EducampNZ

Speed Geeking, Unconference, EducampNZ

Well worth getting up for, on a spectacular Saturday morning in Auckland!  I had a great time along with Wendy one of the DP’s at Rowandale.  I was a bit concerned before attending as I’ve never experienced a day of professional learning where there isn’t a planned agenda and set times for things.  I was surprised to find the day zoomed past and it was great to get input from everyone there as to what we wanted to discuss or find out about. 

The smackdown at the start of the day gave me plenty of new and exciting ideas to develop both in my classroom and hopefully across our school.  I thought Barb D’s idea of surveying the staff for what they want for morning tea would be great fun. I’ve just starting using Google Docs with a form to get staff to record ICT issues/concerns/queries.  It had taken a bit of training but we’re starting to make better progress especially when it comes to scheduling technician assistance and repairs.  There were plenty of other ideas shared during this spot, including answer garden and history pin two tools well worth having a look at.  I can see how answer garden would make it really easy to gather feelings after a learning session with children and adults.

I relished the opportunity to get together with other junior school teachers and hopefully the wiki Rachel Boyd created will be a place where we can share even more ideas.  We talked quite a bit about the importance of children being able to move their digital work including blog spaces, wikis and the items they’ve posted on them.  I can’t remember which teacher suggested it but tagging posts with the child’s name throughout their school life and linking back to those posts on new blogs as they move to the next year is a good place to start with portability.  I think this is something I’ll be reflecting on with my ICT team in the next few weeks.

I’ve been lurking around Twitter for just over a year now and it was nice to match up a few faces with twitter names.  I think anyone considering taking part in a day with this format should definitely go for it!

Big thanks have to go to Summerland Primary for hosting the event at their place and to ACES for their organisation.  

Active Activboard ---- It's Arrived

"what's that Miss?"  "it's an Activboard" "can we touch it?" "who put it there?" "I think it does the tv thing" "no look it does her laptop too" "does it turn off?" "it's soft look"

I managed to explain what the board was for and even turn it on during our first day back this term.  I had 21 year two children focused, engaged and willing to participate in what we were doing.  I introduced the board by showing them a flipchart I'd made about our topic this term - Superheroes Lost in Space.  We started our KWL by brainstorming what we already knew about space, this was helped along by the great introduction assembly the teachers put on to start the new term.  The children enjoyed the photos of themselves I'd added into the flipchart.  We took superhero photos last term so I'd used the snapshot tool to make them fly through the flipchart.

Day two involved using another part of the same flip chart to get the children asking questions and thinking about all things related to space.  I'd made a treasure chest and 'put' it on the moon.  The children could retrieve things from the treasure chest and then talk with a buddy about what they'd retrieved.  A simple idea but a very engaging one.  I used similar flipcharts for mathematics where we looked at halves and how to halve groups of objects.

I'm really looking forward to continuing to integrate the board into my classroom program.  Hopefully I'll get the chance to demonstrate the dual pen function so that the board will work a little better with small groups of children.

I'll keep posting details of what I'm doing with the board in my room as time permits so keep watching this space.  I'll also paste links to any flipcharts I upload.

The Activboard - Before It Arrives. . .

I'm very excited about the possibilities that come with having an interactive whiteboard in my classroom.  I've had the advantage of one before - a Mimio and it did change the way I taught.  This time I'm keenly anticipating the arrival of an ActivBoard.

As the Director of ICT I've already had a peep at the software and I'm starting to develop bits and pieces for use in mine and other teacher's classrooms.  The software - ActivInspire is relatively easy to use and similar to other IWB software that's available.  It's probably a little more powerful in my opinion than the Mimio Notebook software I used to use.  I've started off by creating a topic related flipchart that teachers might use to introduce this terms integrated topic about space.  Morning procedures are my next port of call.  Taking the roll on the board and having short activities that children can participate in before 9am sounds like a good place to start. 

I've also looked closely at a few of the interesting debates that have been happening over the last year with regards to IWBs and their usefulness in the classroom. One such opinion is that of Chris Betcher - after watching his edtalk video I'm keen to get hold of a copy of his book and read a bit more about his experiences with the boards. The video (below) is one that resonates with me, I agree that placing technology in front of teachers and children doesn't mean its going to improve the teaching and/or learning that goes on.   Here's the video:



I'll keep you posted on how the board is going over the course of the term.  Watch this space...

Building Blocks to Literacy

Hmmm... a one day conference that makes me think early on a Saturday morning! Actually it was well worth it both for new ideas and reaffirming what we are doing is going down the right track. I haven't heard Barbra Brann speak before so was interested in gaining some insight into the way she has developed the building blocks to literacy programme.

The conference allowed us to see a variety of activities and approaches Oteha valley and Arahoe school are using with the building blocks to literacy programme. Here are a few of the thoughts I had during the day along with my notes from the Keynote speakers:

"Children are often pushed into formal learning before they are ready" I agree in theory. However as a year 2 teacher I can't see how I can justify stopping children from writing and formal reading instruction until they have all of the skills deemed necessary to the programme. This is one area of the conference that really made me think, challenging my firm belief that we need to keep kids moving and ensuring they are meeting as many checkpoints as possible. Something I think we have to balance when we push ahead and when we wait. At some point we can't wait any longer for children to be ready to move on we just have to move on a reality I think all teachers have to deal with at some point. Perhaps one that we don't have to worry as much about as our English and American colleagues.

I already use the magic caterpillar handwriting programme in my class so was interested in how others work with the programme.

One of the things I'm still not convinced about is the use of chalk and chalkboards, for a long time allergy sufferer this seems like a nightmare. I can't see the point in reverting back to something that irritates so many allergies and makes a rather nasty mess. I still prefer to use either whiteboards and whiteboard markers or using crayons and paper on a desk to get a similar drag to chalk. Just something I'm not willing to change I guess.

I did think the use of the Mimio to animate the story really bought the programme into the 21st century and the colour pictures on the wall were great to... I must get hold of some of those!

Differentiated Coaching

I can teach children, I've been doing it for 5 years but now I've been asked to help teachers improve their skills both in my role as Director of ICT and as a tutor teacher for those new to the profession. I guess I haven't really given much thought until now about how that is different to teaching children but it is... a lot different.

I've just come back from a day where I learnt about exactly that - teaching or in this case coaching teachers. The day was run by Interlead and called Differentiated Coaching.

We looked closely at how different teachers need to be coached in different ways. Using the Myers Briggs personality test we analysed different ways of coaching different personality types. It was stressed throughout the day that although we might test as a certain personality we can all exhibit most of the personality traits at different points in our lives so there is no hard and fast rules that are going to work for everyone. However it's still worthwhile looking at different approaches that could be taken with different personality types.

There are many things to think about when you're asked to coach someone. The way people cope with change and the cycles we go through in order to change interested me, especially when it was put into this format:

1. classroom management
We just want to know how to do it. When something new comes along we're in the frame of mind of "great, how do I do that in my classroom"

2. Curriculum Knowledge
When we've had a few goes at teaching it, or we've been using it for a little while we move into curriculum knowledge, we're able to use it and now we're looking to make it part of our knowledge base, this might be when we need a bit more theory

3. Teaching strategies
It becomes part of our strategies we start to look at it as another tool and can pull it out when we need it.

4. Formative assessment
This is when the change really happens, it's when we're comfortable enough to make it our own and we can start to innovate.

I guess this appeals to me because as Director of ICT change is something that goes with the role. ICT is never the same from year to year, school to school or person to person. It's often seen as a scary thing rather than an important tool. There are many of us out there who see it at the formative assessment stage but we need to recognise that there are also just as many if not more teachers who are at the classroom management stage - how do I use it in my classroom?

One of the other things I took out of the course is just like children building a positive relationship with the person you're coaching is paramount. However with adults you also need to find out what keeps that person motivated. With children we know many of the different approaches we can use to motivate them in their learning and we as teachers a responsible for motivating them. With adults the story is a little different we can't motivate them ourselves we can only present things in ways that might interest them.

As coaches we don't have, I guess you could call it power, over the people we coach they are our equals. With children, they are the children we teach and we are the teacher there is always more power in the teachers hands than the children's hands - or there should be. This is why the coaching relationship is so different to the teacher/child relationship. I figured they did have to be a little different but I think when you have it laid out in front of you it's a lot easier to see what those differences need to be.

Interlead provided us with a course booklet that has a wealth of information about the topic as well as practical ideas for continuing your coaching journey. Many of my notes are in this booklet but here are the rest of the notes I took during the course.









Remember you can click on the photos and go to view largest to get the full size picture :)