DFI Day 5 Reflections - Collaboration

The affordance of technology gifts us a whole different platform to learn, create and share our content.  As such, we are now able to collaborate in real time, in different spaces and time zones and the best part, the paperwork never gets lost!!!  While online collaboration has become so ingrained in our everyday teaching (and personal) lives, I still marvel at the process.  I'd like to spend this blog post reflecting on some of events that have happened in the past couple of weeks.

On Monday, I had to give a presentation to a group of new parents and families to our school.  It was the first time that we were able to organise one this year.  So as you can imagine, we had quite a big crowd (while still maintaining the social distancing, of course).  I was able to confidently use slides to enhance my presentation, while integrating Google My Maps, images and videos.  The tips that I had picked up during the DFI meant that I was able to prepare the slides more efficiently and made it look more professional.

As I am currently working part time, I am often not able to attend most of the meetings held during the week.  This can mean that I am having to catch up on conversations and material, often feeling a bit on the back foot.  However, with the google suite, I was able to use Google Meet to join in the meeting earlier this, while being offsite.  All our documents were on our school's shared google drive and we were collaborating in real time on the shared documents, sheets and slides.  While Google Meet and the Google suite have become so normalised, especially with Covid-19, I still left the meeting feeling so amazed by the gift of technology and the ability to collaborate despite being in different spaces.

One of the game changers for me is the conversations that I am now having with my fellow staff members about our online learning platform.  As majority of our staff have either completed or are completing the DFI, we are all on the same page when it comes to our understanding of Manaiakalani's kaupapa.   We are starting to question how we gather, store and analyse our data, brainstorming more efficient ways to share our ideas and resources, working smarter by collaborating on documents, instead of having constant meetings.

Today's DFI session was a change of pace and content.  I really enjoyed having the undisturbed time to play around and create a Google Site.  This is my second site that I've created.  It was fun getting our little group to brainstorm ideas using Jamboard.  

I realised that I could create a staff site for all our RE teaching and professional development resources where the staff can share and source content from each other.  This would be one way to keep our teaching and learning visible for all staff members and the SLT.  This would definitely cut down on having numerous folders and boxes stored in the resource room.

Final thoughts for the week:

• The online platform is changing the way we work and collaborate on a daily basis.  I personally prefer it and am grateful that I am not stuck with oodles and oodles of paper.
• I realise that am actually more confident with technology that I've given myself credit for.  I enjoyed having the time to consolidate my DFI learning and to be using the tools daily.
• Technology is meant to enhance the teaching and learning process, not necessary replace everything that came before.  When used properly, technology opens the students (and us teachers) up to the whole world and broadens their/our horizons.