#educampAKL

My first time attending #educampAKL. Not only did I love catching up with old and new friends from near and far, I absolutely loved the sharing, collaborating and learning. Here is a collection of the tweets. Feel free to follow the links to access the resources shared at #educampAKL. Can't wait for next year! Thanks heaps to Stuart Kelly and Jacque Allen for hosting and organising, and to N4L and Cognition Education for sponsoring the event!

Fine lines; to blog or not to blog

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Do you blog, and if so, why? For me, blogging is an extension of talking through an issue or a problem. Yes, I am pleased when my visitor count spikes up. Yes, I am pleased when someone leaves a positive comment. But ultimately, blogging is one of the ways for me to make sense of the world around me and what I am learning, and I like putting this out there publicly as others might be interested in it.

You obviously read blogs if you are reading this post, why do you read them? I have many blogs in my Feedly, and while I don't always get to read everything, I pick up on bloggers' ideas, tips, links and resources, and I surely have learnt lots from them.

Many educators take to Google+, Twitter, Facebook etc. and voice their opinions and concerns there. I visit many of them on occasions, and in addition to my private FB account have a professional one (simply a second FB profile, connected to a different email) which I use infrequently only, but amongst many other things I have recently read about NZ teachers fearing they might get restricted in what they say online, similar to restrictions some other occupations seem to have.

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There is a fine line between being a private person and a professional and the things we can and cannot say. It is not always easy to distinguish between the two of them, e.g. I have blogged previously about being a parent and a teacher. I have been in professional roles where everything I sent out or posted online has been scrutinised as to how it might affect my employer's image. This had a marked effect on what I was blogging about, and the amount of posts. There was no option to be a 'private professional' without association to that particular organisation as in our networked world connections are made with ease. Having returned in the classroom, everything I write about my thoughts and questions in relation to my role can easily be connected back to my school (to save you the search, it's Mangonui School, one of the coolest little schools in the Far North of New Zealand). But I don't think there is anything wrong with thinking and asking questions, as teachers we are inquiring professionals.

I am strong believer that social media is fundamentally just another form of communication; just as a conscientious professional would not speak inappropriately of their employers or their clients in public, the same ought to apply online. I doubt that in New Zealand a profession would be restricted on voicing their opinion, thoughts and questions on a matter if it was done in a thoughtful and courteous way (and I hope I'm not wrong there). The thoughts and discussions created by such posts can be extremely rich and can help lift the whole profession. There is another fine line though: If we only blog about 'appropriate' matters, potentially where goes debate, discussion and healthy disagreement? 

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Often young people are accused of using social media inappropriately but I don't believe it is an issue of age. We all need to think about how we word what we say - no matter what the medium is. I am afraid though that some professionals could remove themselves from social media in fear or misunderstanding of what they can and cannot say online and how to say it. I for myself have to say that I would be a much poorer learner and educator in a world without the rich online discussions.

I will continue to blog about my thoughts, questions, about what puzzles me, because to paraphrase the amazing +Manu Faaea-Semeatu unless you give something to the online world, there is nothing for you to take. How about you?

Inaugural #EdCampQLD - Storify

Flick app

I'm impressed by how apps and programmes are starting to play nicely across different platforms, Flick is one of these examples. I was introduced to this app by teachers at one of my New Zealand schools in 2014, originally it allowed you to move images from one Apple device to another, e.g. from your MacBook to your iPad and vice versa - rather than plugging the iPad into the MacBook and moving files that way. Last week I found out that Flick can do much more now:

From http://getflick.io/Flick_Windows.pdf 

In a multi-platform BYOD environment this could be a simple and free tool to share images and now documents between the different devices.

What is the use of this in the classroom? If I was in an environment without a reliable cloud platform such as GAFE or O365, this would be a simple way to share an image and / or document between any number of different devices connected to the same wifi.

Note: There is now an auto-destruct feature which reminds me a lot of snapchat (and the controversy around it). As with all digital technologies, we need to ensure we keep (digital) citizenship rights and responsibilities in mind at all times.

Applying 21CLD in Teacher Professional Learning

Yesterday I went to the GEG Gold Coast Meet-up - loved being amongst a small group of like-minded people! +Greg O'Connor presented to supporting Literacy with Chrome - ultimately UDL though he didn't use the term - and while I knew a lot of the tools he mentioned, I learnt quite a bit, too. +Michael Mathews talked about how he using using Google Sites at his school as a way for teachers and students to be involved in sharing what is going on which was very cool, too. I got talking with Greg briefly, about how I have been thinking about applying what we tell teachers to do in their classrooms in our working with them. He made a good point when he mentioned how he was trying to incorporate the UDL approaches into his work with teachers, and I was mulling this over on the way back.

I think I have incorporated more UDL approaches in my work with teachers than I used to but still I have the niggling feeling that I could improve my facilitation. I keep on thinking, too often we do to teachers what we don't want them to do in class ("sit down, be quiet, eyes to the front" etc.). Does this help or hinder our teachers from applying their learning in their classrooms? Also, is it really UDL I'm thinking about, or is it something else?

Through taking up my ELH role I am in the fortunate position to facilitate workshops on 21CLD. While I had often talked about collaboration, about creating new knowledge, real-world problem solving etc., what that exactly looks like in practise and how to develop these skills to a high degree had sometimes remained a bit vague. Through the ITL research and the 21CLD programme I have gained much greater clarity of what the skills are that we belief our learners need to be successful in the future. Whatever you might call it, 21C or Future Focussed Learning, many of us share the believe that education has to change to prepare young people for their future. At the same time I believe that we learn a lot by modelling, so if I want my teachers to support the development of 21C skills in their students, it would be helpful for me to model this and support them to develop these skills themselves.

All of the above has led to my decision to inquire into my practise: How can I support teachers to develop 21C skills and apply these in their classrooms by utilising the 21CLD approach in my own practise?

I am using this model for my professional inquiry, if you would like to follow and inquire into your practise, I will describe the steps I intend on taking below:

Inquiry learning and action spiral for networks (Timperley, Kaser and Halbert, 2012)

I have been informally scanning for a little while: What's going on for the teachers I am working with?

• They are busy professionals.
• Some though not all teachers agree with the need to change the way we teach our students.
• There are many sometimes seemingly conflicting ideas, initiatives, tools they get bombarded with.
• Student achievement is often seen as a measurement of their effectiveness as teachers.
• Some teachers feel overwhelmed by technology, struggle with it themselves; other teachers are more confident users of technology but are yet to figure out how technology use fits into the bigger picture. There are some teachers who have got it all 'sussed' and integrate technology effectively into their 21C classrooms -> there is obviously huge variability!

(Looks awfully familiar to a regular classroom and no, I did not write it intentionally that way! However, different to a regular classroom, I do not get to see them every day, every week or even every month, sometimes I meet them once only.)

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My focus will be on applying 21CLD: How can we design our learning activities so learner are required to develop and apply 21C skills?
I chose to focus on this because I believe this is really vital to set our young people up for success. As I am relatively new to this particular programme, this will also help me understand it better.
While it would be tempting to just apply this in 21CLD sessions, I want to make sure I consider this for sessions outside this course, also. I would prefer not to narrow this down to just a particular group; however, the need to use some sort of data to understand if I have made a difference will require me to select 1-3 groups of teachers who will be invited to complete a survey before and after. While I endeavour to not limit my use of 21CLD approaches to these teachers, I will measure the effect for working with them.

My hunch is that teachers would benefit from having the 21CLD approach modelled in the way I work with them. If I set it up well, they should be required to develop and apply 21C skills themselves. At the same time I could make this process very transparent so that they can see by my modelling how they could apply this in their own context.

My learning will start with going back through my course resources and background information so I feel confident I clearly understand what the individual capabilities are and how tasks need to be designed to require development of these skills to a high level. I am sure there will be much more learning to come over this year.

What I will do differently: At this point I'm thinking I will focus on one of the skills at a time, starting with Collaboration, and examine my activities / sessions / workshops to what degree they require collaboration. I will set up some kind of document to monitor this. Given we are talking about 6 skills (Collaboration, Knowledge Construction, Self-regulation, Real-world Problem-solving and Innovation, ICT for Learning, Skilful Communication), of which some require more or less time, and some will combine more easily, I will aim at a very rough 6 weeks for each.

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If this will make a difference is the big question; for this I need pre- and post-data. In most cases I don't have the opportunity to visit classrooms and have discussions with teachers about their practise before I meet them in a workshop. Therefore I will look at developing a questionnaire that I will share with selected groups of teachers and follow it up with a questionnaire some time later this year to compare results. I'm still thinking about what exactly I will be looking for; a greater understanding? a shift in confidence? application in the classroom? All of these seem relevant.

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Is there anything I'm missing? Do I approach this logically? Any comments and ideas would be much appreciated!

Are you inquiring into your practise? Would you mind sharing some of it? If not, why don't you join me and share your inquiry?

#EdchatNZ - the never ending conference

Together with approx. 300 other educators from around the country and overseas I spent two days face-to-face at Hobsonville Point Secondary School for the inaugural #EdchatNZ Conference with many more joining in online via twitter etc from the distance. WHAT A BLAST!

Source: http://edchatnz.blogspot.co.nz/

#EdchatNZ is a twitter chat for educators, the brainchild of the fabulous Danielle Myburgh. It runs every second Thursday during term time 8:30-9:30pm. As with other twitter chats a topic gets decided on beforehand, 10 questions are asked and everyone who is on twitter at that time can join in. Danielle usually moderates. It is a very fast paced quick fire of ideas and opinions on what's hot in education in NZ. The #EdchatNZ blog can give you some more information on this.

Approx. 20 weeks ago Danielle decided to arrange a low budget, high quality face-to-face conference. Together with a group of other passionate educators this steering committee made it happen mainly via virtual meetings - in fact some of the members had not met in person until Friday morning. And didn't they do well! Of course it could not have been achieved without the support of many others, principals and BoT of the Hobsonville Point Schools, presenters who gave up their time, the many students who supported beforehand and on the day, the sponsors incl. Cognition Education who I work for, and especially all those educators who spread the word, booked their travel, relievers, accommodation and joined in!

There was so much to take in, I barely know where to start; from the #shrieking&hugging of tweeps or twiducators who have known each other online for a long time to #grelfies thanks @GeoMouldey for the challenges!)

to dancing on the stage or in sessions (thanks @digitallearnin, @mrs_hyde et al!).

Amidst the above fun there was a lot of serious work going on. You can find links to presenter notes in the Conference Agenda, and the lovely @chasingalyx has collated individual resources in this blog post.


It was certainly the most exciting conference I have been to yet. I get to talk learning all day every day, but I found myself in f-2-f company of people who were just as nuts about learning as I am :) Danielle set the tone for the conference with an excerpt of this TED Talk by Derek Sivers:

This set us up so well for what was to come. Many times passionate, forward thinking educators feel like they are a 'lone nut'. What transforms a lone nut to a leader is that very powerful first follower who dares to get up and dance with the lone nut. They draw in more, and more, and more until a critical mass is reached and it is no longer 'cool', acceptable, to watch from the side, but you just have to join in. Using this example, who are you in your school or organisation?

I don't want to go on about what happened in every single session I went to, the conversations with people before, during and after the session, both in person and online were at least as important. My biggest learning from this all is that while we might often feel like 'lone nuts' in fact there are lots of others dancing with us; opening our eyes and looking out for them, face-to-face and online, will help us connect and create that critical mass we need to change our practise for our students for the better, a little bit every day. One of the things Danielle reminded us off is that this Conference is not a one-off, it is simply a face-to-face gathering of the ongoing online conference #edchatNZ has been providing on Twitter. Watching how the discussions continued all weekend and today just confirms that (#edchatnz trended in NZ right through from Friday to Sunday!).

What will I do differently? In the rural area I work in we don't get as many opportunities for f2f connection as in cities. My Professional Inquiry for 2014 is around building capability in teachers to connect with PD in blended ways. The #EduchatNZ Conference has proven to me how powerful the online connection can be, so I will more actively spread the word and support teachers to develop their online PLN. Watch this space :)

Professional Inquiry - update

[For 2014 I have decided to share aspects of my professional inquiry through my blog. I believe that inquiries into our practise are essential for all educators and I would like to encourage every teacher to regularly inquire into their practise. I value your feedback and / or questions.]

Back in March I had decided that this year I would inquire into how I can build capacity for teachers learning in a blended way. This came from the observation that up here in Northland where many schools are small and geographically isolated, teachers feel they cannot access the same quantity and maybe also quality of PD as teachers in the big cities can (I am just stating what teachers are expressing, I am not making any judgement if this is the case or not).

It is a fact that there don't seem to be many f2f workshops and courses in our area. Travelling out of the area is an option, though a course in Auckland for example will incur quite a cost to schools, travel, accommodation all on top of relief. Since I started working as facilitator, I have actively involved myself in various forms of online learning so that I can be as knowledgeable as possible when supporting my schools. I thoroughly enjoy f2f opportunities, though with a family to look after going away can be a challenge, too. Not only do I believe that online opportunities are a great addition to f2f ones, I believe that this will become more and more important in the future, and the government support for N4L unlimited internet and Pond certainly indicate that they see this as an important part of teacher PLD in the future.

What do I regard as positive about online learning?

We often hear about huge drop out rates for MOOC students (and yes, I did NOT complete my Gamification MOOC from earlier in the year), but Johnathon Haber from The Huffington Post crunched numbers and came to a different conclusion in this article. The fact is that online we can access many more topics than we could if we relied on f2f.

There have been distance education opportunities for many years, for example our own NZ Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu, formerly The Correspondence School, has been in operation since 1922. Our modern online learning looks very different though from the printed books in the mail from days gone by, Digital Technologies allow almost immediate access to resources and activities, they also allow completion of work and proof of learning in new and creative ways.

The biggest potential in online learning in my opinion is the opportunity to collaborate. Sugata Mitra is probably one of the best known proponents of students learning with and from each other (and with the help of the internet). Online tools give us the opportunity to create, collaborate, to share, we can discuss issues synchronous and asynchronous, from anywhere around the world. The exchange and cross-pollination of ideas, the co-construction of solutions to problems that concern many of us all over the world and the power of knowing you are not alone in this can be incredibly powerful tools in the kete of every teacher.

As for my professional inquiry, I am actively seeking to involve other educators in various forms of online learning and connecting by sharing links, resources, inviting them into discussions, webinars, arranging online meetings with them etc. I have (with varying success) monitored my efforts and so far have found two main (and not completely surprising) contributors to success:

• relevance of the topic
• familiarity with the online tool

I have placed them in this order on purpose: I believe that when a topic is sufficiently relevant, people will be more inclined to get over the obstacle of an unfamiliar tool (but maybe you disagree?). However, no matter how well they know a tool, they are not going to engage if they are not interested in the topic.

What does this mean for me in my practise?

My role is not one of  'teaching use of a tool' simply for the sake of the tool. However, when this tool serves a purpose, such as access to a webinar or sim., I believe it can be a very good use of my time to walk others through the use of that tool. Hence for the second half of the year I will put even more emphasis on actively promoting the use of tools like Skype, Google Hangout, Blackboard Collaborate, VLN, Google+, Twitter etc. in my schools. This is almost 'the easy part'.

The more challenging part is to ensure I am more aware of possibly relevant topics that I can connect my schools and teachers with. I already spend many waking hours in educational online spaces, but I want to make sure I am very aware of teacher interests and needs, scour these spaces thoroughly and share anything that might be relevant to these teachers - without completely overloading them.

What advice can you give me to ensure I am supporting teachers effectively?

You have something worthwhile to share - your turn!

What a week in education in New Zealand! The Festival of Education was the most visible event this week, but there were also lots of smaller happenings around the country such as FarNet's Digital Horizon Conference in Whangarei, Connected Rotorua Meeting 'Let's Talk Google', Educamp Dunners. Somehow I ended up playing a part in a few of these this week...

My personal and professional highlight was presenting at TechMeetNZ on Saturday morning as part of the Festival of Education. Under the expert guidance of the ever-patient +Sonya Van Schaijik with superb support from +Marnel van der Spuy and +Kathy Scott a group of 7 NZ educators presented on a topic of their choice for 3min each, live streamed on air - with actual face-to-face audience in the room with Sonya at the Festival of Education. Sonya had asked me earlier this year to take part and I was happy to, only realising fairly late into it how much additional attention might be attracted by it being part of the Festival! It was nerve wrecking and fabulous at the same time!

As part of my role I am used to presenting to groups of people on various topics, and I have used my TeachMeetNZ topic "Supporting Universal Design for Learning with Google Apps for Education" before as a trial run for Saturday. Where this differed though was that when presenting in a live Google Hangout, there is no verbal or non-verbal feedback from the audience. On top of that, the clock is ticking, and it can be a challenge to say everything within the 3min and still make sense!

I was first up, and everything went well. My co-presenters +Diana Wilkes, +Justine Driver, +Myles Webb, +Juliet Revell, +Manu Faaea-Semeatu, +Emma Alaalatoa-Dale were so knowledgeable, it was fantastic to hear their presentations, I want to go away and study each of their presentations again as there is much to learn from all of them! You can find them here, just click on their names.

So what do I take away from this? There are lots of great things happening in NZ education at the moment. Individual educators are happy to share with each other and the world in a rewindable way (the recording is available here and be available on the TeachMeetNZ wikipage). +Juliet Revell made some great points in her reflection, and the main thing I read in there was every day we ask our students to put themselves out there, push themselves beyond their expectations. Do we do the same for ourselves? Do we practise what we preach? I can honestly say, this weekend I did.

Would I do it again? Definitely, not just in the TeachMeetNZ format, but I am also thinking about flipping my teaching in other ways. To go with my UDL theme, I am thinking about revamping some of my resources and tutorials and maybe presenting them as voice or video recording - what do you think?

One other thing I learnt over this last week is to get over some of my self-doubt; I am in awe of these amazing educators I have been presenting with at TeachMeetNZ, of the people I am in touch with on twitter, on Google+ etc. but I sometimes doubt that I am meant to be there, that I have got something to say that is worthwhile for others to hear. The support, feedback and love from everyone I have worked with this week, at the LwDT hui in Auckland, at Digital Horizons in Whangarei, at Connected Rotorua, at TeachMeetNZ and everywhere else, means so much to me so that I am saying to myself - like I have often said to my students - you have something worthwhile to share. Now it's your turn: How and where will you share?