Digital Fluency Intensive (DFI)- Workflow

Today's DFI focus was workflow. 

Our day began today with sharing what has and hasn’t worked for us all so far. At this stage, I most definitely have some new skills and other skills that require further attention and refining. We looked at functions of google hangouts. What a wonderful tool, that allows much opportunity for connection like people in remote places being able to join in. Through google hangouts you can share your screen: either one screen or numerous, depending on the needs of the group. Ultimately google hangouts enables us to better manage our workflow if we choose to utilise it.

Dorothy Burt joined us again in today's session for a google hangout. She discussed the Manaiakalani
pedagogy with particular focus given to 'Ako:' looking at how we can accelerate learning and affect our teaching practice while making the move into the digital world and maximising digital resources and skills.

Dorothy spoke about the 'Throwing the baby out with the bath water' analogy. We are not doing this. What teachers have been doing is recognised as already good and important. We now have to shift into a digital world while encompassing what we already know works.  Firstly we must recognise what effective practice is and we need to amplify this. Without sharing what we have done with others, we are limiting the experiences. I am going to try and encourage my students to do this more during the week in their blog posts.  I am going to share with my students the impact of Turbocharge and share that this is how and when technology makes a difference.

It’s important that we understand specifically what effective practice looks like in our individual schools. Getting voice from our young people is important. I am going to encourage my student's to comment on their peers blog posts as well as blog posts from student's in other hubs. I have talked to my colleagues and we are going to timetable in more time for students to comment on other's posts, to help assist the students with this important task.

When we use the word Learn it’s important we know what makes us different. Focus is not about replacing teachers with computers. Teacher craft and knowledge brought to the profession is essential. We need to embrace the essential good in our profession and move forward utilising this at our own pace. One thing Dorothy said that really stood out for me was: Every child everyday should be learning in ways that weren’t previously possible. It is our job as teachers to support this shift.

The focus of technology is for it to amplify learning. Teachers are still important. Our young people are too important to waste their time on something that is just a tool. Technology enables us to remove barriers and deliver to others in ways that wasn’t previously possible.

Some new learning I gained from today that I will take away and use:

• Calendar shortcuts using the letter 'd' to bring up the day, 'm' for month, 'J ' for previous month and my favourite 'a' for agenda.
• a chrome extension named 'Toby'. I will use this extension to accumulate my tabs and find them easily in a short cut.
• Google hangouts.
• use of Control shift v when copying content to blog post so formatting doesn’t change.
• When making changes to email settings ensure you save changes.
• If you archive something in gmail, you can search it through labels.

I look forward to continuing on this journey, gaining knowledge and developing further skills.