Fourth Day of DFI

Today was all about creating sites.
The pedagogy behind Manaiakalani was reviewed, and multi-modal was reviewed as a foundation of how we should be setting up our sites.
I had set up a departmental site approximately 5 years ago, which has been transferred onto the new google sites, which required about 5 hours of 're-jigging' to get it to work. The main idea with this is to put all resources and information on, so that students can go onto the site in order to review/refresh their learning.

We were asked to create a site; this was a challenge as I couldn't immediately think of something which I wanted to make a site about. I settled on the school trip to Cambodia in a couple of weeks; this site can also double as an exemplar for Year 9 students when they are studying other cultures during either the Migration or Kiwi Culture units.
It was a bit of a 'refresher' for me, as it was a while since I'd set up a site; I have been editing and adding to my current site, but it was good to go back to the basics again and remind myself how to do things.

I'm not sure if I will go to the bother of creating a new site for every topic I plan to teach - this seems to be a bit of an overkill at the moment. I will probably create a new section onto the departmental site, in order to keep expanding the choices available to students each year. 

Third day of DFI

This week we were focussing on Google forms, maps and sheets.
Up to now I had only filled in Google forms, but was now creating my own. It seemed pretty easy to set up, but there are a lot of further 'layers' with all the settings etc to make them look prettier and work differently; this will be something to tutu with in my own time.

Google my maps can be used in a number of ways; this could help you plan a route, plot different places or measure distance. I am sure there are plenty of ways we can use this in Social Science in future, such as plotting human rights abuses around the world.
Google sheets was the one aspect I was not looking forward to - up to now I have been very loath to try and set anything up on excel, as this seemed to fit with people of a more mathematical bent than myself. Once we'd gone through a few of the 'bells and whistles', it became more apparent how you could use it. I still feel like I am only scratching the surface with this programme, and it also seems to be very much about presenting numbers in 'interesting' ways, rather than in-depth analysing, but the more use I make of it, the more I will pick up I am sure.
The big 'annoyance' this week is the use of the phrase 'analyse', when 'describe' would be more accurate. As a high school teacher, analysis is a much more in-depth thinking skill which students are expected to demonstrate in Year 13 for all their assessments. What we seem to be asked to do is to summarise or describe the information.
Below is my summary of one of the students' blog sites:

Second Day of DFI

Today we looked at using hangouts as a tool to meet and explain things.
This seemed to be a good way to have mini-tutorials with each other, so you can show the others what you are talking about as you talk about it. This will be a good way to meet within our department when some people are not able to be at the meeting; we can share 'how to' as well as talk the other people through the skills that we are talking about.
Hangouts seem to also be a good way to have one-to-one contact with students; if they are not in the same room, or if they are at home revising and we are free. This also seems to be able to either add to our workload, or make it more flexible, depending on your point of view and how flexible you are allowed to be by management!
Learning about Gmail, organizing folders and setting up labels and filters was very useful, as it allows the inbox to become much clearer, and is an easier way to file information away, and recover it for later use. I think I will still keep emails unread in my inbox in order to remind me to read it and action it!
Google Keep also is a good tool - this can be used to set up reminders for yourself, or multiple people. Up to now I have tended to do this sort of self-organisation on paper in my diary, and will still probably do so, but the fact that others can be added into lists/reminders can enable tasks to be shared between people much more easily. I can see that this could be easily used when organising large events at the Fire Station, as we are now using a system called CIMS 4 which allows for much more organised and focussed delegation, and Google Keep can be used to break down tasks within each delegated group. Students can also use this tool to organise tasks within groups when doing large projects such as setting up a business, by setting up a list of individual tasks, sharing with the rest of their group, so that others in their group can see if everyone is doing the tasks allocated to them.
Calendar has been a tool that I have not used much up to now, as I have a paper diary which I use regularly. At the moment I am not entirely sure that I will ditch the paper calendar, but I can see the use of putting everything online. I find that I need to be over-organised, and plan each day rigidly, but usually remember to do everything I need to do. Getting into the habit of checking the calendar will be something that I can see that I need to do in future!