DFI FIVE, SITES, SITES, SITES.

DFI five started with a hangout. Gerhard Vermuelen from Manaiakalani up in Auckland talked about the share part of the Manaiakalani kaupapa. This was really timely for me as I spent a portion of my evening last night lying in bed with my ten year old son Taika and he was really excited to share what he had been writing at school over the last few days. It was awesome to hear what he had written and see how proud he was of it - in fact I will share it here as it is so kooky but brilliant. Gerhard's hangout highlighted how in most cases a fantastic piece of work like this may only ever be seen by the teacher marking it and then it can probably be found at the end of the year in a dumpster. We shared it with family overseas and it we all had a chuckle at his crazy little imagination. Hopefully this will become the norm as digital fluency gets better and more and more families can share their kid's learning journey with them. Here is Taika's effort.

The lonely giraffe had been looking for a girlfriend for several years,he hadn’t found any. After 2 days he had given up,with nobody to support him through his tough times except his imaginary friend he was hopeless. Until he found a hot tall tree now things really changed round for this guy girls all wanted him so bad. Eventually him and the tree got into an imaginary fight and got separated. Lucky he found another girlfriend she was different because she was a real giraffe but they got along and had a happy life. THE END




The rest of the day was spent looking at google sites and was brilliant timing for me, as I am working on a site for my new year nine digital technology class next credit period. It was impressive to see what everyone else in the class had been doing. The quality and variation in the aesthetics of the sites was very high and will only get better. We talked about how the students would find the sites and I think everyone agreed it will be an ongoing process of incremental improvements based on student feedback, but I keep thinking less is more with the sites. It will be interesting to look back at what we are doing in a few years and see what we think. I was sent this link to a website that has everything wrong about it - it is a game to fill out the form, might be a great example to let students or teachers use to highlight the importance of simple navigation around a website. https://userinyerface.com/

Enjoy