#EdBlogNZ Challenge Week 1

Inspiring Bloggers

The challenge is to write about a legendary blogger that inspires you or makes you dream bigger.  I am in awe at how some educators write reflect so frequently on their blogs.  Two bloggers that I follow and read regularly both bear the same name Stephanie Thompson!  I wonder if they are connected on line too?

First Stephanie who is the author of Four Seasons in One Kiwi I first met her at a two day Solutions Focus Coaching Master class. Stephanie is a primary school principal and as I aspire to be a principal I was really impressed with what she had to say about leadership and growing a coaching culture in her school.  Her blog posts reflect her leadership wonderings and I find them useful to read and reflect how her message resonates with me now (in my role as an acting principal) and to store for my future leadership experiences to come.

Second Stephanie who is the author of Train the Teacher I had connected with her many years ago on twitter and first met a few years ago at an Ignition Conference held at Albany Senior High School.  At the time she was a classroom teacher in Wellington, a tweeter and edu-geek.  I was impressed for a beginning teacher how she used blogging to collect evidence of her practice and labelled her blogs as a great filing system.  Now Stephanie teachers overseas and posts almost daily of her educational learning journey, whether she is reflecting on what is happening in her classroom or from one of the many conferences that she attends.  Her latest post about participating in a disruptive strand at a conference reminded me of the robust conversations I had at the Google Teacher Academy where we put our big ideas into an action plan for immediate steps in our learning community.

I often fear that my reflections will just be aimless ramblings and not worthy of the deep reflection I read in the posts of others.  I do believe in projecting positivity and continuous improvement, so to move forward, I feel you need the time to look back and reflect on your practice to improve. Like ripples in a pond, ideas can grow, reverberate and merge to create new circles of ideas.  I wonder if participating in the #EdBlogNZ challenge will help me get into a routine of weekly reflection (or at least fortnightly) for my leadership and/or education learning journey?  I hope so!

Connected Educators Month #cenz15

It's Connected Educators Month (#cenz15) and I've decided to be involved in a few ways. Firstly I am organising the #twitterdinner15 which coincides always with the ULearn conference.  This year it is being held in Auckland, so I volunteered to organise the evening.  It's no small fete organising something like this and having people pre-pay so that you aren't left hanging on the evening with unexpected expenses! I think in the last month most of my tweets have been to promote the evening! I'm looking forward to connecting face to face with many old and new tweeters!

Secondly, I've signed up to be a contibutor to EdBookNZ which is the brain-child of Sonya Van Schaijik.  This year's EdBook is based on unpacking the Practising Teacher Criteria, I'm interested in PTC12 - Teaching as Inquiry.  Below is Sonya's slideshare she presented at EduIgnite recently that explains the collaborative project.

Lastly, I've decided to be part of the #EdBlogNZ challenge, where each week 3 challenges will be posted to blog about.  I'm doing this because I've had an edu-blog for many years and would like to try and create a habit of posting more frequently my reflections about leadership, education and my edu-experiences.  There are three levels of challenges and you can choose any of the activities set from any of the levels - so I'm thinking I might ease into the challenge with this first post!  I'm hoping that I might get some comments and encouragement to make me think deeper or just encouragement to keep trying!

#edchatNZ Blogging Meme

Term three has had a busy start for me with the first three Saturdays consumed with connecting face to face with my online PLN at #educampAKLD, #educampTT and the inaugural #edchatNZ conference.  I was waiting for the end of this third event to write a post and was procrastinating, however thanks to being challenged by Bridget Casse to participate in the #edchatNZ meme I am prompted to waste no more time!

If you get included in the blogging meme: copy/paste the questions and instructions into your own blog then fill out your own answers. Share on twitter tagging 5 friends.

1. How did you attend the #Edchatnz Conference? (Face 2 Face, followed online or didn't)I was lucky enough to attend BOTH days Face 2 Face

2. How many others attended from your school or organisation?I was flying SOLO at this one however I got to carpool both days with @Mrs_Hyde, @Carobush and @annagerrit which made the trip to the other side of town a lot of fun and giggles.

3.How many #Edchatnz challenges did you complete?I got several Grelfies done over the two days, this really cheezy one first thing on arrival on Friday with Annemarie, Caroline and Diana...

and this Geeky (I say Gorgeous) Glasses Grelfie on Saturday with Bridget Casse @bridgetcasse and Phillipa @AKeenReader













I also love this one with two people that I admire greatly Annemarie and Mark










*Plus I did get people up and dancing in the very first session with Andrew Cowie (thanks to the assistance of Annemarie) video evidenced here: http://youtu.be/JMUha6UiaKc which scored me this wonderful conference prize of a Samsung Galaxy Gear (great because I'm a Samsung S4 user & Android fan)

4. Who are 3 people that you connected with and what did you learn from them?Amy McCauley - Google Sites session: subscribing to changes & making a filter in Gmail in box to sort theseAndrew Cowie - Ghostery.com an app to show what other sites are tracking your movements onlineReid Walker - the joy of seeing a tweep having "aha" moments at Pam Hook's session for primary teachers on Solo Taxonmy

5. What session are you gutted that you missed?Modern Learning Environments with Mark Osborne.  

6. Who is one person that you would like to have taken to Edchatnz and what key thing would they have learned? 

I would of loved it if Tana Klaricich could of been there in person but I know she was following via our twitter updates. 

7. Is there a person you didn’t get to meet/chat with (F2F/online) that you wished you had? WhyI wanted to make a connection with Karla Hull from Ngatea School.  I've been connecting with her a few times recently on twitter and she wasn't able to attend in the end.  I like what I've read via twitter and the blogs coming out of Ngatea School on transforming learning spaces.

8. What is the next book you are going to read and why? Alan November "Who owns the learning?" suggested this week to me twice and it's under $20 on Book Depository http://goo.gl/k7hDSj It is about students using technology to drive their learning.

9. What is one thing you plan to do to continue the Education Revolution you learnt about at #EdchatNZ?

It's ok to be a lone nut, but having a mixed group of nuts is better - variety is the spice of life - seek out the nut in others to try something new.

10. Will you take a risk and hand your students a blank canvas?In my role as a DP our staff are my initial 'students' so giving out a blank canvas supported by 'paint by numbers' is more my style

Who do will I tag with this meme: Aimie Sibson https://twitter.com/Aimiesibson

Anne Kenneally https://twitter.com/annekenn

Amy McCauley https://twitter.com/AmyMMcCauley

Diana Wilkes https://twitter.com/DianaWilkes

Michelle Simms https://twitter.com/MSimmsNZ
Gosh the formatting in this post jumped all over the place!

Reflections from the Festival of Education

The Festival of Education was held in three locations across New Zealand this week and I had the opportunity to present and attend most of the Auckland event held at the Viaduct Events Centre. Here are some reflections of my experience:

TeachMeetNZ

I had previously been part of the inaugural session of TeachMeetNZ in 2013 and enjoyed this exciting new platform for sharing professional learning, so I jumped at the opportunity of being part of the virtual presentation organised by Sonya van Schijik.  A TeachMeet is a professional learning opportunity where up to 10 presenters join a Google Hangout and share a nano presentation (approximately 3 minutes) of a strategy that is working well in their professional practice.  The Hangout is streamed live via the internet and recorded so that viewers can rewind the learning and unpack the presentations at a time that suits them.

Sonya was coordinating the session in front of a live audience at the Viaduct Events Centre and co-presenting from their homes across New Zealand in the Hangout were: Juliet Revell, Myles Webb, Monika Kern, Diana Wilkes, Emma Alaalatoa-Dale, Manu Faaea-Semeatu and myself.  The Hangout was supported by Kathy Scott as master time-keeper with her rattlesnake (aka jingle bells) and Marnel van der Spuy as chat-wing moderator and tweeter for the event.

Getting organised I joined the Hangout ten minutes prior to "going live" only to find that my computer at home wanted to allow an update for Google voice and video to optimise my Hangout experience, I allowed this and joined the Hangout - only to find I could see my fellow presenters but not hear them.  I was to present third in the line-up for the day, so was anxious as to whether I would miss my cue to start, or whether my presentation would be seen or heard.  My colleagues were great in the chat bar trying to help me out with all sorts of problem solving, and then it happened ... my computer FROZE! I was nervous already about presenting live, and the thought that I could be connected to the Hangout and not hear was already raising the nerve factor and then this! I calmly tried to shut down my computer which then had the whirring cog of death displayed - I had to resort to physically pulling the power plug out of the wall and rebooting the computer.  Now as we all know, clock watching doesn't help in these circumstances, and what seemed forever to boot back up, I finally rejoined the Hangout for TeachMeetNZ with sound and video! Hurrah! I caught my breathe, wiped off my sweaty palms and shared my presentation last.  

So what did I learn in all of this?  I truly believe that this platform for presenting and sharing ideas is valuable because it is recorded permanently and viewers can go back at anytime and rewatch the ideas being presented.  There is a supporting wikispace that clearly profiles each of the TeachMeetNZ sessions and presenters.  Each presenter has a page with links to their presentation and online digital footprint. I also learnt that many of our staff often look to contributors of events like these or facilitators as 'experts' and that things 'don't go wrong technically ever for us' however I think with my technical issues on the day, it shows that you need persistence and tenacity to keep calm and keep on trying with digital technologies.  I also have a closer connection with the presenters (albeit virtually) 
Here's my contribution to our full Google Hangout below:

Here's our Google Hangout Presentation (my segment is at 33.30):

Christian Long 

Christian spoke about the influence of The Third Teacher . In essence in every student’s life there are 3 teachers:

1. The parents/adults/teachers
2. Their peers
3. The environment - everything around us affects us (similar to the Reggio Emilia philosophy that there is an influence in the relationship between community and learning).

Christian works with a group of designers who create learning environments that are seen to have a positive influence on student learning. He has been involved in projects to repurpose old building and land, as well as designing new structures like this one below form the KOC Foundation inTurkey.

Christian spoke of the need to have more creative problem solving in the curriculum in order to equip students for the future and promoted the notion of getting into a "moonshot mindset" and getting students to "prototype" by embracing the now and launching ideas in a prototype style, rather than waiting until you are sure you have completely worked out all the kinks. I loved this video he showed that embraced this thinking - particularly the quote "have the courage to try, that's how great things happen."

John Hattie

I missed John Hattie's keynote address, however had the opportunity to join his chatroom session that continued the discussion from the keynote of "High impact, passionate teachers".  Hattie discussed the difference between expert and experienced teachers isn't the from the years of service one might have but of those teachers that work with their students at a deeper level to increase and accelerate student outcomes. The image below I snapped quickly on what expert teachers do:

Michael Fullan

I was lucky enough to attend both the keynote and chatroom session from Michael Fullan.  This felt like a real treat to be in the presence of such a respected educator.  I loved everything that he had to say, and would refer people to his website michaelfullan.ca to find a wealth of shared articles on his work.  I particularly agree with the notion of Principal as lead learner, modelling and participating in the learning and professional development that staff are undertaking. He talked about effective change occurring through the strength and sustainability of a school with the quality of the lateral relationships - "if you want to change the group, use the group to change the group" this can be achieved through leveraging the quality of knowledge and collectivity of ideas. He states that in the unplanned revolution pedagogy is the driver, technology is the accelerator -He looks to Hattie’s work which stated no correlation between technology and student outcomes, however this is possibly because the technology has been acquired without the pedagogy in mind - now there is a flip towards the pedagogy first. He also promoted the use of Hattie's discovery that Teacher as Facilitator (.17) was too passive and Teacher as Activator (.60) was the desired state for working in the deep with students as this wasn't a passive state.

Deep learning (21st Century learning skills) - Of the six characteristics 3-6 have previously been included in 21st Century learning skills however 1-2 have been added in recent times...Character - persistence, resilience etc…, Citizenship is based more on the empathetic side, global thinking.

Fullan also discussed that Principal's do not get trained in developing the group - coaching models are particularly useful to help build the capacity of the organisation. I'd refer you to the book that Fullan has written along with Hargreaves "Professional Capital" which outlines the formula

PC=f(HC, SC, DC). Professional Capital - decisional capital (quality of knowledge for decisions), social (quality of the group and purposeful relationships, collaboration) and human (quality of individual). Social capital needs to be the driver - you can have quality individuals, however if they aren’t in a culture of growth then they will be rejected - collaboration is key - to what extend do you and other teachers work in a coordinated and effective way to improve outcomes for the students. I look forward to investigating more of his work on his site and in his book Stratosphere too.

Other reflections

I loved the showcase of student work using digital technologies from schools in the Manaiakalani Trust. A delightful boy named Robin from Glen Innes School politely came up to me and asked whether I'd like to look at some of his learning on his netbook. He shared with me his learning on his blog (link to come) and we discussed the features of a quality comment which he had been learning about too.

I also got interviewed for a quick segment for the Inspired by You channel. Where I said that when I was at school Mr VK of Manurewa High (now at Botany Secondary) was inspiring because of the relationships he had with his classes to make learning fun and engaging. I thanked Kim Benjamin as a leader who was always so positive in her dialogue with others and then stated the Festival was a great opportunity to showcase the excellence and variety across the sector.

Finally, it was great to make face to face connections with many educators that I am usually online with. The Festival of Education was held over a weekend, therefore it has meant that many of us have not stopped working. The difference I think for those that contributed and attend, is our deep commitment and passion towards our own learning and contributing to the sector for better outcomes for everyone. It was disappointing then not to see it showcased in any national news broadcasts.

A Punch of Professional Development

Personalising professional learning to a whole staff is always tricky as 'one size never fits all' yet over the last year I've participated in several forms of professional learning that has catered to a wide group (all at once!). This has taken the form of "smackdowns" and unconference-style learning experiences. Smackdowns are small punches of information where tips, trick, ideas and wonderings are shared. In many cases a Google Presentation is set up and people are invited to create a slide prior to the event, when the event occurs participants must be prepared to get up in front of the audience and share their slide/knowledge. We have used the concept of a smackdown to continue weekly professional learning for our school wide blogging strategy. Each Monday at our morning briefing staff are encouraged to share 2-3 ideas about what they have found out about blogging. This way the learning is coming from the 'just in time' needs of the staff and staff see others taking a lead. The person with the designation of eLeader doesn't always have to be the source of new inspiration, staff can go to others who have shared or tried ideas. Using a smackdown has been a successful option for us - here is our weekly smackdown of growing ideas around blogging: An unconference format has also proven to be effective. This year I have attended the Emerging Leaders unconference called Ignition in the April school holidays, and at the beginning of this term Educamp Auckland using this format too. Usually when you attend a conference you are aware of who is presenting and what workshops are on offer for you to attend, with an unconference attendees turn up to the event and "post-up" workshops they are prepared to share. This way attendees create the professional learning that is to happen based on the needs, wants and ideas of the group of attendees that are in the room. It sources the collective knowledge and wisdom of the many to tailor learning. Lastly, I have found a hybrid approach to the smackdown/unconference and termed the phrase "sparkshop". I recently had the opportunity to organise a professional learning afternoon for our local eLearning network where we had 120 attendees. We started the session with a smackdown and then broke into sparkshops - 20 minutes of inspiration to spark ideas in attendees to go and try in their classrooms before the end of the term. Unlike an unconference where we would have been unsure who would be prepared to share, we approached 8 keen eLearners across the 15 network schools to present. These attendees made their contribution slide to a Google Presentation and then link their sparkshop so that everyone can view the presentations - attendees got to attend 2 sparkshops in our afternoon session. Here is our eLearning network sparkshop presentation: Finally, it's no point attending professional learning without a bias for action. Attendees were asked to fill in a pledge postcard and to record one thing that they will try between attending the eLearning network professional learning smackdown and sparkshops before the end of the term. These were collected and then school leaders will give back out in a few weeks time to see whether attendees have followed through on their pledge. Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini - success is not the work of one, but the work of many.

Ignition... restarting the journey

Three, two, one...blast off...

After four years of disconnection with the blogosphere I'm taking a bias for action and restarting my blogging journey.  At the end of June I took part in an Edu-Ignite presentation as part of the Emerging Leaders Aotearoa Ignite evening at Hobsonville Point School.  The following presentation outlines my journey with the concept of being connected, disconnected and reconnected as an educator, and the purpose for me in reconnecting with blogging is to share my leadership adventures. 

This term as part of our E-Learning professional development for staff I am expecting that each teacher at our school will write a blog post celebrating the learning in their room for the week, so I will have the same expectation for myself in this space.  I've given the blog a facelift from its previous look (below) and hope to build a positive digital footprint of leadership case studies that may engage others reading this.  So, the journey begins....(again)....

Techie-Breakie I - Reflection

Yesterday I took my first "Techie-Breakie" workshop for teachers. On my twitter the other day I got asked what one is; it simply is a short workshop/meeting before school to highlight ways in which the staff can use their laptops, class computers and web2.0 applications effectively.

I have planned to take these workshops weekly, running between 8.00-8.30am, however this first one went close to the school bell (which wasn't ideal, as teachers really should aim to be in their classes around 8.30am to ensure they are ready for the daily lessons ahead and building relationships with the children and parents that have arrived early at school).

The purpose of the first session was about using blogs because this year I have started three blogs for our three teams at school to share with the wider learning community successes and events of each team. The idea is that one class per week will be responsible for making a post of what they are learning in their class, or highlight an event. I am hoping that when staff see the power that an authentic audience has for student learning and how relatively easy it is to make a post, then they may feel encouraged to start their own individual class blogs. So a very brief post was made as an example to show the staff how to make a post.

I felt that I was well prepared, having made a wikipage of instructions and simple step by step handouts. It took a lot longer than expected as staff had not responded to an earlier email that was sent asking them to be a contributor/author to their team blog, along with a follow-up email that I had sent inviting them to come to the Techie-Breakie and to view the wikipage first. So the first session was spent mostly with setting up all the staff present with their Google Account, along with accepting their contributor/author invite for their team blog and then watching a demonstration of how I made the previous post and inserting an image.

How do I feel about this? Well I was actually quite pleased and went away from the session believing it was a success. It is only optional for staff to come to these workshops and out of 17 classrooms there were 11 teachers present, along with 2 student teachers, the other DP and our Principal; so 15 in total. I had a projector set up with my laptop so staff could see what steps to take, and a staff member who hadn't set up her accounts did it on my laptop for everyone to see, while I "coached" everyone else. I was able to go up to the screen and point out where they should be typing and working alongside staff that needed extra help. This was great for me, as a good coach should always be hands-off in my mind and the staff member should be doing! After the workshop was over, I made a follow-up email inviting all staff to go through the steps of what we did in the session by making a Google account, and accepting their invitation for the team blogs. I also encouraged the staff members present to go back and help our colleagues that did not come to coach them through this process.

The best warm fuzzy I got was when our assistant principal for the junior team later in the day made her first post to her team's blog. She inserted images all by herself and I coached her through using the Edit Html tabs to cut and paste the image to the correct position on the blog. I was really proud of her because she made a post with several images and text. I hope she now feels more confident using this feature and now she will be able to coach, lead and encourage the other staff in her team.

Where to next? Well my goal this term is for all teachers to make a post to their team blogs using simply text and images of an event in their classroom. From here I would like to introduce how to insert videos, slideshows, voicethread and moving images (like bubbleshare). At one of the next full staff meetings I need to recap internet safety with the staff and our responsibility to not break copyright by the correct attribution of sources.

photo credit: Beautiful Tools by Geishaboy500 http://www.flickr.com/photos/49503154413@N01/100043823

Getting my son connected

Today I started a blogspace for my son (mr8) to help him get motivated with his learning. He unfortunately tends to lacks in confidence with his written work and struggles a bit with his math. I want him to feel excited about learning and using the internet and so am sort of conducting my own experiment. I believe it will also give me a great opportunity to work alongside him and strengthen our relationship (rather than always nagging about school work). This will be our portal to learn and discover together.

I want mr8 to be able to do everything to do with posting to his blog. I have initially helped to set up the layout of the blog (but he has chosen the theme and widget counters). He has written his first welcome message and is eager to get on his blog. He doesn't understand that first of all he needs to think, plan,reflect what he wants to put on there and what he needs to learn in order to do so. We have made a list of things like 1)take a photo; 2)upload photo from camera onto pc; 3)upload photo into blogpost; 4) write about it; and 5)publish it. With all this eagerness can you believe that I've got no charged batteries for the digital camera! What a way to put a dampner on the start of his IT journey (sorry son).

There is going to be learning journey for me too. Firstly to not give in to temptation to touch the keyboard and secondly to be patient. How is it that I'm more patient with the kids at school than my own children? So I'm hoping it's going to stregthen our relationship too. The first learning I've had to do is to work out how to use PhotoStory3 for windows. This is a free download. I'd heard of it before (at least 3 years ago now,but never used it). I quickly downloaded the programme and within ten minutes had quickly put this trial clip together. Now mr8 will be able to have a go and use the saved photos we have on our computer to make a Photostory to post to his blog. You can visit my son's blog here. Below is my first trial of using Photostory3: