Creating my Digital CV

For our last (ever!) digital immersion day we created an online CV.  It was a great opportunity to use our digital skills to showcase our learning journey, teaching pedagogies and digital capabilities.  

I had a look at my 'digital CV' I created last year when I applied for jobs and I couldn't help but cringe a little! I had just been introduced to Google sites and I created my first ever site as my Digital CV. I used the drop down menu function and choose a template.  It was a pretty good effort for a first timer, but it shows just how much I have learnt.  

My 2015 digital CV

My 2016 digital CV

For my 2016 digital CV I wanted everything to be on the same page.  I wanted it to look as simplistic as possible, so used HTML to create tables for each of aspects I wanted to include in my CV.  I  wanted to use more images and less text.  I used Google Draw to turn my images into links.

With the help of Dorothy, I created an album of photos to provide a snapshot of my teaching.  I did this by creating a Google Presentations and inserting photos onto each slide.  Also, on each slide I included left and right arrows, which were hyperlinked to the previous or next slide.  You need to publish it to the web and make sure the auto advance settings are on. Once you have created your Presentation, you add it as a Gadget on your Google site.  The Gadget you use is 'Slideshow Maker'.  Then you follow the steps to add in the slideshow and specify the height and width.

Make your site pretty

I use a few websites to help make my website look good.  I like to choose fonts that look interesting and compliment each other.  I will always use different fonts for titles and normal text.  It can be hard choosing from such a large range of fonts, so I always use 100daysoffonts to help me.  Note that this probably shouldn't be shared with students as some of the text used is not appropriate for kids.

I also like to choose colour schemes and use a few different sites to help me. Color-hex and coolors are my go to.  My favourite is coolors because a) you can adjust the shades b) you can save your colour palette by exporting it and c) you can upload an image and use the colour picker to find the hex-codes for the colours you want!

Reflecting on my First Year as a Beginning Teacher in the MDTA

It is crazy to think that I have almost completed my first year as a beginning teacher in the MDTA.  I have learnt heaps and grown a lot.  Here is my doco where I talk about my beliefs, the MDTA programme and how I use Manaiakalani's 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy. Thanks to Dorothy Burt, Anne Sinclair, Fiona Grant, the MDTA BTs and the team at Glen Innes Primary who have helped me on my journey!  I am looking forward putting my learning into practice into my own class next year.

Manaiakalani Film Festival

Today was the 9th annual Manaiakalani Film Festival.  Instead of our usual digital immersion days, the MDTA spent the day at Hoyts helping out and enjoying the awesome films our learners have created. 

It was a pretty awesome feeling to see my  film on the big screen!  I am so proud of my learners and the effort they put into the making of our film.  All the actors did an excellent job and helped come up with some awesome shots. I was also lucky to have an awesome director (Lauren) who took charge of the filming.  

Here is my first Manaiakalani Film Festival film, enjoy!

Let us know what you think! Feel free to leave a comment on our class blog.  You can also check out the films from all schools in the cluster by clicking here.

Class OnAir Episode: How-to-Haiku's

Here is my first Class OnAir episode!  Last week we learnt about Haiku poems.  On Tuesday, we learnt about the structure and features used in Haiku's.  Following this, the students found their own examples of a summer, autumn, winter and spring haiku.  Next, the students annotated the features they liked about the Haiku poems they had selected. 


On Wednesday the class worked collaboratively to use what they had learnt about the structure and features of a Haiku, to create a class Haiku.  This is what I chose to film.  Something to note is that we had an ERO visitor in the classroom during filming.  This is why they were much more quiet than what they usually are.  There is also a lot more teacher talk than what would usually happen during our lessons, as I needed to give the learners extra support and prompts to encourage them to share.  I think my learners did a great job under the unusual circumstances.


Overall I was pleased with how the lesson went.  The learners were engaged and it was a great oportunity to use a new digital tool - padlet.  I like to use clips from YouTube during my writing lesson as the learners can draw on what they see and hear to create descriptive pieces of writing. This is particularly beneficial for our struggling writers.


Click on the screenshot to have a look at my Class OnAir site. It is quite daunting putting myself out there and it feels a little odd to watch myself teach, but I can use this to figure out what I can do to improve my teaching. 

Updating my PRT site

Last Friday the MDTA were very fortunate to have a whole day to update our PRT sites.  We spent the day sharing how we could illustrate the Practicing Teaching Criteria. In order to gain full registration, all beginning teachers are required to maintain a documentation which demonstrates that they are capable and knowledgeable quality teachers.  Registered teachers also need to maintain documentation in order to renew their certification.

Creating an online PRT folder an easy way to keep a record of all the documentation needed. As we are a digital school who uses Google Apps for Education, it made sense to create a Google Site.

I had created mine when I had first learnt how to create a Google site, so it was looking a little sad.  I decided to give my site a re-vamp to make it better reflect my personality.  It was much easier this time as I have had plenty of experience with using HTML to create a Google Site.

Here is a little screencast of how my PRT site is looking at the moment.  An easy way to put content on your site is to embed folders from your Google Drive.  Instead of having to edit your site, all you need to do is to put your documents onto the embedded folder, and it will automatically update.

Chelsea OnAir: Creating my First Class OnAir Episode

Last week we prepared ourselves for our first Class OnAir episode.  Class OnAir has been created in response to the question - how do we teach in a digital 1:1 learning environment?  This year Class OnAir follows five talented teachers from the Manaiakalani cluster of schools.  They film episodes which provides insight into how Manaiakalani teachers use technology in their every-day teaching.  Click on the link to learn more and watch the Class OnAir teacher's in action.

What's in a Class OnAir episode

• Videos of the lesson
• Overview of lesson
• Link to detailed plan
• Relfections and next steps
• Links to learners activities and blog posts

A while ago we explored the Class OnAir site and provided feedback to the teachers involved. Now it is the MDTA BTs turn to have a go!  We had Matt Goodwin come in and give us some helpful tips for creating a class OnAir episode.

My first episode

I chose to create my OnAir episode about Haiku poetry.  Over the past four weeks my classroom has thoroughly enjoyed our unit on figurative language, so I thought this would be a great opportunity to see if they could use their learning in a new context - Haiku poetry.

I filmed my lesson this week.  The filming is the easy part.  To start with it is a little unusual to be filming myself as a teacher.  However myself and my learners did relax as time went on.  Editing is very time consuming - it is hard to decide which parts are valuable and which can be culled.  I have almost finished editing and my Class OnAir site is pretty much completed.  Stay tuned to see my very first Class OnAir episode!

Is your default the way you learn OR the way your learners learn?

Today we joined up with other Manaiakalani teachers for our Digital Immersion session.  The focus for this term is all about visible learning and its benefits for our students. Learners in our communities come to school below the expected standard for New Zealand students.  In order to get our learners up to standard by year 8, they need to make a 1.5 year accelerated shift. Visible learning enables such an accelerated shift.  

Each learner is different

We started the day with the question: how do your learners learn?  We chose three students and wrote down the ways in which they preferred to learn.  The answers were then collated and turned into a word cloud.  The results were interesting:

As you can see from the Tagul, there is a wide range of learning preferences.  Our learners learn differently.  This is important to remember when creating learning experiences. As teachers we need to make sure we are considering the learning preferences of all our learners, not just one in particular.   Following this, we watched a thought provoking clip of Chrissie Butler discussing UDL - Universal Design for Learning. Two key ideas resonated with me:

• What engages one learners doesn't necessarily engage another learner
• Is your default the way you learn or the way your learners learn?

So how can we ensure our students learning preferences are catered to in our lessons? Can we cater to  20+ students learning needs in one lesson? 

...Enter multi-modal learning!

Multi-modal learning is an approach which uses a range of modes to develop students understanding of a topic or an idea.  It is related to Gardener's theory of 'Multiple Intelligences'. The site uses a range of audio, visual and textual (paragraphs, bullet points and sentences) resources.  Students can synthesise their learning across multiple types of media to gain a better understanding.

As the MDTA already learnt about this earlier in the year (here and here), we were set with the challenge of extending our learners further.  We were set the task of encouraging our learners to select their own texts to help make sense of what they are learning.  

As my classroom has already had experience with using a range of multi-modal sites, I decided to challenge my students with a trickier topic and include self-selected texts.  Our inquiry topic for the term is weather, so I created my site to help my students learn about lightning and thunder.  I chose a range of texts (paragraphs, bullet points and sentences), videos and images (including GIFS).  As the science behind lightning is quite tricky, the texts range in reading difficulty.   I want my learners to engage with more challenging texts, so it is my hope that they will first use whichever mode they prefer to learn in, and then use the more challenging texts to deepen their understanding.

Click on the image to have a look at the site that I have created using HTML.  We have begun using this site today and will continue to use it throughout the week.