DFI: Day Seven

Ubiquitous

“Anytime, anywhere, any pace and from anyone.” 

This is a familiar term as we have covered this in staff meetings. Ubiquitous is all about access to learning to empower children and teachers. It removes the walls of the classroom, children can learn anywhere, anytime, any place. So it links well to accessible, visible learning for this to happen. 

Examples include: Toolkits for teachers which I enjoyed participating in, especially how I can make it rewindable by going back and looking at the slide shows and watching the videos. Our Distance Learning for the children to access at home when they could over Lockdown and now continued as rewindable learning on hub site. I am watching Jane Considine videos for Professional Development and use this as a rewindable resource that I can speed up or slow down for the parts I need to concentrate on. Our Google site gives the children the opportunity to connect if absent from school, on holiday during the term or before/after school at home. I really like the idea of rewindable learning as it is personalised to the child/person who can learn at their own pace. 

Summer Learning Journey

I have heard of the Summer Learning Journey to stop the Summer Drop off over the holidays. I had some children in the juniors who were keen to join but they weren’t in the age bracket. I wonder if there could be something for juniors to complete over the Summer too. 

Cybersmart Programme

I am currently doing the Cybersmart programme with Sharon on Mondays and Fridays in the classroom. We have completed the Kawa of care and are now working with Explain Everything. Today I learnt how to find the audio to record my voice for instructions and then lock it to the screen so the children can’t move it. I am looking forward to having a go with this in the classroom. I know how to take a photo, selfie, crop, lasso, type in a text box etc. So I enjoyed learning a few other things I could do with Explain Everything. It is very well suited to the juniors. My next step will be to create Explain Everythings for classroom lessons. My confidence has increased using ipads with the children. I thought about how important it is for the children to complete the Cybersmart curriculum before they go online. We want to “empower our learners as connected and confident decision makers.” I want to have a look at the Be Internet Awesome which supports the Cybersmart curriculum, sounds like a good resource.

The quotes that spoke to me were:

“Being Cybersmart empowers learners to connect when their learning is visible and ubiquitous.’’

“Whenever and wherever we share online...it’s personal!”

“Make kindness go viral.” 

“If it’s worth teaching, it’s worth capturing, if it’s worth learning, it’s worth capturing.” 

It shows how much rewindable learning is needed to make learning accessible to our learners. 

During Lockdown I used Explain Everything to make big book videos for the children to read along with me. These are now in the Independent Reading page on our site that the children can access. I learnt how to do Google meets and now we often have them for different meetings. I found it interesting to think of doing a drill for learning online like we do drills for earthquakes, fire drills etc so that the children are prepared and know how to access their learning online. We have the Learn, Create, Shares which we get the children to access sometimes for follow up activities already in the classroom. 

I thought about how I really like rewindable learning and need it for myself. I take notes to remind myself later how to complete the tasks and also like to see the task in action. Then I try myself to complete the task. If I get stuck I go back to the rewindable learning to help me (DFI notes and Day’s Agenda with information). I like the idea of getting the children to video themselves explaining how they completed their learning goals when they are confident. E.g how to complete a maths strategy. I hope to do this in my classroom. 

Chrome Book and ipads

I haven’t worked on a Chrome Book very much so it was good to see what the children are doing further up in the school. I learnt where all the main buttons are on the keyboard and how to take a screenshot. I am currently working with ipads in the junior hub and have Sharon helping me team teach Cybersmart with the children. We use Explain Everything on the ipads so I have already had experience with this. Today I learnt I about the video option where you can record what the children are doing on the screen and I am keen to give this a go next week. I found out how to use the clipart to add pictures and look for shapes and to airdrop. I now know to save as a project if the children are going to work with it. 

I decided to work on a task on the ipad for feedback for writing. I used the positive, thoughtful, helpful template from when we blog to feedback on writing. This gives a structure for the children to follow. This is a need in the classroom to give constructive feedback to others and receive feedback to enhance our work. 

Check out my ipad work!