8 Digital Immersion Intensive: Empowerment

This was one of the topics discussed today - another busy and fruitful day of this 9 day course.

How do we expect our learners and teachers to achieve the desired outcomes when they do not feel empowered? Not only the learners and the teachers, the community as a whole (this would mean parents) must feel empowered if the school has to serve its purpose.

The presentation by Dorothy Burt this morning highlighted many issues and reasons why our communities are not empowered.

• Low Income levels of the parents

To me this is a very significant issue facing many families in our zone. It goes without saying that children and families who are deprived of the basic necessities of their lives can under no circumstances feel empowered. Obviously this

Is technology making us antisocial

A. Do you agree or disagree

Technology does promote virtual relationships as opposed to real relationships. Technology provides a platform where individuals go to socialise, often for the sake of it, sometimes to be part of an audience which seems to make people popular.
Whether this form of relationship promotes real friendships and understanding among people.
In many ways there are also points in favour of technology - it can be used for keeping in touch and engaging with people in a very meaningful manner 

Cybersmart

There are concepts and ideas that straight away stood out for me. Of interest to me were:

Smart Relationships: The emphasis is on positive and supportive relationships and focuses on decisions we make and how we interact. And probably more important, knowing how to react when things do go wrong.

Smart Values: Emphasis on respect and responsibility, amongst other things.

Smart Learners: This gives importance to responsible use of devices and trains learners to be confident users of devices and applications.

Smart Teachers: This encourages teachers to be up to date with cybersmart curriculum and be familiar with school policies. Teachers should be able to role model the cybersmart curriculum and be able to empower our learners.

Smart Parents: Parents need to understand the use of digital technology to support learning. They need to connect with their children. Its very important that parents set expectations at home and are familiar with resources on school websites

From my point of view these form the cornerstones of successful schools where good learning and good teaching take place -  which can only happen with support from informed parents.
I also see a huge correlation between these and and Tamaki College's RISE values - Respect, integrity, Success and Responsibility.
For Tamaki College, it is not something the college has on paper only. I have been thoroughly impressed by this being made an important issue. At every school assembly the school principal, Mrs Pamaka and her Senior Leadership Team have emphasized the importance of the RISE values and how these can help them to become successful learners.

3 Intensive

Organisation of emails

Excellent professional development on a very important aspect in today's life  - emails. This will improve the way I handle my communication with colleagues and also very importantly with my learners. It allows me to prioritize and organize the communication received. And more importantly it hopefully will save time and make me more efficient in the longer term. I have used emails for a very long time now without realizing so much more could be done to organize myself.


Google Keep

 An excellent PD on this as well. I liked the idea of making notes and using this as a tool for reminders. Looking forward to using both pictures as well as text.

Hangouts

An amazing method and a tool for communication. Looking forward to hanging out with Dorothy Burt on Wednesday at 3pm. Learnt a good lesson on things that need to be looked at in advance and how to prepare well before the actual hangout.

Calendars

I have already started using my Google calendar. Another handy tool to organize our busy lives and more so to help us become more efficient in our work place.

Intensive 2 Mapping - showing towns and countries the group members were born in

Digital Immersion Intensive - Manaiakalani
Today attended this intensive course which is going to go on for 9 weeks. I have set myself this goal of becoming proficient in using google doc in my teaching by the end of these nine weeks.