DFI Session 9 - Thursday 2nd July 2020

What a great way to complete our last DFI session with a successful result with the exam and some great fun new apps and programs to use. I definitely learnt a few things through the exam that I didn't quite know off the top of my head but it was great to put my new skills to the test and finally finish! The openness and collaborative way this experience has been, has given me lots of confidence to continue this journey of being digitally fluent and helping my students to achieve their goals. I will definitely have fun exploring and learning more!

Some main points from today: 

Ubiquitous Learning

• Knowing that children can learn from anywhere at any time from anyone. 
• Learning is rewindable and students always have access to repeat the learning if needed. 
• Students who are well off are exposed to 30,000,000 more words than those who are not. 
• Digital technology has the power to remove barriers to learning. 

DFI Demo Slam: 

• Body Synth - Dancing
• Brush Ninja - Creating GIFs through drawing - using paint tools to draw different pictures
• Semi-Conductor - conduct an orchestra through your browser
• Google Earth - Exploring and creating projects they can share with others
• Auto Draw - good for those not good at drawing. Predicts what you are going to draw and gives suggestions
• Music Lab - Turning Art into Music. Choosing different instruments and creating different sounds. 
• Trusted contacts - Google app for mobile. Allows to share with trusted people where you are for safety reasons. 
• Smart commenting - Sentence starters for making good comments 
• Meet Extensions - Google meet enhancement suite, Google Meet push to talk, Meet virtual background. Meet party Button, Meet attendance. 
• Google Trends - Dynamic, changes and shows what's being searched all around the world. 
• Read and Write for Google Chrome - for learners who need support. Accessibility functions. Paid versions has more functions. The website can be read to you, remove ads. 
• Flubaroo - Grade and analyse Google sheets. Can mark for you. Highlights areas of need.
• Sing like Freddy/Freddy Meter - Karaoke on Steroids?! Analyses your voice to see how well you are in tune. 
• Getting Minecraft characters using Google Sheets. 
• Rapid Doc Creation 
• Google Arts and Culture - Accessible from laptop. Engaged with Arts and culture experiment. Tour art museums. Art Camera - See details of art work. Download app - take selfies and can match your face to a portrait that looks more like you. 
• DFI fun and games 
• Tangrams using google drawings - Create and complete Tangrams
• Phet University - Maths science interactive simulations and can add to a blog. 
• Okay Go Sandbox - Highly recommended - great for STEM. Takes aspects of all topics. 
• Kupu - Appstore. Take a photo of an object and it comes up for the maori word for it. 

DFI Session 8 - Thursday 25 June 2020

Coding and Computational Thinking

Great session! Exploring different ways of using coding was fun and interesting! I think this would be a great way to get students engaged and understand how things work and sequencing of codes. Also a lot of problem-solving would be involved when things don't work and find out how to solve it and what to use. Students would also be able to understand different symbols and their meanings. I can also see different aspects of Coding can be used in Maths. This will be great to trial. 

Some main points from today 

Deep Dive - Future of Tech 

• Being a contributor to technology
• Robotics being developed to help with medicine, rescues etc
• Having the ability to be creative

Digital Technologies Curriculum 

• A digitally capable person can create their own digital technologies solution.
• A fluent person can decide when and why to use specific digital technologies to achieve a specific task or solve problems
• Teachers learn how digital technologies used effectively can have a significant impact on accelerating achievement outcome. 
• It's important that students have opportunities to be innovative designers and creators of digital solutions     
• 3 Strands - Technology practice/knowledge and nature of technology