My Holiday Highlights

Well, to be honest, the first part of my holiday was not a highlight - I came down with a cold! So maybe this was my lowlight - sneezing, runny nose that was blocked at the same time and generally feeling pretty miserable. No sore throat or much of a cough though, so that was a bonus! I needed to recover fast - my Mum, Dad and 2 nephews were coming to stay in 4 days!

By the time they arrived, I was way better, but still not quite 100%. Excitedly, we waited at the airport for them to land. They were the last people to get off the plane as usual! Ryker didn't even notice us waving at him, he was too busy checking his reflection out in the big windows! After hugs and greetings and picking up their car, we bundled all of their luggage in the boot and cruised to McDonalds for lunch. Everyone was starving!

It was the very first time that Mum, Dad and my nephews had visited our new house, so we were really eager to show them around. They were exhausted after a 4am wake up, so we didn't go far that first day.

We certainly packed in lots of adventures over the next few days though - Eastwoodhill Arboretum, Galaxy World, Boardwalk, Space Jam at the Movies, playground, ice creams, catching up with family and shopping.

Six days zoomed along so fast! It felt like in the blink of an eye, we were back at the airport again, saying goodbye. I can't wait to see them again when we go down to the South Island at Christmas time!

ANZAC Biscuits

Today I was baking ANZAC biscuits using my Great-Nanny's recipe

I enjoyed making the biscuits and eating them when they had cooled down.

I found it challenging to measure all of the ingredients accurately.

Next time I would change the recipe to double the amounts so that we had more biscuits.

Session 9 - Digital Fluency Intensive

Today was the big day...

GOOGLE EXAM DAY!

I must say nerves were running high after getting sorted and signed in - more because of the time pressure than anything.  Unfortunately Cathy's theory of answering multi choice questions with Bs didn't work out as there weren't any haha!  I found that if you read the questions carefully so that you were answering or doing every part that they were asking you, it was pretty self explanatory.  I found the parts about Docs, Slides and Sites relatively easy to do.  I got very frustrated with Sam Nash as his calendar would not come up when I wanted to schedule an appointment to see him!  I came back to this question at the end and just had to guess when he would be free in the dying seconds of the exam!  Sheets I found fine apart from forgetting how to make a chart go onto it's own page.  I should have remembered the 3 dots!  Waiting for results...

Phew, cue big sigh of relief!  We had a Meet with 3 DFIers in Auckland - tried to give them info and tips about the exam but I'm not sure how well they could hear us.  If in doubt - Google it!  

I have loved this DFI - lots of new learning for me, lots of useful ideas to use in my classroom.  I have also loved our group, it's been great being on this journey with you all!  We've had lots of laughs too.

Thanks to Maria and Cheryl for leading this DFI and thanks to Dorothy, Gerhard, Dave, Stef, Matt and Kent for your input as well.

DFI - Over and Out!

Raquel Parsons, Level 1 Google Educator, signing off!

Session 8 - Digital Fluency Intensive

We had Matt join us from Point England School this week to take us through Media - Youtube, Google Drawing and Google Sites.  First we caught up with Dorothy in a Google Meet to hear about empowerment.  I must say some of the images she shared were a real eyeopener for me.

We checked out Youtube with Matt, created an account and learned how to make our own playlist, which will be great for when I want to share videos with my learners.  We then had a Google Hangout with Kent, also from Point England School.  This was a closer look into live streaming through Youtube.  I'm not sure I'm at this point and don't know if it is something that my school would be interested in, but I like that the learning here is rewindable and I'm sure I could ask for help in this area if it was of interest in the future.

I am really loving Google Draw, mainly because of my button obsession haha!  I REALLY want to complete my digital drawing - but it is tricky getting those lines right, so I've had to put it aside for now and aim to get it finished when I have a bit of time.  Loved all of the different ideas that Google Draw could be used for, so have popped it in below as a reminder to revisit.

Lastly was another look at Google Slides and it's potential for all sorts of creations!  We had to chose to create something so I went with a pick-a-path story.  While I haven't quite finished it yet, it has been really fun.  Check out what I've done so far below...




We've signed up for our Google Exam next week which I'm slightly freaked out about, but more sad actually that it will be our last week.  I've enjoyed this DFI so much and especially working with such an amazing and supportive group of teachers - I'm going to miss you guys!

Session 7 - Digital Fluency Intensive

It was lovely to have Stef down from Auckland with us today.  We caught up with Dorothy via Google Meet to look at being 'Connected'.  Blogger is the class blogging platform used by Manaiakalani to build powerful connections across our clusters. Tui Mai Tuhi Atu empowers our young people to learn to be Cybersmart through leaving quality blog comments and engaging in online behaviour and thinking that elevates positive actions.  We are involved in Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu and we comment on Room 8's blog from Glen Innes School in Auckland.  

It was great to have a play with Google Forms and have the opportunity to create one.  It highlighted things to think about too when creating one for your own class.  For instance when I made my quiz, the answers were case sensitive, so if they used a capital letter and I didn't, it was marked incorrect.  I think for the age of the learners I have, I would use multi-choice!

Google My Maps was fun too.  The answers to questions on Google Forms on holiday destinations went to a Google Sheet, which we then used to make our Map.  Check mine out below.

I definitely think we could have used this when we looked at Discover Our World and Beyond last term - especially when we looked the distance and time from our house to Ormond School.


We do our planning on Google Sheets which I shared with everyone, but it was great to pick up some extra tips and tricks - some that I had forgotten and some that were new!  It was great to use data from blogs to create graphs.

Thanks for another great day!

Session 6 - Digital Fluency Intensive

We met at Tōnui Collab today for our session which I was excited about, having never been there before.  I was very impressed with the wide open spaces, use of colour and of course the amazing view out of the windows!

We started off the day with Dave Winter, looking at learning being Visible.  This has definitely been a focus for Lynne and I this year with our Class Google Site.  We created it with visibility in mind so that when children have been away or want to access learning to work on at home, it is all on our site so they are able to do so.  It was nice that Dave acknowledged our site for this, thanks Dave.  It makes things so much easier for the learners too as it's all in the one place and it can't get lost or thrown out!

Then it was over to the team at Tōnui Collab for an introduction to the future of technology and what it means for our tamariki.  We watched a clip about the 'Superhero Arm', which highlighted for me how important technology and digital technology is when you see what advancements something like a robotic arm has made.  We then looked at the digital technologies curriculum and structure and I worked with Perky and Cathy to discuss how are we using the Digital Technology Curriculum.  We concluded that we are pretty proficient with the orange areas, but are fairly new on our journey in the blue.

Next was a fun Kahoot using questions from The Mind Lab’s Digital Fluency Playing Cards, which were designed to help integrate digital technologies into the New Zealand curriculum in a fun and engaging way.  Well done to Perky who came out tops, winning a set of these cards and a smartphone microscope converter - I didn't even know there was such a thing!

We watched the peanut butter and jelly sandwich video, which was an introduction into coding.  We have used this video with our learners to highlight the importance of specific instructions!  I teamed up with Perky and Cathy again for our next challenge which was to make a code for a person who couldn't see to navigate from their number on one side to their number on the other without squashing any dinosaurs!  I was the coder - this was tricky, as you had to think about specific instructions and estimate variables like the size of the step taken.  Cathy was the reader of the code and Perky attempted to cross the dinosaur infested path!  After a couple of unsuccessful attempts and some 'debugging', Perky made it!

I really enjoyed my little play on Lightbot and I think this would be a great introduction to coding for my Year 4's.  And then our next challenge was getting into a group and solving tangrams!  NOT as easy as it looks, I'd like to do some of these with our learners too, maybe onscreen and physically.  It was cool to pop on the Virtual Reality googles and have a go with M-Bots too!

Last but not least - Cospaces!  I really enjoyed creating and animating characters with Briar using coding and think this could be the next step for our Year 5 and 6 learners who are using Scratch at the moment.

I really enjoyed my day at Tōnui Collab, I hope to be back someday.

Session 5 - Digital Fluency Intensive

First thing, we had a Google Meet with Gerhard to look at the Share component of the Manaiakalani pedagogy and kaupapa.  It gave us a overview of sharing over time and how sharing has evolved with the introduction of social media.




We then looked at how sharing since time began (with one another, the class, the school, the community) can now go beyond that - to the world (global) in the digital age.  Blogger is Manaiakalani's choice for this global sharing platform and by using it people who access our learners' blogs are choosing to listen to them.  Gerhard also talked about the model that is used for commenting on blogs.  Comments should be positive, thoughtful and helpful and if we are giving our learners this scaffold, then we are helping to eliminate negative posts and bullying.

And I am sharing this seriously cringey video clip, which is a parody of One Direction's 'You don't know you're beautiful', because it does have great messages and I think the kids actually might be into it!!!!

Next up, we had a look at some class sites.  This was great and just what I had wanted to do when I gave feedback last week.  I found this so useful and have heaps of ideas of what I want to try and how I want things to look.  Themes, links, introduction about the class, image carousels and buttons, lots of buttons!!!!  Unfortunately I will have to wait for next year when I start a new site to implement it all, but for now I will use some of this on our current site.

Anyway, back to buttons...

I am in love with creating buttons!!!!  It is so much fun!  I have added some of these on my own personal site.  I am keen to teach Lynne how to make these too and add these to our class site.

The remainder of the day was improving and changing our current class sites after getting some feedback from fellow DFI'ers.  I made a couple of image carousels which was great, they take up far less space.  I changed some access settings so that anyone with the link can view and of course I made some buttons.

Great day!  Back off to school to see if we beat Ubby's Riverdale rugby team haha!  Looking forward to next week.