Digital Fluency Intensive #6

Manaiakalani: Connected

The default is visibility. Manaiakalani connects students across the cluster for valuable sharing and connecting for learning. We are also connected to a number of clusters around the country as part of the Manaiakalani Outreach. This allows for teacher support and a shared language as well.

Connected learners share (Tohatoha). What a great reminder that we are all connected through the Manaiakalani site to our own school sites, which enables students (and teachers) to see what is happening at other schools. 

Implementing the kaupapa of Manaiakalani all four elements are required to be working together at all times in order for the effectiveness to be seen across the classrooms. 

Looking at the visual appeal for sites and 2-3 clicks. What is good and what needs improving? We spent time looking at sites from around the clusters and evaluating them. 

By using Google Sites (instead of other available platforms) students have access to their learning and resources at any time, whether at home or school.  When creating a site, you always need to consider who your learners are, how they are accessing the site, what the theme of your site is going to be and what the purpose of the site is.

No matter what you are creating for students, it is important to make them purposeful learning tasks. don’t forget to keep the SAMR model in mind.  When modifying and redefining, it is important to remember that you are using multiple platforms to learn, create and share their learning. Just as it is important to spend time reflecting on the technology affordances you are providing for your learners.


One of the things that I spent some time doing today was cleaning up our team site a bit. We tend to randomly add links to our site as we need them (for testing purposes, media links, etc). I went through and made these links more uniform to the rest of the site format by creating actual buttons. Some of these can be seen on the bottom of the home page for our class site.

Taking time in the future to have students create a site for a specific reason is something that I am considering and the reminders we were given today about the site building are a great place to start when working with students as well. A big thanks to Clarelle Carruthers for all her helpful tips, especially those in regards to choosing a colour scheme, font(s), and layout to use throughout the site development.