Collaborate

#eTwion

Sonya Van Schaijik Professional Learning, PTC 07 , , ,

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My ongoing personal inquiry is teachers and how they share their learning. I was really excited to  join Arjana and Bart @abfromz @BartVerswijvel and six other global educators on Tuesday 26th of April for a global networking seminar as part of their programme for European teachers called The Networked Teacher. When Shelly opened the session, we had both Arjana and Bart on screen and I was reminded about our history of connections through the TeachMeetINT virtual sessions that we took part in a few years ago. Bart had this cow bell that he used as a timer. That bell was an awesome timekeeper and we tried hard not to hear it.

I shared parts of my ongoing personal inquiry but from my perspective of how I built my professional learning network. I was asked to focus on my New Zealand connections so was extra excited to share about our part of the world to European educators in the eTwinning programme. The hashtag they use is #etwion. The session took place at 5.00am in our New Zealand time zone. You can check out the hashtag and see what the attendees are learning.

I built the slides over a few days. An event like this allows me to reflect on where I am as a learner and from listening to other global educator stories inspires me to set new digital learning goals. I was interested in hearing their stories from their parts of the world. Happening in the chat window was a lot of questions. I am not the best at multitasking so quickly captured the questions asked of me so I could respond to them later. The ones that caught my attention involved teachers of heritage languages wanting to make contact with our Te Reo teachers. So I suggested contacting me via social media and I hope to help them make connections here. I learnt the splot trick from @MissSpeir. So sprinkled purple splots as hyperlinked breadcrumbs throughout my presentation.

I have to mention here how Arjana was an inspiration for the #TeachMeetNZ project which is where New Zealand teachers share their passions and learning in 3 minute video clips. In a way too she plays a part in #Edblognz because it was by tagging me in a #Meme that the list of New Zealand educator blogs was curated by @HelenOfTroy01. I took that over and expanded that to include all other New Zealand blogs which was then added to the #EdblogNZ curated site of New Zealand educator blogs which I now help curate with @nlouwrens and @ariaporo22.

Thank you Arjana and Bart for inviting me to share our New Zealand teachers learning. To Joe from Canada @Joe_Sheik, Fiona from South Africa @fibeal, Shelly from Texas, USA  @ShellTerrell, Karina from Israel @karinam60, Marie-Leet from Belgium @BensBel, and Annamaria from Brazil @anamariacult, fabulous to meet you all. Hearing your stories was inspirational. To all the attendees of the webinair great to meet you all and I look forward to adding you on twitter.

GAFESummit 2015 reflection

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Recently I attended the GAFESummit North Island sessions held at Albany Senior College. Last year we had 6 teachers attend the summit from Newmarket School and when we returned we moved very quickly as a school. As a staff we embraced Google Apps for Education and all planning became collaborative as we moved into the transparent environment. Each team had folders and a site.

But the changes really took place this year as team leaders took control of their team sites and team blogs. Each team member had full ownership rights to both. I watched with pride as the learning spaces evolved and the speed at which information was shared with both teachers and their students.

 

Then this year, I had three teachers and myself accepted to present at the 2015 Gafesummit. As their mentor, I felt huge pride at the process each teacher underwent to prepare and then present in front of their peers. They had fabulous feedback via Twitter. I was away for the week leading up to the summit and the team got together in my absence and practiced a run through. They gave each other feedback. The experience enabled them to tweak their session and step through what they wanted to share. The practice session also enabled them to share ideas and identify how they could make their presentations even better.

 

I have been at Newmarket now for nearly 6 years and I have seen the growth in professional learning blossom as our school leaders and teachers move into making their own learning visible.

 

Myself and the management team have recently returned from an international conference and the trip confirmed that we are well on the way with what we are doing with our teachers and to continue encouraging and developing them as leaders in education.

 

I have identified that we need to provide further opportunities for collaboration outside our school. Each teacher has a Twitter account, they are all on the VLN and they all have their pond account activated. As they continue to make connections with educators outside our school I know that this will continue to have an impact on their practise and thus affecting the learning for their students.

 

I know that the educators who presented at this years GAFESummit have been changed by the experience. They were ready for the challenge and will return to school buzzing with more ideas. They will identify what they need to do next and their enthusiasm will generate the next group to step up

 

Some of my takeaways from the sessions include

  • Do not be a complacent expert but a restless learner
  • How do we find the adjacent possible in our classroom?
  • Disrupt Boredom

 

Myself I shared the TeachMeetNZ project and also took an advanced youtube session. I use youtube to mentor teachers and as a platform for them to share their learning.

Here are the teachers’ reflections who presented at GAFESummit

Here are the slides to my session ‘GAFE 2015 TeachMeetNZ’.

Here is my video introduction for my advanced youtube session.

Science

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Science has been dominating my time this past few months and it has been exciting.

@mattynicoll approached me to lead the 24th of February #ScichatNZ and of course I said yes. I know Matt because we were both on the steering committee for #edchatnz and he is one of the teachers joining the #TeachMeetNZ meets #Science session.

I enjoy teaching science and learning through the Nature of Science. For those of you interested in learning how to run a twitter chat, I use the #GlobalClassroom training shared with me from @mgraffin. He is an Australian Science passionate teacher that I have met on twitter. I set up a google Doc and divided the hour up with questions. You can see the one I set up for #SciChatNZ here. Matt was fabulous is supporting me by giving me the topic. During the hour chat, I have learnt too from @ussieEDchat the importance of using a graphic for questions as this helps hold the chat together. So I created a presentation of the questions here . I exported the presentation as jpgs and tidied up the images leading up to the session.

The session was storified by @NZScienceLearn so do go back and revisit the session. I was grateful for the #SciChatnz team who rallied around me and helped ensure that the twitter chat flowed. In fact it didn’t just flow, it stormed and we trended on twitter.

One of the important lessons I learnt from @julielindsay is about keeping a record of the sharing. So I like to see some kind of an archive of chat history. This is something that the #SciChatNZ team do very well.

The other big Science collaborative project I was involved in was with Cath @NZScienceLearn. We had been coordinating a #TeachMeetNZ meets Science Session for the 21st of March. You can read more about that here.  We had a team of 8 science educators joining us and they are well known in the science education community partly because of their twitter activity and their involvement in various science projects such as #scichatnz and Science fellowship.

As part of my collaboration with Cath I was interviewed by Melissa @NZScienceTeachr on behalf of the New Zealand Association of Science Educators. You can read that interview here.

My goal this year is to understand how social media works and so I had investigated how everything linked across platforms and how traffic was driven. I observed the TeachMeetNZ youtube channel with interest. Through the work of @abfromz and @BartVerswijvel I stumbled across Thunderclap. I activated a thunderclap to help broadcast the science session and also so I could see how it drove traffic. I set up tickets in Eventbrite and I could see the huge integrations that this site had with Facebook, Twitter and instagram. In addition, I activated my Mailchimp account that had been dormant for a while. I used the TeachMeetNZ meets Science session to play with many of the tools.

Science at Newmarket School has many links. In particular the work we did with @S_Heeps. I had @BelindaHitchman join me from School in the TeachMeetNZ session. In addition we had @Doctor_Harves join us at school for a visit.

My SOLOtaxonomy thinking hat is excited because I believe that my work with TeachMeetNZ is moving into relational thinking. I am having other educators put their hand up to host a session. Yes I can already see where it needs to go for extended abstract thinking here in New Zealand. But I need a few more strong Google + educators with a working understanding of youtube.

Hey Tony, thanks for sharing a viewer’s perspective. The fun is in the connecting and collaborating sessions. Thanks too with your support in Pond, Google + and Twitter.

Flat Connections

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‘Break outside your friends list and join a community of internet strangers. You will be surprised at what you will learn from them.’
Imgur founder Alan Schaaf

For the past few months I have been working with a group of educators globally as we fine tune our learning about being connected educators in a global setting. One way of coping as an online learner involved setting up a page on my SandBox Wiki and dumping all the links that flew at me. This included any contact information and all the important pages. This page helped me hugely and allowed me to quickly access anything I needed. There might be a better way of doing this but I coped regularly by reverting back to what I know.
A whole pile of events aligned for me as part of my FlatConnect learning and these have eventuated in the following outcomes:
There have been 5 of us in the Flat connections cohort. @julieswords1 @AnnRooney6 @mblanrun  @BonnieHermawan.  We come from four different countries and have time zones as one of our biggest challenges. To address this Julie Lindsay @julielindsay our mentor uses Timebridge to coordinate an agreed time between us. Between us we have a combined level of expertise that is astounding.
Julie uses Fuze which is a free online video meeting service  to communicate with us synchronously. This works like elluminate but appears to be more stable. However I am unsure if this can be live streamed as I have had a play but need to learn more about this great tool.
For our current assignment we were asked to work collaboratively together on a common theme and create a video artifact. We were asked to use our team wiki to create all our notes and learning.
One huge learning from me this week was that I can copy and paste directly from a google doc straight into the wiki and all my images tables links etc all come across beautifully. The only challenge is the photos need resizing but it is easy in a wiki, because I can just drag across. I should have done that at the start of advertising my google hangout. I was focussed on trying to pull the group together quickly for a hangout and resorted back to what I know which is twitter and google docs. A second learning was coping with the time zones particularly as I was coordinating the hangout and I used World Time Buddy because this is a tool I have used before. I learnt that there was a half hour time difference between my two Australian Colleagues. I sort of had already guessed that there might be. In New Zealand we have no time difference between any city because of our small size.
As I prepare for a collaborative project with our sister school in China I need to take into consideration the Great Firewall of China that blocks twitter, Facebook, Google and recently Instagram. I am aware that several schools and local citizens bypass the wall using a different system. But in China this is an illegal activity. I could have directed the current cohort to the Team wiki and I could have used the Flat Connections Ning for asynchronous communication. There is no way I can use a hangout with our sister school but we can use skype for school as this gives us a similar number of access if I brought in several classes to work with our school. I could screen cast a skype session but that would bring up legalities about capturing images with minors.
After the Google Hangout session was over I realised that I could have had each team member share their learning around our recently completed assignment and I could have had them create a single slide about what they had learnt. I could have then given them the second lesson of sharing their own screens and they could have talked about what they have just completed. I underestimated abilities and I could have covered a lot more in the session. Even though most of my global colleagues were new to a hangout, they are not newbies to collaborative tools.
Instead I wonder if they would be willing to join me again in a follow up session and give a brief reflection of their learning as being part of FlatConnect Global Educator 14-2 group. We could use the same idea I do with TeachMeetNZ project and I would wiillingly cut the video so that they could have a reflective page on our Team’s wiki.
Where am I up to? I need to interview a teacher gamer and complete my part of the collaborative assignment, create my slides about our sister school project in preparation for our final session with Julie and count down to our summer holidays as we only have two weeks left of school but there is still so much to do. 
WOWEE, I have also just learnt that I can copy straight from a Goole Doc into the Ning too. Even better I just spotted the editing tool for corrections and even better the HTML tool for embedding. 

CENZ14

Sonya Van Schaijik Hyperconnectivity, PTC 01, SOLO Taxonomy , , , , , , , , ,
Connected Educator Month has been and gone here in New Zealand.
The vision of the New Zealand team was for educators to strategically access, collaborate and share across national & global networks to inform schooling designed around students’ needs and strengths.



As I look back over the past few years, this is the third year that  I have been part of Connected Educator Month. In 2012, I was lurking and watching what was happening via @JulieLinday’s tweets. In 2013 I lead a Global Chat Sharing Stories of our Global Connections with #GlobalClassrooms. I attended a few online sessions run using Blackboard Collaborate.

At Newmarket School I am conscious of giving our teachers and our students the same opportunities that I have been a part of. So as I read the Ministry of Education Future-focused learning report, and Core Education 10 Trends in particular Trend 8: Global connectedness I am looking to 2015 and have identified how we can ‘effectively connect, communicate, collaborate and co-create across classrooms.’ I have been given the task of designing an EFL experience for learning using a global focus and I am excited at the possibilities. I have been learning so much from the #FlatConnect course and credit Julie for exposing my thinking to ideas that I had not even thought of. I will be using some of those ideas in my design. 
At SOLOtaxonomy design is extended abstract thinking. I am thankful that I have been part of Connected Educator Month and have created learning opportunities for teachers because now I can bring those ideas back and inform my school and design the learning opportunities for our staff and children based on their needs and strengths to connect and collaborate at a global level.
This year Karen Melhuish Spencer @virtuallykaren approached me and asked if I was interested in aligning one of the TeachMeetNZ sessions into the Connected Educator Month. I already knew about Connected Educator Month so of course I said yes and I would run the first session earlier in the month than I had initially planned. I then agreed to coordinate and run two events as I was sure that Matt Esterman  of #TMSydney  would join me because we have been speaking for a while about a combined TeachMeet event. The third event which was a collaborative book project was not really planned. However the work I have been doing with Julie Lindsay  around teachers working together on a collaborative project was the incentive I needed to say ‘Let’s do this.’ As a SOLO taxonomy educator I am aware of where I need to go next with what I do online so the book project was like the beta test.

So those were the three events I committed to for October. At the same time because of my teacher inquiry, I was working with staff who were preparing for their first ULearn presentation. In addition Wendy and I agreed to work together and co-present using my inquiry as the springboard for the presentation. But ULearn14 was only one of three events that my principal and I prepared and shared at. The second was sharing for the Springboard Trust and the third being part of the collaborative educators team who wrote the #EdBookNZ.


Highlights for Connected Educator Month are all listed below.
But what you can see is the product.

I know Pam Hook  and Virginia Kung  would say to me, “Where’s the rubric Sonya?” and “The process is more important.” and ‘How has your thinking changed?”  I am also really conscious of not allowing this reflection to just being a multistructural description. So if you are reading this, then please respond below as this allows me to think more at a relational level.


So where to next for me.
“Politeness is the poison of collaboration,” said Edwin Land. My collaborative friend Bridget Casse  was prodding working with me as we wrote the chapter on connected educator blog post. I was more excited in the working document. The challenging discussion was stimulating and thought provoking.
So thinking along the learning of #flatconnect I would have each collaborators work on a wiki page next time. This allows the interested educators to see the process. We could use an unlocked google doc too, however am unsure of how secure the history would be and how long it is archived. If I was working with children under 14, I would probably use Edmodo because it is a more like a walled garden for our children.

Acknowledgement
Thanks to all the amazing educators who took part, supported, proof read, gave feedback, broadcasted etc to the events below. Special thanks to the staff at Newmarket School who have joined in and are sharing their learning. Special thanks to Wendy the head learner who is willing to walk the talk, special thanks to Karen who was visible in all the events and to Julie for my global learning. To my SOLO mentors Pam and Ginny none of this would happen without your ongoing disruptive thinking.

https://www.smore.com/t5yjg-connected-educator-month?embed=1

Can I see you, teacher?

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Listen teacher, listen to me. Don’t look away.
See my eyes they hold messages that make you understand me.

Are you a 21st century teacher? Are you a future focussed educator using effective pedagogy? Do you teach in a modern learning environment and use digital tools? Are you conscious of digital citizenship? Are you an active member of a virtual community and use social media to make connections and broadcast? Do you foster digital collaboration with your elearners?

What?…..  #halt! Let’s flip that learning? We must be connected educators because we relate with all of the above… Right?

So what is a Connected Educator? Let me carry out a personal inquiry.

October has been branded “Connected Educator Month”. I was determined to unpack this coined phrase. I have found dropping the term ‘connected’ a challenge, considering this has been my inquiry for 2014. I relied on connecting for this EdbookNZ project. I crowdsourced for this collaborative project using social media and invited educators to give up their precious time and to help me write a  book that would debunk several current educational terms being bandied around. I envisaged we might make a difference to education by disrupting some of the current thinking taking place. Well goodness me my learning community responded.

Initially I wrote a blog post to clarify my understanding and help me unpack the term ‘Connected Educator’ in readiness for sharing my learning with colleagues at ULearn14 with my principal Dr Wendy Kofoed. So if you are looking for a definition of Connected Educator then go to this link and read a carefully thought out definition there. Access the ULearn video and watch the discussion or rewind our Ulearn slides to demonstrate your connectedness.

Connections can take many forms. I had a lightbulb moment when my SOLO Taxonomy mentor said, “Sometimes educator blogs read like a description and very few take their reflection to an analytical level.”
Sometimes I need a prod to help me with my thinking and that was the prod I needed. The focus for this ‘disruptive article’ is ‘Educator’. My personal inquiry has centred around connected educators at my school and my own understanding of educator has been clarified by using the term ‘connected’ educator. I now realise that this educator does not need the term connected in front. This educator does not need a digital badge to say I am a connected educator because first and foremost I am a teacher therefore I am an educator and  I am a learner too. I have my teaching certificate to prove this. Each year I carry out an inquiry to show I am learning. Each year I work with another cohort of teachers and students who challenge my thinking and I, hopefully, challenge theirs. Each year I create and leave a legacy for other learners as is encouraged by the New Zealand Teachers Council. Therefore a badge is handy for this process of evidence based learning.

Considering all this learning as inquiry that has taken place, should I have focussed on the educator as a learner? A large part of my own learning results from online collaboration. The online learning environment continues to shape my thinking and the connections I make shape my learning. For my reworked contribution to #EdBookNZ as part of Connected Educator Month,  my topic is ‘Educator’ – I have stripped away the term connected as I believe it is not needed to describe being a teacher because to educate requires connection. It is a prerequisite. Without connecting with our learners, can we educate effectively? Without connections, can we collaborate effectively? Without collaboration can we share as effectively?

I believe connectedness is one of three concepts relevant to being an educator.
At any New Zealand school, being connected requires the learner to develop a secure sense of their own identity and agency to think and work towards where their potential might lie.

At my school our three values are whanaungatanga, manaakitanga, kaitiakitanga.
I use these concepts and their definition to frame my current thinking around Educators.

In Aotearoa New Zealand an educator understands the Maori concept of whanaungatanga which focuses on building relationships with each other, the community and our children. Therefore an educator knows how to use the managed online learning tools to find people and knows how to connect with them. They think carefully about the dynamics of interactions. They use social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Google+, LinkedIn, and other tools to make connections and to build their own personal learning community. They actively seek other New Zealand educators to connect and build learning relationships with.

In Aotearoa New Zealand an educator understands the concept of Manaakitanga or Generosity of Spirit. This is about developing the ability to walk in others’ shoes which includes seeing issues from others’ perspectives and thinking carefully about the dynamics of interactions. It is about cultural awareness. An educator knows how to use and take the tools from their kete to move their practice forward. They know how to get the learning needed to improve the craft of teaching. An educator uses online tools to crowdsource to share ideas and to call for help in creating resources for their learners and for other educators. Generally they are participants in learning communities and take part in twitter chats such as #edchatnz to connect nationally and globally with other New Zealand educators. They comprehend the concept of an educational bubble and actively seek virtual chats to connect them with educators globally because they understand that sometimes the New Zealand bubble is just that, a bubble.  They use a wiki, blog and or google sites as a sandbox to test their learning and show what has been learnt. They attend online New Zealand webinar such as the Virtual Learning Network monthly sessions. They participate in national online projects- such as Connected Educator Month or even better, they contribute to online projects. Even much better they take part in or create their own global collaborative project that includes their students, keeping citizenship at the heart of what takes place.  They curate their own learning using Pond and make connections with other New Zealand educators to share what has been found and learnt. They know how to bring back what they have found and learnt online and share it with their school community via a reflective educator blog, a face to face discussion or via a different media. Personal learning is transparent, visible and accessible by all.

In Aotearoa New Zealand an educator understands the concept of Kaitiakitanga or Guardianship for Sustainability of our world. They understand the notion of stewardship by ensuring sensitivity and thoughtfulness of actions in environments both local and distant. An educator knows how to build their community of practice so that it has active participants like guest speakers or blog authors and where everyone constructs knowledge collaboratively. They identify the voices that are silent and actively seek them out to ensure that all voices are heard. They know how to reflect on what they have learnt and make this available for all via a blog, Google Doc, wiki and or a site. They have identified video as the new text and have taken personal responsibility to learn how to craft their learning using video. An educator uses several communication tools to find people and connect with them. An educator knows how to access the learning needed to improve their own teaching. They know how to empower each other and the children that they teach to build their own learning environment. They take pride in leaving a legacy for other educators.

An educator is visible online and can be identified by the work that they do with the children that they teach and with other educators through the legacy that they collaboratively create. The educator’s attitude, knowledge and skills change as they learn. The change in their thinking can be mapped. They continuously gather and analyse data of what they are doing for quality improvement.

Most importantly an educator is a professional learner who creates, contributes and converses. They know how to empower each other and their students to build their own networks to learn from and use the tools and resources that are available. They have the mindset to learn from each other, with each other, from and with the children that they teach and from and with the families/whanau of their children.

So, if I assess my outcome using the levels of SOLO Taxonomy; have I clarified my thinking around what a connected educator is, elaborated on and justified my definition, prodded you to rethink the connected educator label? Have I disrupted your thinking? Have I created a new way of defining connected educator?

Where to next, can an educator, without access to technology, still be a connected educator? Can they not still connect with those around them? Can they not still connect with learners, family, community?

Do give me feedback because quality improvement drives my learning.

For this post I thank Bridget Casse @BridgetCasse for being my disruptive friend and value her time and prodding. You can check out her blog here. http://bridgetcasse.blogspot.co.nz/
References

About Connected Educator. (2014, September 1). Retrieved October 30, 2014, from http://connectededucator.org.nz/about/

Appraisal of Teachers Phase Two: What is Evidence? (2014, January 1). Retrieved October 30, 2014, from http://www.teacherscouncil.govt.nz/content/appraisal-teachers-phase-two-what-evidence

Hook, P. (2014, October 21). Take away the descriptors – Artichoke. Retrieved October 30, 2014, from http://artichoke.typepad.com/artichoke/2014/10/take-away-the-descriptors.html

Hook, P. (n.d.). SOLO Taxonomy. Retrieved October 30, 2014, from http://pamhook.com/solo-taxonomy/

Hyde, A. (2014, October 2). (Modern) Learning Environments. Retrieved October 30, 2014, from http://likeahoginmud.blogspot.co.nz/2014/10/modern-learning-environments.html

Kemp, C. (2014, October 30). Taking away the descriptor – Collaboration. Retrieved October 30, 2014, from http://mrkempnz.com/2014/10/taking-away-the-descriptor-collaboration.html

Kern, M. (2014, October 21). Are we Digital Citizens, or rather Citizens in an increasingly Digital World? Retrieved October 30, 2014, from http://thebelbird.blogspot.co.nz/2014/10/are-we-digital-citizens-or-rather.html

Kofoed, W. (2014, October 18). E-ducators, it’s about a learner mind-set. Retrieved October 30, 2014, from http://drwendykofoed.com/2014/10/e-ducators-its-about-a-learner-mind-set

Melhuish Spencer, K. (2014, October 28). The death of the digital community? Retrieved October 30, 2014, from http://karenmelhuishspencer.com/2014/10/28/the-death-of-the-digital-community/

N Antipas, P. (2014, October 17). Redundant Adjectives. Retrieved October 30, 2014, from http://eodysseyblog.wordpress.com/2014/10/17/redundant-adjectives/

Paki, T. (2014, October 22). Whanaungatanga Collaborative E-Book Connected Educator Month 2014. Retrieved October 30, 2014, from http://teaomataurangatokutirohangaake.blogspot.co.nz/2014/10/whanaungatanga-collaborative-e-book.html

Prashnig, B. (2008). Pg 12. In The power of diversity: New ways of learning and teaching through learning styles (3rd ed.). London: Continuum.

Wells, R. (2014, October 18). An End to “21st Century” Learning Tools. Retrieved October 30, 2014, from http://ipad4schools.org/2014/10/18/an-end-to-21st-century-learning-tools/

Goundhog Day at Newmarket School

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In 1877, Newmarket School in Auckland New Zealand was established on the site where 277 is today.
On the weekend I was excited to have our current principal Dr Wendy Kofoed take part in an online discussion about learning with educators from around New Zealand.
This discussion will continue throughout October as part of #CENZ14.
You can read more about that here.
After the discussion I put a call out to Pam Hook to read what we have so far accomplished as I wanted to ensure that the project is framed by SOLO Taxonomy. 
Pam flicked me a link to a sceptics log she and a team of creators had made in 2006 and the discussion was the same. In addition she linked me up to Chris Bigum who had been part of that original discussion and he started feeding me readings and video links via twitter.
The outcome of all that weekend learning is this reflection.
One particular idea that I had read about and awoke with was groundhog day. 
We are such an old school. I thought of our first school leader, Captain Charles Ross Cholmondely Smith.
in his single classroom with his room full of children.
The stories I have read about how the children learnt is hilarious. 
But if we revisit those early days of education, we know that the teacher was basically a coach.
They used the older children to teach the younger children who in turn taught the younger ones than themselves. In addition he would have had a team of children leaders who took care of various activities to help with the running of the school, kind of like our student leadership programme.
If a child needed extra help they would know who to ask for support.
They would only go to the teacher when absolutely necessary because he ruled his classroom in true military style of the time. 
Newmarket School on current 277 site of today
As the years passed and the school grew and new teachers came in, the process continued with teachers using each other as support. There was no professional development in those days only personal learning.
They relied totally on the community for everything because there was no local $2.00 shops to stock up or colour photocopying for the walls. They used local resources in their programme kind of like the glocalisation concept. (No, not a spelling mistake.)
The children would have continued to support each other and most had a job to do to help keep the school clean and tidy because there would have been no school cleaners in those days. This is like how we structure our enviro programme.
I was thinking about our current situation with the discussion centred around learning and thought we are moving back to those times not because of circumstances but because it just worked.
Teachers are reminded about the pool of learning amongst their peers. Our current head teacher continues to lead by example in her own learning. She in turn guides and coaches her team in their learning, who guide and coach the teachers in their teams with their learning who guide and coach the children in their classes and between classes as we move back to ”it takes a whole school to teach a child,’ and we move back to the notion of a single building on the site where there are no walls and we learn with and from each other. 
We have a variety of interesting developments happening in our school and this is raising teachers to the surface with their learning. Even more exciting is that they are sharing their learning with each other and several have begun the journey of reflecting in a visible way for our global school community via  a blog that you can read on the right hand side. If I have missed anyone, please do send me your link.
So in our old grounds, in our old buildings that are being demolished and rebuilt I can hear our head teacher, teachers and children ancestors giggling and watching from the ruins saying, here we go again. And you know what, so what. This teacher with 30 years experience finds it exciting to watch the cycle of education life go around again. Just like I love watching our 100 year old tree go through its cycle of life on a yearly basis, change and grow bigger and better, Just like I love talking with teachers and hearing their learning stories and sharing their learning stories. Even more exciting is the change happening. 
Children ancestors of Newmarket School
All photos and stories rehashed from our school archives that you can read about here.

Travelwise

Sonya Van Schaijik Critical Inquiry, PTC 12, SOLO Taxonomy , , , , , , ,

Today was our  Travelwise Lead Teacher day held at the Trust Stadium in Henderson.
One of the most important aspects of these days is the opportunity to network with other Lead teachers from around Auckland and curate ideas that we can use back at Newmarket School.

A real highlight for me was seeing Christine Allen and Veronica Verschuur from Marist School. I worked with them many years ago.

Russell French designed the introductory session so that the information was front loaded using a QR code activity. We moved around the room scanning QR codes in order to locate correct information of facts asked. We could have also googled this information but the opportunity to try a digital activity was fun. Russell then shared with us the rest of the information via his presentation.
He then continued and introduced us to the work of Robert Cialdini and how to link this to our days learning.
Cialdini’s 6x principles of persuasion and apply it to Travelwise

  1. Reciprocity
  2. Commitment (and Consistency)
  3. Social Proof
  4. Liking
  5. Authority
  6. Scarcity

We moved around the stations of activities set up by the CTCs and we covered a lot of information in a variety of ways. 


    WOW www.atwowcalendar.co.nz . I was interested in seeing the WOW calendar set up as a way of children taking responsibility for data entry using the new online system.
    The day was fabulous as it reminded me of what I still need to do at our school.
    So here are my goals until the end of the year.
    • Complete our time zone map and photograph hazards.
    • Revisit our Walking School bus idea. Particularly as we are going through a rebuild and we don’t just have a hazard at the gate we have a Tsunami.
    • Set up a Travelwise display board. At this stage I have no idea where to place it as we are going through a rebuild. Maybe I will create a digital display and resurrect our Travelwise pages on our school Enviro wiki and revamp that.
    • I really liked the idea about surveying our parents and identify where they drop our children off so will create a google form for that.

    After lunch, I presented our school’s trial with the Tracksafe resource framed using SOLO Taxonomy. My pechakucha ended up being presented eight times so by the end of the afternoon I was hoarse. However I was excited as I could see where Virginia Kung and I need to improve on for our Ulearn presentation when we share how we have used the resource at Newmarket School.



    Clesol2014

    Sonya Van Schaijik Critical Inquiry, PTC 07 , , ,

    Clesol Day 1

    http://www.clesol.org.nz/index.html is in Wellington and runs for three days.

    This year Clesol is hosted at Victoria University. This is my first visit to Rutherford house.
    Using #Clesol on twitter I could only locate 6x other educators attending the conference.

    The conference launched with a welcome function sponsored by IELTS. I was excited to see a few familiar faces so as Paul Nation walked by I grabbed him for a group photo.

    The first plenary began the following day and as I sat in that first session and looked around, I  saw maybe 6 educators using a device. The challenge is most teachers have been given a TELA since 1996 so why were most educators here still using pen and paper.

    William Grabe

    Powerpoint available via email.
    william.grabe@nau.ed
    Foundation for L2 Reading development.
    William highlighted essential aspects of reading comprehension. He spoke about instructional applications as well as a few specific practices that are not commonly considered in many reading instruction curricula. I was listening to him share about building a reading curriculum.

    I attended   collaborative workshop ‘Connecting across the ditch and beyond.’ The session was well rehearsed, ran to time and was inclusive of all attendees. Both Lesley and Yvonne covered a range of social media and how they used them in their work. I was particularly interested in the collaboration and to hear that yesterday was the first time these educators had met f2f.
    Lesley highlighted for the group a few of her global connections from her personal learning network. 
    The following session was from John Read who covered 

    ‘Coming to grips with quality in language assessment’. John spoke about an ongoing concern in language teaching is how to assess learner abilities through good-quality assessments that are suitable for their intended purpose. He stressed the importance of moderation and expertise amongst teachers in their own subject area. Again the slides are incredibly text heavy and for a learner like me, I like my pictures.  I give a quiet chuckle when he spoke about computer familiarity. I was not sure if this included mobile devices but probably not.  

    In the afternoon session I attended Heather Thomas session on Mindfulness practice and pedagogy that could enhance English Language Teaching (ELT) by increasing attention, emotional 

    The session was not what I expected but is actually what I needed to hear. We often rush from one thing to the next but never take time to stop and smell the roses. 
    She shared with us the following documentary. ‘Room to breath’.


    Heather’s session was on Mindfulness meaning about being in the moment, being present, being in the now.

    Probably the best part of the day was the discussion that happens between the sessions.

    TeachMeetNZ Interface

    Sonya Van Schaijik Leadership, PTC 01, PTC 05, SOLO Taxonomy , , , , , , , , ,
    Titled: Where Teachers Meet
    TMNZ.png
    (Educators involved in TeachMeetNZ in 2013)
    This post is an update of that article.


    In 2013, I launched TeachMeetNZ as part of my TeachNZ Sabbatical. A TeachMeet is an organised but informal meeting (in the style of an unconference) for teachers to share good practice, practical innovations and personal insights in teaching with technology. TeachMeet originated with three Scottish educators – Ewan McIntosh, David Noble and John Johnston. Currently all over the world there are hundreds of TeachMeets that take place regularly in a variety of venues. As Ewan Macintosh commented, TeachMeet was never about technology 100%, it was about the Teach first of all, and the tech was instrumental to achieving what we wanted to achieve pedagogically and never the other way around.” Ewan Macintosh.
    This article will describe how I developed TeachMeetNZ, the process of the on-line organised collaboration using Google Hangout, the relevance to teaching and conclude with future development for TeachMeetNZ.


    TeachMeetNZ
    I developed TeachMeetNZ after two years of research, investigation, then the trialling of a variety of online products, with Google Hangout being selected as the preferred platform.  
    A small team of willing educators agreed to join with me to learn how to use Google Hangout as a way of presenting, demonstrating good practise, sharing and celebrating teaching with technology. Each term, a group of inspirational New Zealand educators develop and deliver a series of presentations. These sessions are live streamed, and are attended virtually by educators from around New Zealand and globaIly. In addition a TeachMeetNZ wiki was  developed for participants to communicate and share their presentations with a virtual audience.


    Collaboration and participation
    TeachMeetNZ is about New Zealand teachers connecting online. They collaborate and problem solve using online tools. These educators support and mentor each other before and during the practise Google Hangout sessions. To take part, teachers prepare 12 slides that auto cue every 15 seconds so their presentation is three minutes long. The slides are hosted on Google Presentation or Slideshare and must be live before the session. We learnt that the most viewed YouTube clips are just under three minutes long so this is the preferred length. A three minute video is created of their presentation and may become a resource for use at a later time.
    After the live event, discussion usually follows via twitter using the hashtag #TeachMeetNZ. Many teachers go on to blog a reflection of their session, and they can embed the YouTube clip into their blog.  A TeachMeetNZ presenters badge is awarded to those educators who present on TeachMeetNZ..  Participants and viewers willingly give feedback and regularly give their time to support and help others.


    Relevance to teaching
    Online spaces are useful for portfolio development and fostering interaction and collaboration. Google Hangout is a tool that can be used to collate and present resources, to support community interaction and contributions, and as a platform for personal expression. Google Hangout is an ideal tool for teachers combined with a YouTube account.


    From creating and hosting TeachMeetNZ sessions I have learnt that teachers appreciate recognition and acknowledgement for what they do. Hosting TeachmeetNZ has pushed my knowledge of making connections with ideas and with people. Hosting the sessions has encouraged me to give better feedback to teachers who take part. The sessions have allowed me to be more focussed on my feedback with teachers and not to rush this important process. After each session I play the clip back and reflect on how I can carry out the task better next time. I make notes and begin with these notes at the next session. I have also learnt to go through the presentations before the live streaming so that I can better prepare my questions. I do this by asking for presentations to be live before the session and I usually run practise sessions for people new to using Google Hangout.


    Where to next?
    In the future I plan to host more discussion sessions with panels of educators. Last year I had an educator host a specialist session based on PE and this year I have planned to include similar sessions.  In addition I have planned to have single themed discussions and to have educators and practitioners who can contribute to themes at a deeper level. Some of the feedback that I have had from participants is that they enjoy the opportunity to ask questions and discuss ideas in greater depth. A session, that I hosted at the Festival of Education in Auckland, featured a group of inspirational educators who shared and discussed their passions both online and with a live audience.


    The TeachMeetNZ site has grown rapidly and I have now become the site’s curator. Currently the site contains nearly thirty nano presentations. This number increases each term as teachers share and celebrate their learning on TeachMeetNZ. Global visitors and viewers can watch the presentations in their own time and place.


    For my own learning.
    The SOLO Taxonomy practitioner in me realises that my current sessions take me back to being multistructural in my thinking.  In order to achieve depth in what I do online I need to continue to take a leadership role in other online communities. As frightening as this sounds I think that my first goal is to move from participating and running TeachMeetNZ sessions in online communities to being involved at administration level with online global projects. I would also like to continue with mentoring and developing others to host sessions. The popularity of the digital badge concept may also mean that I further develop this system for levels of participation.  


    If you have been a presenter or have watched a session on TeachMeetNZ, please add your comments below.


    For further information
    Visit the wiki
    #TeachMeetNZ on twitter


    Teacher from Newmarket School
    Auckland New Zealand