Digital Fluency Intensive... Day # 6

DFI Session# 6 reminded us about connecting with Manaiakalani. Being connected digitally empowers our learners. The default is VISIBLE so connections can be made. We are connected to a powerful network. 

Connectivity is a way of life for our students if we take it from them and they will check out. If you are all paddling in the same direction, you have greater power, you are more efficient. There is an impact on the nature of teaching and learning because if the teacher and student each know what it is you’re meant to be focusing on you are more likely to reach your goals. -  Dorothy Burt 

Connected learners share. To make a connection both parties need to SHARE. Sites help close the geographical gaps of the wider connected network. Twitter and G+ increase the audience for our blog posts and helps connect our learners and our teachers. Tuhi Mai, Tuhi Atu (Write to me, write to others) creates a connection with a meaningful audience  for our learners and online toolkits allow us to share good practice.

Google Sites

Clarelle Carruthers shared a few insights into the rationale behind creating a google site. When thinking about putting together a class site you need to think about:

• Who your learners are
• How they are accessing the site
• What your theme is
• Why you are using the site

Designing your layout and having a plan before you begin will keep your site organised and easy for the user to navigate. Here is the link to the presentation Clarelle shared. We then explored each others class sites and left feedback. It is both interesting and valuable to find out suggested changes from your colleagues. It was suggested to me that I include an image of myself so that visitors to my site can make an immediate visual connection to who the teacher of LS2 is. It was also suggested that the images of my students also needed to be more visible. This lead to a bit of rearranging and organising but I love the fact that regardless of where we are in our digital journey, we are always learning and adapting. As you can see in the image below our landing page now has a photo of me, my contact details and an image carousal that reflects student life in LS2.

Useful Takeaways:

• Think about colour, layout and font
• Think about whitespace to avoid cluttering
• Put all site docs etc in one folder with open sharing permissions to ensure its visible on your site
• Need to access links within 3 clicks
• Use a layout (in site tools) to ensure buttons are aligned
• Create a Screencastify to show new students how our site works. This will create an excellent rewindable opportunity that can be shared at home as well.