It was great to hear Fiona speak about Cybersmart during her presentation. It is a fantastic programme, and one which I think far more schools would benefit from having as part of digital learning in their schools. When I think about the amount of time and effort that I spent at my previous school working on teaching kids about responsible device use and ways in which we can keep ourselves safe online, using the Cybersmart curriculum would have been so much easier. I think one of the best parts of the programme is the consistency of terminology across all year levels. The terms and phrases that children are taught in primary school are still relevant once the child reaches College. As Dorothy said, “they’ve had 8 years of brainwashing by the time they reach College!” - what a perfect way of summing it up! Haha!
It was great to spend some time looking at Hapara today. I remember being introduced to it in my first year as a teacher and thinking how great a programme it was. Learning that it was created especially for Manaiakalani schools to use was very cool! Dorothy made a point of voicing her displeasure around the ‘Highlights’ function being added to the system for the benefit of overseas schooling cultures, and I tend to agree with her opinion of teachers being able to kick students off tabs being a negative thing and one which we shouldn’t be encouraging. Interestingly, we never had access to the Highlights function of Hapara at my previous school for whatever reason, so perhaps this is a setting that can be changed to stop this from being used? Regardless, I liked Dorothy’s principle of “get off your a$%e!” rather than “whacking students with a stick”.
A really helpful tip which I picked up today was learning how to embed content using HTML. This is something which I haven’t been able to do up until this point, and so it was great to see this during Kerry’s session on Blogger in the afternoon. With any luck, you should be able to see the Screencastify video I did around Cybersmart ‘Smart Money’!
Speaking of Screencastify, it was great to get this set up on my device today for the first time. I have seen it used a number of times by colleagues in the past, but have never looked at it for myself. After a few technical glitches as a result of the adblocker I was running my device, and with Gerhard’s help, I managed to get it sorted. I already have a lot of ideas of ways in which I can use this programme as part of my personal life. I quite often help older friends and family members with their devices and help them to increase their own digital confidence and understanding, and so Screencastify would be great for the purpose of making some ‘How to’ video tutorials. I have managed to teach myself a lot of new skills around using formulas and script editing on Sheets by watching YouTube tutorials during this lockdown period. I am definitely someone who learns best by watching others do, and I know that there are a lot of others who learn this way too. Screencastify is a great tool, and one which I look forward to using in the future.
We have only a couple of sessions left to go with DFI, and although that’s a bit sad, I am looking forward to sitting the Google educator exam along with putting the skills I have learnt into further use as part of my everyday teaching practice.
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