Session Three: Media

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

Dorothy led us through a session on the Create aspect of Learn Create Share. This was great to go over just as we have come out of the Covid-19 lockdown as both our learners and many adults showed so much creativity. Whether it was family TikTok videos, school staff YouTube videos or students videoing themselves doing science experiences for their home learning. The digital aspect was essential to capture all the "Create" and it allowed it to be shared with whanau who were not in our bubbles.

The quote from the Life Long Kindergarten group website was very important to keep in the front of our mind. Their ultimate goal is - "a world full of playfully creative people, who are constantly inventing new possibilities for themselves and their communities." Surely, this must be our goal as educators!

Something else that stuck with me was the quote from Woolf Fisher related to the tasks provided by teachers whose students are showing accelerated learning - "The tasks were designed to generate thinking and allowed for student collaboration and choice in learning and creating."

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

Gerhard's session on YouTube was really beneficial for me. I already had a YouTube channel with about 25 videos I have created over the past 7 years. So now I have tweaked all the settings. I was very surprised to see that I have 38 subscribers - who knew!? Now I know how to create playlists, I have created 2 so far - one for writing prompts (I like to use animated short videos for writing prompts) and one for our hub singing (songs with lyrics).

Interesting reflection, is now that I am in a digital class again I haven't used YouTube yet this year to do any "Create" - so that is a short term goal. This might coincide nicely with us wanting to record our hub assemblies this term (rather than a whole school assembly), as we could use YouTube live streaming and post it later on. I like the fact it would be going straight on to YouTube rather than me having to get it from my phone/camera onto my Drive and then onto our blogs.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?  

I use Google Drawings quite a lot to make things for our learning site. Even though I am pretty familiar with it I got lots of little tips from Vicki's session. I usually download as a jpeg to put on blogs or sites rather than embedding, so I can try this now. I like the tips about changing the shape of an image and replacing an image. I also did not realise that if I double clicked in a shape I could type text, I usually add a text box and then group the two together. Great time saver!

My Getting Creative session with Venessa on Pick-a-Path stories was great. I am really looking forward to teaching my students how to do this. In my create time I quickly created a little quiz about contractions (which I will embed below). I am looking forward to seeing how creative my Writing group students can be with pick-a-path stories.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

If I happen to go to school (out of school hours) I like to listen to music while I work so I will be able to create my own playlist of songs to listen to rather than listen to already created playlists from others.

I found the Deep Dive that Kent ran informative, although fast paced. In my live outside of school I am involved with the local rugby club and using live streaming is something we have talked about as a committee but not get ventured into. I am also a passionate sports/action photographer, and I would love to have a drone, and a gimble for that matter too.


This is my About Me that I created when we looked at Google Draw.