A year of teaching on the Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Intensive

I have now facilitated the Northland Digital Fluency Intensive for two cohorts and it has been a fabulous experience.

In terms of my own facilitation I found I grew into the role as I became more familiar with the process. The comprehensive framework of Learn, Create, Share really helped me to define various parts of the day and this was important with our visiting facilitators who on occasion needed reminding of the time. Meeting the needs of all our participants was an ongoing iterative process which I took upon myself like a mother ensuring all her children were fed. I wanted everyone to go away feeling as though they had learned a lot that they could apply straight away into their teaching practice. Each day has a key focus and it was hoped that teachers would feel confident enough to try what they had learned during the week so they could feedback how it went the following week.

Each DFI brought together a wonderful rich mix of teachers with a range of abilities both in their teaching practice and technical know how. Some barely understood their Google Drive while other participants were already teaching their students coding. Equally there were those who had been teaching for 30 or 40 years and those who were in their first year of teaching. Drawing on this rich expertise within the room opened a treasure trove of knowledge and experience which made for some fabulous discussions, all of which added a bit of dynamism to the day.

Our visiting teachers from Manaiakalani were the crème de la crème and brought a unique flavour to the day. We had primary teachers from new entrants to year 8, a Deputy Principal and a couple of the Manaiakalani Facilitators who brought with them such a wealth of experience. Their anecdotes made it all the more real for teachers and the resources they so openly shared were graciously accepted.

There were certainly stressful moments but that was mostly to do with the technical infrastructure at schools and not being aware of the issues we might encounter. Venue set up, device access and firewall blocks caused a few technical hick-ups on a number of occasions but I've learnt and hopefully so has our network provider what needs to be put in place beforehand to ensure the technology side of things works 100% of the time.