You're my favourite class, too

I'm the person who can't have games on my cellphone, otherwise I'll spend spare time mucking around on them rather than doing something productive, like, you know, reading. And I do love a game of Tomb Raider . Solving problems, shooting bad guys, exploring exotic locations where the weather radically changes when you come out the other side of a cave. But am I a gamer? Probably not, and certainly not if I compare myself to my teenage boys. That said, the Bartle test on what kind of gamer I am was a nice distraction, and I wasn't particularly surprised by the results: Achiever : 53% (win, challenge, compare) Explorer : 87%  (investigate, create, discover) Griefer : 20% (hack, cheat, heckle) Socializer : 40% (share, comment, help) (Although, realistically, the socialiser bit would probably be a lot lower because I'm not really into that aspect of gaming.) As an educator, how could I tap into the power of games in a few ways. There is always room to pl...

If there's one thing I'd love to make English, it's more hands-on. Imagine it, a classroom where students are busy and happy making things that enhance their understanding of reading and writing... Wait a minute... hands-on English? How? I've had students make resources for me before and create visual images as part of the curriculum, but how can I embrace the maker movement into a subject area often seen as abstract. The make movement puts students in the role of designers, constructing artifacts and applying technology in novel ways. It encompasses 'traditional' crafts like knitting, calligraphy and metal work, along with computer programming and hacking. It's about experimentation and risk taking. Social interaction is a key part of the process, including conversations and feedback from peers. In English, the obvious two ways we create are through writing and visual texts. There are certain rules that students are expected to follow with writing (you ...

One of my current roles within my school is as Principal's Nominee. The responsibilities of this role feel enormous at times, and feel amplified when teachers ask my advice and guidance on assessment issues. Suddenly, I'm seen as the voice of authority on these issues. As I find my way through this role I have been identifying small changes that I would like to see made in some of our processes (it's not that we're doing things wrong, but I can see ways we can do things better). One of my challenges will be in  managing change in a way that's flexible and achievable for staff. The Agile Manifesto , introduced at the Mindlab session a couple of weeks back, is easily adaptable to a school situation and with many possible variations. Here's one set: Individuals and interactions  over assessment Effective teaching  over data management  Student centred  over teacher directed Responding to students  over following a scheme It's about reflective manag...

My cultural perspective is undeniably Pakeha-dominated. My parents (and their parents, and their parents' parents) were working class of European descent. Although I am empathetic towards issues of cultural bias, I know that will always benefit from 'white privilege'. Likewise. my children, whose whakapapa traces back to Hoturoa, commander of the Tainui waka, will also know that privilege due to their blue eyes and pale skin which scream Pakeha. At least two of the Practising Teacher Criteria  explicitly refer to showing commitment to and working within a bicultural context. My school does make concerted efforts to incorporate Maori culture into our teaching practices, including the use of te reo, references to Maori world views and cultural practises. There is room to develop our multiculturalism, though. How does our school culture reflect the growing numbers of Filipino students or our Chinese fee-paying students? There is great value in diversity. Within...

Agency is one of those terms often bandied about in school and I admit that it is one that I struggle to define. Reflecting on the term, though, it seems to me that student agency is something that I encourage - albeit intermittently, perhaps - in my classroom. For me, agency is about student taking ownership of their learning. By developing their capacity to do things, giving them choices and control over their learning. There are different ways that I try to do this with my students, and I can certainly see even more ways to be effective in empowering it. I want my students to be more self-directed in their learning. In the past, when I've given students the opportunity to work collaboratively to construct knowledge of a text, for example, I have had concerns about the amount of work some students did, as well as the quality of their work output. I think that this concern has become an obstacle for me, too, because it makes me reluctant to transfer further control for their ...

As teachers, we dream of students engaged in their learning, exploring their passions in a myriad of ways. The reality is more often students doing work that is dictated by assessment needs. As part of our Mindlab session this evening, we were asked in small groups to discuss assessment practices. As three high school teachers, there are aspects of our assessment practice that we would like to change. One of the primary reasons is that we think that changes in assessment would benefit our students by increasing agency of their learning. Among the issues with assessment that we identified are: standard /assessment is driving the teaching and learning rather than teaching and learning driving assessment. NCEA and National Standards pressures 'exam' based assessment tasks assessments predominantly individually assessed where work could be submitted as group - how to manage this? over-testing within school reliance on written assessments Overall, we would prefer an i...

As a teacher in a school which is incrementally introducing BYOD, I am increasingly exploring ways of blending learning between traditional and digital platforms. I encourage my students to manage themselves so that they complete homework and in-class activities to an appropriate standard. However, unfortunately, there are still some ways to go towards my students taking full responsibility for their learning and I have been reluctant to implement a flipped classroom environment. I do, though, love the idea of getting students to watch videos in their own time and giving them the opportunity to apply the knowledge attained from the video in class time, where I can work with students and give them more individualised attention. There are so many exciting tools that I can utilise to engage my students in a flipped learning process. I've utlised TED-Ed lessons in the past to encourage students to reflect on an issue that we've studied in class - see for example, the TED-Ed les...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFdzz26g-EE This interesting and short video by DML research hub explores connected learning. Teachers in the video identify that there is no defined future, which leads to a need for students to be flexible, adaptive and creative. We need to ignite learning through sites of engagement, interest, and passion. The video identifies issues with fundamental questions that focus on outcomes -  what we want them to learn - and how the goals, content and everything else is defined by that. They argue that the core question should be what is the experience we want students to have, thereby focusing on engagement, and the needs of students.  Education is now 'whole village'. It is not just school that educates students. Learning is everywhere. Imagine concentric circles: connecting with interests, parents, communities, online. How do we bring people together to create greater 'connectedness'? I think that this is a key question: how ...

My junior classes (Year 9 and 10) have been doing creative writing the past week or so. The focus for both classes has been to start with describing a place and then put a person into the scene, describing how he or she got there and feels about where they are. It's the first formal (as in assessed) piece of writing that the Year 9 class have done, but the second time round for this Year 10 class. Their first efforts were mixed, and I really wanted to lift their use of language techniques to create a more authentic-sounding and evocative piece of writing. The structured and tiered writing response has worked really well, and I can see a significant lift in the sophistication of language and sentence structures. The Mindlab sessions using Scratch have had me thinking more about how I can incorporate digital storytelling into my classes, so doing creative writing has been excellent timing. Students will be recreating their written description as a visual text, using Scratch. I...

Do you think of yourself as someone who can programme a computer? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jRREn6ifEQ In this TED Talk, Linda Liukas discusses the poetry of programming.  A couple of years ago I had a go at the Python coding challenge through Grok, alongside several students in the school.  I didn't see poetry in the programming. I saw lots and lots of numbers and symbols that I had to arrange in a very precise way in order to make things work and on top of that I had to use mathematical formulas to solve problems and that really threw me. Thinking about it now, of course, I can see the parallels. There is a synchonicity and precision required to write both programmes and poetry and there As frustrating as the process was, though, it was exciting when those algorithms worked and I could make the computer do something that I had instructed. It's been the same when I've experimented with Scratch - but probably more exciting because of it's visual na...

I've seen growth mindset discussed at various times in forums such as Twitter. The concept interested me so I had done a wee bit of research on what it was, although that was admittedly as far as I went. The traditional view of intelligence was that it is innate and there is nothing you can do about it, no matter how hard you work. I see this attitude reflected at various times in my classroom by students who think that they, for example, find creative writing difficult and so put little effort into producing finished work, or they struggle with aspects of grammar but don't try to figure out the rules and apply them to their work. I have been guilty of a similar attitude towards Maths, and have caught myself making comments along the lines of I suck at it, therefore someone else solve the problem for me. With the Maths thing, though, I've become more conscious of what I say because I have a daughter who I want to encourage into STEM and I realise that how I role mod...

Of late I have been reflecting more on my learning and applying it to my practices via this blog. I set it up a couple of years ago but had been sporadic in adding entries to it. My motivation for having a blog was to try to encourage me to reflect of on my teaching practice more regularly. I guess in theory it was good but although it gave me an avenue to think about my teaching it didn't really encourage more writing. I also felt a bit uncomfortable putting my ideas out there to the big wide world, which is kind of the purpose of a blog! With the Mindlab course, though, I'm going out of my comfort zone in all kinds of ways, and sharing my ideas and thoughts publicly is one of them. I have been making regular updates after each session, focusing on the aspect of the class that I found interesting and can apply to myself, my students or my school. I have found this a useful avenue to make me think about and clarify the ideas from the course rather than forgetting about them a...

For the past two and a half years my school has set aside time every Wednesday morning for Professional Learning Groups. These groups provide teachers with time to work on their inquiry cycle and have professional discussions with others about their classroom practice. I appreciate having the opportunity to develop my pedagogy in this way. As a teacher - as a human being -  the assumptions that I bring to my practice are influenced by a range of different things. The way I teach can be influenced by factors including my world view and the way I was taught (and didn't like being taught). But these influences aren't always going to be conducive to best practice. One of the things that I really like about the inquiry process is that after identifying an issue to address, there is an expectation that I will identify my own learning needs and that my next steps will be evidence based. Utilising the vast array of research that has been done on education is to me a logical thing to...

Over the past few years I have been steadily increasing the use of technology in my classroom, made easier with the school introducing BYOD in the junior school. As such I have been familiar with the SAMR model: Image source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/The_SAMR_Model.jpg I won't discuss the mechanics of the model because there are plenty of people on the internet more qualified than me who have done so (check out Kathy Shrock  here  and the Technology is Learning site  here , as starting points). In many ways I like this model because it provides a stepping stone approach to using technology which is useful for teachers just on the first step of changing their teaching practices. It shows that introducing digital activities doesn't have to involve major shifts in practice but can be incremental. It also shows, though, that ultimately students should not be using a computer to complete the same activities that they would be doing w...

Last night was the second Mindlab session, exploring the links between 21st century skills and the key competencies of the New Zealand curriculum. One interesting idea that was raised was that organisations ‘biological’, I guess in that there are levels of organisation and that they are living, evolving systems. This also means that organisations have the ability to ‘learn’. A t raditional school structure is hierarchical - within my own school we have the principal and two deputies, as well as three teachers who act as Senior Leader Support, followed by layers of deans, HODs, 2ICs... If we take the biological metaphor further, organisations, including schools, must be self-evolving or else they will stagnate. As the culture of an organisation changes, the nature of leadership within the organisation will also change. In schools, this includes how we might define knowledge and the role of teachers in bringing about changes. For my school and others to continue to evolve there ...

Tuesday night was my first session of the Post Graduate Certificate in Applied Teaching (Digital and Collaborative Learning) through Unitec - otherwise knowns as The Mindlab . The focus of the first session was on what is knowledge and the purpose of education.The course notes state: [Students'] familiar means of information aggregation and distribution are not in sync with the education system and students are looking for flexible, more affordable and more relevant ways to gain the knowledge needed to apply ‘as needed’ skills for life-long learning. At heart this challenges the whole notion of what schools do, hence the question we were focusing on: what is education? In a formal sense, education is the systematic transfer of knowledge and information, but informally we are 'educated' in various ways everyday - through what we read and listen to, who we talk to. What we do as educators is inherently governed by what has been done before, because change can be a slow ...