Explain Everything 0 - Screencastify 1

Today we have been exploring Hapara - Teacher Dashboard, Cybersmart Curriculum, iPads & Chromebooks, Explain Everything and Screencastify.

Hapara - Teacher Dashboard
Whilst I know quite a bit about how to use it, due to using it for a few years, there were a few things that I discovered.

• You can access the shared folders from Hapara, which is helpful if you can't find the document or the student has called it something weird, or you have student who makes multiple copies of the same document.
• We explored the 'Share Links' button which allows you to either lock students into particular sites or allows them to explore the internet but not particular sites. There are real advantages for both of these tools in the classroom, particularly if you were wanting to direct them to say a reading activity using a newspaper site but not wanting them to explore further than a particular page.

Cybersmart Curriculum

Reviewing the Cybersmart Curriculum reminded me that I need to spend some time on the YMS
Curriculum to highlight some of these things. Looking at our curriculum has made me realise that the Learn Create Share pedagogy is highlighted but needs to be unpacked more. I'll see if I can find some time for this ... 

We also need to work out how to balance the curriculum in a classroom where the children potentially spend 4 years. It is important to keep it fresh for them.

iPads/Chromebooks

Kindly Te Pihinga lent us some iPads to have a play on. We spent a bit of time looking at this slide. That was great to go over the basics. In terms of my role as School Leader, I feel a bit disconnected with what the iPad classes are doing and how they are implementing the use of these devices. My guess would be that they aren't being used to there fullest potential but I could be wrong. Looking at all the information in the slide gives me an idea of how we move forward, however, it comes back to that time thing again. I'll add it to the list ...

We didn't play with Chromebooks but the Digi Dig was a good process to go through. Important learning: anything that is a short cut on a Chromebook that uses control, on a Mac is simply command. Boom town!

Explain Everything/Screencastify

Our explores today were around these two apps. I have some experience with both but in limited ways. I had spent last night creating two explain everythings for a math lesson but was having trouble working out how to get it into my lesson slide. A quick conversation with the experts (Kelsey and Mark) and a couple of tips on screencastify and I've been able to redo what I was trying to do last night using screencastify.

We also discovered a published work of 50 ideas for using screencasitfy in education. This has some great things in it and inspired Angela to try something new for her math lesson. I have magpied her idea and am also going to use it. It is really great to be able to share ideas and spark off each other.

My aim for this coming week is to see how the students find using screencastify to enhance their understanding of a strategy. Is anyone else trying screencastify for their learners?