Day 6 - Diving into Sites, Nostalgia, and the Journey of Learning

Day 6 of the Digital Fluency Intensive was all about Enabling Access through Google Sites, and what a journey of discovery it turned out to be! While building and customising was definitely great fun, I’ll be the first to admit that Google Sites doesn’t always feel quite as intuitive as some of the other Google tools we rely on daily. It takes a bit more deliberate design thinking to get everything running seamlessly, especially when keeping the user experience clean and aiming for that gold standard of navigating anywhere in just two or three clicks.

The day's focus prompted me to pull up class sites at my school, which were created back in 2015. Looking at those old sites side-by-side with what we are designing today, over a decade later, was a real eye-opener! It is crazy to see how dramatically digital technology, interface design, and web functionality have evolved over the years. The tools available to us now allow for much richer personalisation, from custom headers and digital buttons to seamless integration with platforms like Hāpara, making a learning site feel like a dynamic, welcoming digital shop window for our classroom.

Beyond the tech itself, this trip down memory lane highlighted the incredible dedication of our kaiako. Keeping pace with such rapid technological shifts isn't something that just happens automatically. Teachers continuously invest their own time behind the scenes - testing ideas, making mistakes, tweaking layouts, and practising until a new tool is fully understood. That ongoing effort is a true testament to how deeply educators care about delivering meaningful, accessible learning spaces for our tamariki.

Rooted in the Manaiakalani kaupapa of Learn, Create, Share (Ako, Hanga, Tohatoha), today was a wonderful reminder that technology in education is ultimately about connection. It isn't just about building a stylish website; it is about breaking down barriers so our learners can easily navigate, reflect on, and showcase their learning journey.