It's all about making connections

Today's session was around tohatoha (share)

Once again, Dorothy had some wise words of wisdom to impart pretty early on in the session. Step aside from the teaching world for one moment and think about our own presence on social media. Social media is all about sharing. The digital world has made it normalised to share whatever we are doing, where ever we are! Instantly! Everywhere around us we're encouraged to connect with others, to broadcast ourselves, to share our lives. Our breakfast is not just for our viewing pleasure anymore. We, as individuals can't connect with someone if we can't share in some way with them. Think about that awkward conversation at dinner party with a person who just won't engage. We move away as quickly as we can and find someone else to make connections with. 

Sharing in the classroom is really no different. However, it is the purpose of sharing now has a bit more clarity. I always thought the sole purpose of sharing was to show parents and whānau (maybe a grandparent, or some stranger from the other side of the world) the amazing learning their tamaiti had been a part of.

The purpose is not for tamariki to connect with parents and whānau. It's a great side benefit, but there's way more to it. The purpose is to teach tamariki to to be confident and informed digital citizens. We want them to be cyber-smart, and we want their comments towards others to be positive, thoughtful, and helpful. I am curious about this ideology. I think about the keyboard warriors, the over-shares, the quite frightening and naive way we've become so flippant about sharing our lives with the world.  I wonder whether this focus on digital citizenship, cyber safety, and just plain ol' be-kind-or-keep-scrolling attitude will shine through in the near future. I hope so.

Dorothy also touched on the definition of an 'authentic' audience. These are people who CHOOSE to listen to you. That doesn't include the 250 tamariki sitting in assembly on Friday. Interesting. I see value in putting time aside for blog commenting in class. Tamariki are making a choice to visit their peers' posts. They are interested, not forced. We're currently in the middle of a blog commenting competition across our school. It's been absolutely wonderful to see the dramatic increase in whanāu choosing to comment on their child's blog, but on the other hand it's bitterly disheartening to know that those comments have only appeared due to lots of nagging from tamariki and promises of spot prizes.      

A nice reminder for me, and I think all classes in our kura was that traditional ways to share are still extremely valid. They are hugely important. This reminder really appealed to me, as it's easy to forget that there's still value in using a pen and a book. Digital learning is an addition not a complete replacement. 

Dorothy's final reminder was that Learn ~ Create ~ Share needn't be linear. Tamariki can share to finish their learning,  or they can share to start new learning. I thought this was an easy way to look at it.  

Todays focus...

Google Forms. 

I had fun playing round with this, but to be honest, it's not something I would use with my tamariki.

              

Google Maps 

The number 1 piece of information I took from this deep dive was that it's not going to be in the exam. I don't think this section was particularly relevant to my practice, however I would like to try and map out Marae around Aotearoa my tamariki mihi to, and I can see it would be very helpful mapping out an upcoming family holidays to Auckland if we're ever allowed back up there. 

A trick - Set 'default view' using 3 dots on the left rather than zooming in and out all the time. 

Google Sheets

This was the major focus for the day and was very helpful. I learned abit more about conditional formatting, which is exactly what I'd been needing to work on. Our task was to analyse our children's blog posts which I have shared below. I think my more confident tamariki could definitely do this themselves. It would make for a great pāngarau activity. 

Tips and tricks ...  

Use the thicker bars in the top left corner to lock in columns and/or rows when viewing lots of data

Resizing rows - Selecting all rows you need by clicking on the letter and moving across. Allows you to resize all rows in one hot. Click on first row, hold shift, hit last row and resize.  

Adding numbers - go to the box you want the total to go into. Go to signa key and click sum. Highlight the data you want to tally and hit enter.  

Increase or decrease decimal places for tidier numbers.

Drag handle (plus sign that appears when you hover on the small box at the bottom right of the cell) works downwards and across. 

Changing formats - 123 format and drop down arrow will change the format if you have mixed letters and numbers you want to tidy up. 

Use the filter function (looks like a funnel) to sort and filter by age, score, gender etc...

Conditional formatting was lots of fun! Use alternating colours to make it easier on the eye! The explore tool is down the bottom!

Once again, my brain was fried at the end of the day. However there was lots to take away, and I'm enjoying being a part of it all. 

Until next week!