tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50156624180159248922024-03-13T13:48:28.791+13:00 Widgets & Wikis & Blogs...Oh My!Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.comBlogger43125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-51957309276820377652016-10-23T18:21:00.002+13:002016-10-23T18:21:17.872+13:00Changes in my Practice<br />
32 weeks ago I began my Mindlab journey, it was something I had seen several friends of mine complete, and I had been eager to join their ranks. To be honest, I saw it as an opportunity to get a formalised qualification to 'back up' all of the informal learning and experimenting I had been doing with regards to e-Learning since I first became a teacher back in 1993 and thought myself very innovative for running a Literacy unit based on the game <i>"Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?" </i>(Which to be fair, was a pretty cutting edge thing to be doing back then). I wasn't completely sure just how much value I'd get from my participation in the course, even my DP said, "Are you sure you won't be bored?". To be honest, no, I wasn't sure, but if nothing else, the promise of playing with robots (if I wasn't a teacher I think I'd love to be a robotics engineer) at some stage in the near future was a pretty big carrot.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PTC 4 " Fully registered teachers demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of personal professional practice." </span></b></span></div>
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Well, I'm pleased to say I most certainly was not bored. Yes, there were some things I already knew about, or had been using for a while, but there were also many, many other things that were just as new to me as they were to everyone else. In the case of the former, this gave me an opportunity to help others grow their expertise - good practise for me in developing both my leadership and teaching skills as I had to help through asking the right questions instead of taking over and telling or just doing. When it came to the latter, however, then I have to say one of the biggest aspects was the theoretical and pedagogical knowledge that underpins effective teaching and leadership. Prior to Mindlab, I knew nothing about concepts such as Lean and Agile, beyond thinking maybe they were something related to a diet and exercise programme. These were just two of the many, many new ideas I was exposed to. To be fair, not all appealed, and there are some I need to continue to mull over, but my growth in both knowledge and professional practice has been immense.<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PTC 1 <span style="background-color: white;">"Fully registered teachers establish and maintain effective professional relationships focused on the learning and well-being of all ākonga."</span></span></b></div>
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My learners have benefitted from my Mindlab journey as well, at the simplest level they loved to see that Mrs McGhie also had homework, and it took a long time for one wee cherub to get his head around the fact that, "No, teachers don't actually know EVERYTHING, we are still learning and growing everyday, just like you." They have benefitted in other ways as well, whether it has been through me taking back some of the practical activities we did in class and letting them have an opportunity to explore "Mrs McGhie what did you learn this week?!" - augmented reality being a particular hit - right down to the assignments, which through their very nature challenged me to change my practice and try new things within my classroom programme, and then ask the children for their thoughts on the impact of these changes. I think this reflects my commitment to and development of PTC 1 as I certainly used my new learning to engage with and collaborate with the learners in my class.<br />
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In terms of my future professional learning, I know that one of these days I want to complete my Masters, but that will be a dream that has to wait for a while, as I have some other things I need to conquer first. However, I know that I will certainly get there one day, and Mindlab has been an important step in achieving my goal.<br />
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<b>References</b><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: open_sansregular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">Ministry of Education (nd). </span><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: open_sansregular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">Practising teacher Criteria and e-learning</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: open_sansregular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;"> . Retrieved from </span><a href="http://elearning.tki.org.nz/Professional-learning/Registered-Teacher-Criteria-and-e-learning" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1aaf5d; font-family: open_sansregular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">http://elearning.tki.org.nz/Professional-learning/</a><br />
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<br />Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-41468428166862647252016-10-23T17:31:00.000+13:002016-10-23T17:34:49.961+13:00My Interdisciplinary Connection Map<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUbu2EimcsHuF89cWPF356IkTo_YNTzkveIicI50lsK38veawXiHYx95gNCEhDUnj2wF7HggeJD8Wv0y0LujW5QXHZ2YmAD8-IhhOY8Iayb9S5VWj-Czpv7mFmdYb05uXqjdQuIZEw1QjC/s1600/Current_and_PotentialInterdisciplinary_Connections.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="388" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUbu2EimcsHuF89cWPF356IkTo_YNTzkveIicI50lsK38veawXiHYx95gNCEhDUnj2wF7HggeJD8Wv0y0LujW5QXHZ2YmAD8-IhhOY8Iayb9S5VWj-Czpv7mFmdYb05uXqjdQuIZEw1QjC/s640/Current_and_PotentialInterdisciplinary_Connections.png" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Current Connection</span></h2>
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<b id="docs-internal-guid-e6e33d06-efd1-4560-7e8f-4f8882107886" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When looking at the map above, which shows my interdisciplinary connections as they relate to my roles of classroom teacher and learning leader, it is quite eye-opening to note the number of connections there are, and those are just the ones I thought of as I am sure there are many others.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a school, we are working with Mark Treadwell (one of my identified interdisciplinary connections) to develop and implement a competencies based curriculum, where we start with Mark's work as a base, but mould and shape it to fit the needs of our particular school community. Due to the nature of it's design, there is a lot of potential for we as educators to situate these competencies within an interdisciplinary outline. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Barton and Smith (2007) talk about the notion of children having the opportunity to learn something “</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">worth knowing”</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. They discuss the idea of an interdisciplinary outline, one that “...recognizes that effective planning is...a well-crafted set of resources and activities that can adapt to the emerging needs and interests of students.” One of the advantages of the approach to curriculum that we are taking is our ability to take the teachable moment, or run with what interests the particular students in our class at the time.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As the competencies, and their sub-set of concepts, are cross-disciplinary in nature, this provides us with the scope to look for opportunities to present a concept within an interdisciplinary context. According to Mathison & Freeman (1997) “...an interdisciplinary approach always consciously combines two or more disciplines and keeps them distinct and in focus. It has clear objectives that include both critical-thinking skills and in-depth content, and is typically teacher directed but may welcome student input.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In their presentation entitled </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The Logic of Interdisciplinary Studies”,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Mathison & Freeman (1997) discuss some of the concerns that need consideration when considering an approach such as this. They talk about the risk of it being little bits of lots of topics, without any real deep or unifying structure - and go on to discuss the importance of ensuring that important educational goals are met through the use of this form of curriculum design and delivery. This is worthy of consideration, especially when considered in relation to the competency based curriculum we are implementing. With each of the competencies being separated into between 15 - 19 interrelated concepts, and the expectation being that each concept should only need between 20 minutes and 2 hours to develop understanding, I often worry that there is a real risk of presenting a series of isolated pockets of ideas (that theoretically are integrative and cover big educational ideas). What this certainly highlights for me is the importance of ensuring their is still something tying them all together into a logical and cohesive whole.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Potential Future Connection</span></h2>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Looking at the diagram, there are a number of potential connections that could be well worth exploring, one that I think could be particularly worthwhile, is that of the local high school. One real limitation I have found when it comes to really exploring things that are worth my learners knowing, is the availability of suitable resources to really deeply explore some aspects of the curriculum. A good example of what I am referring to would be the area of Science. At it's simplest level, this could mean me contacting a Science teacher/HOD at the school and getting their ideas and input into a lesson I am planning to present, or perhaps connecting with teachers at Albany Senior, where they are already exploring interdisciplinary teaching within their own context, and looking for suggestions on combining Science and Literacy, for example, in a meaningful way that will help promote deep learning.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On a more complex level, it could be taking my learners to one of the local high schools to explore a concept with more depth than I can provide at school, or alternatively, maybe it could take the form of students at one of those schools as part of their learning, preparing and presenting something to help my learners to develop their skills and knowledge, that builds the older students' knowledge at the same time.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In order for this to be truly successful, I think it would be very important to ensure that I am working collaboratively with the teachers and or their students, as at the end of the day, I am the one with the best knowledge of my students and their needs, so full collaboration would be the most important consideration.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">References</span></h2>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Barton, K. C., & Smith, L. A. (2000). Themes or motifs? Aiming for coherence through interdisciplinary outlines. The Reading Teacher, 54(1), 54-63.1.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mathison,S.. & Freeman, M.(1997). The logic of interdisciplinary studies. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, 1997. </span></div>
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Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-19174008184984983702016-10-23T15:08:00.000+13:002016-10-23T15:10:36.949+13:00Using Social Online Networks in Teaching and Professional Development<div style="text-align: left;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have been a long time user of social online networks both for my own professional development and as a means of connecting my learners with others beyond the four walls of our classroom. </span><br />
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<b style="color: #333333; font-family: arial; font-size: 15.3333px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Early Years</b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My earliest forays into the world of social media began as far back as 1998, when I became a member of a US based teachers List Serve, an online forum, which I also was able to receive in digest format through my email. It was through my membership in this forum that I became aware of different teaching methodologies such as Four Blocks Guided Reading, and my first introduction to Habits of Mind. I also enjoyed the interaction with other like-minded educators, as they fulfilled a need that wasn't being met by my peers within my school community. This aligns with Karen Melhuish's observations when she noted that "...</span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">this ability to share and leverage previously invisible or unreachable networks has brought a new dimension to what it means to be a lifelong professional learner." (2013, p181).</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was also able to see the potential advantages for my children and signed up my Y2/3 class (with permission from the boss and their parents) to participate in a Key Pals project with a class in New Jersey. In those days I had one computer in my classroom and it was not linked to the Internet, so I would have the children write their emails in their draft books and then take them all home to type up and send via my own computer. It was a valuable experience, with my Levin based students learning about how they were the same and different from children across the other side of the world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From there, this morphed into a variety of online projects with other classes over the years including: hosting and sending several travel buddies, involvement in postcard exchanges, moving on into a Monster Exchange, and in more recent years, maintaining class blogs, Quadblogging and Pass the Blog activities, among many, many others. The biggest benefits to my children have been in having real life opportunities to develop and perfect their Literacy skills - which aligns with findings by McDowell, (2010) whose research identified </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"... </span>that there are a number of affordances of ICTs and effective e-Learning
environments that may help teachers provide the conditions needed for literacy learning to occur". (p61)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Social media also gave the children <span style="color: #333333; white-space: pre-wrap;">an awareness of the lives of others both nationally and internationally, and of course, improved digital citizenship as I was careful to ensure that the children's interactions online were grounded in key ideas of netiquette and digital safety.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15.3333px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial";"><strong> <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/Keamac/u-learn-classroom-connections" target="_blank" title="U learn classroom connections">U learn classroom connections</a> </strong> from <strong><a href="https://www.slideshare.net/Keamac" target="_blank">Kirstin Anderson-McGhie</a></strong> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: red; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><b>The above is a link to one of my ULearn presentations exploring the different ways I've used social media to connect my learners.</b></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 15.3333px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Social Media and My Professional Growth</span></h2>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Professionally, it would appear that 2007 would be the next defining year in my social media journey. October 2007 was the year I attended ULearn in Auckland. Ewan McIntosh was the keynote and he kept talking about Twitter and Bloggers Cafe. Intrigued I set out to find out more about these, and from there my teaching career was transformed! Literally overnight, I set up a <a href="https://twitter.com/Keamac" target="_blank">Twitter account</a>, set up <a href="http://keateach.blogspot.co.nz/2007/10/hello-world.html" target="_blank">this blog </a>as a professional reflection blog, followed my first few kiwi tweeps - many of whom are still good friends of mine today, and I was off on my new path as a connected educator. The biggest thing for me was discovering that there were others like me and that they were in New Zealand as well as overseas. I was always wanting to do things that were out of step with where my school was at in terms of pedagogy and digital literacy, and it was nice to know I wasn't the only maverick out there (or what <a href="http://missdtheteacher.blogspot.co.nz/2016/01/how-do-you-know-if-you-are-fruit-loop.html" target="_blank">Danielle Myberg </a>describes as a lone nut).</span></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><i> My Twitter feed</i></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a result of my online participation in these forums I have gone on to present several times at ULearn and other conferences, I have taken my online PD into face to face settings such as EduCamps, I have been exposed to new ideas, grown exponentially as a teacher and as an individual, I have met some amazing educators in person and have learnt from them, and most importantly, the children that have been in my classes have benefitted from my online participation.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For me, social media is a vital part of my professional development tool kit and one I would hate to be without.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 15.3333px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">References</span></h2>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; white-space: normal;">McDowall, S., & Team, C. E. (2010). Literacy teaching and learning in e-learning contexts. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; white-space: normal;">Wellington: Ministry of Education</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; white-space: normal;">.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: normal;">Melhuish, K.(2013).</span><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; white-space: normal;"> Online social networking and its impact on New Zealand educators’ professional learning</em><span style="background-color: white; white-space: normal;">. Master Thesis. The University of Waikato. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: normal;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/goog_1617531820"><br /></a></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><a href="http://missdtheteacher.blogspot.co.nz/2016/01/how-do-you-know-if-you-are-fruit-loop.html">http://missdtheteacher.blogspot.co.nz/2016/01/how-do-you-know-if-you-are-fruit-loop.html</a></span></span><br />
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<br />Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-27976663074934756212016-09-30T12:25:00.001+13:002016-09-30T12:27:02.997+13:00Legal and Ethical Contexts in My Digital Practice<b id="docs-internal-guid-b582b051-783f-5cf5-06a3-6115aa17f7e0" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; white-space: pre-wrap;">According to Henderson, Auld & Johnson (2014) “Students will learn understandings about the law and morality from the actions teachers do and do not take associated with social media in the classroom” (p5). Whilst this statement is pertinent to a number of situations involving the use of social media in the classroom, in this particular instance I shall be exploring the ethical dilemma that arises with the use of online images, written content and music.</span></span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Photo Credit: K Anderson-McGhie </span><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/" rel="license" style="color: #015782; text-decoration: none;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" alt="Creative Commons License" data-pin-nopin="true" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/80x15.png" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-radius: 0px; border: 0px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 0px 20px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/" rel="license" style="color: #015782; text-decoration: none;">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><i>The Dilemma</i></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This is a particular ethical dilemma I have come up against on many occasions over the last few years, and for the most part it is one that stems from a lack of knowledge on the part of the various stakeholders - which can include students, parents and other teaching staff. I am well known amongst other teachers at our school for my rigid adherence to copyright rules and laws, and will not hesitate to point out when something is in breach of copyright.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Earlier this year, consent was given and arrangements made for the children in my class to bring their own devices to school in order to create their own Weebly page about an area of interest to them. These 'passion projects' as they were known, were the culmination of 2 terms worth of work facilitated by my classroom release teacher. The children worked on their projects 1 day per week when I was away from the classroom fulfilling my team leader responsibilities.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In terms of the actual BYOD process and creation of individual websites, all appropriate permissions had been sought, arrangements had been made for the safe storage of the devices whilst at school. In terms of the guidelines and policies laid out in the Ministry of Education (2015) Responsible Use document, everything was in place with regards to access and device & content ownership.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Once all the projects were finished, I had the opportunity to sit down with the students as they shared their work with me. While I was impressed with the thought and effort that had gone into their web-pages, I became increasingly concerned at their use of music and images in particular which were in fact copyrighted.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><i>Why Was This a Problem?</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Part of the dilemma for me was that I was very concerned that the children had inadvertently broken the law. This had potential ramifications for the children, as according to NZ law they are the copyright holders of any work they produce, regardless of the ownership of the device it was produced on (Ministry of Education, 2015). Secondly, there was the fact that the children, and potentially their parents, could be justifiably upset if I were to ask them to take their work down, both in terms of their owning the work and also the time involved in creating their sites. At the same time, parents could rightly express concern that their children were put in a position that potentially exposed them to legal action as a direct result of the task assigned by the school. The flip side being of course, that there was the potential for legal steps to be taken by the owners of the copyright.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><i>Solving the Problem </i></b></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ordinarily, before embarking on any online project, I take the time to educate children about copyright rules, and introduce them to creative commons licensing. I also provide them with a list of sites where they can access creative commons licensed materials. I also tend to encourage the creation of their own images and music, and we talk about how they are the copyright holders of those. In this particular instance, what I ended up doing was talking to the children about what had happened and helping them to find images that were licensed for reuse. There was some disappointment, as not all of the images available were as impressive as their original selections, but I was more comfortable with what they had online. Moving forward, I need to make sure that I check other teaching staff's understanding of copyright law and ensure that they have everything in place to enable the students to produce digital artefacts that are both legal and something they can be proud of.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-9c8e3d4b-7845-5d6a-e8fb-67e7a813fdeb"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.3333px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Henderson, M., Auld, G., & Johnson, N. F. (2014). Ethics of Teaching with Social Media. Paper presented at the Australian Computers in Education Conference 2014, Adelaide, SA.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.3333px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: open_sansregular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: normal;">Ministry of Education. (2015). Digital technology - Safe and responsible use in schools.</span></span></span><br />
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Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-24169747739705234862016-09-30T00:00:00.003+13:002016-09-30T12:25:35.790+13:00Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Responsiveness in My Practice<div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In this post I have been asked to consider indigenous knowledge and culturally responsive pedagogy, both from my own perspective and how it looks within the context of my school. Within a New Zealand context, the impact of these on <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; white-space: pre-wrap;">Māori learners and their whanau is a core focus, supported by such initiatives as<a href="http://www.education.govt.nz/ministry-of-education/overall-strategies-and-policies/the-maori-education-strategy-ka-hikitia-accelerating-success-20132017/" target="_blank"> </a></span><span style="color: #333333; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://www.education.govt.nz/ministry-of-education/overall-strategies-and-policies/the-maori-education-strategy-ka-hikitia-accelerating-success-20132017/" target="_blank">Ka Hikitia;</a> however, on a wider scale, it is also worth considering the implications when engaging with learners from other ethnicities, particularly in a school like mine where we have a very ethnically diverse student community.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Photo Credit: K Anderson-McGhie </span><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/" rel="license" style="color: #015782; text-decoration: none;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" alt="Creative Commons License" data-pin-nopin="true" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/80x15.png" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-radius: 0px; border: 0px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 0px 20px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/" rel="license" style="color: #015782; text-decoration: none;">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">My Understanding</span></i></b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></i></b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Having completed the survey using the Self Review Tool in Cultural Intelligence, it reinforced for me that in general I have developed a good understanding of different cultural beliefs and practices, and I make every effort to acknowledge different cultural perspectives within my classroom. </span><span style="color: #333333; white-space: pre-wrap;">I enjoy having opportunities to engage with and participate in different cultural practices, and take every opportunity to ask questions, try new things and grow my understanding of different cultures. Having completed my teacher training at the University of Waikato, and later on having the opportunity to teach in schools in both West Auckland and Levin, I have had many opportunities to explore the richness of Te Reo and Tikanga in particular, as well as Pasifika and Chinese cultures. </span><span style="color: #333333; white-space: pre-wrap;">According to the Ministry of Education document Ka Hikitia - Accelerating Success 2013 - 2017 Ako is a two way process where the teacher both teaches and learns from the student and the student is also both learner and teacher and d</span><span style="color: #333333; white-space: pre-wrap;">uring my 5 years in Levin in particular, I had regular opportunities to develop and refine my understanding</span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of culturally responsive practices. One aspect that I identified on the survey tool as being an area of continued growth for me is that of </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">the less visible hidden psychological features of culture, such as beliefs and values, among other aspects.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><b>My School's Practice</b></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Communication Methods: </i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cowie, B., Otrel-Cass, K., Glynn, T., & Kara, H., et al.(2011) state that "</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; white-space: pre-wrap;">New Zealand primary classes increasingly include students with diverse cultural, linguistic and experiential backgrounds.” (p2) This is certainly the case at our school, with some of our more dominant cultural groups being those of South African, Chinese and South Korean descent. In fact, </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">Māori</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and Pasifika students make up less than 5% of our school population. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; white-space: pre-wrap;">What we have done as a school to support communication is employing Mandarin speaking staff of Chinese decent on both our teaching and office staff, we also have a Korean teacher aide and a number of South African teachers (including some who speak Afrikans). This enables us to more easily facilitate home/school communication, and means we can translate signage and newsletters as appropriate. It also means we have staff available to act as interpreters for meetings between parents and teachers. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; white-space: pre-wrap;">We also liaise closely with members of our </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">Māori parent community, who share their expertise with us in matters of protocol and in supporting our Kapa Haka group. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">Children are able to share their learning with their parents in face to face meetings, but also through platforms such as blogging and </span><a href="http://web.seesaw.me/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;" target="_blank">SeeSaw</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"> where they can post various digital artefacts including video and audio recordings. Children are encouraged to use their home language to support their learning and understanding as well.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Learning Activities: </i>Our principal has certainly been a driving force behind lifting the profile of </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">Māori language and culture within our school, and ensuring that teachers have the necessary skills and knowledge to include them in our classroom programmes. An example of this being that all teachers ar</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; white-space: pre-wrap;">e currently completing PD in Te Reo and Tikanga through </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #4a4a4a;">Te Wānanga o Aotearoa. The idea being that this is then taken through into our classroom programmes to upskill our learners, and acknowledge our </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">Māori students. It is very much in it's early days and is happening with varying degrees of regularity across the school. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><i>References</i></b></span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-9c8e3d4b-7595-0702-07f0-a9e2f42e21bb"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Cowie, B., Otrel-Cass, K., Glynn, T., & Kara, H., et al.(2011).Culturally responsive pedagogy and assessment in primary science classrooms: Whakamana tamariki. Wellington: Teaching Learning Research Initiative.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1f1f1f;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ministry of Education. (2013). Ka Hikitia – Accelerating Success 2013-2017 Wellington, New Zealand: Author.</span></span></div>
<br />Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-5196257707659637802016-09-29T19:06:00.001+13:002016-09-29T19:50:59.389+13:00Exploring a Contemporary Issue or Trend: The Development and Ubiquity of New Technologies<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b id="docs-internal-guid-9c8e3d4b-7480-98fd-2922-ce84c4383671" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There are many trends that are impacting on education. In this post I'm going to consider the development and ubiquity of new technologies</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Photo Credit: K Anderson-McGhie </span><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/" rel="license" style="color: #015782; text-decoration: none;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" alt="Creative Commons License" data-pin-nopin="true" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/80x15.png" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-radius: 0px; border: 0px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 0px 20px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/" rel="license" style="color: #015782; text-decoration: none;">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Relevance to My Practice</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As noted in the report produced by the OECD (2016), the internet has become very much a part of most people's lives, they expect instant answers to their questions, and are never far from it, especially with the growing uptake of various hand held devices. This is of particular interest to me, as over the 20 odd years since I first accessed the Internet, I have leveraged its potential as a tool to support my learners, as well as using it to grow both my professional capacity and my personal relationships. I am very much a self described "gadget girl" never far from one of my many devices. I am also a mother and a teacher, and over time have seen the potential for both harm and good that comes from a connected society. In my own classroom, I have children pleading for more time on our 9 devices as they explore different learning opportunities, and I also see the number of them who carry smart phones and iPods in their school bags. For me, my main focus, my main concern, is how to harness the power of this trend so that our children and their families can benefit from it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Analysis</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">According to data presented in the OECD (2016) report, in 2013 the average number of Internet users was around 85% of the population, with just over 50% of those accessing the Internet from mobile devices. Interestingly, this placed us in a fairly similar position to Australia, but significantly ahead of the USA (although admittedly, both of those countries have larger populations). This indicates quite a high uptake in New Zealand, and when you consider that this data is 3 years old, it would be interesting to see the results if a survey were to be conducted today.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This trend certainly has a significant impact on our education system. When looking at </span><a href="http://www.core-ed.org/thought-leadership/ten-trends" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">CORE Educations Ten Trends for 2016</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, they identify issues such as equitable access, they explore the rise of networked communities, and also discuss the need to develop computational thinking and digital fluency with our young people (and I would add, their teachers and whanau too). In fact, a scroll through past iterations of the Ten Trends presents an interesting picture of the change over time, while also illustrating the increasing prevalence of digital technology in our lives. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In July of this year, the Minister of Education announced that digital technology would be formally included as part of the New Zealand Curriculum. </span><a href="https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/nz-curriculum-include-digital-technology" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/nz-curriculum-include-digital-technology</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> This means, whether teachers are ready or not, whether parents want it or not, New Zealand children will be expected to explore digital technology as part of their learning.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Responding to the Trend</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The OECD (2016) report suggests that with people now having the potential to be accessing several different things at one through their devices, this "... gives rise to worries about decreasing attention spans among today's youth" (p103). This means that as educators, we need to make sure that learners are made aware of when it is appropriate to skim and scan, and when a deeper focus may be needed - and equip them with the skills to do both. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One thing we need to consider is the role of reading and writing versus the use of video - both to present and share new learning. Unfortunately I can’t find a written reference, but many times in our work with<a href="http://www.marktreadwell.com/marks_notes" target="_blank"> Mark Treadwell,</a> he has challenged our staff with the provocation that reading and writing will be unnecessary in the future. I’m not sure I’m completely convinced, but this does mean that as educators, we may need to consider teaching our learners more in the way of visual language skills - such as interpreting and presenting visual media. Certainly in my own classroom, with the introduction of SeeSaw as a way of curating and sharing their learning, my students have produced a significant amount of video footage, and for many it is the preferred way to share their learning.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">References:</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #4b4b4b;">OECD (2016), </span><em style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #4b4b4b; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Trends Shaping Education 2016</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #4b4b4b;">, OECD Publishing, Paris. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #4b4b4b;">DOI: </span><span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1b67b5; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/trends_edu-2016-en"><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/trends_edu-2016-en" rel="" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1b67b5; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/trends_edu-2016-en">http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/trends_edu-2016-en</a></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">Core Education's Ten Trends for 2016 Accessed from: </span><a href="http://www.core-ed.org/thought-leadership/ten-trends" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://www.core-ed.org/thought-leadership/ten-trends</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">NZ Curriculum to include digital technology Accessed from: </span><a href="https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/nz-curriculum-include-digital-technology" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/nz-curriculum-include-digital-technology</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-23648780927856496472016-09-29T17:14:00.002+13:002016-09-29T17:35:51.317+13:00Current Issues in My Professional Context<b id="docs-internal-guid-9c8e3d4b-7422-1622-04dc-c2e191a61ef8" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">According to Stoll (1998) "School culture is one of the most complex and important concepts in education" (p9). When considered alongside the impact of the socioeconomic status of learners, particularly the research that supports the correlation between low socioeconomic status and poor education outcomes APA (2016), it quickly becomes apparent that these factors play a significant role in determining the educational outcomes and experiences of our learners. At the same time, these factors can also shape the beliefs, practices and well being of the teaching staff working in a school.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: xx-small; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Photo Credit: K Anderson-McGhie </span><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/" rel="license" style="color: #015782; text-decoration: none;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" alt="Creative Commons License" data-pin-nopin="true" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/80x15.png" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-radius: 0px; border: 0px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 0px 20px; padding: 8px; position: relative;" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/" rel="license" style="color: #015782; text-decoration: none;">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What Does This Look Like in My School Community?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A quick look at 2013 Census data held by </span><a href="http://www.stats.govt.nz/Census/2013-census/profile-and-summary-reports/quickstats-about-a-place.aspx?request_value=13255&tabname=Culturaldiversity" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Statistics New Zealand </span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> shows that the area in which our school is situated is one where most of the population are European, with the next biggest ethnic group being Asian, and only a very small percentage of Maori or Pacific Island decent. Almost half of the people living in our area were born overseas. Just under one fifth of the community are aged 15 or under. These statistics are reflective of our school community, a Decile 9, with a broad range of ethnic groups. We have only a very small number of Maori and Pasifika students, and a growing population of students from Asia - particularly China and South Korea. Interestingly, despite only a small proportion of the wider community being aged under 15, we have a rapidly growing group of Year 1 students (5 year olds), plus our school community is increasing on an almost weekly basis due to a housing boom in our area.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a school we are aiming for a culture where all feel welcome, included and accepted. Where we embrace cultural diversity and strive to remove barriers to learning. Embracing the indigenous culture of New Zealand is valued and actively encouraged. We are committed to supporting both our staff and our students to be life-long learners and have the capacity to reach their full potential. It is a place where teachers are supported and expected to continue to build their professional knowledge and engage in current best practice. One of the key factors in everything we do is the question: "Does this benefit our students?"</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To achieve this we do the following:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Deliver a competency based curriculum</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Translate signs, newsletters, and announcements into Hangul (Korean) and Madarin</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Teachers and Senior Leadership are upskilling in Te Reo and Tikanga </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Senior Leadership participate in all PD that the staff participate in</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">An active and growing Kapa Haka group</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Minimising costs to parents for things such as stationery and EOTC events</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our Vision and Values are visible, living documents</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Parent groups for ELL families, among others</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And much, much more.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">An Issue To Consider </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stoll and Fink (1996) as cited in Stoll (1998), identified a series of norms that can have an effect on school improvement. In considering these 10 norms I certainly agree that these are all norms to which we aspire and, for the most part I'm pleased to say are evident in our school, particularly when considering the professional environment. Having said that, I would argue that risk taking is something we continue to work on - we expect it from our students, but at times our teachers find this hard to do. As a SL Team we have been considering this, and looking at ways in which we can support teachers to feel confident to do so. It is our culture of life-long learning and reaching your potential in an environment where you feel supported that is driving us as a team. What we still need to reflect upon is - what is it that we are doing or not doing that is making this difficult for teachers? Furthermore, if we have teachers who are finding this a challenge, what does that mean for our learners?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">References:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "open_sansregular" , "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: normal;">APA. (2016). </span><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: open_sansregular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: normal;">Education and Socioeconomic Status</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "open_sansregular" , "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: normal;">. Retrieved from </span><a href="http://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/education.aspx" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1aaf5d; font-family: open_sansregular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none; white-space: normal;" target="_blank">http://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/education.aspx</a></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "open_sansregular" , "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">Stoll. (1998). School Culture. </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: open_sansregular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">School Improvement Network’s Bulletin 9.</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "open_sansregular" , "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 15px;"> Institute of Education, University of London. Retrieved from </span><a href="http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Understanding-school-cultures/School-Culture" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1aaf5d; font-family: open_sansregular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Understanding-school-cultures/School-Culture</a></div>
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Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-45253401080812178192016-09-29T14:44:00.001+13:002016-09-29T14:52:32.349+13:00My Community of Practice<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b id="docs-internal-guid-9c8e3d4b-7394-e532-ffdf-e327e1a51358" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What is a Community of Practice</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Wegner (2000) defines communities of practice as ones in which members "...share cultural practices reflecting their collective learning"(p229). He also goes on to explain how the members of each community define the specific competencies required of community members and how these are comprised of three elements: joint enterprise, mutuality and a shared repertoire of resources (Wegner, 2000). I will come back to these later in this post.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: xx-small; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Photo Credit: K Anderson-McGhie </span><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/" rel="license"><img alt="Creative Commons License" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/80x15.png" style="border-width: 0;" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/" rel="license">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>.
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Identifying My Community of Practice</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The communities of practice I belong to include: global teachers; New Zealand teachers; a member of staff at my school; a member of the senior leadership team at my school; lead learner in my classroom community; an active and long term member of global and local networks of Twitter educators. There are others as well, but for the purposes of this reflection I have decided to explore my school environment as a community of practice.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Three Elements </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Joint Enterprise: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wegner (2000) talks about the importance of learning as a community being the focus, and highlights the need for effective communities to consider both the gaps in knowledge as well as new possibilities. In our school we have taken on board a competencies based curriculum - facilitated by <a href="http://www.marktreadwell.com/Knowledgenet" target="_blank">Mark Treadwell</a>, which is quite cutting edge as we are one of only a handful of New Zealand schools to implement this particular iteration. This has meant that all of us, from the principal right through to our first year PRT (Provisionally Registered Teacher), have been involved in inquiring into our practice, establishing shared understandings, building upon our prior knowledge and best practice, and establishing the way forward for our school.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mutuality: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In order to build our community and help us move forward, we have a number of structures in place to facilitate support and interaction within our community. We run two vertical teams, each comprising of around 11 teachers that come from all levels of the school. This means that each team has a diversity of year levels and teaching experience. Each team is lead by a Learning Leader, of which I am one. Teams meet regularly, and at all times professional development and student outcomes are at the forefront. As a staff we meet weekly, again with PD and student outcomes highlighted. Each member of the teaching staff participates in <a href="http://www.growthcoaching.com.au/" target="_blank">GROWTH Coaching</a>, with most of us acting as coaches as well as coachees. </span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shared Repertoire: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We have a shared OneNote notebook where we share ideas and examples of lessons we have taught that link to our competency based curriculum. Furthermore, because of the competency based curriculum we have a shared language with our learners and each other.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Defining My Practice Within the Community </span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a Learning Leader and an early adopter of the competency based curriculum, I have quite an active role within the community. As a leader I am expected to model best practice as well as showing that I am open to and actively pursuing new learning. Being on the Leadership team means I get regular opportunities to interact with Mark, which means I can clarify new concepts for my team, and have some say in the direction we are heading. As we are all on this journey together I feel very connected to the community, we all learn together, it is new for all of us, and as a staff we tend to be supportive and open with each other. There are many occasions where I get to learn from others in the community as they share something they have tried or experienced. On other occasions, I have the opportunity to take the lead or share my new learning, so it is definitely a community that is based on the principle of a social learning system, with each part contributing to the whole.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reference:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wenger, E. (2000). Communities of practice and social learning systems.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Organization</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, 7(2), 225-246.</span></div>
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Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-52529467166208284692014-10-06T22:01:00.003+13:002014-10-06T22:25:04.092+13:00#EducampNZ Smackdown on Air<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Tonight I got to participate in my second ever Google Hangout (my first having been our planning meeting a few days ago) and to add to the experience it was a live on air hangout, which meant that we had a viewing audience! Talk about jumping in the deep end.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Our planning chat hadn't really required me to say anything, which was a good thing as my computer microphone decided it didn't like me wearing headphones and refused to pick up anything I was saying. Fortunately, I figured that I'd be ok for tonight as I had my TELA laptop and an iPad as back ups; however, I realised after our meeting that I really didn't know how all the Hangout features worked. This resulted in an entertaining 20 minutes this morning where I logged in on one device as myself and on another as my son, put them in different rooms so that I could check the microphones were working, and then dashing backwards and forwards between the 2 devices to see what happened when I pushed different buttons. I'm sure someone could suggest a more practical method, but I was the only person at home, I like to figure things out by myself until I know I can do them, and the dog and cat were suitably entertained.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In any case, I felt confident that I knew what I was doing and was ready for the live hangout. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The purpose of the Google Hangout was to share the Educampnz movement and also ways of connecting with other educators, using the Smackdown format often used at Educamp. This was our contribution to Connected Educator Month, which takes place throughout October. If you want to know more about it check out the website <a href="http://connectededucator.org.nz/" target="_blank">here</a>. There were several of us from up and down the country contributing to the Smackdown, ably facilitated by Fiona Grant.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As well as having the opportunity to contribute myself, I had a front row seat to listen to all the other contributors and the things they had to share. I learnt about several ways of connecting that I hadn't heard of before and even got introduced to the term FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) in relation to being a connected educator - certainly something that I suffer from at times. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I spoke about using travel buddies as a way of building national and international connections for your students. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihs8mAOl1zpM-tA0oJ7nAloOGHDv5Z6Fa3hwXO0x5HX8Q3OX6zhMaw7vHTqTbWd8QWh3vMEKQgQHH2RwtQEklUquyWcH_wNVPtPhA7YDxVr_m8FBaiNQrpsUAXluM_kqB2dJyJujt7knW-/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-10-06+at+9.53.13+pm.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihs8mAOl1zpM-tA0oJ7nAloOGHDv5Z6Fa3hwXO0x5HX8Q3OX6zhMaw7vHTqTbWd8QWh3vMEKQgQHH2RwtQEklUquyWcH_wNVPtPhA7YDxVr_m8FBaiNQrpsUAXluM_kqB2dJyJujt7knW-/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-10-06+at+9.53.13+pm.png" height="237" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Here's a sort of transcript of what I said during my part of the Smack down ( I'd pre-written notes because I wanted to make sure I remembered everything).</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Travel buddies are a really easy way to connect your class with other classes, both nationally and internationally. I've been using travel buddies with my students since 1999 and I was able to create these learning experiences for my classes through my own online connections.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Travel buddies can be as simple and inexpensive as posting a flat Stanley in an envelope. This was the first travel buddy experience I participated in. After reading Jeff Brown's book, we drew our own flat Stanley's and posted them to a host class, we received theirs in return.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">When sending a travel buddy, you often send them with artefacts that represent or tell something about your town, city or country. These usually stay with the hosting class as a Koha for hosting. The host class keeps your travel buddy for whatever amount of time you have agreed upon & they are responsible for keeping a journal or diary sharing what the travel buddy gets up to and include photos where they can. Back in the 90s and early 2000s this was usually a physical journal. These days it can be digital e.g. A blog post, Skype chat, google doc, or similar.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">A few years ago Rohi the Kea went on a grand tour of NZ and was passed between several classes throughout NZ who all contributed to a collaborative blog. This was a great way for all the children to learn about different parts of NZ.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Last year my class hosted Snail and Whale who were travelling around NZ complete with the book about their adventures. This was easily incorporated into our literacy programme. When it was time to send them on to their next school we recorded inside the cover of the book to show who we were and where we were from.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Sometimes travel buddies go astray - Kara the kiwi never returned from her trip to Wisconsin. She was posted from the U.S. but never made it home. Rohi, was accidentally sold at a school gala but fortunately she was retrieved and was able to continue on her travels. This doesn't happen often but it worth keeping in mind - this is one of the reasons why I make sure mine are small, light and inexpensive. Keeping them small also helps keep postage costs down.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Travel buddies are a great way for teachers to connect and collaborate with other teachers and provides an engaging and accessible learning opportunity for their students</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I have to admit to a huge sense of relief once I'd finished my bit. I was also really pleased with how it had gone. Having never really participated in a Google Hangout before, I have to say it was a fantastic way of presenting to others and I loved the collaborative aspect as well.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Here is a link to the recording of the hangout if you missed it: <a href="http://bit.ly/1xURRzm">http://bit.ly/1xURRzm</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is a link to the supporting Google Presentation document <a href="http://bit.ly/ZMQMMe">http://bit.ly/ZMQMMe</a> It's open for you to edit if you have something to add.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Finally, I've included a link to my Wiki page about travel buddies <a href="http://bit.ly/1EjBCh4" target="_blank">http://bit.ly/1EjBCh4 </a>and I've embedded the EdTalk video, filmed a few years ago now, where I talked about connecting through classroom projects such as travel buddies - just in case you wanted to know more.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">There are so many ways that educators can connect with each other, check out the hangout recording, browse through the presentation and give something new a try. I certainly did tonight, and had a blast.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="281" mozallowfullscreen="" src="//player.vimeo.com/video/51576059?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&color=cc3a35" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="500"></iframe> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://vimeo.com/51576059">Travel buddies</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/edtalksnz">EDtalks</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.</span>Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-78053897397130427782014-01-17T13:11:00.000+13:002014-01-17T13:58:50.202+13:00Blogging Meme<span style="font-family: inherit;">It has been a very, very long time since I wrote on this blog. I've been meaning to for quite a while but couldn't think of anything worth saying. Thanks to a blogging meme that has been currently doing the rounds, I have got the kick start I need to get this blog up and running again.</span><br />
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Essentially the meme works as follows:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Acknowledge the nominating blogger.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Share 11 random facts about yourself.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Answer the 11 questions the nominating blogger has created for you.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">List 11 bloggers.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Post 11 questions for the bloggers you nominate to answer, and let all the bloggers know they have been nominated. Don’t nominate a blogger who has nominated you.</span></li>
</ul>
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I was tagged by both <a href="http://declairingit.blogspot.co.nz/" target="_blank">Claire Buist</a> & <a href="http://elearningr14.blogspot.co.nz/" target="_blank">Kimberley Rivett</a> so I decided to do one set of random facts but provide answers to each set of questions. The tricky part is deciding who to tag myself as most of the people I would tag have already been tagged - some more than once.</span><br />
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<b><u><span style="font-family: inherit;">11 Random Facts About Me</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I own over 3000 books & most of those are novels or picture books.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I have lived in 24 houses, in 11 different towns/cities in NZ.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I have lived at 6 different fire stations - Dad was a fireman and the houses were on the fire station grounds.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I was born with short achilles tendons and as a result I walk on my toes - especially when I don’t have shoes on to hold my heels down.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I am the oldest grandchild on both sides of my family.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">When I was 6 years old I was awarded second place for my painting of Guy Fawkes night in an art competition as part of the Wanganui A &P show.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I can't stand beetroot and no matter how hard I try I can't convince myself to eat it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I hate it when people call me Kirsty and often won’t respond if they do.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I have always wanted to go to Antarctica.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I have been as far south as Bluff and as far north as the Isle of Skye.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I love Jelly Belly Jelly Beans - they don’t last long when I’m around.</span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: inherit;">Here are my answers to Kimberley's questions:</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">1. Who is the most famous person you have ever met?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I met Rob Guest in Wanganui when I was 6 - he was performing in Half a Sixpence. He signed my programme and Mum bought me a 45” of his single “Hanging On”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">2. If you could spend a day with anyone from any era or country, who would it be and why?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Elizabeth the first. I have been fascinated by her since I was a very little girl.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">3. What is the greatest challenge you have faced in life?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Surviving a near fatal vehicle accident and then in the years afterwards helping my husband and son to cope with the impact it had on them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">4. What is your favourite childhood memory?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Summer holidays with my family - this includes my cousins and my grandparents.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">5. What has changed for the better and the worst in teaching since you were at school?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">For the better - recognition that each child has different needs and is at different points in their learning journey, instead of simply teaching the whole class the same lesson because they are in the same year level.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">For the worse - public opinion about teachers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">6. Who is the most inspiring teacher you had as a student and why?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Miss Evans my 5th form History & 7th form Classics teacher. She was interesting and engaging, had clear expectations and knew what she was talking about.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">7. What do you need to change or develop this year (personal challenge time!)?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Continue to develop my leadership skills in my role as a Learning Leader.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">8. Where would you love to travel to and why?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Canada because my grandfather trained there during World War Two and my best friend lives there.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">9. If you went to a 'P' party (something starting with the letter 'P') what would you wear? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Pyjamas - they’re just soooo comfortable.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">10. If you were a super hero what would be your superpower?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The ability to heal others.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">11. What is one thing you would change in the world if you could change anything?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">That’s a tricky one - I think I’d like for everyone to accept that each of us is different and that difference is ok.</span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: inherit;">And here are my answers to Claire's:</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">1) What is your favourite book?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">That’s a hard question - it would be like asking me to name my favourite offspring. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">2) What is your most precious device?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">3 way tie between my Mac Book, iPhone and iPad mini.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">3) iPad or Android tablets?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Always iPad.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">4) What do you consider the most valuable thing you own?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">My life - I’ve come very close to not being here on 3 occasions in my life and so I appreciate every moment I have and try to live each day as if it were my last.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">5) What is your favourite way to waste time?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Surfing the web.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">6) If a movie was being made about you who would you choose to play you and why?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kate Winslet because she is a fantastic character actress plus her complexion is similar to mine.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">7) If you could have an endless supply of food what would that be?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Dessert.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">8) What's the best holiday you've been on?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">3 weeks touring the UK.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">9) What's the worst haircut you've ever had?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The one my sister gave me when she was 2 and I was 4.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">10) What three things do you love most about your best friend?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">She understands my warped sense of humour, she’s always there for me no matter what and she loves books and history as much as I do.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">11) What is your favourite smell and what memory does it remind you of?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Wood smoke. It reminds me of my Dad. He was a fireman and often when he came home I’d hug him and he would smell all smokey. Also when we went to visit him at work the room where they hung all their gear had the same smell.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: inherit;">My 11 Questions:</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">1. Why did you decide to become a teacher?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">2. What are you most proud of?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">3. If you weren't an educator what would you be?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">4. If you could invite any 3 people in the world (past or present) to dinner, who would you invite and </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> why?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">5. What advice would you give to your 18 year old self?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">6. Do you speak another language? If so, what?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">7. What television programme from your childhood would you like to see back on the screen these </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> days?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">8. What's your idea of a fabulous weekend?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">9. Blogging, Twitter or Facebook - which is better and why?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">10.Which animal do you feel best represents you and why?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">11. Do you think imagination is important? Why or why not?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I tag the following people:</span><br />
<span id="docs-internal-guid-0bbd4d12-9d8b-89ee-0e15-770c6ec868dd"><span style="font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">@kiwispouse, @eMartian, @tinado, @dragonsinger57, @dragon09 & anyone else who hasn’t been tagged but wants to do it as I am running out of people who haven't been tagged already.</span></span></div>
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Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-37051711924186318912010-04-30T21:23:00.000+12:002010-04-30T21:23:26.938+12:00Cellphones and PDF Files.So I was playing with my cellphone the other day whilst sitting in the car. I was reading blog posts on my phone's web browser. One post in particular contained a link to a PDF file. Initially I thought I'd have to wait until I got home to see what it contained, however, I decided to click the link and see what happened. Next thing I knew Adobe Acrobat Reader opened on my phone (I didn't even realise the phone had it) and I was able to read the downloaded document.<br />
Now I just have an ordinary sort of a cellphone - a Nokia , with an ordinary sized screen so I had to zoom the text up a bit to read it and I'm not sure I'd want to be reading too many documents in this format - it's a bit cumbersome if you zoom in too much. Never the less, I was quite excited to realise that I could access PDFs on the move.<br />
My phone has blue tooth and so does my computer so when I got home I was able to blue tooth the document to my computer. I also realised I could send PDFs back to my phone from my computer, which could be useful.<br />
It's been a long time since I've had a chance to just sit and play like that and see what I can discover. What I discovered is, I'm sure, not all that amazing to some of you, however, it was an aha moment and piece of new learning for me. I have always been a strong advocate of having sand pit time, having the time to play and experiment as a means of developing knowledge and skills in the area of ICT (or any area of new learning for that matter). I was reminded of this as I played with my phone the other day. My other thought as I was playing with my phone was "duh! Why didn't I realise my phone did this before?" It reinforced for me that sometimes adult learners ( and kids too) make learning discoveries that might night be a big deal for those in the know. The important thing I took away from this was to remember, when I'm teaching others in PD situations, that we're all at different stages along our journey and that it is important to acknowledge the excitement and new learning discoveries made.Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-90378548553008450072009-04-19T10:07:00.007+12:002009-04-19T11:18:35.423+12:00Blogger's Guilt or Rediscovering My Reason for Blogging.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiecOvk3Spd5HOIYB5r0ZgiEVR_llHPbnQKcDYcRbAVKwRTqKsDidvtmUK4s-yGRZXzSF9gYBDeWsRrF-pMWziPog3SDqo5KtrgdCv-OnHswTrfFC6gigJpjNvQVhIOaq8SWUrCUPIud7w5/s1600-h/MyPicture.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 221px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiecOvk3Spd5HOIYB5r0ZgiEVR_llHPbnQKcDYcRbAVKwRTqKsDidvtmUK4s-yGRZXzSF9gYBDeWsRrF-pMWziPog3SDqo5KtrgdCv-OnHswTrfFC6gigJpjNvQVhIOaq8SWUrCUPIud7w5/s320/MyPicture.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326172544960601778" border="0" /></a>Ok so here I am after what appears to be a 6 month break! Life has a habit of getting in the way at times and something just has to give. Since my last post I have changed schools & year levels...what an awesome and daunting learning curve that has been. I know I could have found plenty to blog about... if I could just find the time.<br /><br />Which brings me to the point of this post, I've discovered an interesting phenomenon which comes with maintaining a blog and developing an audience..<span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">. 'Blogger's Guilt'. </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I have seriously spent the last 6 months feeling guilty that I haven't posted on my blog. I have felt terrible because I have abandoned the 2 people who even bother to read my blog in the first place.<br /><br />Having an 'authentic audience' makes you feel compelled to engage with them. However, sometimes for the sake of sanity you just have to step back... it's an interesting quandary.<br /><br />During this time I have been busy preparing for my new class, supporting my 6 and 7 year old charges as <a href="http://mrsmacscyberkids.blogspot.com/">they take their own tentative steps into the world of blogging</a>, staying in touch with my PLN via <a href="http://www.twitter.com/">Twitter,</a> visiting blogs... predominantly lurking, but occasionally leaving a comment on my own behalf, building an audience for my class blog by leaving multiple comments on behalf of my class, the list goes on and on.<br /><br />There has also been the issue of what to blog about. Sometimes an idea will come to me or I'll have a play with something new in the world of web 2.0 and I think that maybe I could blog about that. What ends up happening though is that I'll log into my Google Reader and discover that several others have already done/written about the same thing... who wants to be told they're just jumping on the bandwagon - a comment I have seen out there in "Blog Land", put out there by some blogging notables. You start to wonder if your voice is worth sharing if you can't think of anything new to say. For a perfectionist like me this can be the perfect excuse not to try.<br /><br />After thinking things through for a while and turning them over in my head I had a mini epiphany of sorts... I actually blog for the most important audience of all...<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:130%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">Myself!</span></span><br /><br />I originally started blogging as a means of processing through the many thoughts that tumble around in my head. My f<a href="http://keamac.blogspot.com/">irst blog</a> ( and also sadly neglected at the moment) began as a space to record my daily thoughts and happenings as a form of online journalling. It was a place to post my scrapbooking pages (yes I'm a scrapbooker) and I was really doing it for myself and my family.<br /><br />Then I discovered the world of the Edublogosphere and realised that I needed a space to process my thinking and learning in relation to my other passion...teaching. I had to start another blog as I really didn't want to bore my grandmother with my musing and pondering about ICT integration and the classroom. The Edublogosphere can be intimidating... you feel like you need to be deep and clever like other blogs you read in order to be relevant. You owe it to your audience to appear to know what you're talking about. You start to blog for the sake of others, instead of for your own sake and some of the original joy of blogging starts to disappear.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">Side note - I wonder if there is a risk of this happening to our kids. Already this year I have seen the disappointment on the face of one little cherub in my class because his post on our <a href="http://mrsmacscyberkids.blogspot.com/">class blog</a> only received 7 comments when another child had received 17. In both cases I had tweeted several times to invite others to read and leave a comment for my kids. Maybe I just picked a good day for one of them, maybe people were too busy to stop and leave a comment that particular day. I know from my blog counter that both posts received many, many visitors, and yet one missed out on the comments. For one little boy the joy of having an audience was diminished when he saw that his comment tally was less than another's. I'm going to have to think on how to make a 6 year old understand that the number of comments isn't the most important thing... or is it? Hmmmm... I think I have the basis of another post there.<br /></span><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Returning to my mini epiphany, I decided to reclaim the joy, to reclaim my space on the net, to let my voice ring out again... even if I end up talking only to myself. I blog because I want to write, I love to write, I need to write. I blog because I have a lot to think about and process and this is a venue that allows me to do so. I am going to blog for myself. I enjoy having an audience and if you want to take part in my blogging journey, then you are most welcome my friends. However, I've decided I won't allow myself to feel guilty, or to avoid posting because I think my voice is less important then anyone else's.<br /><br />If you have persevered to the end of this post, then I am most impressed. If you want to share your views I'd be interested to hear them.<br /><br />Thank you for stopping by.<br /></span></span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"></span></span></span>Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-73219685776316933382008-10-12T22:07:00.001+13:002008-10-12T22:13:14.522+13:00Here Comes Learning - A Keynote from Sheryl Nussbaum Beach and Will Richardson Pt3.Will talked about how we need to prepare kids to work with people from multiple cultures, whom they are never going to meet, in order to create things together. He explained how it is predicted that in 2 years time most Fortune 500 companies will have a presence in an immersive world e.g. <a href="http://www.worldofwarcraft.com">World of Warcraft</a>, <a href="http://secondlife.com/">Second Life</a>, etc. He suggested that people could be "going to work" as an avatar having packed their "virtual lunchbox" for the day. (Having a major <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otherland">Otherland </a>moment here). It is such an amazing thought and totally reinforces just what a different world our children could be living and working in.<br /><br />Will asked "How do we prepare our kids to connect with people who share their passion and work together to effect change?" I love this idea of kids working together to make a difference in the world. I love the idea of working with others myself to make a difference. I think <a href="http://m3teacher.blogspot.com/">Erin</a> and her class are already off to a great start with this via their <a title="Kiwis for Kenya" href="http://kiwisforkenya.wetpaint.com/" id="tafz">Kiwis for Kenya</a> project. Projects like this one show that it really is possible.<br /><br />Sheryl made a comment that really resonated with me, "None of us is as good as all of us." I thought this was a really powerful statement. The idea that the more of us that work together, the greater the change we can effect is quite a sobering and yet optimistic thought. Sheryl talked about how, with this in mind we needed to ensure that we and the children did not just simply use the tools at our disposal, but use them in a way that allows us to move through Shirky's continuum to the point where we are able to take collective action.<br /><br />Another thing Sheryl said that really hit home for me was, "You can't give away what you do not own." This is so true. She went on to say that teacher's NEED to own it. By this she means that we need to be comfortable moving in these networks and communities, in having connectivity in using and exploring the digital tools available to us. I agree that this is vital, after all how else can you know what you are talking about? How else can you ensure the children are fully prepared to take their place in the world?<br /><br />Sheryl talked about how we are working outside our comfort zone, how we are in a messy place of change, but that we are preparing our kids for their future! Again this struck a chord. The question is, how do we get everyone else on board with this? How do we get the message out there? What about parents? Their idea of school is based on their own experiences, we need to consider how we can communicate the need for change and the types of change to them.<br /><br />Will added at this point that there are lots of questions and lots of challenges. With this I whole heartedly agree. Sheryl added that as educators we need to decide together what matters. She discussed the importance of us becoming networked learners, of collaborating with like minded people. I couldn't agree more. In the past year alone I have benefited immensely in terms of my professional and personal growth thanks to the collaborative and supportive group of educators who make up my PLN. <br /><br />Sheryl identified us as the last generation of teachers who have a a choice about whether or not to embrace this technology/participatory media. She said the children in our classrooms now do not have this choice. She went on to add that we have a moral responsibility to make the choice to embrace it. She explained that while some of our kids will get this at home, many of our lower decile children do not have this safety net. She referred to it as a "safety net for their future" and that the only place our at risk learners would get this is within the "safety net" of our classrooms, which is why it is absolutely vital that we make the choice to embrace the tools, to own them, so that we can do our kids justice.<br /><br />She finished by saying that New Zealand teachers need to move to true collaboration and collective action. She challenged us to to "Do it for the children's sake, challenge the status quot". Finishing on that note I felt excited and energised. Everything I heard made a lot of sense to me. I found it powerful because it reaffirmed my thoughts and beliefs, as a keynote it reflected where I am at with my thinking, with my own personal tipping point. This is a challenge that I am ready to take up. But, is this the same for everyone? What about those teachers who aren't there yet? What can we do to get everyone heading in the same direction? I'd love to hear what others think, what is your perspective? What do you think?<br /><br />So here you have it, a three part rewriting of my frantically typed notes as processed and reflected on by me. If anyone thinks I've missed something or perhaps missed a key idea, please feel free to let me know in the comments and I'll come back and edit. I got SO much out of this keynote that it's hard to do it justice. Thanks so much Sheryl and Will for making me think, ask questions and even dream a little. I can't wait to see where this train ends up.Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-58795979963418625252008-10-12T20:14:00.003+13:002008-10-12T20:30:59.613+13:00Here Comes Learning - A Keynote from Sheryl Nussbaum Beach and Will Richardson Pt2.Will stepped in at this point to explore the concept of sharing further. He looked at how sharing on line is extremely easy, apparently blog posts, <a href="http://www.flickr.com/">Flickr</a> uploads, etc number in the millions each day. We talked about how the problem with this ease of on line sharing is that many kids using forums such as <a href="http://www.myspace.com/">MySpace</a> are not necessarily sharing in a way that is very appropriate. He went on to add that our kids are going to be <a href="http://www.google.co.nz">Google</a>-able and thus it is extremely important for them to think about what they are sharing. Apparently in the U.S. more and more people are being Googled by future employers. Will asked us to think about what we are doing to prepare our kids to make sure they are employable in 6-7 years time. He went on to say that we're not really preparing them to be sharable right now. I had to agree whole heartedly with this as I am absolute passionate about helping kids (and adults) to understand the importance of their "digital footprint" and encourage them to consider that everything they place on line stays on line. It was very affirming to see that I am definitely heading down the right track with this.<br /><br />He also made a point about filtering our children's on line experiences. He gave <a href="Http://remoteaccess.typepad.com/">Clarence Fisher</a> as an example, <a href="http://remoteaccess.typepad.com/">Clarence</a> doesn't moderate his kids blogs, he monitors them, because they have an unfiltered world at home. I totally agree, it makes much more sense to teach kids appropriate ways to deal with the nasties out there then wrap them up in cotton wool so that when they do encounter them they have no experience of how to deal with them appropriately. If they are given an opportunity to manage these situations in a safe and scaffolded environment, then surely they will be better prepared to meet them head on on their own.<br /><br />Sheryl stepped up at this point to explain how sharing leads to connections, which eventually leads to the building of community. She talked about how she went from knowing no New Zealand based educators to connecting with a whole lot, to developing community, all due to their on line presence. She explained that it is important to continue to share, engage and post in order to maintain the community of practise and to allow it to grow over time. I know there are times where I have large gaps in posting to my blogs, although I do maintain a healthy level of interaction via Twitter. However, after hearing this I resolved to make a greater effort to not only blog with greater regularity, but also comment on the blog posts of others more often. I can also see the necessity of setting up situations in the classroom where my children have this opportunity as well.<br /><br />Will shared examples of fan fiction sites at this stage as an example of the cooperative things kids are doing. He talked about how we can cooperate and create similar situations. He also mentioned <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> and had me absolutely fascinated as he talked about a group of kids he hooked up on line via <a href="http://www.skype.com/">Skype</a>, with an expert in Scotland who took them through how to use <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a>. Andrew was the 12 year old expert and he was up past his bed time - how cool is that?! I love the idea of using tools like <a href="http://www.skype.com/">Skype </a>to connect kids with each other in real time situations. I certainly think this is an area that needs to be explored further. I am also very excited by the thought of children being able to see each other as experts, to be able to realise that the "experts" aren't just adults or teachers. I wonder what areas of expertise my children could offer in a similar forum? I definitely need to explore this idea further.<br /><br />Sheryl talked about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Tuckman">Bruce Tuckman's</a> ideas of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forming-storming-norming-performing">Teaming</a> and explained how groups go through stages of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forming-storming-norming-performing#Forming">Forming</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forming-storming-norming-performing#Storming">Storming,</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forming-storming-norming-performing#Norming">Norming</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forming-storming-norming-performing#Performing">Performing</a>. Apparently the reason we often don't see more evidence of change in school is because people get to the storming phase and give up before getting to the true performing stage. She also talked about how you can see pockets of isolated change in the school/classroom. That resonated with me as I could totally relate to the idea of being an isolated pocket.<br /><br />(To be concluded in Here Comes Learning - A Keynote from Sheryl Nussbaum Beach and Will Richardson Pt3).Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-8479585248525827342008-10-12T18:42:00.002+13:002008-10-12T18:56:17.338+13:00Here Comes Learning - A Keynote from Sheryl Nussbaum Beach and Will Richardson Pt1.<span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">I'm going to explore this keynote in three parts as I got a lot from it and have a lot to share and consider. I figured that by breaking it up it will make for easier reading for those of you that are interested.</span><br /><br />Whilst at <a href="http://centre4.interact.ac.nz/spaces/space.php?space_key=17876">ULearn08</a> I was fortunate enough to be able to listen to a keynote presented by <a href="http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.com/">Sheryl Nussbaum - Beach</a> and <a href="http://weblogg-ed.com/">Will Richardson</a>, two US educators who I very much admire. They presented using a sort of tag team approach with each of them taking it in turn to share their message/thoughts with the audience. The title of the keynote was;<br />"Here Comes Learning". I found their presentation to be both inspiring and reaffirming, I could see that I am on the right path in my journey as an educator and learner as we move forwards in a new direction with education.<br /><br />Will shared the story of 11 year old Laura Stockman and her blog <a href="http://twentyfivedays.wordpress.com/">25 Days to Make a Difference</a>. Laura started this blog after her much loved grandfather died in honour of his memory. She was determined to make a difference in the world by doing one good deed a day for 25 days. Her blog was the portal through which she shared her journey with the world. Now, around 10 months later, Laura is still blogging and still making a difference, her original plan has has just ballooned! Check out her <a href="http://twentyfivedays.wordpress.com/">blog</a>to see just how much. <a href="http://twentyfivedays.wordpress.com/">Laura's blog </a> is read all over the world, she's one awesome kid.<br /><br />Sheryl then talked about her work with novice teachers involved in a networked project with threaded discussions. She discussed how this kind of network allowed for the sharing of several different perspectives about he topics discussed. I think one of the things that really struck me personally was her story of a young teacher who was questioning his decision to become a teacher. He was finding everything so overwhelming and, as many of us have done, he was starting to feel that he just didn't measure up, that this wasn't for him. He wrote about it in the forum and what he wrote came from the heart - he really was at the end of his rope. What he got back was an out pouring of support and encouragement from the others in the forum. Realising he was not alone he made the decision to stay in education, his post to the forum when he made this decision gave me goose bumps. This was an example of what a powerful medium a community of practise can be. I know from my own point of view that my PLN is like my life line, it's what keeps me going and helps me to feel that I am simply not just a voice in the wilderness.<br /><br />Will talked about the need for <span style="font-weight: bold;">"every child in every school to grow their own network in safe and effective ways"</span>. This really resonated with me and, as a mother as well as an educator, I can see the sense in this as these transformative technologies shape a very different tomorrow for our young people. I find this really exciting, if a little scary at times, but also realise that this concept is potentially very daunting and frightening for some. The other worrying thing is that I think perhaps many people out there just aren't aware of what's here already and what's coming up close behind. I first read <a href="http://www.tadwilliams.com/">Tad Williams</a> "The Otherland" series back in 1999 and thought "yea right!" but, having reread it recently, I can see that much that was written about as science fiction has in fact now become science fact and I can see that many of the other concepts explored in that series may in fact become a reality in the not too distant future.<br /><br />Sheryl then went on to talk about the need to place teachers in these situated learning communities of practise in order for us to support and enable the children in growing their own networks. She talked about how she felt that New Zealand has a good understanding of the power and value of these types of communities and cited our ICT Cluster system as an example. Sheryl used the following definition from Wikipedia to describe community:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"The process of social learning that occurs when people who have a common interest in some subject or problem collaborate over an extended period to share ideas, find solutions, and build innovations." </span><br /><br />She went on to relate this to virtual learning communities. Sheryl talked about communities of practise being situated learning communities e.g. in my PLN we're all educators and are interested in improving over time. Sheryl talked about how situated learning communities are all about improvement. A situated learning community, according to Sheryl, differs from a network because it evolves. She explained that in a situated learning community you would want co-created content and co-created community, which should result in co-ownership. She talked about how members of the community start to evolve and develop shared norms.<br /><br />Sheryl mentioned seeing the learner in these environments as an innovator, a co-communicator. She then went on to outline <a href="http://www.shirky.com/">Clay Shirky's </a>steps in a continuum in the process of forming communities whereby it moves from Sharing to Cooperation to Collaboration to Collective Action. (<a href="http://www.shirky.com/">Clay Shirky</a> is the author of "<a href="http://www.herecomeseverybody.org/">Here Comes Everybody"</a>).<br /><br />(To be continued in Here Comes Learning - A Keynote from Sheryl Nussbaum Beach and Will Richardson Pt2).</ahref="http:>Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-33051726864216610532008-10-10T09:01:00.002+13:002008-10-12T20:53:26.927+13:00ULearn Day Two<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMqtft-PhyphenhyphenPrD4URVT-BPOZYyk0_6XFfqJhPmCeyf4fl0IZ0kUN8lfmWf3ZmvzzSFUMpE0evn3QE2TGwa8QJMDBwS5rvqlQ1Sl7pfQ865xqRuOdsUnZe-hV23RHRrzFHvZ3fcXRYASm0wG/s1600-h/DSCF0021.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMqtft-PhyphenhyphenPrD4URVT-BPOZYyk0_6XFfqJhPmCeyf4fl0IZ0kUN8lfmWf3ZmvzzSFUMpE0evn3QE2TGwa8QJMDBwS5rvqlQ1Sl7pfQ865xqRuOdsUnZe-hV23RHRrzFHvZ3fcXRYASm0wG/s320/DSCF0021.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5256172292718946850" border="0" /></a><br />Day 2<br /><br />Started the day nice and early with another brisk walk through the streets of Christchurch to the <a href="http://www.eatout.co.nz/decadence-cafe.html">Decadence Café </a>for the <a href="http://educatingthedragon.edublogs.org/2008/08/15/breakfast-for-the-nzbloggertweets/">Bloggers/Twitterers breakfast</a>. This was a fabulous way to start the day, nice food, good company, time spent catching up with my online friends – just brilliant! In fact I could have stayed there longer just talking, getting to know each other better & just chilling. Thank you so much for organising it <a href="http://educatingthedragon.edublogs.org/">Simon</a>, great idea, nice to have the opportunity.<br /><br />After breakfast it was off to the conference venue. I sat at the Blogger’s café for a while just getting in the zone. Was feeling a little nervous by this point as I had to present later in the day and this time it was my “big one” the 90 minute interactive presentation!<br /><br />I was interviewed & videoed by some of the fabulous kids from the Media Team. They were talking to me as a first time presenter about how I found the whole presentation process. Not sure what happens with all the video next, but it was neat to be asked.<br /><br />Off to the keynote next where we got to see the awards ceremony for Microsoft Innovative Teacher of the year. Some stunning work being done by educators in schools around New Zealand. The posters to support their presentations have been on display in the foyer – just amazing. The speaker who followed – Steve Carden was just terrific. Made some interesting points, was a fantastic story teller. It was great to hear form the perspective of a “non educator”. I made a few comments on twitter about points he made that resonated with me. If you can hold out for 24 hours I shall add a quick post on my thoughts – I just need to retrieve them from Twitter when I’m able to be online again & have time to think it through.<br /><br />After morning tea it was off to my first breakout of the day with <a href="http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.com/">Sheryl Naussbaum Beach.</a> I have to admit to being just a tad star struck & when she shook my hand and said “Hi I’m <a href="http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.com/">Sheryl</a>” it just made my day. An amazing lady, very knowledgable, very genuine. Her session was fantastic and shall be the source of another blog post I think as again I have a lot to ponder.<br /><br />Highlight of lunchtime…finally getting to meet Mr Woody, another member of my PLN. By the time lunch rolled around all I could handle was a banana! & a glass of water. I sat upstairs in the presenters lounge with David and Marnie and just took the time to chill and try to calm my nerves. Then I headed over to the Crown Plaza to prepare for my presentation.<br /><br />The room was a bit of a comfy fit for everyone (and I’m sure I had ring ins as I think there were more than 26 in there – but it was all good. So I just launched in and went for it! I think people really enjoyed learning about the <a href="http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/">Pacific Northwestern Tree Octopus</a> & having the opportunity to view my live specimen! I actually think I tried to cover almost too much. I think next time I might break it up and do a few things, or maybe offer a session for beginners and then one that’s a little further along the continuum. I didn’t quite get what I wanted happening with the <a href="http://authenticict.wikispaces.com/">wiki </a>– ( a time factor again) but it was all good, as really I just wanted people to take some time to play, explore and discover. The idea of creative commons was new to most of the attendees so I was pleased to have a chance to really plug that one! Other than all that, I had some great feedback, really positive, so I hope people got at least 1 thing out of it to take away with them. I figured that they could always revisit the wiki and explore things for themselves when they had the time and were in the head space to do so.<br /><br />My last breakout was with <a href="http://weblogg-ed.com/">Will Richardson</a>, again I thought it was terrific and it was fun adding comments to the back channel he had streaming alongside his Google Docs presentation. I sat with <a href="http://allanahk.edublogs.org/">Allanah </a>& we back channelled our “talk to your neighbour” discussion!… he he he. Some valuable and thought provoking stuff once again. I’ll revisit the ideas further in a future blog post – to be honest, with presenting as well and trying to get around and meet everyone it’s been a bit hard to find time to just sit and reflect – I’m figuring I’ll roll the ideas round in my head and then blog them once I’m home and have time to think it all through.<br /><br />The final part of the day was the conference dinner. Totally awesome! Excellent live performances going on, good band, good conversation, great food – it rocked! I was able to catch up with a few of my PLN friends and really enjoyed having the opportunity to catch up with <a href="http://educatingthedragon.edublogs.org/">Simon </a>and have a good, long chat.<br /><br />So now it’s really late and I need to catch a few hours sleep before the final day of Ulearn08. I’m off to interact with classroom bloggers tomorrow at <a href="http://manaiakalani.blogspot.com/">Dorothy Burts</a> breakout, then I finish where I started back with <a href="http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/About+Me">Andrew Churches</a> learning about his <a href="http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom%27s+Digital+Taxonomy">Digital Taxonomy</a> – really looking forward to both of those.Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-63778164952779078332008-10-09T08:37:00.001+13:002008-10-12T20:59:02.987+13:00Day One of ULearn<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxrijFXxvNxabUIfTXksJ4DY6pTptA7tcF_taNlRq27GK0QMyTRFAqBe8JNxTVTlrwAIG_mE42ybYVeJkBnBaEJef7vP4h66tSXmcRoc8ldR0b6rSMexxxNYIaL2NAkMVbxMY_rMV5shwy/s1600-h/DSCF0006.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxrijFXxvNxabUIfTXksJ4DY6pTptA7tcF_taNlRq27GK0QMyTRFAqBe8JNxTVTlrwAIG_mE42ybYVeJkBnBaEJef7vP4h66tSXmcRoc8ldR0b6rSMexxxNYIaL2NAkMVbxMY_rMV5shwy/s320/DSCF0006.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5256173585170935698" border="0" /></a><br />Up bright and early, I marched off through the streets of Christchurch in the beautiful spring sunshine, to register for Ulearn08. I have to say that Christchurch really is a beautiful city, I love all the parks & the old stone architecture – it’s just magical.<br /><br />Arriving as the doors opened I trot up to register – so much easier when you’re there before the crowd. Collected my registration pack, which included a nice USB data stick as a thankyou for presenting – Thank you CORE Ed.<br /><br />Trotted up stairs to the presenters lounge to get my laptop configured – pretty easy really – just a case of turning it on. Saw Toni while I was there and said Hi. Then I wandered downstairs to check out the posters for the Microsoft Innovative Teacher awards. The posters were amazing, and the amount of work and detail involved was just astounding! They also have to do a six minute presentation before the judges – I’d hate to have that job. Met up with Marnie & David K there – which was really neat I’d met Marnie before but only knew David through his blog “Turning the SuperTanker”. It was nice to catch up with people I knew so I didn’t wander aimlessly. We headed upstairs to the presenters lounge to just chill out for a while.<br />While we were there Rachel & Lenva arrived so I had a nice time catching up with everybody. Went downstairs to get my list of delegates & there was Erin at the registration desk – so it was hugs all round.<br /><br />Finally it was time to head off to the keynote. The sense of anticipation was starting to build – I was here & Ulearn was about to begin! For the first time ever I had my laptop open & was using it to take notes instead of the old pen & paper method. I was also able to follow the back channel of tweets through Twitter which were starting to pour in thick & fast. Chris Carter was up first – I was really enjoying the video he had to support his talk of educators & kids around NZ doing their thing – some awesome stuff happening there. Next up were Sheryl Nausbaum- Beach & Will Richardson – they presented together, taking turns to share the presentation. I think they raised some interesting points that are well worth thinking about. Some of them will take a lot more mulling over I think. I shall blog about them separately though.<br /><br />After the keynote it was morning tea & then time for the 1st breakout. Had an awesome time at Andrew Church’s session. We did an online learning styles test (apparently I’m multimodal – a polite way of saying indecisive???). Then he took us through all kinds of tools and applications that could be used to reach & strengthen different learning styles. One of my favourites was “Rasterbator”! The name’s a bit of a worry, but it was a really cool application, you can basically take any size photo & blow it up as big as you want – way cool. I did discover that small pixel sizes work better.<br /><br />Next up was lunch and I got a chance to catch up with Jamin, Jane, Suzie, Simon & Fiona. I also got to chat with my old DP from Levin who is now the principal of Coley Street School – nice to catch up.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLKVBph_UTjwcwek7qPmxYrMH6I7PaDhWFempHElwbcYgjW6irz172usA_xs36qvs0_QAz12BKgnkw13RfvzGvKD3R22H6YLLzp9MDwjhkzWvBVypq1xB9uOPW9JOw6TYWxjeOVW5rvIpV/s1600-h/DSCF0007.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLKVBph_UTjwcwek7qPmxYrMH6I7PaDhWFempHElwbcYgjW6irz172usA_xs36qvs0_QAz12BKgnkw13RfvzGvKD3R22H6YLLzp9MDwjhkzWvBVypq1xB9uOPW9JOw6TYWxjeOVW5rvIpV/s320/DSCF0007.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5256173581092528210" border="0" /></a><br /><br />The end of lunchtime saw my Breakout arriving! Allanah was doing the first taster session in the room & I was next. Allanah and I had never met face to face before so it was awesome to finally get to meet her. I kind of hung out in the corner during her presentation, enjoying the calming effect of the Jack Johnson album she had playing, as by this stage my hands were starting to shake for some inexplicable reason.<br />And then it was my turn! So here I was with 20 odd faces staring at me waiting for me to start. So I counted to 10, took a calming breath, and off I went for 40 odd minutes talking about VoiceThread & all it’s many charms. I was pleased that people asked questions, nodded, smiled, laughed and interacted - did all the right things. I figured at that point that I must be doing ok as no – one was asleep, so it’s all good. Now I just have tomorrow’s biggie to look forward too and then I’m done!<br />Headed back up to the Blogger’s Café afterwards and caught up with some of the others, including Barbara who I hadn’t seen all day. Simon had a really funky microphone that recorded what you said as an mp3. You then plug it into your computer via a USB connector on the other end and voila! Great for sharing news, group discussions etc. Totally kid proof apparently. At $85 dollars I was thinking it was a little bit ouchy, but very cool and of course it was another toy to add to my wishlist.<br />Stopped a while with Suzie and just chatted as by this point I was feeling exhausted, a bit headachy & just a tad over whelmed – it was nice to have some peace.<br />Caught up with the rest of the crowd from school and we headed off to dinner at Portofino. So now I’m in bed blogging, just processing through the day. Have a lot to think about. There’s a lot going on and only so much time to get it all done. Please excuse the lack of links – I’ll go back through my post tomorrow if I can and add them , otherwise I’ll get them in place by Saturday – no internet access in the hotel so I have to do what I can between breakouts, etc while at the conference venue.<br />I promise I’ll blog the key notes properly as soon as I can. But I think it’s time for zzz’s as I’m up at 6am to get ready for the Blogger’s Breakfast and it’s just gone midnight.<br />Having a ball though. One of the best things for me has to be meeting up with everyone from my PLN – it’s just fabulous.Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-24050911445502766332008-10-07T10:02:00.005+13:002008-10-07T10:35:18.319+13:00ULearn08... I'm on my way!ULearn 08 is finally here. It's been very much at the forefront of my mind for the best part of the year (let's face it, I've been looking forward to it since ULearn 07!)<br /><br />In a couple of hours I'm off to the airport and on my way to Christchurch. I'm sitting here right now with my mind (and stomach) absolutely churning with different thoughts and emotions: anticipation, excitement, nervousness, apprehension and a healthy dose of worry to round it all off.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Anticipation</span> - I am so looking forward to all the amazing learning and networking and just know is going to take place over the next few days. I am also anticipating that it will be cold!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Excitement</span> - "I'm going to ULearn...I',m going to ULearn..." Total geek out time, get to meet up with all my online friends - yay! I'm like a kid the night before Christmas.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Nervousness, Apprehension </span><span style="font-weight: bold;">& Worry </span>- I'm presenting...TWICE! I've made multiple back ups of my presentations, have spent countless computer hours creating them and have the sore elbow and stiff shoulders to prove it! I know I'm well prepared, I think my presentations are useful (and pretty - not that pretty is important...but I like pretty!), however; this still doesn't stop me worrying that something will go wrong, or I'll mess up, or I'll bore my audience.... all the usual paranoid and irrational thoughts that keep the adrenaline pumping. I've decided there are times where perfectionism is a bad thing. I'm also a bit anxious because I have to fly. I hate flying! I like going to new places, but I hate flying there. To add to my nerves there is supposed to be a storm front across half the country - nice!<br /><br /><div style="width: 425px; text-align: left;" id="__ss_638756"><a style="margin: 12px 0pt 3px; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; display: block; text-decoration: underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/Keamac/voice-thread-presentation?type=powerpoint" title="Voice Thread">Voice Thread</a><object style="margin: 0px;" height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=voicethread-1223295648118520-9&stripped_title=voice-thread-presentation"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=voicethread-1223295648118520-9&stripped_title=voice-thread-presentation" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="355" width="425"></embed></object><div style="font-size: 11px; font-family: tahoma,arial; height: 26px; padding-top: 2px;">View SlideShare <a style="text-decoration: underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/Keamac/voice-thread-presentation?type=powerpoint" title="View Voice Thread on SlideShare">presentation</a> or <a style="text-decoration: underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/upload?type=powerpoint">Upload</a> your own. (tags: <a style="text-decoration: underline;" href="http://slideshare.net/tag/voicethread">voicethread</a> <a style="text-decoration: underline;" href="http://slideshare.net/tag/ulearn08">ulearn08</a>)</div></div><br /><br /><div style="width: 425px; text-align: left;" id="__ss_638748"><a style="margin: 12px 0pt 3px; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; display: block; text-decoration: underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/Keamac/authentic-ict-presentation?type=powerpoint" title="Authentic Ict">Authentic Ict</a><object style="margin: 0px;" height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=authentic-ict-1223295144780103-8&stripped_title=authentic-ict-presentation"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=authentic-ict-1223295144780103-8&stripped_title=authentic-ict-presentation" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="355" width="425"></embed></object><div style="font-size: 11px; font-family: tahoma,arial; height: 26px; padding-top: 2px;">View SlideShare <a style="text-decoration: underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/Keamac/authentic-ict-presentation?type=powerpoint" title="View Authentic Ict on SlideShare">presentation</a> or <a style="text-decoration: underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/upload?type=powerpoint">Upload</a> your own. (tags: <a style="text-decoration: underline;" href="http://slideshare.net/tag/ict_classroom">ict_classroom</a> <a style="text-decoration: underline;" href="http://slideshare.net/tag/ulearn08">ulearn08</a>)</div></div><br /><br />My wiki to support my presentation & provide notes and further information can be found <a href="http://authenticict.wikispaces.com/">here</a>.<br /><br />So here I sit, full of expectations. I really need to close the lid on my 'puter and prepare to go offline for a while (that's an ask in itself - might have to divert Twitter to my phone...maybe not, imagine how fast the memory will fill up!) Rohi the Kea is ready for her trip down south, my bags are packed and guess what?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM0Y6GMac8aTviISdJvXH-axCiw2Kujx0u-O6dbX75qxOGe0JHsFhO751g5Ln5KcrjlrUHVDOy3poVlTYpkEA62L9QqpLrZatg4ua_uXUL7wuraVYz8jaw5KZrymAMhCcpMYkKp63h5RWB/s1600-h/DSCF0003.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM0Y6GMac8aTviISdJvXH-axCiw2Kujx0u-O6dbX75qxOGe0JHsFhO751g5Ln5KcrjlrUHVDOy3poVlTYpkEA62L9QqpLrZatg4ua_uXUL7wuraVYz8jaw5KZrymAMhCcpMYkKp63h5RWB/s320/DSCF0003.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5254154594928754946" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">I EVEN HAVE A T-SHIRT!!!</span></span><br /></div>So if you're looking for me I'll be in this little number.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy1i07QwnplSzeKa3KxRfFfSlAcUNP95b5j7-uMw-4PcuxigXEro-rE92abOHs_qM2YEkI2aKtyNZKmDJS1Ff4VJ2zKjMVhjPfERcss34e2-adCqXMqd6n_UKDMySArUccaaqgjsm27UbX/s1600-h/DSCF0005.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy1i07QwnplSzeKa3KxRfFfSlAcUNP95b5j7-uMw-4PcuxigXEro-rE92abOHs_qM2YEkI2aKtyNZKmDJS1Ff4VJ2zKjMVhjPfERcss34e2-adCqXMqd6n_UKDMySArUccaaqgjsm27UbX/s320/DSCF0005.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5254154585603486626" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWyUSZ4mDd6IJwYxV0ISs3TTHidjtuHPEJ03LHjYUDfQNMhftx71VwdsIMI4ZzBvpm8CmKTx58BF-wharqOUFICiU5Vap1MrsUBHrfnRWHugGyKmVHP4l7HdXwjKQNOQ_oD3qmmd3bw_wd/s1600-h/DSCF0009.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWyUSZ4mDd6IJwYxV0ISs3TTHidjtuHPEJ03LHjYUDfQNMhftx71VwdsIMI4ZzBvpm8CmKTx58BF-wharqOUFICiU5Vap1MrsUBHrfnRWHugGyKmVHP4l7HdXwjKQNOQ_oD3qmmd3bw_wd/s320/DSCF0009.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5254154606845797170" border="0" /></a><br />See you at ULearn08 everyone.Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-32906653889033248012008-09-14T22:37:00.004+12:002008-09-14T23:37:50.292+12:00Shiver Me Timbers...A Great Piratical Collaboration.<div class="thumbnail"><a href="http://skitch.com/keamac/i747/pirate-face"><img src="http://img.skitch.com/20080914-fjgsiq486rpcryg5acxaynp42f.preview.jpg" alt="pirate face" /></a><br /><span style="color: rgb(128, 128, 128);font-family:Lucida Grande,Trebuchet,sans-serif,Helvetica,Arial;font-size:10;" >Uploaded with <a href="http://plasq.com/">plasq</a>'s <a href="http://skitch.com/">Skitch</a>!</span></div><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:85%;" > Photo from Flickr sourced under creative Commons Licence - <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/turbojoe/1405511669/">Yarrrr!!!</a> by <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/turbojoe/">turbojoe</a><br /><br /></span>It all started with a "tweet"...<br />Friday night sitting in front of my computer as I often do, periodically glancing up as I hear the familiar "ping" of another set of tweets streaming by. One tweet in particular catches my eye <a href="http://twitter.com/digitalmaverick">digitalmaverick</a> wants to know if others plan to participate in International Talk Like A Pirate Day. Intrigued, I think about for a moment and then decide - why not? I tweet back. <a href="http://twitter.com/heymilly">heymilly</a> is keen too, we discuss the possibility of a <a href="http://www.skype.com/">Skype</a> call between classes. <a href="http://twitter.com/digitalmaverick">digitalmaverick</a>says he'd love to do that but the time zone differences would make it interesting. I think about it for a moment and suggest a <a href="http://voicethread.com/">VoiceThread</a>, everyone likes the idea so I offer to create it and start trawling Flickr for creative commons pictures relating to pirates - would you believe how many there are? <a href="http://twitter.com/heymilly">heymilly</a> suggests a wiki to pull the project together, immediately she's on it starting to create our project wiki <a href="http://talklikeapirate.wikispaces.com/">here</a>. <a href="http://twitter.com/lenva">Lenva</a> tweets to count her in too and offers to create the graphics and home page - she's a wiki whizz! Meanwhile <a href="http://twitter.com/tasteach">tasteach</a>, <a href="http://twitter.com/Allanahk">Allanahk</a> and many more are surfing the net for us, suggesting links and just generally getting into the spirit of the whole thing.<br />By lunchtime yesterday (Saturday) the whole wiki was in place, complete with graphics and a <a href="http://talklikeapirate.wikispaces.com/Ahoy...+Voicethread">VoiceThread</a>. I even managed to get my poor laryngitis ravaged vocal chords to cooperate long enough for me to drawl a piratical message in my best pirate voice to introduce the <a href="http://talklikeapirate.wikispaces.com/Ahoy...+Voicethread">VoiceThread</a>. Our wiki keeps getting better all the time with more and more bits added.<br />I was absolutely chuffed this afternoon to read <a href="http://hfsconversations.blogspot.com/2008/09/wikis-why-are-they-so-good.html">this blog post</a> written by <a href="http://twitter.com/fmanning">fmanning </a> about our Friday night endeavours.<br /><br /><div class="thumbnail"><a href="http://skitch.com/keamac/i75j/talklikeapirate-home"><img src="http://img.skitch.com/20080914-r9khs2t5hfs21ebebhkxeuyc3r.preview.jpg" alt="talklikeapirate » home" /></a><br /><span style="color: rgb(128, 128, 128);font-family:Lucida Grande,Trebuchet,sans-serif,Helvetica,Arial;font-size:10;" >Uploaded with <a href="http://plasq.com/">plasq</a>'s <a href="http://skitch.com/">Skitch</a>!</span></div><br /><br />I think the thing that has amazed me the most about this whole process is how one chance remark on <a href="http://twitter.com/home">Twitter</a> has led to this amazing, collaborative effort which is now available for global classes to join in on if they so choose. Could we have done this even a couple of years ago? Would it have been as easy to put together? Would we even had access to the right tools and software on line in order to easily achieve our aim? The power of the web is a source of endless wonder and fascination to me. There is so much potential, especially in light of Web 2.0 technologies. I think it's vital for all educators to become comfortable and familiar with the tools available so that we really can infuse these seamlessly and authentically within our classroom programmes.<br /><br />And, all that aside, it was great fun! I enjoyed working with others in that way to achieve a common goal - imagine what our kids would make of being able to co-construct a web based project with others in different parts of the city, country, globe!<br /><br />So avast me hearties! Be ye willin' to join yer pirate bretheren this Friday? Hoist the colours...Yo ho!Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-38559811095067758412008-09-09T21:42:00.002+12:002008-09-09T21:46:50.722+12:00PicLitsHaven't blogged for a while - things have been really hectic! Will resume shortly I promise. For now I'll leave you with my latest discovery...<br /><br />Just been playing with this site - <a href="http://www.piclits.com">PicLits</a> which is a place for creating poetry online. Check out my creation below.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.piclits.com/viewpoem.aspx?PoemId=1243"><img src="http://www.piclits.com/piclit-image/0/1/1243.png" alt="PicLit from PicLits.com" style="padding: 31px 8px 15px 10px; width: 260; background-image: url(http://www.piclits.com/assets/images/piclit-thumb-background.png); background-repeat: no-repeat;" suppress-context-menu="true" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.piclits.com/viewpoem.aspx?PoemId=1243" style="padding-left: 4px;">See the full PicLit at PicLits.com</a>Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-52172596404072988462008-07-09T13:52:00.002+12:002008-07-09T13:55:47.236+12:00How Geeky Are You?Thanks to "Dragonsinger" on <a href="http://twitter.com/home">Twitter</a> I now know how geeky I am as well as how much of a nerd I am. Is there any hope for me in the coolness stakes? I think probably not! ;)<br /><a href="http://www.oneplusyou.com/bb/geek" style="text-decoration: none; background: url('http://www.oneplusyou.com/bb/css/img/quiz/geek_badge.jpg') no-repeat; display: block; width: 268px; height: 82px;"><span style="display: block; padding-left: 125px; padding-top: 28px; color: #000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 22px;">50% Geek</span></a><p>Created by <a href="http://www.oneplusyou.com">OnePlusYou</a></p>Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-74688232458566057632008-07-08T14:04:00.002+12:002008-07-08T14:06:56.632+12:00How Nerdy Are You?I was surfing the net trying to occupy myself and came across this - good for a giggle. An online test of nerdiness - apprarently I'm a Dorky High Nerd!<br /><a href="http://www.nerdtests.com/nt2ref.html"><br /><img src="http://www.nerdtests.com/images/badge/nt2/cea8feebb8353fd7.png" alt="NerdTests.com says I'm a Dorky High Nerd. What are you? Click here!"><br /></a>Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-53631196786176557942008-05-06T21:48:00.005+12:002008-05-07T07:14:01.612+12:0031 Day Comment Challenge - Self AuditOk, so I'm later doing this then I intended as the technology in my house decided to have a disagreement with the internet yesterday. Having spent 6 - 7 hours wrestling with it last night, I finally sorted it out this morning.<br /><br />Right, so now that's off my chest I'm ready to begin my "self audit".<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week?</span><br />Once per week on a good week, sometimes not at all. Often I comment in my head, but never quite get round to committing it to writing. So why don't I comment more often? Because I can't think of anything to add to what has been said already, because I worry that what I have to say will seem light weight compared to some of the other comments I have read, because I really admire the blogs author and don't want to write something that makes me sound like a ninny (how teenage of me), or because I get hit by a wave of overwhelming shyness and just can't convince myself to write anything. Reading all that it would seem that I have a fear of being judged by others! Thinking about it, the blogs I comment on the most are those where I have developed some form of relationship with the blogs author (usually via <a href="http://twitter.com/home">Twitter</a>) which means I feel "safe" so it is less of a risk. Hmmmm interesting. What do others think? Do you tend to stick to "safe" blogs or do you venture out with confidence?<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQEb03s8JpYcLbD0DlAawazNtIqo2HKZ7bclLMfgFug43ogC0cG6kuRwyy1RWUErZUPGxpG9CRAPkwQVtEgXepWJLKsSZcV3Ve3lBI5oCw6hmTBCQMaWMftgFdqVxSQ-quS_EGNuxM_uHx/s1600-h/MyPicture.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQEb03s8JpYcLbD0DlAawazNtIqo2HKZ7bclLMfgFug43ogC0cG6kuRwyy1RWUErZUPGxpG9CRAPkwQVtEgXepWJLKsSZcV3Ve3lBI5oCw6hmTBCQMaWMftgFdqVxSQ-quS_EGNuxM_uHx/s320/MyPicture.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197219827778065026" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Do you track your blog comments? How? What do you do with your tracking?</span><br />Not usually. From time to time I will click to be updated via email if I am particularly interested in a discussion and where it is going, otherwise no. Since beginning the challenge I have signed up for <a href="http://www.cocomment.com">cocomment</a> and after ironing out a few things I seem to be able to track my comments via my blog using the cocomment widget in my sidebar.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Do you tend to comment at the same blogs or do you try to comment on at least one new blog per week?</span><br />Mostly the same blogs, there are some I visit quite regularly. I do try to push myself to comment on blogs that I haven't done before, maybe only a couple per month, but I guess that's a start. That's part of the reason for my involvement in this challenge as I know this is an area that needs work. <br /><br /><a href="http://lifehacker.com/software/top/special-lifehackers-guide-to-weblog-comments-126654.php">Gina Trapini's Guide To Blog Comments"</a><br /><br />Click on the link above if you would like to read <a href="http://lifehacker.com/software/top/special-lifehackers-guide-to-weblog-comments-126654.php">Gina Trapini's "</a> tips on better blog commenting. How do I measure up?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Stay on Topic</span><br />So the basic idea behind this one is to keep your ideas relevant to the blog post you are commenting on. I definitely do this, I don't tend to deviate with random thoughts when leaving a comment.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Contribute new information to the discussion</span><br />So do I leave comments if I can't think of anything to add that would enhance the conversation? Well no (as I have already mentioned), but, "conversation" is the key word here. I'm not sure that all blogs I read and their related comments are always a conversation as such. Sometimes they are simply sharing something someone has done, discovered, etc and not necessarily some form of "deeper" conversation. I might be wrong (or more to the point you might disagree) but it's just a thought I had. Point of interest, I must be a glutton for punishment then, or really conscientious as <a href="http://lifehacker.com/software/top/special-lifehackers-guide-to-weblog-comments-126654.php">Gina Trapini's post"</a> says:<br />"The longer a comment thread the more likely someone has already said what you're thinking, and the less likely it is to be read by future visitors anyway."<br />I ALWAYS read all the comments so that I can get a well rounded picture of all the thoughts and opinions being offered on a topic. Sometimes there are gems hidden in the murky depths. Should someone feel that they shouldn't add their voice to the conversation because there are so many others involved? If this happens what gems might be lost?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Don't comment for the sake of commenting</span><br />I certainly don't. Do people really leave "First" as a comment? Well that's a new one on me - why would you?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Know when to comment and when to e-mail</span><br />Now this is an interesting one, I definitely agree. Here's a thought though, what if there is no way to email because no link is provided? Then again, would these types of conversation be the ones you would have with those you know a lot better then some of your other commenters? If that was the case they'd probably know how to contact the blog author by email, so no issue then.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Remember that nobody likes a know-it-all.</span><br />Something I suffered from as a child, something I try to avoid when leaving comments now as an adult. That said, isn't being a "know it all" subjective? Does what I consider being a "know it all" necessarily reflect what someone else considers being one? Does it in fact depend on ones frame of reference, cultural norms, etc? - Am I being one now? ;)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Make the tone of your message clear</span><br />I certainly try to, I've been aware for a long time that misunderstandings are more likely in written conversation. Though, I'm not sure if I always want to leave smilies in my comments - I think this might depend on the tone of the blog/post itself. It would also depend again on that "relationship" with the blog's author that I mentioned earlier.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Own your comment</span><br />I do. I don't post anonymously. I always leave my gmail and blog address if the option is available.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Be succinct</span><br />Hmmmm? Mostly I keep it brief, BUT, occasionally my responses to topics I feel passionate about have got a little too long. Sometimes I don't think I've written much as it doesn't look that big in the little text box... then you hit submit! Opps, did I really write that much? Can't take it back once it's gone. I might have to work on that one.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Cite your sources with links or inline quoting</span><br />I do my best. I don't often write the types of comments where I need to do this though, it's more a blog post thing.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Be courteous</span><br />Always. Sometimes I might respectfully disagree, but I'm always polite.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Don't post when you're angry, upset, drunk or emotional</span><br />Don't really drink so that's not going to happen. If something I've read angers or upsets me I tend to rant at my long suffering husband about it. If I'm feeling emotional about something else I'm more likely to surf iTunes then surf blogs - so no, I don't post when I'm in a negative head space.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Do not feed or tease the troll</span><br />What's a troll? I'm not sure I totally got that one, I sort of do...I think. I take it this isn't the cute kind with the funny faces and sticky up hair then?<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh21bWQ34TQKj-ZIluvBkuamgMiBlWR7I10yjxqqXmayCyXS9EM7ho5SAMo8tRYiSri7AB8IKX32fwMkKnALxhGLyMPezkfmLZriiiP25BsWgGAxdm5zD_SjDuQL4_4oG_4OlQJOiFe_qOU/s1600-h/comment_challenge_logo_2.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh21bWQ34TQKj-ZIluvBkuamgMiBlWR7I10yjxqqXmayCyXS9EM7ho5SAMo8tRYiSri7AB8IKX32fwMkKnALxhGLyMPezkfmLZriiiP25BsWgGAxdm5zD_SjDuQL4_4oG_4OlQJOiFe_qOU/s320/comment_challenge_logo_2.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197222585147069074" /></a><br />And if you are part of <a href="http://commentchallenge.wikispaces.com/">The Comment Challenge</a> remember to add the <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/comment08">” comment08 ”</a> tag to your post.Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-23178255127883650652008-05-04T15:35:00.010+12:002008-05-04T18:29:59.585+12:0031 Day Comment Challege - Behind Already!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib2IAcssB_N4P0IV3BoXCcYmS0oUuLTkr07lSR9Lq2eT0aqUVMYHp1go2P5itOlxZ11oqvw-PqplER-mKBpNKxglITO21KNLql_kvmbKn8InTYnq3SNE120_QVoCwGtVqOsleaYxDAXYtP/s1600-h/DSCF0004.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib2IAcssB_N4P0IV3BoXCcYmS0oUuLTkr07lSR9Lq2eT0aqUVMYHp1go2P5itOlxZ11oqvw-PqplER-mKBpNKxglITO21KNLql_kvmbKn8InTYnq3SNE120_QVoCwGtVqOsleaYxDAXYtP/s320/DSCF0004.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196389297067135570" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><h4 style="color: blue;">Why Participate?</h4><br />I've signed up for the <a href="http://commentchallenge.wikispaces.com/">31 Day Comment Challenge</a> in the interests of pushing myself outside my comfort zone. I was thinking the other day how funny it is that despite the relative safety of your online persona, my shyness still leaks through. I'm not sure if that last sentence quite makes sense, but essentially what I'm getting at is that even though I'm not engaging in a face to face conversation my inhibitions often stop me from leaving a comment.<br /><br />Then, on the flip side of this is the fact that I love to get comments and feedback from others. In part I blog for myself as a way of jotting down my thoughts and ideas for future reference. However, I also blog hoping that what I have to say will be of some use (or at least interest) to others - kind of a combination of my love of sharing my learning/resources and my frustrated inner author. Comments from others shows that you are not merely talking to yourself.<br /><br />With this in mind I decided I needed to be involved with this challenge in order to give myself the "push" I need to comment with greater regularity - to both build my confidence and to ensure that I am giving others the type of feedback that I enjoy receiving myself.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIp7cDHnRuYGSS-aQoIQfKHv3cT2tpu52UowAMp4dggvb625g7xp-LZxAuR2vqDkvCMeTzI4hRj_7bZBP4DWUSyPugVpDGe2xHQhZCjs7AFkI83e9jUOOH4ipu5KyVpBqwaVrwQfRaAhtG/s1600-h/Memotions+Snail.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIp7cDHnRuYGSS-aQoIQfKHv3cT2tpu52UowAMp4dggvb625g7xp-LZxAuR2vqDkvCMeTzI4hRj_7bZBP4DWUSyPugVpDGe2xHQhZCjs7AFkI83e9jUOOH4ipu5KyVpBqwaVrwQfRaAhtG/s320/Memotions+Snail.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196392595602018914" border="0" /></a><br />Photo from <a href="http://www.flickr.com">Flickr</a> uploaded on <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/memotions/archives/date-posted/2006/10/03">October 3 2006</a> by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/memotions">Memotions</a> licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic Licence</a>.<br /><br /><h4 style="color: blue;">Behind Already</h4><br />Now the challenge runs from the 1st to the 31st of May. As it is the 4th, I'm already 4 days behind! I plead the fact that I had to get organised for the start of the new school term tomorrow. I was having to resist the urge to log in and work on the <a href="http://commentchallenge.wikispaces.com/31+Day+Comment+Challenge+Activities">challenge tasks</a>.<br /><br />Now, this already illustrates the power in being involved in a challenge like this (at least for me) as my natural "girly swottiness" means that I feel compelled to complete the required tasks and make sure they are done on time. Which is not to say that this is some form of strictly regimented "thou shalt" type of a task, after all my participation is purely voluntary. I think what it is though,is the fact that you have signed up for something that others are also involved in and you just know that you want to do it properly and do it justice.<br /><br />I also feel that it is important to participate fully and to the best of my ability as this is the best thanks I can think of for all the hard work <a href="http://aquaculturepda.edublogs.org/">Sue</a>, <a href="http://mscofino.edublogs.org/">Kim</a>, <a href="http://langwitches.org/">Silvia</a>and <a href="http://michelemartin.typepad.com/thebambooprojectblog/">Michele</a> have put into getting this challenge up and running.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixGx8XgoFPKr4QPfvExsTBaG_74Rb5x_K69ro0qkQbHZwfHSgpN2K5lL4uc1bBp_QhEuq1rQHraN54NY8PwXJ_5l3m7M7Lr0rAxCC8dN_gNd1m2F5BC3WYPnwo0Fr9Wn9RB5yRORKSNkQS/s1600-h/comment_challenge_logo_2.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixGx8XgoFPKr4QPfvExsTBaG_74Rb5x_K69ro0qkQbHZwfHSgpN2K5lL4uc1bBp_QhEuq1rQHraN54NY8PwXJ_5l3m7M7Lr0rAxCC8dN_gNd1m2F5BC3WYPnwo0Fr9Wn9RB5yRORKSNkQS/s320/comment_challenge_logo_2.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196395911316771442" /></a><br />Logo created by <a href="http://christinemartell.com/">Christine Martell</a><br /><br /><h4 style="color: blue;">Daily Tasks</h4><br />So today I have 4 tasks to complete. One I have already done - Sign up for a Comment Tracking Service. I did this as soon as I signed up for the challenge and have set up an account at <a href="http://www.cocomment.com/">Cocomment</a>. This will allow others participating in the challenge to track my comments.<br /><br />I have to leave a comment on a blog I have never commented on before, which I shall do soon as there are plenty of blogs that I read that I have yet to leave comments for.<br /><br />I have to leave a comment on another blog post that asks a question in order encourage conversation/dialogue between myself, the blog author and other readers. That I shall do soon too.<br /><br />Finally, I have to complete a "commenting self-audit" which I think I shall do as a separate post as this one is getting quite long enough already.<br /><br />So I'm off to complete my self-audit and start on my path towards improving my commenting on blogs - both my own and those of others. I'm looking forward to the challenge, the fun of participating, the new skills I hope to develop, the new online acquaintances I hope to meet and the reinforcing of my current online relationships.<br /><br />And don't forget, if you are part of The Comment Challenge remember to add the <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/comment08">comment08</a> tag to your post.Kirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5015662418015924892.post-10546292500019739852008-04-27T01:35:00.008+12:002008-05-04T00:18:28.392+12:00Encouraging Self Reflection and Thoughtful Decision Making.Not the most attention grabbing title, but I promised Amanda I would blog about this and I was determined to get it done before I went to bed tonight (which is now this morning).<br /><br />We’re in the middle of our school holidays right now, but about 3 weeks before the end of term my class spent a week creating advertisements about themselves. They were required, as part of our Team 5 integrated topic “Advertising Me” to create a television type commercial. This commercial had to have a jingle and some form of catch phrase. It was suggested that they use Movie Maker to create their advert. I was concerned that Movie Maker would be too complex for some of these children, especially as we had a very short time frame to complete their advertisements in and many of the children were unfamiliar with the programme.<br /><br />After sharing the task requirements with them, I asked the children which software they felt would be the most useful to create their advertisements and they came up with 3 possibilities<br /><ul><li>Movie Maker</li></ul><ul><li> Photo Story</li></ul><ul><li> Power Point</li></ul><br />We had 2 full days and 3 half days available to us in the ‘Discovery Centre’ (our school’s tech suite) so I knew our time was limited. Prior to going to the Discovery Centre the children had spent a couple of weeks working out their slogan, writing their jingle and story boarding & scripting their advertisements. We had also viewed several examples of television advertisements and had developed our own criteria for what would make a good advertisement.<br /><br />Our first session arrived and I had made the decision to take things up a notch. I could have made the decision as to which software they would use and tell them they were all going to use it. However, as I believe in challenging my kids and encouraging them to think for themselves/ use problem solving strategies, I decided to give them the choice. In order to make an informed choice I felt it was important to provide the children with an opportunity to simply play, explore, experiment with each of the programmes so that they could see the potential and pitfalls for themselves.<br /><br />The children were asked to create a mini movie about a recent class trip or a story they had written. I had folders with pictures suitable for both possibilities set up on the intranet ready to go. All they had to do was to recreate their mini movie 3 times – once in Power Point, once in Photo Story and once in Movie Maker. They spent the day working on their movies, calling each other over to come and look or to help with suggestions and solutions. I kept myself moving around the room asking questions and encouraging them to think about the pluses and minuses of each tool.<br /><br />At the end of the day I asked the children to gather together in their “table groups” (groups of 4 that they regularly work with) and discuss & record the pluses and minuses of each programme. They then had to make a decision as to which particular programme they were going to use for their advert. As each advert was an individual piece they could all choose something different if they wished. They had some interesting opinions (Click on the image of the table below and it will take you to a larger version that you can read).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBlhrQiDPBdHTexvYuhlqJLhHZDDkGx3NEkkJXg7wwcuHN4na8IEXAI-o4cyCGXbcKE_CAvBW5QjOBwhUTOdHypXyy3HeLtVb8SaYsySLuWMQWcsUZIIdW3PsVXnMLfYcySgG6fkejneHW/s1600-h/tools.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 493px; height: 153px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBlhrQiDPBdHTexvYuhlqJLhHZDDkGx3NEkkJXg7wwcuHN4na8IEXAI-o4cyCGXbcKE_CAvBW5QjOBwhUTOdHypXyy3HeLtVb8SaYsySLuWMQWcsUZIIdW3PsVXnMLfYcySgG6fkejneHW/s320/tools.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5193552320844272194" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />Now this was the first time they had been asked to do something like this and they were mostly 9 years old, but I think they did well for a first time. This is certainly something I will continue to encourage during the year. For most of these children their only previous independent experience had been with Power Point. They’d watched me create a quick movie for our “Voices of the World” contribution on Photo Story, but hadn’t used it before. I was very careful not to influence their decisions by telling them which programme I thought would be best for this particular task (Photo Story) so it was interesting to see what they thought. In fact, about two thirds of them opted for Power Point – the main reason being that they were familiar with it and they liked the pretty backgrounds and the whiz bang effects. About 5 of them picked Photo Story and only 2 chose to use Movie Maker. There are 27 kids in my class in total.<br /><br />The children spent the remainder of the week working on their creations. This included taking photos or short video clips and putting it all together to create their advert. Many of the children started to re-evaluate their original choices as the week progressed, especially when they found the tool they had selected was not able to do what they needed it to do, or it did it, but not in the way they wanted. This was particularly true for the children who had opted to use Power Point. Most of them persevered with their existing choice though, some saying they would use something else next time, others saying that they still preferred Power Point despite the fact they were unable to do all the things they needed to in order to meet class criteria. A couple of them wanted to transfer their Power Points to Photo Story so they could use the features available through that programme, so I taught them how to save their whole slide show as a set of jpegs so they could import them into Photo Story. (As an aside I felt they adverts created using a combination of programmes ended up being the best examples produced. The children were able to take advantage of some of the best features of both programmes).<br /><br />Finally we had our class viewing session and adverts were assessed by self, peer and teacher review according to the criteria we originally set. The final task I set for the children was to complete an evaluation of the whole process and product. I asked them to say which programme they used, did it do what they wanted it to – they had to explain their response and would they choose a different programme next time & why? Here are some of the responses:<br />“I would stay with Power Point because I find the other ones hard to use.”<br />‘I think I would use Movie maker next time for a bit of a challenge”<br />‘I would rather use Movie Maker or Photo Story next time because they have more features.”<br />“I would use Photo Story again because if you want to go back and fix something you do not delete your progress.”<br />“I would choose a different one so I could learn.”<br />“I would maybe probably use Photo Story next time because I think personally it’s the best.”<br />“I would use Movie Maker because you can put in movies you have recorded.”<br />“I used Power Point because I was familiar with it and I would use it again because there was nothing else I needed.”<br /><br />I found this whole week to be an interesting and useful learning experience for both the children and myself. They have covered several curriculum areas and have been required to use problem solving strategies and be reflective about their use of technology as well as the other aspects of the unit. I can’t wait to see the progressions they make as we move through the school yearKirstin Anderson-McGhie (Keamac)http://www.blogger.com/profile/00724907406423207265noreply@blogger.com11