My Preproom

This conversation about the NCEA review if for parents, school students, grandparents, employers, tertiary students, employees, educators, politicians,...everyone. NCEA was phased in between 2002 and 2004.  It replaced an exam system of percentage of one assessment opportunity of School Certificate and Bursary, and it replaced number system of many assessment assignments in Sixth Form Certificate.  The early 2000's was the first time in decades that major changes had been made to our qualification.  Now, 16 years on, we are having our first big review of it.  This review is about how NCEA works as a qualification.  At the end of the review some aspects of it will not have been for discussion at all.  Not up for discussion are the content of the standards themselves, that is for another time.  Whether or not we should have standards based assessment...at the end of this review, we will still have standards based assessment and it will still be called...

Workshop By Jarrod Aberhart (Twitter: @JarrodAberhart) Jarrod lead us through a collection of change processes.   He uses bits from each of them as they suit the situation in his school. Design thinking -  https://medium.com/media-ethnography/ethnography-the-first-step-in-design-thinking-d3c533278978 Lean -  https://leanchange.org/resources/ Agile -  https://www.infoq.com/articles/modern-agile-intro He brought in the idea of ‘The Power of Constraint’ and suggested that we are more creative when we are constrained in our thinking in some way.   This was illustrated by a $50 bet between 2 men in 1960…”you can’t write a book using only 50 different words”.   Out of that bet came Green Eggs and Ham , one of the most iconic Dr Seuss books of all time. Jarrod uses ’30 Circles’ (explanation https://hbr.org/2013/11/three-creativity-challenges-from-ideos-leaders ) to help people warm up their creative brains.  ...

Why use digital ink? Digital ink has transformed my teaching practice as a chemistry and biology teacher over the last 3 years or so.  But a lot of new tech has come into digital ink over the last 12 months and I knew I wasn't up with it anymore, so I elected to go to the workshop by Becky Keene (Twitter: @BeckyKeene) about digital ink at the recent hui we had in Auckland. There are 3 reasons for using digital ink: Sketching - drawing, diagrams, doodling Reducing cognitive overload - often we ask students to learn an app AND we ask them to learn some kind of content at the same time...digital ink enables them to just do it Marking up - this is annotating text which brings understanding to the text and introduces colour with meaning to the text. I definitely use digital ink for reasons 1 and 3, but hadn't thought about reason 2 before at all.  When I think about it, I should consider it.  Cognitive over load occurs when there is too much to learn before the lear...

Creativity!! That famous TED talk by Ken Robinson, in 2006, " Do schools kill creativity ?" was all about this idea.  A lot of people took notice of that talk, I certainly did.  I am a science teacher.  I teach science, biology, and chemistry and I am constantly being told by people that there is no creativity in science, it's all about facts and information.  According to the online dictionary Creativity is.... the use of imagination or original ideas to create something; inventiveness. I think education is very creative now and becoming more and more creative as teachers start to explore their practice.  I think science is one of the most creative ways of thinking there is.  I think it is important that we strive to offer that creative thinking and opportunities to our students as often as we can, in any learning area.  They are all creative.  This definition harks back to my last blog NZ MIEexpert hui 2018 - curriculum ideas when I talk a...

What is an MIE-E? On a weekend in the July school holidays, all the teachers in the NZ Microsoft Innovators Educator Expert programme (MIE-E) came together for the first time ever.  MIE-E teachers are super keen on using technology as tools to advance learning and learning experiences for our students and they are some of the most creative, innovative, and critical thinking teachers I know.  This programme in NZ is part of a global MIE-E programme supported by Microsoft.  It was awesome meeting people I'd come to know on Twitter, though our Yammer thread, and during our monthly Skype calls.  This gathering was funded by the Ministry of Education via the Networks of Expertise programme.    The whole weekend was put together by our MIE-E Fellows.  The Fellows are the gurus of the MIE-E programme in NZ.  Like all educators conferences in NZ, we had Keynote speakers plus a collection of teachers volunteer to share their knowledge in seminars and ...

SciCon 2018   http://www.scicon2018.co.nz/ is the biennial conference of science educators across New Zealand and it was held in Christchurch in the first week of the July school holidays this year.  I love that teachers all over the country spend their term break time going to conferences to learn and share their ideas, to create new and strengthen old networks, and have conversations with each other about learning.  SciCon 2018 was just like this.  One of the kaupapa that seemed to play out over the 4 days was scientific literacy and it's importance in learning experiences for our students.  This is a kaupapa I am passionate about too, so I went to all the keynote speakers and many of the workshops who had this theme in their kōrero. Johnathan Osborne said in his keynote: Two years of high school science has more new words in it than learning a new language. While I knew there was a lot of language in science, and learning it was a key part for student...

This year I have leave from my school to work in educational facilitation.  Most of my mahi is part of the centrally funded PLD of the Ministry of Education model that supports teachers in their schools.  As you would expect, this mahi takes me to visit some kura and I get to meet some amazing people, staff and students, doing some amazing things.  Let's park that experience for a minute.... Over the last few years I have read a few articles about future-focused education.  Such as... Bolstad's 2012 article, "Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching: a New Zealand perspective"  (You can access article here) and I have heard from many people at conferences and talks about the Digital Revolution where it is described as having a similar impact to our lives as the industrial revolution in mid-1800s.  All of these articles and talks have similar retoric. Our future is unknown; prepare our children for this Many jobs now will not exist in the futu...

Over the last few months the language features in Microsoft apps has improved greatly and this is due to machine learning.  Machine learning is software that enables the app to learn the more you use it and with millions of people all over the planet using language features in Microsoft app, there is a lot of data being assimilated to make the service better and better. PowerPoint now has Subtitles available and it is surprisingly easy to set up so that all your listeners can access your presentation.  Now everyone can access your presentation.  If a language your listeners need isn't available, don't fret. Microsoft are adding languages all the time, so keep checking back to see if it has been included. You can choose the input and output languages You can reach people in your community such as deaf students and students of other languages You can have multiple output languages because the subtitle feature works with the Microsoft Translator app on phones People u...