Digital Practicum

I was delighted to be given the opportunity to become a ‘digital associate’ for some of Auckland Univeristy Graduate Diploma in Teaching students between June 15th-June 26th. 

The form of the practicum is:

1.     The students will have an introduction to Manaiakalani pedagogies by AP Rebecca Jesson.

2.     Me organising a Google Meet on June 15th to introduce them to my class and to give them a brief to work on.

3.     The university then supports the students to use Google Sites to create a task that meets the brief.

4.     I will meet with the students again on the 25th or 26th June (or early the following week) to see what they have made and to provide them with some oral feedback on what they have done.

5.     If possible,  the children that I wrote the brief for will try the activity and let the students see the outcomes.

6.     The student teachers see/comment on the learners’ blogs during the fortnight they are with me.

This is a wonderful opportunity for the students to see digital pedagogies and to learn about teaching in all modes.

At our first Google Meet, I explained how our Class Site worked and how I use the digital space for teaching and learning. I showed them how to access the student’s blogs (a ‘virtual tour’) and told them about how I set up things online for the students to learn with/from. It was so refreshing to see their youth and enthusiasm. I also gave them a short class description and then gave them their brief. The meeting fnished with the opportunity for the student teachers to ask me questions. They didn't have any which made me think I had either explained everything incredibly well or bamboozled them and they needed time to process what I had said! I suspect the latter - I did get a little carried away with my explanations! 

I had already created a shared folder for us to access everything. This is where the recording of our Google Meet went in case they needed to replay it (rewindable learning is fabulous for people of all ages!), a copy of the brief and then a Screencastily of me explaining my Class Site and how it worked again. I also included a Google Doc with everyone's contact information, links to our Class Site and Class Blog, and an explanation on how to access the students individual blogs.

Their brief is:

I have a workshop group that has merged since Lockdown. Half of them are just being introduced to decimals now and the other half were introduced to the idea of adding tenths just before Lockdown. They could solve problems such as 3.4+4.5 and were working on moving past a whole number e.g. 3.4+4.8 (they were not independent with this). They can still do 3.4+4.5 but every now and again when they are looking at decimals I hear them call 5.14 “five point fourteen” and then correct themselves. It looks like they haven’t retained what the decimal point means and the concepts of tenths and thousandths. This is why this workshop group is coming together. 

I am excited to see what they come up with.