DFI Week 4

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy? 

My answer for this became a big of a long rant, so I'm going to put my thoughts into a separate 'reflections' post. 

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

These two questions belong together today. Lots of what I did learn will impact my life both personally and professionally. 

I already had a good idea of how to use Google Forms, having designed and distributed Forms to collect student voice feedback on teaching in our Maths Department at GHS last year. That really honed my skills, but it was fun to make this wee example as a quick exercise. 

You can have a go with it here, if you like:

Using MyMaps to make a map layer. Encountered this a long time ago but haven't had time to go back until today. I had a go at making one and putting my places of importance on it. This could become part of a visual mihi for me...

    

 Lots of stuff for google sheets 

Having worked in admin in the past, and taught ICT in the UK, I already knew a lot of stuff, like conditional formatting, SUM/AVERAGE, formatting the cells/rows/columns, freezing the panes, text to columns, linking spreadsheets to slides... There was still much to learn this lesson though, which was fascinating. 

 Recording macros to save format templates - that would have saved me so much time in terms of conditional formatting. Now I can just set it up once, and then use the macro to create all those formats and conditions for me when I'm working on data for a new class/new year without having to start from scratch. 

 Pivot tables to pull out summaries - now I can see where some of SLT/HoDs get their summaries from. I think I could have a go with using this now. 

 'ImportRange' to pull data in from another spreadsheet. I can see that being useful for pulling together info from several student spreadsheets into one, shared and protected, class document.

Dave Winter's group had a whole host of tools which will be really useful for sheets, but I feel like I could do a whole masters degree in sheets and I would still never be an expert on it. 

 

 What did I learn that could be used with my learners, how could they use? 

The 'create a graph' activity was pitched at a slightly too low level for me. Teaching high school maths, including Bivariate and Multivariate data for students, I am used to not only creating graphs but teaching students how to use this tool for their assessments. 

It's just good to have this selection of tools available, even if they're not being used immediately.