My Preproom

Seniors leave for exams next week and I am at the time of our staff appraisal process where I begin to reflect on the school year just about over....I pause at this time to think about how to begin this blog, so much has happened. In the last 12 months a lot has happened to my family and my department that has left me feeling I might have done more, but also grateful that there were so many moments of ... "lucky that happened" This time 12 months ago, my brother was having a scan of his prolapsed disc in his back before surgery to fix it, and the radiographer noticed one of his kidneys didn't look right.  Lucky that happened .  He had surgery for his back and then 3 weeks later had surgery to remove his cancerous kidney.  No more cancer, all clear, no more treatment.   Lucky that happened ! Just before Christmas a staff member had an odd turn but she was fine and her family were all schooled up on strokes and aneurysms.  2 weeks later, she suffered an aneurysm a

Of all the interesting and cool things you can do with digital technology, for me the most powerful effect it has is when it enables students to access learning and share their thinking when traditional reading and writing it quite a barrier for them. I am very keen on equity and justice in education and these technologies have gone a long way to helping provide that for my students. My Y10 science class and I have been trying out a few readily available assistive technologies with the idea that next year, when they are in Level 1 NCEA, they will have a few options that might better support the communication of instructions to them from their teachers, and their thinking and learning to their teachers.   For all my Y10 students, their learning struggles are not severe enough to be financially supported by the Assistive Technology Funding provided by the MOE, but most will qualify for special assessment conditions for NCEA should they sit external exams in Level 1 and beyond. I

I have been thinking back on my experience of the last year as an Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert.  I have come a long way.  My confidence in new digital environments has increased and I realised a very important thing about being a digitally fluent teacher...you don' t have to know everything there is to know about all the tools available to you in your kura, you just have to have the confidence to know you can work it out if you play around long enough. BUT, it is quicker if you have a colleague to brainstorm with! Enter (Stage Left) - Digitally Curious Colleague Much of the digital world I try to get my head around these days has large components of collaborative capability, which are the ultimate digital tools for a teacher.  Having a curious colleague to help you explore it all means that one of you can be the teacher and one of you can be the student, nutting out all the useful tricks of the tool.  The Web must be littered with carcasses of old embryonic 'Test&

The school term break in New Zealand is just finished.  I don't call it the school holidays...we all know it isn't a holiday for teachers as they spend it marking, writing feedback, preparing lessons, going to conferences to learn more, and in some cases, still teaching.  By the end of this week or certainly next week, teachers all over the country will be feeling like they are starting to count down to the next term break when they can catch up on all the jobs that are already beginning to build. Decreasing our workload is really important. REALLY important.  We want amazing teachers to stay in the profession and we want to attract amazing teachers to our profession.  Marking student work and giving quality feedback is a teacher task that is incredibly important and is an effective way of causing learning.  TKI - Effective Feedback  webpage states that feedback is "most effective when given at the time of learning".  This means that amazing teachers prioritise th

Problem = offering one off PLD about digital tools to teachers is not effective because more than half of them can't keep up with the lesson, there is too much content, and teachers weren't given time to play with it and think about how it fits their classrooms. Solution = offering teachers ongoing support much more often; what they need, when they need it                    2nd Problem = IT staff don't have time to do this, not enough IT staff too many teachers My version of this solution = "IT-Drop In" which is an allocated grounds duty All teachers have duty in schools, designed to make the environment during break times safe for students.  All schools have those cushy duties where your relationship-management skills are not really needed, it is just supervision.  In my school, that cushy duty is the Library Classroom - a suite of computers the students can use at break time.  The students are so busy in their virtual worlds, they don't have