DFI Day Three - Media, Creating that look to get that hook!

Lights, Camera, Action!

This session has got to be one of my favourite sessions so far! We took a deep dive into the Create part of Learn, Create, Share. OOooohhhh, how I love the create part of this model! I get so excited because this is where everybody who is taking part in the learning gets to decide how they are going to share what has been learnt, while embracing the creativity that is inside all of us!

In the create process it's an opportunity for us to pass on our knowledge and inspire our learners to create exciting things to share like blog posts, a poster, a painting, a song, a letter, a story, a dance, baking, knitting something and even voice recording.

The most important thing I learnt about the Media is that it is all about the SISOMO - Sight, Sound and Motion. Using these 3 important concepts enhances our imagination, influences our innovation, and drives us to pay attention to detail to make connections.

I believe it is imperative that we as educators get into this habit of scaffolding new creative ideas and developing those creative ideas to empower students to feel confident in developing their skills in their creations, and to take ownership of their own creative master pieces.

It's a given that creating takes time to learn and develop new ways of sharing things, so it's important that lots of time during the week is set a side and given for students to produce their own creative ways of sharing their learning, after all, Rome wasn't built in a day.

I created this amazing piece of animation with the instructions from my wonderful facilitator Nicola:

For my very first time, I am pretty impressed with myself on this one. Who would have thought that you could make a great animation with Google Slides and have fun doing it too! I'm definitely going to introduce this my capable students and see what they come up with.

Another piece of information I found very useful, was that Youtube is a maze of madness if not used wisely! We need to ensure the content we link and provide is appropriate for our students, especially if they are watching a selection of videos from a channel they have subscribed too.

And, (this is a big and), if they have their own channels, (those who are 14 and up, or have parent consent), we also have to ensure that our students are being cyber smart when posting content on Youtube. So much travesty for such a very popular website!

I recently found that embedding the videos directly from Youtube into the class site, reduces the tendencies that our students have to go off task and click on other videos. No more adding links to Youtube on the class site for me!

Just because I can, I've embedded one of my favourite animated videos from Youtube.

Watch at your own dispense:

Well that's all from me today.

And, if you have reached this point, you are a legend! Thanks reading!

Stay tuned for the next post!

DFI Day Two - Workflow, that's what you need to know

Staying woke!

It was a nice start to this week's session, revisiting the Learn, Create, Share model that I have come to know and love. There was a heavy focus on the Learn section of this model. It's really good to be reminded of how we as educators need to Recognise, Amplify and Turbocharge the learning in our classrooms, as well as making it rewindable, for those that are keen on revisiting and extending what they are or have been learning. Let me tell you, I believe I now have that part jam packed into my pedagogy!

Google Keep is one of the best applications that Google has ever made! I live off this app and I'm starting to convince my family and friends they should too!

I love using Keep in my personal life because it makes things so much easier. This year alone, I have used it to help me organise birthday parties, to do lists, allocating jobs to family members, sharing and saving links to things, taking notes, and the list goes on. I especially love how I can take a photo of any piece of writing and it will record it for me, (saves me having retype it all out). If you haven't tried Google Keep, you are certainly missing out!

During Lock Down I had become quite familiar with Google Meet and how to work my way around it. I am now familiar with creating a reusable link that I have added to my class site for regular Google Meets with students and creating scheduled meetings through Google Calendar. It definitely made social distance learning so much easier! It has also influenced parents to get involved in on the learning their children are doing, (as my students are very little and a lot of adult support is required for scaffolding). 

I love how we have the choice of presenting our entire screens, a window or a chrome tab to all attendees in the Google Meet.

Check out the Google Meet recording:

Shout out to my buddy Janelle who volunteered as my Google Meet recording buddy. Check her blog out here: https://janelletrounson.blogspot.com/ 

(Also, I think we did the set task back to front, so this is quite a giggle)

The last thing I really want to shed some light on, is our Google Drives. Google Drive is a crazy mine field of digital paperwork. If that thing isn't arranged right, it can become a massive dumping ground of guess who or guess where. I suggest you organise and clean that thing up like a monthly spring clean! I am currently managing my mess in my drive, what about you?

Well that's all from me today.

And, if you have reached this point, you are a legend! Thanks reading!

Stay tuned for the next post!