Week 9

Today we looked at rewindable and ubiquitous learning and how learning can happen, any where and at any time.  This is good for planning, in that you do not need to plan as children can access the class site where ever they are in the world.

We also touched briefly on goggle classrooms and how we can create a google classroom.

Week 4

Today we looked at creating a playlist from Youtube, which is something very exciting to do as I was able to group everything of a simliar nature together under one heading.  This is the activity I found really useful as I go on to Youtube and the information I download is just usually left to float around wherever they float.

Another very good learning activity was seeing how drones could be used to live stream events in real time.  Also knowing the costs was helpful to those thinking of buying one.  Recording using web cams was another alternative.

Week 8
Today we looked at Gmail, Google Calendar and Goolge Hangouts.  Apart from the Gmail, everything else was new to me.  While I use Gmail all the time, it was really cool to see the other things you could do with it, such as adding a background, compacting emails and putting them in order as well as deciding if you wanted to receive emails from certain people.  It was also good to know that you could undone send if you sent the email to the wrong person, or included something you should not have.

Google Hangouts gave us the opportunity to share with others in a group situation and was similar to Skyping, but very good to use.  I had not used Google Hangouts before.

Google Calendar is something else I have not used, and it was good to be able to colour code things of similar importance or category and to create events and be able to invite people to them.

Wk 7-Evaluating & creating a class site.
Today we looked at other people's class sites and did any evaluation on each of the sites.  I found it quite hard to evaluate other people's work as they all looked so good to me.  It was really good to be able to look at what others have done and to get some ideas for my own site.  Some of them were very colourful and all of them were relevant to the age groups they are teaching.  I started to create my class site and put in buttons and learnt how to link lesson plans to each button.  I still need to add a lot more work to them however.  I think I have to get used to sharing my work with other people as well and also that planning is really essential to setting up a site.

I also made some drums make a sound when connected to my laptop by using a number of connections and play dough.  It was really interesting what could be made by using everyday objects which could be found in the classroom.

Wk 6-DFI:  Google site
Today I did a google site for anyone wanting to access information on Te Matariki.  Even though I have not finished yet, I was able to find some very useful information from another site that I could use.  Also, sitting at my table was a person who has a lot of experience working on google sites, so she was able to help me with my work.  I think the hardest thing is remembering the steps I took to make my site.  I wasn't too sure about sharing with other people but the button has already been pushed, so I hope it is useful to someone.  Of course there is so much more to learn, but I've learnt enough for today.

dfi week5 - Friendship and Making

This is my scratch digital story that I made with code. It is about two butterflies and a beetle who meet one another in the forest.  The butterflies stop and talk but the beetle is too busy and carries on his way.

Week 3 - Chrome castify

Today I learnt to use screen castify as a way to create a short presentation.  It was really good and especially being able to make the characters I chose to use, to speak by adding speech bubbles and then to move in a direction, get to the end of the screen and then 'bounce' and walk back in the direction they had come.  This is in my show above.

We also looked at Hapara and how to keep a track of students and in particular if they are on task and doing what they are supposed to be doing on their device.