New Learning - DFI Session 7

The focus of today's session was familiarising ourselves with using Chromebooks and iPads and putting ourselves into "the shoes of our learners".   It was beneficial to have the opportunity to do this as it highlighted the near to allow opportunities for students to familiarise themselves with these devices and their features also.

The first session involved completing several tasks using a Chromebook.  I found this very useful as I have in the past found Chromebooks quite frustrating to use as I wasn't used to the different "pad" without the left and right click buttons.  Today's session helped me to feel a lot more confident with using a Chromebook.  It was also great to have the opportunity to learn and familiarise myself with the range of Chromebook shortcuts which will be something useful to take back to my learners.  I have added these shortcuts to my Class Site in order for my students to have these to hand throughout the day to refer back to when they are completing various learning tasks.  We will go through these together as a whole-class lesson.

The second session involved completing tasks using "Explain Everything" on an iPad.  I did not have an iPad to use as we do not use these at our school apart from in the Junior classrooms.  Instead, I used the online whiteboard.  I really enjoyed familiarising myself with this and completed these tasks.  Completing these activities highlighted the importance of allowing students time to explore these learning tools in order to become familiar with the different functions and to develop their confidence and independence with using these.  Without the teaching and time to explore the students are less likely to use these and certainly not to their full potential.

The last part of the day was spent on screen-castify.  I was pleased to have the opportunity to extend my confidence with using this extension.  I completed the assigned task and then created a maths-based screen-castify (see below) which I then put onto my Class Site as rewindable learning for my students based on our current learning - Geometry/Transformations.