CENZ15 and the Core Badges

Stoked!




When I went through the list of badges it was awesome to see just how much I've actually done - based on the descriptions and whether I'd actually earned them or not. Very cool.




Here's the link to my list of badges: http://badges.core-ed.org/#/badges/29db943819c4209739aedf49fe39f61073d87ade17c6063b43fae93f78fb378e




Uploading now so I can add the link to my prof site later.

Inspiration and Refinding Passion

I say I'm a learning sponge. I soak up bits and pieces that interest me. Let other bits seep out and away... I enjoy learning and sharing. Develo0ing ideas together with others and challenging myself to understand other people's points of view.

Living with the dog and the cat, phone calls home mostly to talk about the weather differences and any raruraru going on - kind of leaves me bored.

I search and search for inspiration. Hold it tight to me when I find it and then when it goes away... I'm forced to find the next thing. Because it's not enough anymore. I'm not inspired by what I do. I used to be. I can be. But at the moment... it's routine.

Checking in on assessments, marking assessments and inputting assessment data for students to gather credits. The juniors I can still be innovative with but even they have lost motivation.

After the holiday break where I spent a considerable amount of time learning... I came home absolutely buzzing. Because I'd had such an awesome experience. Because I'd met so many fabulous people. Because I'd learnt and remembered that I can elicit change and inspire others.

I'm frustrated and apathetic.

I try to do bits and pieces where I can.

I feel like I'm lacking in inner inspiration and jeez - it's only Thursday night - week 1 - Term 4. And yes - sure it's Term 4 but - I don't know. I just need something more. Craving that something that I'm not currently getting and wondering how I can hold onto that feeling that I can actually inspire and be inspired.

Perhaps I'm just tired.

Even if being tired is just the problem - I think there remains the underlying issue that my inspiration battery isn't recharging automatically anymore. It's draining quicker than before and I hope that my next big learning with the MindLab will kickstart that inspiration truly and totally. Because we need it. I need it.

Things are still moving too slowly. I'm still too impatient. There are just so many cool experiences and opportunities out there. For my students and for me. And I need to figure out how to capitalise on all of them to ensure the best output and learning for everyone.

Think this has been weighing on me for a while now. Just had a massive breath let out and feel a lot less heavy on the shoulders and in the mind.

How to recharge and keep my battery charged?

I wonder whether Aristotle or Grant Lichtman have any whakatauki for me...

Pat Snedden - Keynote 3 - Manaiakalani and Historical Background on the need for Equity - #ULearn15

Amazing speaker!!

My notes:


Storified Tweets:

Collaborative Notes:

Presentation Slides:

Overall Takeaways:

Designing Innovative Learning Environments - Breakout 4 - Mark Osborne - #ULearn15

Probably the most practical session and I seriously needed this after all of the thinking about enviroments that I'd been doing that day! Brilliant session. First time I was able to check out Mark Osborne's korero and it was incredibly refreshing.

Notes here:




Storified Tweets:

Collaborative Notes here:


Overall Takeaways:

BYOD Journey at Waitakere College - Breakout 6 - Lee Devenish, Shona Smith and Catalina Espinoza - #ULearn15

Really enjoyed this session! Came in a little bit late but had just finished a really cool conversation with the Canvas LMS exhibitor. Will blog about that soon too!

Super impressed with the quick turnaround of the journey to BYOD for the whanau at Waitakere College. It gives me hope that we can do it at Heights too!!

Overall Site info: https://sites.google.com/a/waitakerecollege.school.nz/professional-learning/ulearn-2016

Presentation Slides: https://goo.gl/g7W0km


Storified Tweets:

Collaborative Notes:



They shared this too:

The most amazing Google Form that was used to collate data from staff in order to upskill them and to see how well they have changed their practices over a year of BYOD implementation.

This is embedded so that I can create a modified copy for our own school. 

Please do not fill this in as it will skew the Waitakere data.

Overall Takeaways:
Sincerly impressed by the efforts of Lee in his role as e-learning facilitator. Really need to talk to him more about how he's done it.

Love that he broke the session down into categories:
- Strategic Overview
- Growing the Leadership
- Infrastructure/Hardware
- Growing the Teachers
- Growing Digital Citizens
- Equity Issues
- Platforms, tools and software - what they used to support the learning
- Practicalities

Tauatanga - Breakout 5 - Wharehoka Wano

From the minute I sat down to listen to this korero I was fully engaged. Beautiful whakaaro!!!!!!

Notes:

Storified Tweets:

Collaborative Notes:

Overall Takeaways:
Truly impressive korero. Felt fully involved and included. Some interesting whakaaro around the idea of fixed term units - which aren't allowed to be that way due to our collective agreements. As a result there are limited opportunities to become acknowledged for leadership potential because people tend to hold on to units rather than share them around.

#LibraryCheerleaders or Has the Grim Reaper got its eye on Libraries - Breakout 3 - Paula Eskett

Absolutely LOVED this breakout. Was exactly what I'd hoped it would be. So glad that I ditched the taster I was going to check out and went to that one instead.

My tweets were frantic, notes ecstatic and overwhelmingly stoked at being part of collaborative change.

There are just so many cool things that we could do with our spaces in our libraries. They will never die. They always evolve. But our practices need to evolve to be able to create more beneficial and effectice spaces for our students and our staff to learn in.

I loved the aspect of community hub for learning - where all are welcome to come in. I think that we need to truly rethink what we've been doing and think about what the next steps are for us.

Paula was incredibly passionate, driven and totally positive. Beautifully presented and am a total new fan of her work. Am hopeful we can ask her to come help when we redesign and rethink the future of our library at school too.

She gave some great ideas, challenged our thinking and more importantly made us evolve our perception of what future libraries have for us.

She made mention of the libraries in Alexandria. They've stood the test of time and will continue to do so. We just need to reimagine how we use them.

Still loving the idea of the library as a gateway to knowledge, rather than just a repository of knowledge.

Here's the notes I took:

The Storified Tweets:

Paula's presentation sans the copyrighted photos that were uber cool that she'd gotten permission to use from the owners: 

Reminded me of the simplistic aspect of asking for permission and being granted access rather than stealing and using and hoping for the best....

Here are the links to all of the documents she discussed during the presentation from LIANZA and other organisations:

Overall Takeaways:

Am just so inspired. Really interested to see how we could rethink our space. Our library as a hub. How we might use it for tutorials to build elearning skills and build on understanding of staff and students alike. How our library can truly become a hub. How we could use it for meetings and how we need to empower our students to take ownership and accountability in the library. How we could reimagine how we currently use the space and rethink the purpose. How we might bring in more students to the library and how it might be used for music events!! How we need to think about catering for those students whose love for reading just isn't there but who still need the spark. How we might use social media to cater to our audience and truly become a hub for all thst is happening in our library. Using past and current and future students to help in the redesign and thinking about what works and what needs changing.

I really really wish that there had been more of our teachers at the conference - rather than just me. Such an awesome experience.

I honestly feel empowered to try and help facilitate change. It's necessary to breathe life back into our libraries. To make our students feel welcome and believe that the space is theirs too.

I really really wish that I could have spent longer in this breakout and had more power to enable a change in something as big as a redesign of our school library. I need to stop saying that I'm "just a teacher". We have the power to change things and we just need to work together to enable this to be a possibility. If we can do this - we can do anything.

Ann Lieberman - Keynote 2 - Teachers as the Heart of Professional Change

Really enjoyed Ann's keynote! A beautiful woman who was humble and clear. That look on her face was stunning when everyone began clapping at the end. Still so touched by the gratitude and appreciative whanau at ULearn. She spoke the truth. If we want change - we are the heart of it.

Collaborative notes:

Tweets:

General Takeaways:

Twitter Dinner - Representing Class Dojo

Was so awesome to see everyone and get to meet some new f2f buddies too. I got to the Twitter Dinner a bit late but had enjoyed myself talking with one of the awesome guys at Furnware discussing effective learning environments.

Incredibly thankful to Class Dojo for helping to sponsor our refreshments at Twitter Dinner and found the presentation went really well! It was a bit difficult without speakers for the videos or a mic because we had to speak so loud over the quietened music in the restaurant.

Super thankful to Campbell Potter for his ongoing support and offer to help present how he uses Dojo as well.

Gave out a couple of bags... wish I'd brought more because I'd given so many out during the first day. Am betting that the stickers went to school but forgot to go past school before I drove to Auckland. Will share stickers out at the next event and with my students too who have probably been my biggest supporters.

Thanks to Hamish my co-community lead for bringing more bags the next day as I probably would have run out much faster if you hadn't have given me the new lot!! :)

Hopefully encouraged some new CD users during conference and am looking forward to doing an abstract next year for Dojo.

Thanks again Class Dojo!

Blogging for Beginners - Breakout 2

This will essentially become a collaborative post once we both add in our different bits and pieces.

At the moment though - before I think too deeply about how it went I'd just like to say a massive thankyou to Nathaniel for allowing me to be a part of this new journey! Was an absolute pleasure presenting with you e hoa. For all my procrastination - I hope I didn't disappoint you! Think we did pretty well really and most people seemed to enjoy it. Wish we'd done some quick feedback at the end though.

Our presentation slides are here:
https://docs.google.com/a/whhs.school.nz/presentation/d/19DGsuOJpWAfJUGMc6jEjFKjUq5SzDn1dKrErmno4KQc/edit?usp=docslist_api

Kahoot Quiz for those playing at home:
https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/392f773d-f566-4fac-b5fb-dc9c56ea0b5a

Crowdsourced Padlet from Twitter buddies - Why Blog:
http://padlet.com/nlouwrens/whyblog

Crowdsourced Padelt from Blogging workshop - What we might learn:
padlet.com/nlouwrens/ulearnblog

List of newbie bloggers here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-t_ltCAk39jzR48vJ3Tji7lTjsse1Nh_cfE4kScfUQE/edit?usp=docslist_api

General Takeaways:
I was initially overwhelmed by the quick uptake of both EdBlogNZ and our sign up sheet for our workshop. Even more surprised that our workshop filled up so fast! Perhaps we needed to offer a couple of sessions? Maybe next year!!

I always feel a bit jittery before presenting but feel like I'm slowly becoming more confident and am able to present a lot better. Would love some feedback and feedforward - am I talking too fast, am I mumbling, do I help enough etc etc etc

It was cool to be able to share the teaching and facilitate the session. I find it funny that I do so much prior knowledge and checking in with the audience just like I do with my own students. Partly because I was aware of how disengaged I was in the last breakout and wished we'd been properly asked about our level of understanding throughout the session- so I made sure to keep checking in with our audience to gauge their understanding. 

I liked the digital mihi at the beginning and that Nathaniel did his i te reo Māori before explaining i te reo Pākēhā. Mine was a bit more jumbly and switched between both languages and I didn't include my maunga nor much of my throwbacks. But think I captured my true essence in my pics! Mia, siblings, twitter and selfies. Haha

It was cool to see all of the attendees actually create their own blogs and become so involved in the discussion. Think I should only have had maybe 8 Kahoot questions and made them even simpler perhaps - hopefully they take the app and use it in their class as they do with the Padlet.

Am wondering how many listed their blogs into our shared doc as well:

Am hoping they all work together and keep writing after ULearn. It's a kickstart that we all need. And it's important that we all push ourselves to keep writing, curating information and developing and evolving our thought processes.

EdBlogNZ challenges are still running!

GAFE - Breakout 1

In the description when choosing breakouts, this session looked absolutely amazing! However - it was dissappointing for me personally because it wasn't targeted at what I actually wanted to learn about - as the description had mentioned it might be about. Perhaps the descriptors need to be more focussed on the targeted audience and levelling? Not sure but definitely needs changing somehow.

One of the good things about the breakout though was this collaborative document for crowdsourced chrome apps.

https://docs.google.com/a/whhs.school.nz/document/d/19GdFLFdxn-qJM8P-8oUzLCbGJANYcFtM6Z9BL5i8ZV4/edit?usp=docslist_api

There were some good ideas being presented - like the need to sort the infrastructure and tech out first before you could move into the other stages. Perhaps they just tried to fit so much in and their message became jumbled as a result. Hmm.

Not really the best start to my ULearn conference. Luckily though - my own breakout was up next!!

Grant Lichtman - Keynote 1

Absolutely brilliant idea to start with this keynote for ULearn! What an inspirational guy :) I very quickly became a fan girl!!

I really really want to buy his book too. EdJourney. Because it is a journey. Creating a ubiquitous learning opportunity that is equitable is difficult - but our students need it.

Grant's TedTalk:
http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/What-60-Schools-Can-Tell-Us-Abo

Collaborative Notes for Grant's keynote:

Storified Tweets:

Overall takeaways:

ULearn15 - Overview

Firstly, before I say anything else, I just want to say the hugest of thanks to Jenna and Class Dojo. You guys truly made me feel so appreciated and valued and more importantly welcome into this massive CD whanau. It was an absolute pleasure being able to go to ULearn on behalf of Class Dojo and I was able to talk with a lot of people about the app and share ideas, swag and Twitter handles!

This year - I honestly think I've got the hang of conferencing. It truly is all about the networking, the learning, the building on ideas and collaboration, sharing and listening. I feel sometimes though that my conference experience may differ from others purely because I've put a lot of effort into getting to know lots of awesome educators and learning as much as I can to help my own practice and my school too.

I was overwhelmed by how awesome the keynotes were from Grant Lichtman and Pat Snedden. Totally inspired by four out of the five breakouts I went to. Loved the breakout that Nathaniel and I presented at and wish we'd even had more time to delve into the more deeper stuff than we'd done. Maybe next year! :)

I've written screeds of tweets and some notes for different breakouts and keynotes.

Barely wrote a thing during Pat's korero because I was utterly transfixed by everything he was saying.

Spent most of my time in Ann Lieberman's keynote sorting out the wifi and Tweetdeck issues - gave up and used my data and created the Day One ULearn Storify. Totally redundant now because it will be ridiculous to try and do a day 2 and day 3... there must be a better filtering system so I can search for time periods?

Really liked what she had to say and I think it's important to be aware of ongoing leadership and growing ourselves.
Am still perplexed by the messages from our Political members that came to conference to speak but I suppose there will always be an agenda - no matter whose it is...

Still stoked at the number of Class Dojo bags I was able to give away and wish I'd taken more each day because I kept running out!

Feeling like I need to really think through the perspectives and whakaaro from all the speakers and put everything together over the next 24 hours. Another update to come soon. Sleep for now! :)

Lastly, a massive thank you to all of the awesome newbie bloggers that came to our workshop. You were all super supportive and hope you have all been inspired to start/keep writing!

EdBlogNZ Challenges

Absolutely stoked with the amount of people that have signed up to the EdBlogNZ challenges!

As always I'm starting late - as I tend to do with these challenges but I'm excited to take part in this.

Since our CENZ presentation on GHO last year during Connected Educator month, have been again and again impressed and humbled by the sheer awesomeness that Nathaniel Louwrens has in working towards building a more collaborative and connected community of bloggers in NZ.

With the very early beginnings of EdBlogNZ these past few months it's been an absolute honour to have been asked to take part and be involved as an admin for the blog. There's been so many tweets and sharing of teacher's blogs - it's been awesome to see so many people get involved. The blog roll using the RSS feeds is particularly brilliant. It makes finding new blogs so much easier to read. I've tried commenting on a bunch and need to read more too.

The past couple of weeks with the beginning of Connected Educator month has been overwhelmingly awesome - the sheer number of people getting involved and the challenges that have been completed. So so cool!

Am really looking forward to ULearn when we do our presentation too because it's always good to work with Nathaniel and I really love getting newbies into blogging. A captive audience helps this too! :) 36 people in our workshop. Pretty exciting!

Now to just finish the slides (always a procrastinator) and get some blogging challenges done myself! :)

Quick Update: Term 3 Holiday Break

So we're now halfway through Term break and I still haven't been able to completely rid myself of the bags under my eyes - but I've had a pretty good break so far.

Term three is always full on. Stressful and draining. Partly because of the pressure to get as many students passing their internals as possible - which have now all been marked! Yay! And also because to get them to that point there is a bit of a second wind of motivation needed after readying them for prelim exams. There was the quick turnaround of senior reports where I had to ask to see certain parents - and the disappointing outcome on parent teacher interview night where only four of my student's parents were able to make it.

Now that we're heading into Term four I keep thinking about all the things that need to be done. I've got most of the revision stuff sorted, I'd like to make my juniors courses more interesting but for the next three weeks I have to focus on my seniors and their revision and carry on with the programme I set up for my juniors last term. Am just glad that it's the Tiriti o Waitangi and creative writing for their booklets.

Surely though - I should be all rested and off on a holiday right? Perhaps. I write this as I'm still tired so there isn't much pep in my step haha.

I had an awesome time at PPTA conference last week. I need to do the Storify for it. Am a bit nervous to do so though due to a few member's inappropriate use of Twitter. I ranted quite a bit at our NETs caucus meeting, took screenshots and will do what I need to do to ensure that something so disgustingly inappropriate doesn't happen again. It frustrates me that grown men can be so immature and disrespectful to our other members and keynote speakers. It comes back to digital citizenship and how we conduct ourselves online - especially as professionals.

Anyway - despite that raru - it was an awesome time. I'm glad I was able to take two of my colleagues from school with me and they've both been bitten by the PPTA bug too. Stoked. :) They'll be coming back.

Had a moderation meeting yesterday for the level 2 writing portfolio - which was really cool. Wish we could do that more often. I learnt that I can stand my ground when I believe my assessment is correct and it was cool to see that 9 times out of 10 I was right because my assessment was endorsed by another.

Still need to finish the slides for our workshop tomorrow. Am nervous. But excited all the same.

Still many things that need doing - like packing again before I drive to Auckland before ULearn begins. Finish doing my washing while it stays sunny here in Rotorua. Play with Mia so that I can get a few more minutes sleep later on before I drive up. Hang out with Dad for a bit before he goes back to Opo. Clean the house before my mate comes over tomorrow to look after Mia for me while I'm gone.

Will write a better post later about PPTA and ULearn. Still need to update the PLD post too...So many things to do and it's already Tuesday!