DFI Session 1 - The Ins and Outs of Being Fluent in Digital Speak

The world of blogging has long been inviting me in, and for just as long, I have been resisting the invitation. I certainly didn't want my first blog to be all about my professional journey on a digital fluency course. I rather imagined that it would be a travel blog or a food blog, or even better, a travel and food blog, filled with food dishes from countries and places near and far, ordinary and exotic, with majestic panoramic vistas and dishes you could almost lick the screen to taste.

And here I find myself, creating and owning a blog as one of the requirements of the Manaiakalani professional development course I'm currently on. No food, except what I had for morning tea and lunch, and although the vista from the balcony is one to be appreciated, it isn't quite the same as a vista from distant nor foreign shores. I almost feel like I imagine students in classes all over New Zealand, if not the world, returning after a holiday break every single time, to write about what they did over the holidays. Such is life, which is apparently what happens while you're busy making other plans!

This morning is the first time that I have really heard the story of the Manaiakalani's birth and journey. They have a pretty impressive kaupapa and pedagodgy, especially in their overarching goal to bring our Pasifika and Maori learners into the digital age, and to provide for them an equal footing in terms of the tools, skills and knowledge needed to compete in the open world once they leave school. We sit under the Manaiakalani umbrella as part of the Ako Hiko cluster, which includes schools from the Mt Roskill, Wesley, Owairaka and Hillsborough suburbs in Auckland. My ignorance has now been ammended and my appreciation multiplied - I'm always in favour of a heads up for our Pasifika and Maori learners and their families. Long term outcomes without the short term band aid!

Before today I certainly didn't know how much you could do on a Google document, with all the tools and tricks. Who knew you could create a table of contents and headings in a few simple clicks? I had previously felt the frustrations of trying to copy and paste or download an image onto documents, without all the text moving to places you didn't want it to go. I stuck to pretty much the basics, without much excitement but am now ready to share with my class the funky little hacks I've picked up.

The only downside is that everything was so fast and so packed, with little bursts of the master class lesson, then little time pockets to practice the learning and then on to the next master class (hence the 'intensity" part of DFI) and no time to scribble down notes. For those of us in the more mature phase of our timeline of life, when the memory isn't as sharp, this presents some difficulty once we're at home and trying to create on our own 😅 Thank goodness for rewindable learning - now just to find a spare 48 minutes in my weekend to watch the video...

I have a little more knowledge of how documents work in Shared Drive and to make shortcuts INSTEAD of moving folders or files that are here, and in particular, that making a copy means that any updates are not transferred. Definitely good to know. My favourite order of the day was learning how to create a document without all the lines of a table present, and how to post images without their backgrounds. Some good tips to share with my classroom of learners and my Lumana'i team, who are also novices. Woohoo!

The weekend is calling so until next Friday's session, manuia ma le soifua.