Cass Professional Blog

 DFI Day 1

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

Today was an introduction to the origins of the Manaiakalani kaupapa shared from Dorothy Burt. 

Dorothy had presented this kaupapa at my kura (Devon Intermediate) late last year (2020).

I like the concept of making digital education available for students who have limited access to digital tools and learning due to socio-economic reasons.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

Having a support network is always beneficial to motivate and provide help if needed. I liked that I could ask the facilitator questions on the spot and have an instant tutorial when needed. 

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?

In these times of increasing learning from home due to lockdowns, having a digital classroom will allow the transitions to be smoother if we have these events.

Although I feel I am fairly competent with using digital tools in the classroom, I learned a few shortcuts and helpful tools that will enhance making digital resources and teaching these to the students.

I am looking forward to increasingly using remove b.g. to remove the background on images and I think my students will enjoy using this tool also. 

At times I have found aspects of formatting google docs clunky but Maria helped me with a really simple shortcut to centre images when formatting that I did not know! It was so unbelievably easy but I have wasted a lot of time in the past tying to format image placement on documents, so I am super happy to utilise this shortcut. 

I am looking forward to trying out the text to talk tool with some of my learners such as a dyslexic boy in my class. I think this could also be utilised as a punctuation tool as well, as the correct punctuation needs to be spoken onto the document.

I also enjoyed the scavenger hunt activity. I didn't quite have time to complete it but the actual concept of doing a scavenger hunt is an optimal way to highlight gaps in my own and my students skill set and I will be using a scavenger hunt on a regular basis to identify skills and skill gaps. 

The explore tool was an awesome shortcut tool to use when working on a document! 

Scavenger Hunt

This was a poster doc we made to have practise with editing images etc.

Mine was a personal poster rather than a school resource, based on my youngest daughter staying with me, so I felt a 'Bathroom Etiquette' poster was appropriate and a bit tongue in cheek to share with her.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

I think a combination of the shortcuts and being exposed to even little beneficial tools all benefit ease in workflow and capability. Having time to hands-on practise using the tools during today's workshop builds confidence by doing, and I am more likely to continue to use tools with repetition when I am building confidence to use them.

I believe it is important to be open minded and appreciate that some of the tasks are every day life to me, but even so, enhancing my skillset with new tools and shortcuts upskills me and my students as I like to share what I learn with my class and try new things together as tuakana teina.