DFI - Session Five

Today’s session started with unpacking Multi Modal. What does this mean? Multi Modal is an inclusive, differentiated approach to teaching in a digital learning environment. In a more simple term, it is how we receive and communicate in a digital world which has and is still changing. This made me think about all the different ways I communicate with people online, in fact it can be rather scary! With my teacher hat on this made me reflect on the platforms that our students use to communicate. This is something to be very mindful of at all times.
Manaiaklani have created four priority goals to support multi modal:

• Engagement 
• Personalised Learning 
• Acceleration 
• Empowerment 

Our hangout today with Dorothy was exploring the four words that help to define Manaiakalani which are, Visible,Connected,Ubiquitous and Empowered. Today we unpacked what it means to be visible. 

Here are a couple of things that stood out for me: 

• Making learning visible means removing barriers. Making all learning visible to students, teachers, colleagues and whanau. 
• Visible learning needs to be in advance, accessible and available. This creates a no surprise culture for students and whanau. 

We then explored Google Sites. I have experience with loading content onto sites but that is it. This afternoon I learnt how to create a site from scratch! This was very exciting learning all the ins and outs behind the site. An important thing to remember is making sure your homepage hooks students in. This means changing it up every term. This is something I am going to take back to my team to discuss. Dorothy also talked about the importance of never deleting content or your site as this is your planning and it needs to be kept for seven years. This means creating a new learning site each year. Here is my site I started creating. 

I am looking forward to learning about sites next week and going into more depth! Do you have any top tips about using sites?