A New Bridge to Cross...

A new year and a new set of challenges.  In the past few years I have been spoilt by sharing an office with a person who can reflect, discuss, inspire and challenge myself with on a daily basis.  I've had the chance to work alongside them as a team member and in the classroom.  I feel that in the last few years some strong pedagogical ideas and changes have happened in my teaching and in the way I learn.  Many of these shifts have taken place by having a person who wants to challenge, change and examine the way the classroom looks on a daily basis.

Before this, my place of reflection - this blog was the place I came to, to reflect and think about my practice and ideas. To share my learning and pass on the process.  It's amazing how a place of reflection - whether it be a person or a place - makes a difference to your pedagogy.

So my blog has sat at the side of the bridge - waiting for me, while I made new discoveries and changes in thought.  The time has come to make my way back on to the bridge - a place that has helped me gain friends and colleagues from around NZ.  The bridge that always takes me on the same familiar journey but also leads me to places of new surprises and sights.

I have loads to share and think about from the range of professional readings, tweets and conferences I have had the pleasure of attending.  Over the last short while I have had attended educamps around NZ, uLearn in Auckland and the International Thinking Conference in Wellington.  I have been able to take many things away from these conferences and also find a way to connect small ideas together that will make big changes in my understandings and teaching.

This year I also am taking on new challenges in my professional life - leading a team of talented teachers.  Taking on leadership and working towards creating a shared environment where we, as a team, can work together to be a support network for each other is my aim.  To become a strong professional learning house, sharing our pedagogy, triumphs and challenges.  I have a lot to learn and am looking forward to the year ahead.

In my classroom I am continuing to develop my passion and interest for negotiated learning in the classroom.  Students developing their self managing skills and autonomy in the classroom.  Last year saw some strong developments for myself in the way that this could be structured in the class.  Many of these changes came from reflections with the students about how they want their learning to look.  This year it will change and develop further with the different learners and needs I have within my classroom.  My passion for the integration of eLearning and mobile devices will continue with a strong basis in supporting the learning and learners in the classroom.  Examining the way student voice can be shared to understand that my students can have an audience as big as the world.

So... welcome to the place where I begin my journey back across the bridge - to the familiar place with familiar places but also lots of new sights and people.  I hope you will take part and have conversations with me in different places.  Challenge my thinking/ideas and share your own!

Photo used under CC: Heymilly

eWrapper Conference

On the last day of the holidays I had the pleasure of attending the eWrapper Mini Conference at Everglade School in Manukau.  I was even more excited to have been asked to present a workshop by Rachel Boyd.  The choice for the workshops were huge! It was really hard picking workshops which ranged in topics from thinking, green screening, mobile devices, questioning and more!

The day started with a keynote presentation by Trevor Bond based on the notion that there shouldn't be such a huge focus on Inquiry models but rather more of a focus on the learner and their needs.  This looked like a fantastic keynote but unfortunately I wasn't able to be there for the whole keynote.  Hopefully I'll get a chance to see this at a later date.

I was fortunate however to be able to attend Trevor's Questioning workshop later in the day. This has been a big focus for me this year and he definitely threw a few spanners into the work and made us think and question what we are doing.  One of the quotes that he worked through was a quote by Edward De Bono - "Questioning is the engine-house of thinking."  He then worked through the notion that as teachers we shouldn't be so focussed on the 'fat' and 'skinny' questions but rather look at how student's questioning skills can be developed to be more specific and focussed.  He argued that sometime there is a high need for 'skinny' questions that prove them to be more than effective in gaining the information they require.  One of the participants referred back to "what every good marketer would know" that the use of a skinny 'screening question' is highly effective to find out if the person they are talking to fits their requirements.

A good question is one that:
- is relevant
- gets you the information you need
- can be taken from intelligent and non-intelligent sources
(Intelligent being people / non-intelligent being books, internet etc)

The idea of modelling to the students as questioners is a huge concept also.  What kinds of questions are we demonstrating to our students?

Something that really hit home from me and that I took from this workshop was the notion of what do we do with those questions that kids ask? The on topic questions? The random questions? The ones that we just can't answer right now?  I've always loved the idea of a wondering wall but then for me it's been the next step.  How do we answer these and really acknowledge that we appreciate and accept a range of questions that will develop our student's knowledge?  I've done a lot of thinking about this in the last day and I have a few ideas about how this could work in class.  So keep tuned to see where this goes.  I think this was my BIG takeaway from the day.  If you want to find out more about Trevor Bond head along to his website at ICTNZ.

I also went to a workshop looking at how the Key Competencies were being developed at Reremoana School.  There were some great ideas and really interesting to see how they had created their own Learning Competencies based on school and community feedback.  They had fantastic use of Learning Journals in their math's programme to set goals, question and reflect on their own learning.  There is more information about this on Lisa's Weebly.




Photo used under CC via Flickr: dullhunk

e-Portfolio Reflection

Over the last 6 months there has been a vast number of aha! moments and questions that have been raised for me in regards to e-portfolios. In the last post on our Learning Links I skimmed across a few of these concepts. After having a few discussions with people at EduCamp it gave me a chance to think through these concepts a bit more. In this post I want to reflect on these concepts and look at a few of the big questions I have floating around.

Tech vs Reflect When we put the technical needs in front the of the student needs are we then creating barriers for the students to overcome? From moving away from a Learning Management System for student e-Portfolios to a free relatively low-tech portfolio system has allowed me to see students completing tasks in a range of situations.

Transference Across Sectors One of the key concepts for me that make an e-Portfolio powerful throughout a learners life is the ability for it to be transferred across all age levels. The MOE acknowledges that the lack of interoperability between systems and schools is a major barrier to the use and advancement of Managed Learning Environments (MLE).

At EduCamp I had the opportunity to talk again to one of the ex-teachers from Manaia Kindergarten about what they have been doing with their Blogger based e-portfolios. Their system seems like a powerful way of allowing the learning to be owned by the family and then transferred on throughout that child's learning. NaketaNZ talks more about this in her post on EduCamp. A few years ago I had the chance to present at an Early Childhood Conference and then talking to some of the same EC educators at EduCamp, it reinforced that there needs to be an eye kept on what is happening for our students that enter our schools from ECE through to where our kids go at the end of their primary schooling. When we are talking about e-portfolios it's all that learning that comes and goes with them and how is it going to go with them?

Continuuing on the path of moving on with the e-Portfolios (Learning Links) that we are developing within our classes I am becoming more interested in the pathway of creating individual blogs for each student to track their learning through. At the moment there are a few ways of creating and maintaining them that would work effectively and safely for the students and families. This will be part of the ongoing development.

Whanau/Family Knowledge
Through a range of conversations we have already identified that a large portion of time needs to be placed to upskill and develop our parents knowledge and understanding of e-learning. The change from paper portfolios to digital portfolios was received well by the majority of my parents - who were really keen to see the variety of learning their children were involved in. But this opened the door for more questions and new knowledge that parents realised they need to keep up with what their students are doing in class. A next step is to run a series of workshops along with another teacher to develop our parents understanding. I can see that if we move to blogs as a primary way of sharing learning that for them to be highly successful we will need to run a series of workshops/sessions in varying formats for parents. I would be interested to know how those utilising e-portfolios to share student learning are informing and upskilling their parents to use and respond within them also?