DFI Journey - Day 4

 DFI - Day 4

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

It was interesting to hear that the statistics for Learn, Create, Share is equally attached to the elements of Create as with Share. I know that our tamariki in our New Entrant-Year 2 studio love to share their learning via Seesaw with their whānau but I never thought of how other students would like to share also. 

It was interesting to hear that Manaiakalani is about 'Sharing with PURPOSE for an AUDIENCE'. I loved hearing about how 'an assembly is not an authentic audience as they don't have the ability to pause then move on'. This certainly resonated with me as a kaiako who teaches 5-6-year-olds. The amount of time spent sitting for these children is counterproductive to them and their teachers, as we NEVER do this in our own learning time. Our blocks are broken down to small segments with movement and brain breaks in between whenever we see tamariki struggling. It would be fantastic if these breaks could be implemented into our assemblies. 

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

Oh my gosh!!!!! My life was changed today by learning how to freeze columns and cells in Google Sheets. I have a poem calculation sheet that I fill out each week of what poem my readers have. This was so wide that I could never see my first column. From now on I will freeze the first column to make my life easier!!!! 

I also learnt about what the pointer, hand, and crosshair do and how I can hide columns if there is any confidential information that you don't want to share. I thought I knew a few things after using different version of spreadsheets over the years but my gosh, life just got better today!!!! The picture below shows how I have already used my skills of what I learnt today. 

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

I'm not quite sure if I could use it with my learners as some may not know their address but I loved learning about and playing around with Google My Map. What an awesome tool to have in my kete and to use if if the opportunity arises. I would be interested in contacting other NE teachers to see if and how they have used this in their classes.  

I really enjoyed the refresher on Goggle Forms also. I was thinking I could use this a bit more with our wider community to gather more information re: child's voice, their opinions, what their child did in the holidays etc. Of course the Forms are endless and what a great idea to use them for School Camp situations (not that we go on camps in Rongo-mā-tāne).

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

As mentioned above learning how to freeze cells in my Google Sheets will save my a huge amount of time when inputting what poem each child will have. I usually spend between 1-2 hours each Thursday night placing poems into children's folders and updating my sheet, so fingers crossed my new found knowledge will decrease this time. 

What did I enjoy the most?

I really enjoyed playing around with Sheets and learning how I can use the data to analyse it in different ways by creating different formula and charts. I found there just wasn't enough time to finish the task but I actually felt confident enough to just dive right in and if I did a mistake I could just undo it :). Here is what I created from the data. 

My win of the day!!!

I actually remembered how to embed something into my blog without any help (I did ask Emily to just watch if I was doing it correctly, just in case)! The feeling of accomplishment was amazing and it made me realise how our students must feel when they have achieved such a thing :).