About The Digital Fluency Intensive

In 2017 the Manaiakalani Principals in partnership with the Manaiakalani Education Trust decided to pilot a new approach to supporting effective teachers in their quest to become "At Home in  Digital World".  All our 3000+ learners now live in a digital world, and the majority of them are now being educated in digital learning environments, so it is essential that: 

1. Our teachers are supported to acquire fluency using the basic tools our young people use for learning

2. Our teachers are supported to acquire fluency using the basic tools required for effective teaching, planning, assessment and professional learning

3. Our teachers are supported to understand how digital technologies used effectively can have a significant impact on accelerating achievement outcomes

4. Our teachers are supported to understand how the Manaiakalani pedagogy and kaupapa has been co-constructed over more than a decade to maximise the impact of effective teaching and learning in a digital learning environment. 

Manaiakalani teachers (including those across our Network Schools) have the opportunity to join a professional learning group to learn together, following a programme designed to meet these four key goals. The Digital Fluency Intensive releases them from class one day a week for nine consecutive weeks. The cluster calendar is populated with the dates for each cohort.

Online DFI

To give you a heads up:

This is an online cohort of the DFI programme. We will be running weekly sessions by utilising Google Meet. The first session is held on Wednesday the 14th of Febuary. Here are some essential details for you to help make this online experience effective for everyone:

• Time: Meet links will be live from 7:45am, commencing 8am sharp. We stick the agenda times. There will be scheduled break times throughout the day. 

• Online meeting etiquette: There is quite a number of participants in this cohort, so it is really important for us all to follow the following guidelines to ensure that things run smoothly

  • Keep your microphone muted unless you are speaking.

  • Try to keep your camera on but if your internet can't cope feel free to turn it off after our meet and greet. 

  • Questions are encouraged! Feel free to use the chat bar - There will be plenty of facilitators to support you. 

  • Set yourself up in a cosy spot, but make sure that your location has good lighting. Think carefully about what is in your background. 

• Setting yourself up: 

  • If at all possible, have two devices set up. One for accessing the online meeting and the other for accessing the learning content. This will make navigating the day easier.

Remember to Bring Your:

• Laptop - most important.  iPads do not provide enough range for this course

• Blog - we will be using edublogs as our sharing platform and we will set these up for you. More information will come through to you closer to the start of DFI. NB: This is not your class or subject blog. It is YOUR professional space to share your learning.

Useful to have:

• Smartphone - we include those most sessions

• Tablets - we will notify you when we have a tablet session in advance

This is a nine week course, designed to build (and increase) confidence and digital fluency in teachers in Manaiakalani and Outreach schools.

Participants range from classroom teachers to principals, primary to secondary, and more.

Prior experience in the digital world ranges from participants who have never owned a personal digital device through to people who could be teaching this course. Educator experience ranges from first year teachers to 40+ years of teaching!

The eclectic mix adds greatly to the richness of learning experiences.

The nine days cover a wide range of digital tools and apps and each day is a prerequisite to the next ie the course is designed to build knowledge progressively.