Digital Fluency Intensive- Week 3 (online)

Today's session comes after a weeks gap, due to the shutting down of schools during the Covid-19 lock down. It was great to back doing something somewhat normal, even though having the whole day online is completely new.
We were incredibly lucky to have built up the skills we did over the first two sessions, as these made today go a lot more smoothly. It has also meant trying and using what we had learnt again, which has been a great way to confirm what I can and can't do. It was also great to see how some of these tools can be of use from a learners perspective.

The sessions today helped me see far more of the capacity of google slides, google drawings, and made me think of YouTube as a tool I could use in a more organised way, rather than just for watching videos. I also enjoyed using Google Meet again, and having to troubleshoot around it,  as it was the only means of completing the sessions. It made me feel far more confident for if our kura was to use a "live class" option.

Things today that I can see being tools to help my work:
1. Google slides-

• Building an animation, sort of like a stop motion, to show understanding of concepts.
• Creating Pick-a-Path slideshows for a digital way to do activities like Canta-science, or for giving information around learner choice in activities. It's awesome how something like hyperlinking to other slides in the deck can change how it is used so much! 
• Q&A is also a tool I can see being useful in a senior context, when the class is all together. It would enable students to ask questions, see questions, and receive answers, in a way that is visible for all (well I think that's how it might work- need way more of a trial with not just me online!)

2. YouTube- 

•  I imagine using this to create video playlists for concepts, and embedding them on my site to  reduce the video clutter I have.
• It is similar to my goals around TobyMini, where I can collect information from various places together in folders which link to a specific section of work. 

3. Google Drawing- 

• I have already been using this to over lap images and create editable images for student activities, but I had never seen the masking tool before!
• Being able to crop an image into a variety of shapes is very exciting for being able to create content that is more entertaining/engaging for learners.  

I will insert my creations from today at a later point, as currently they are either incomplete, or those that are, my computer  freezes every time I try to add them! So watch this space... :)