DFI - Day 6

Today we focused on enabling access and the importance of staying connected and continued working on refining our Google Sites.

Staying Connected

I felt the Google Meet session with Dorothy really resonated with all of us at this time especially considering the Lockdown in Auckland that Dorothy is experiencing right now. We can appreciate her predicament given that it was not too long ago when we were all feeling physically disconnected from family, friends, colleagues and students. At the same time this really upped our game online! Through distance learning we had plenty of opportunities to connect. Even those students who would normally have gone without a device were provided with one due to our schools swift actions going into level four of the lockdown. The use of Blogger at this time was a very powerful way to connect with children and their families. There was a sharp increase in page views and posts which really demonstrated how effective and important maintaining those connections was at a time when schools were not operating as usual.

Most of us are at our best when we can strengthen our relationships by being connected together. This is part of the pedagogy of Manaiakalani- Learn, Create, and Share. Both parties need to share. It's a two-way street. I am lucky enough at my school to have undertaken PLG's, online toolkits, DFI and MindLab. These experiences have definitely influenced my ability to authentically connect and share with others through a variety of media.

Google Sites

It was really useful today to stay connected with others today when we enabled access and shared our Google sites with others. Personally, I liked being able to talk one on one with three other people and get their feedback on my site with the help of some guiding questions. This helped me to think more critically about my site and also give thoughtful and helpful advice (I think) to my colleagues. I noticed there was a lot of on task talking in the room at the time therefore others must also have found this sharing and connecting time valuable.

My goals for today were to make my site tidier and rearrange my images/video clips as well as to add multimodal content and audio. I was pleasantly surprised that copying the link URL for my audio file that I recorded from Online Voice Recorder and added to my drive was all I needed to do to put it on my site. I then inserted an image of a speaker and pasted the URL link to it. Done! This week has been really uplifting. I'm starting to feel like I am climbing out of the pit - with a few more tools in hand!