to go to that every one can access.  Keep it simple, limit the links. 
• The teacher facing visibility - Hapara teacher dashboard is our visibility to the learning.  Everything the learner does comes to us as the teacher.  Parent Portal - what is this? How can we use it?

There should be clear links between the class site with the plan for learning, quality feedback on student work and then also sharing of learning visibly on blogs.

Class on Air has some great examples of visible teaching and learning to explore.

Multi Modal Sites - Why?

1. Engage the learners and hook them into the screen and the learning.  

2. Enable and empower our students to learn online and become a life long learner as they can access and learn anything now in the digital world.

3. Battling disengagement - so many distractions on the digital platform.  We need to really sell our learning. Make your class site a place that inspires the students to go in and explore, a visual feast,  it should reflect what we are about.  It needs to be dynamic. 

Multimodal design - behavioural engagement is about students accessing the learning, having a voice and an authentic audience for sharing.

Multi textural design aligns with t shaped literacy - It is about kids being cognitively engaged and get the brains working so they feel challenged.  Rich literacy resources to deepen students understanding.  Go back in and watch the videos in this slide.  

Universal Design for Learning - Thought to ponder: Have I presented the learning in a way that is going to reach everybody in the room.  Individualising learning - use sound bites, graphics etc?

Site idea for next year - use remove bg for student photos for class site home page linking to their blogs - insert as png's s, have a variety of poses.  

Making a multimodal text set

When selecting texts for a multimodal text set think about including:

Focus text - the one text they must read and you are going to look at deeply.

Complementary Text -  text that supports and extends the ideas in the focus text

Scaffolding Text - a text that simplifies the concepts for the students or helps them to understand the ideas.  This could be a video, diagram or visual text.

Challenging texts - cognitively challenge the learners.  Could offer a different perspective

Learner selected text - Attach a padlet and the students add the texts they find related to the theme and it builds as a resource.  You can then add additional texts that support the learning.

Today we spent some time making  a multi modal site for our learners.  I chose to make my site about critical thinking around texts.  The big question to explore was: Can you believe everything you read?  This site will be really valuable to implement with my learners to make sure they check the validity and reliability of the information they source on the internet.

Here is my site; 

What next?

After reflecting on today's session I have come up with some things I would like to focus on this week. They are:

• Harpara -  Do a drive by with my class, put up unshared doc screen on the big screen.  Get students to file all unshared docs
• Finish the activities for the t shaped literacy site that I made today so it can be used in the classroom.