Digital Fluency Intensive - Week 5 Reflection

I have to say that I think the participants of this cohort of DFI are probably receiving the most authentic experience of the course that we could have hoped for! Sure, we miss out on the person-to-person interaction that comes from being in a room with the other participants, but we are learning a whole new set of skills on the side as we go. Also, we are able to ‘iron out the kinks’ that come from an online learning experience in preparation for our own classes once the term recommences. It’s crazy to think that this was all very unfamiliar to us a few weeks ago! Such a lot of ground covered in such a short space of time.

Making learning visible is so important for the process of empowering and encouraging our children to be one of the stakeholders in the learning, not just being or seeing themselves as empty vessels to be filled by the teacher’s knowledge. With this approach, they know where they are and where they’re going with their learning. By doing this, we are encouraging whānau to be part of the learning, particularly for our Māori and Pasifika communities. Using Google Sites also allows all learning content to be put in one place, completely visible and open to anyone and everyone with the link.

For our Create time today, we spent time creating a multi-modal site. Here is a link below to the Site that I created;

I am excited about this prospect of creating and finding ways to improve my class site. I freely acknowledge that my site is very much on the basic side, especially compared to some of the exemplars I have seen today! Having said that, I have now the time, knowledge and motivation to work on it and make it better. The idea of ‘limiting the links’ is definitely an important one to have in mind when thinking about designing a site, though. I found that short clip we saw about the design of a shop front to be really helpful and insightful. We can and should be looking at our sites through a similar lens. Are our sites appealing visually? Is there too much going on? If so, this may well be a stumbling block for our learners. Lots to think about!

Once again, can’t wait for next week!

Jeremy