Today was the fifth DFI session. The main focus for today was developing an understanding of the features of Google Sites. The deep dive session which was run by Venessa was very informative and I gained a good understanding of how to use some of the additional features of Google Sites that I was unsure of, such as adding "buttons" and selecting the layout/format of these.
It was great having the opportunity to plan out and create a Google site based on a particular theme. The group that I was working alongside focused on "Smart Media: Real or Fake?" I created a multi-modal site which focused on this theme. It was great to have the opportunity to develop my skills and confidence in this area and to also be able to use some of the teaching from earlier in the day in order to add additional features to this site such as adding the schoo logo to the home page, adding "buttons" on the home page with links to subsequence pages, adding youtube clips and Google slides directly. This is going to be very useful for me as last year I created a class site but did not feel overly confident with using this and making it engaging for the students. During the time of lockdown and the need for remote learning programmes, my team and I created a syndicate learning site which hugely boosted my confidence with creating and adding to a learning site. The knowledge I gained from doing this, along with the tips I learned in today's deep dive session, will now enable me to revamp and update my class site and to use it more effectively and to also make it multi-modal and engaging for the students.
We also learned some good blogger tips this afternoon such as being able to personalise reaction buttons by adding our own selection of comments/reactions to blog posts. We were also shown how to email a post to someone. This will be very useful for me to be able to email students directly if something relating to them has been posted on the class blog and also email this to their parents for them to see their learning and comment.
I am looking forward to the further Google site sessions where I will hopefully gain additional ideas to include in both my class and the syndicate learning sites in order to make them more engaging and easily navigated by the students (something which I became aware of the importance of today).
Kia ora Linda,
ReplyDeleteGreat that you could make connections with site learning to what you can use with your learners.
A good idea to have your next steps re sites - there will be time as I said to focus on a class site. You could then link this to your syndicate site.
Ngā mihi nui,
Maria