DFI Session Eight

Session 8!

So meeting again in our digital bubbles. I really enjoy this time to share what has worked well for me during the week or what I have used in my hub. The Digital Dig from last week was a real hit with my Year 5/6 children. I am loving all the resources that I am getting during this course. Even in our digital bubble, we were sharing Matariki resources.

We then moved on to The Manaiakalani Kaupapa of Empowerment. This was one of the most important messages I got from this session.

Devices are not just tools they are transforming the way that the children learn and offer them new experiences and opportunities.

Having a better understanding of the Digital Curriculum Document was a great session. The slide that we were shared has some really good information for a better understanding. Hopefully, you enjoy looking at it.

Next, we had a look at coding and had some playing and creating time. I enjoyed seeing what was actually available for children. I will use some of these in. my hub. I especially liked the Minecraft Voyage. This would be great to use for strand maths. Children would be very engaged in this.

Have you ever coded before? Did you enjoy it?

DFI session Seven

So starting off the day again in our digital bubbles and sharing what has worked since last week, what hasn't worked or made sense and what do you need help with. I really enjoy doing this and sharing what has worked for me. I am finding that I am learning so much doing the DFI and have so much content that has worked for me each week.

We then looked into cyber smart. How can we make our children cyber smart?
This is something that I want all children to be aware of it's something that is really important in the digital world we live in.
We need to give them to skills to be connected and confident decision-makers and we want them to be using positive and proactive language while being cyber smart.
At school, the focus is Smart Learners which is how we learn in term 1, Smart Footprint in term 2 which is where we will create and term 3 we will look at Smart Relationships which is the share. However, there are actually ten categories in the cyber smart curriculum.
Your school values are also really important to bring into these lessons.

We are creating confident, connected, actively involved lifelong learners this to me is one of the key concepts to being cyber smart and something that we need to share and remind the children of more often.

I think that after lockdown we can see that being connected and making learning visible has helped parents connect with their children learning and this is really important.

Having a play around on the Chromebooks today was a good insight as to see how our children use them on a day to day basis. I really enjoyed the Digital Dig and that would be something that I would be keen to even get the children in my hub to do now. Just knowing all those shortcuts and extra features on their Chromebooks makes it slightly easier for them to use it more effectively. It would also be perfect for the beginning of the year when you have new students in the school who have not been 1:1 Chromebooks and are moving into a new hub.


I pads were next and we explored explain everything. I thought this was only something that could be used on an I pad. I enjoyed exploring it and having a play around. I think this would be a really useful tool that children could use during maths to show their understanding of strategies. So this week I will get some children to have a play around that are in my maths groups to show their understanding of place value.

We then had some creating time on Explain Everything. I have made a video about what I think it would be useful for. I think that the children may find it harder on Chromebooks than I pads but it is another tool that they can use for sharing their new learning.

What is your favourite tool to create on?