New Learning - DFI Session 6

Today was the sixth DFI session.  The main focus for today was evaluating sites created by others.  It was beneficial having the opportunity to view and critique other sites as this was a great way to get ideas for my own site and also gave me an insight into how to navigate a range of different sites.  This highlighted the importance of ensuring that the Site is easy to navigate and is not made confusing with too much detail/content on the page.  We then looked critically at our own Sites using feedback from others in our "digital bubbles".  It was incredibly useful to use this approach to viewing our own sights as I found that it enabled me to clearly identify what I need to work on to further develop my Class Site.  It was also useful to have the time to set goals for what I wanted to achieve today on my class site.  This helped me to prioritise what I wanted to focus on and set realistic and achievable goals.  It was great having our facilitator to call on at different stages whilst working on my site whenever I needed assistance with doing something.

So far this year there has been more of a focus on using the Syndicate Site, especially in view of the Remote Learning which occurred to ensure consistency across the 5 classes in my Syndicate.  I have now set a goal for myself to utilise my own Class Site more effectively.  The aim is that the students will access the Class Site first thing each morning as there will be a link to the plan for the day.  Within that plan for the day I am going to add links to the various activities we will be engaging in during the day for ease of access for the students.   It was evident from today's session that it is of utmost importance that the site is easy for students to navigate.     The two important features of a learning site are visual appeal and functionality.  These are the aspects of my site that I aim to focus on.

I have a classroom "movie" theme which I have today begun to incorporate on my site by adding buttons and updating my homepage.  I really enjoyed today's session and having the opportunity to experiment with page layout and creating buttons that tie into this theme.  I think this will make my learning site more visually appealing to my students as well as making navigation easier for them.  I have also ensured that there is consistency across the site in terms of layout, fonts etc and that these are also consistent with the format of the Syndicate Site which the students became very familiar with over the remote learning period.

I am aiming to spend more time today and over the weekend continuing to add to my learning site in order to add to the visual appeal and functionality.

Check out my Class Site to see the changes I have made.

The Hapara hot-tips at the end of the day were very useful also.  I have a designated time in my class on Friday afternoons for students to upload content to their blogs as well as to post a comment on another student's blog.  I will also incorporate time for the students to tidy their Google Drive to ensure that all work is in the appropriate folder for ease of access.