Reflections for Learning

I have been an educator for more that 20 years in both primary and secondary education. Over the last 10 years I have had an emphasis in my teaching on the use of technology in education for both adult and student learners.

In recent times I have been reflecting upon work, education and the processes that enable me to support all learners. I have reflected upon these practices and decided that some of my practices are very good pedagogy and other areas have room for improvement.

My Learning journey Mantra

 

I am writing this blog to share my courses, practices and reflections on a daily basis. I believe it is important to reflect regularly. Daily reflections will bring to light the small things and the reflections for both successes and failures. As it is my belief that these are equally important in education and sharing these demonstrates both the development of new ideas and the ongoing learning for the improvement of both my practices and the learning options in the classroom.

I look forward to developing this blog and sharing my Digital Teaching and Learning. I hop you enjoy this blog and please join in the conversation.Rachael

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Innovator’s Mindset series – Education, Innovation and change #IMMOOC

This post is the first in a series of posts in response to the Innovator’s Mindset book study MOOC, By George Couros (@GCouros). I am hoping this will form the foundation of my next steps in my role as a leader in our College. All ideas I have and share are my own and will be raw and unpolished. I look forward to the feedback I get from readers to further refine my ideas.

What is the purpose of Education?

I believe the purpose is to prepare students for their and our future. It should teach resilience, growth mindset, critical thinking and how to create information to create knowledge.

Is innovation necessary in Education?

Yes, it must reflect change with the world innovation may not be something completely new – just new and better in your setting and for your context.

How are you embracing change to spur innovation in your own context?

Recently changing school, state and moving into leadership, I have embraced change in many ways. Now I will encourage others to join me on a journey of change and innovation to make education in our setting new and better. Some strategies that we must embrace, that I have identified through reading this and other books include:

• make connections to the heart of educators and students to enhance connections with our mind.
• compliance, for teachers or students, does not foster innovation.
• all students have a sense of wonder, an opportunity to explore, to become leaders and leave school more curious than when they started.

The challenges I am sure to face include pushback from some staff which I will need to work on motivating all staff “one snowball at a time,” empower our teachers to make changes through small manageable steps that are not time consuming and leadership modelling of the desired practices which will enable everyone to succeed. We will build relationships through shared experiences and become lifelong learners, learning from within the expertise in our College.

The Education Stronghold

Higher education certification – senior year at school including the pressure cooker situation of year 12 and the end of year exams, waiting to see your final results of schooling and then the waiting scenario for which universities might (or might not) offer you from your choices that you originally made over 3 months ago (although these could be altered in the meantime). Is there any wonder questions need to be raised about this process and the validity of it in our world of technology and connectedness?

My Google 20% Story

I have begun reflecting upon the books that I have been reading and this book is a great inspiration to my teaching practices; “The Google Story” by David A. Vise. You can read my reflections about this book here.

I have proven when education embraces some of the lessons learnt by Brin and Page into the life lessons being taught across the world that there is greater success and innovation. Every teacher can start this by simply asking the students about their creative ideas and providing the Google innovation “20% time” to develop and incubate these ideas.

Mindset

We all have students who dislike attending school, and will take a day off at any opportunity. I often ask why this is, and when we look at all of the fun things students do outside of school, it is no wonder that they would rather be at home. They can explore, operate by their own schedules, don’t have overbearing adults watching over their every move and telling them what to do every minute of the day. At home students learn from their earliest years and then at the age of approximately 5 years old they are pushed off to an environment that pushes and prods them into a form of learning that is more often than not, not the best learning environment or technique.

The Key to Communication

As educators and professionals in a very demanding role we are all aware that we have a responsibility to keep the communication loop open and feedback is an important part of our work. We must communicate with colleagues, leaders, our students and their families, as well as the broader community. This is all on top of the core business we have of supporting the learning and exploration of concepts outlined in the governing curriculum to rank students against a continuum of learning outcomes and communicate this information with the stakeholders who require this information.

Loneliness doesn’t come form having no one around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that are important to you.

From Learning to Exploring

With only a week before school returns for 2015, I am beginning to consolidate my ideas into planning for the new school year. As the Digital Technologies Teacher K-7 (plus a year 11/12 course) I am keen to continually innovate and push the boundaries. I have a new leader in the STEM curriculum area, whom I believe will be supportive of innovation, and a very supportive Principal who has given me license to push towards innovation and making a difference in my field, but to always reflect and evaluate upon the implications.

When I plan for the new Australian Curriculum – Digital Technology I know there will be many challenges and a very steep learning curve to navigate. I took the opportunity to begin some coding with some students at the end of last year during the Hour Of Code, which was received well by some students, so I believe they are up for the challenge and change. My big idea for the year is to allow more freedom to the students in what they will explore and learn. I want them to take more responsibility for their learning and the direction of their work. I know some students will run with this and thrive in the new learning format and space that is being provided, and others will need guidance and modelling every step of the way. This is an effect of the education system we traditionally impose on our students.

Going Google

I have been using Google Apps for approximately 12 months and I have spoken to many educators who have gone through the process of becoming a Google Certified Teacher. I am inspired by this and believe I have the knowledge and skills to achieve this. My plan became actions when, in April I travelled to Sydney for the Ed Tech Team’s Google Summit. I thought I was very knowledgeable with my use of the suite and my goal for the conference was to make connections and meet some inspirational educators along the way. Instead, I learnt so much my brain was almost ready to explode after 2 days of “Google in Action”. I also learnt that there is so much I DON’T know about the suite and in particular the scripts that make the suite so much more powerful.

Following this, I returned home inspired and determined to achieve Google Certification. I studied thoroughly and completed the exams to achieve Google Certified Educator within a week of leavng Sydney. This was another steep, but very rewarding,  learning curb. I now felt knowledgeable enough to present my skills to a wider audience. This opportunity came when I applied to present at our upcoming professional Development Day.

Digital Leaders Project

On the mid year school holidays I was a part of the wonderful CEGSA Conference in Adelaide. As a committee member this year and seeing all of the organisation falling into place was a wonderful experience for me. Personally I was involved in getting “The Ed Tech Crew” Podcast team to attend and broadcast many interviews with presenters and delegates.

Often when we attend such large conferences as delegates we are excited about the possibilities. We return to the classroom invigorated and inspired to make change and implement all for the wonderful ideas we have been presented with. Unfortunately although, all too often we keep up the “new and shiny ideas” for the short term but resort back to tradition and our old habits.

This year, one of the key note presentations was by Nick Jackson (Online Educational Designer at University of South Australia). His presentation on the Digital Leaders Project he initiated at his previous school in the UK.

This, like many presentations, lit a spark in the hearts and minds of several delegates, and at the end of the presentation Nick invited everyone to contact him for more information if they are interested.

Days later, as I trawled through my local hang-out place – Twitter, I noticed a conversation involving some delegates and Nick (@largerama) about an upcoming hangout. I got myself involved and began my journey.

Since then I have participated in the hangouts to discuss the porgress and projects of school’s programs. I have also had Nick visit our College to support me in my launch process. We discussed several ideas and after discussing with the students their interests I found the common thread for most was Minecraft. When this was offered to the students as an alternative lunchtime activity Minecraft Monday’s was born. Since this there has been a core group of students who attend each week with several coming intermittently. These students range from year 4-7 at the moment.

Minecraft

What I have observed from these students is that they are always working to improve through self monitoring, motivating and encouragement of all players. The students are working together to achieve a goal and share knowledge. Since this I decided to persue an offer to host a Minecraft camp at our College. This camp provides players the opportunity to paritcipate in a community of Minecraft players from within our College and beyond.  They will be explosed to curriculum learnign without even knowing.

My hopes as a result of hosting this camp is that the Minecrafters at Ocean View College are able to begin usign their time to develop and demonstrate digital resources using Minecraft to teachers. As this goal develops I will present the idea of participating as a Digital Leader at the ACEC2014 National Conference in October next year.

For more information about the Digital Leaders Project you can contact me through the messages below or watch the Google Hangouts at the links below.

Oz Digital Leaders Hangout 1 – 23 July 2013

Oz Digital Leaders Hangout 2 – 13 August 2013

Oz Digital Leaders Hangout 3 – 27 August 2013 with Michael French

Oz Digital Leaders Hangout 4 – 3 September 2013

Oz Digital Leaders Hangout 5 – 22 October 2013 with Amber Wurst (Year 9 Digital Leader Participant)

Challenging Myself

I have been thinking about my lack of blogging quite a bit in recent times.  I have an idea but for one reason or another I can’t get it down. Either I’m teaching or away from the computer, then by the time I can write the inspiration is gone.  In my own mind I have written a blog post every week. In reality I have only written 12 posts.

I know the importance of this process of reflection but unfortunately too often my life gets in the way. Earlier in the year I made a plan but this has not been as successful as I had hoped so now for a slightly new plan. And just as I suspected back then that my greatest challenges are with time management and how to get the posts written. I believe this is the same feeling students have when they are presented with an assignment and struggle for motivation and ideas. To make the team more manageable we tell students to break it down into small parts and tackle one part at a time. So this is what I’m going to do…

I read blogs that are written by highly respected educators such as George Couros, Alec Couros, Free tech for teachers & Jarrod Lamshed to name a few. More notably, I also have a personal connection with most of these bloggers and I believe what they say is extremely valuable, but I also recognize that I need to look further than my small circle and branch out to read more widely.

So over the next month (keeping thing small and manageable to stay with) I plan to seek and read regular posts from a wide variety of educators and bloggers in the hope that I can build some momentum to improve and increase my own bogging. In my regular practices I also listen to a number of podcasts reeled to education, this may also become another avenue for me to engage professionally for ideas and ways to present my blog.

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by vanhookc

I will reflect on my own experiences and make connections. This with specify allocated, uninterrupted time to write. I should be on track to make bogging a regular habit rather than random and intermittent.

I also hope this will initiate more conversation with me and my readers whom I feel I let down by not producing regular posts…and yes I know I have visitors almost daily thanks to the dashboard stats… 🙂

I do believe my voice is as important as any educator who shares with us their experiences I just need to share more of mine. I have plenty but I don’t want my blog to become an outlet of frustrations about other teachers who refuse to engage with technology or negativity towards students using social networks and it’s “associated risks”. Because I have plenty of these experiences.

Do you have any suggestions on blogs I should read? Either education, technology relates or just well written blogs to get me motivated and moving.

Rachael