#edchatnz Conference

Last week I was lucky enough to be invited to the #edchatnz conference at Hobsonville Point Senior School. Myself, Renee Hogg and Sonya Van Schaijik represented Newmarket School.

When Renee and I arrived at HPSS and were immediately stunned by the sea of enthusiastic teachers that greeted us. If I'm being honest, we really had no idea what to expect. Sonya (@vanshaijik) had played a big part in the organisation of the conference and was adamant that we would find it beneficial. Both Renee and I had seen a handful of the #edchatnz conversations via twitter but not enough to really know what we were getting ourselves in to. We picked up our wonderful personalised lanyards and set off to the opening session.

After an inspiring opening talk by @missdtheteacher - the lone nut and reason we were there, where we were given an overall view of what this was all about - we knew we were in for an eye opening 2 days.

First Session: we decided to do a tour of Hobsonville Point Primary (@hobpointprimary) to see a modern learning environment in action. For Renee and I, this was our first time seeing a school like this. Though we loved the school set up, we had a lot of questions about how we could transfer our new knowledge to Newmarket School.



Morning Tea: I think both Renee and I can agree that it was the best chocolate cake we've ever eaten.

Second session: With our bellies full, and as though perfectly planned, the session we chose to attend next was a group of students from HPPS explaining how their self monitor and plan their own days. They were from year 2 to year 8, each student discussed they process they go through each day. They also talked about how the teacher monitors them and referenced specific examples of project based learning they had undertaken. Overall, a large number of our queries were answered just by listening to these students speak.

Lunch: Another winner with the food! Thanks #edchatnz caterers :)

For our final session we went to the eye-opening political debate between National, Labour and the Greens, brilliantly moderated by @claireamosnz. The focus of course bring their views on current and future education policies.

With our brains full we decided to call it a day.

Saturday:
We arrived bright and early on Saturday morning and made our way to our first session: Furware. As Newmarket School is in the process of planning and building new learning areas in the school, we were curious to see and hear about potential furniture choices and how important it actually was to improve learning and productivity.

We then saw @chasingalyx - This session was great, as it was from the perspective of a beginner teacher. Both Renee and I are early in our careers so we were able to relate to the challenges Alyx has had to overcome. Her simple yet interesting approach to how teaching should be transparent was highly beneficial.

After yet another wonderful morning tea, we headed towards @Geomouldey's presentation about creativity in the classroom: and what can I say! Yet another valuable discussion about how to stimulate and inspire students to be creative risk takers.

Overall - we arrived at the conference having no idea what to expect, and left with our minds exploding: so full of ideas to take back to our classrooms and schools, changes to make in our own practice and a clear vision of our way forward. A massive thank you to Renee - @MissRHogg for being great company, @vanshaijik for the push in the right direction, @newmarketschool for the opportunity, @HPSSchool for hosting and all who were involved in the preparation of such a great conference. Awesome!

Holidays = Resource-making-days

After an incredibly busy last few weeks of term, we are finally on holiday! and of course, I have time to update.

In our final team meeting I was able to introduce Hapara to my team, showing them a few basics such as changing student passwords and uploading mass documents to student drives. I am excited for more people to be coming on board in using the wonder that is the teacher dashboard! I have even set up a shared folder in Google Drive with my colleagues, where I am putting all the activities and resources I make or collect, in the hopes that they too will begin adding in their own. I have big dreams of a never ending resource folder full of collaboration and innovative new ideas for the classroom :)

Back in the class, being one to one is going well. In the last week of term we had our parent/teacher interviews. I was somewhat apprehensive about the questions I was going to get from parents and how on earth I was going to answer them. Luckily, I quickly came to the realisation that the parents were thrilled that their child had been given the chance to take the step towards being a fully digital classroom. I was able to share the work they have done so far, the processes we follow when completing work, as well as how easy it is for parents to now view their child's work and the feedback given to them by their teacher on a regular basis. Overall the response was fantastic, and completely solidified my belief that this is - truly - an awesome opportunity for all involved.

As mentioned in previous entries, reading and writing is pretty much up and running with only a few kinks that need smoothing over. However, I am still pondering my next steps for Maths. I have several meetings lined up over the break with people I know who are already using devices in their math programs for more than just online games or activities. I hope to have collected a range of advice and resources by the time term 3 rolls around. This means the majority of my break is going to be spent creating, collecting and researching - but I'm okay with that! In fact, I'm quite enjoying it :)

The class is well and truly up and running this week, with all students on their way to finishing their first writing piece using Google Documents. At this point, I'm still thinking where too next? How do we publish? Is there an easy way to add photos to each piece of work? At this stage it looks like the answer is no - but hey! I'm sure things will become more fluid as we go on.

This week, our main focus has been on how we edit our work and what teacher feedback looks like. I still want the students to be able to read back over their final piece of work and be able to acknowledge where they made mistakes and how they corrected them, as I feel this is an important part of the writing process. We are coming up with some systems, that include highlighting incorrect words, phrases or punctuation, and commenting on the section with the mistake we have made, then the correction. Once I am happy with this the comment can be resolved, and can be checked later on for a reminder. This may end up being too much of a lengthly process, but while the students are getting used to using Google Drive I think it's a good place to start.

When I am giving teacher feedback, I am trying to do it with the student sitting next to me so we can discuss any comments that are being made. I encourage them to respond to my comment once they have corrected or checked their work according to the feedback I have given - Here is an example.

I am appreciating their comments, especially if I am unable to be sitting with the student as it gives me a clear indication of whether or not they understand the feedback or changes I am requesting.

Week 2 has started off well! We are adjusting and will be for a while to come but that's okay with us :)

Almost a week in

We are nearly a week in!

At this stage I have only implimented one to one devices to reading and writing, and BOY is it taking a long time to set up!

We have spent the majority of our time, sorting out how we get to our computers and how we look after them when are using them and how we put them away. I have devised a system that seemed like a good idea at the time, and I suppose could end up being one. However, it has been fairly tedious to start up. I have split the class in to 4 groups and given each group a leader. I spent an afternoon training the leaders how to put away each device and charger. Most of our lessons thus far have been getting in to the habit of going up to get the devices one group at a time, getting the same laptop each time and putting it away in the same space each time.

I am hoping that eventually, this will become second nature to the children. I am crossing my fingers that all of the time we are spending on this organisation won't be for nothing!

Apart from this, we are logging in quickly and able to access our work easily. The students are picking up on typing and editing skills quickly as well, and planning/organising our work is happening much quicker than it was when it was done by hand.

From a teachers point of view, it's great! Being able to check and comment on a students work as they write or even from home has been fantastic. Hapara is a wonderful tool, which allows me to navigate the students work quickly - I definitely feel like 'big brother'!

Anyway, despite the initial set up frustrations I feel like things are going smoothly. At least for now!

Room 5 are going one to one

Today was the first day of one to one devices at in Room 5. We are the lucky class who have been selected to be the first one to one, fully Google class at Newmarket School. 

We started the day with a discussion covering how to use the devices, how to take care of them and general admin things like internet safety.

The first resources I created was a Google form. The idea behind this was to get the students initial feelings about using the devices, giving them a chance to say what they know, what they want to know and what they're worried about. I encouraged them to answer honestly, and the results were great! I have gathered a lot of useful information and some next steps for increasing their skills.

Once we had completed this I gave them a challenge. They had to find this in their google drive and follow the given instructions. It was all about basic steps within a google document such as adding a title, typing, changing the font type and size, as well as commenting on a different document. Again, this went well. I could feel the excitement as the students found new ways to do things. Everyone managed to complete the given tasks and even got a few minutes of free 'discovery' time. 

So far so good! I'm looking forward to further challenges to come.