You're my favourite class, too

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 ...

Last week I was fortunate to have the opportunity to visit three Auckland schools as part of the Big River Learning and Change Network. This was my first chance to see what a modern teaching environment looks and feels like; my school was built in the 1920s and subsequent expansions strongly reflect the time periods they are built in, so the flowing open plans were quite a contrast. I like to challenge myself with my teaching. I take ideas from Twitter, Pinterest and (perhaps) more serious sources and try to use these in my classes as I can. However, the timetable and curriculum approach that Hobsonville Point Secondary School  utilises is far beyond what I envisaged for my classroom. This is undoubtedly because any changes I make to my classroom practice is realistically confined to this space, whereas HPSS has been built through new teaching theories and practices and there is a whole school philosophy. The challenge that I (and my school) face is taking the 21st ideas used by ...

After a long period of resistance, I'm Twittering. Well, not truly Twittering yet, mostly observing, searching, reading and being astounded at what a great professional development source Twitter is. Just this evening, I've: Found a classroom blog I want to emulate next year:  http://www.iseroma.com/   And read the same teacher's professional blog: http://iserotope.com/ Subscribed to an ICT in Education newsletter:  http://www.ictineducation.org/newsletter/ Found a fun game for ESOL:  http://www.englishraven.com/cardgame_mysterypeople.html Reflected on the importance of building relationships:  http://umakeadiff.blogspot.com/2011/09/its-all-about-relationships.html This is all through links people have put onto Twitter - awesome! And I'm sure I haven't figured out even a fraction of the what I can do through Twitter yet. I'm a convert - thanks for the guidance, Barry .

Co-operative, because I'm not fond of the double 'o's in cooperative. Any-hoo. Today I attended a meeting where one of the focuses was on co-operative learning strategies. As a group we were privileged to participate in three very different co-operative learning activities: the doughnut, bus-stop and continuum. As an adult learner I enjoyed each of these activities. As a teacher I believe in using co-operative strategies regularly in the classroom. But (you saw that coming), I'm not sure how I can feasibly introduce these particular methods into some of my classrooms. I get nervous. I get nervous about chaos, about students talking about everything but the task at hand, and even worse, about students sitting in silence. I'm nervous because of experience. Last week, Year 9 groups were asked to brainstorm everything they knew about two things in preparation for a new unit study. Some did it. Those who were with the T.A did it well. In other groups, I saw maybe...