Who helped me dream BIG?

Who are the inspiring leaders, educators and legendary bloggers that have helped me dream BIG?


The quote that keeps me moving forward and thinking about meeting the needs of the students in front of me is

"If we teach today as we taught yesterday, then we rob our children of tomorrow" (Dewey, 1926)

....as poignant now as it was almost a century ago!

The people.........

Barbara Cavanagh, @barbjcav  Learning Leading Learning Principal at Albany Senior High School. Who could ask for a better principal? A truly inspiring leader who is passionate about growing teachers and leaders and providing opportunities based on someone's potential.

Grant Lichtman @GrantLichtman (thank you Steve Mouldey

for introducing me to The Falconer last year) and Grant sorry not to have had the chance to meet you whilst in NZ - and thank you soo much for taking the time to google hangout with my product design students last year. It meant so much to the students and made me realise that, digital gremlins aside, hanging out globally isn't that challenging and should be done far more often. Additionally, reading The Falconer set me on the path of recognising the importance of questions and questioning. The Future of K-12 Education is a regular in my inbox.


Tony Wagner - Creating Innovators. A great read and a site worth dipping into. Really resonates with what I've been exploring in terms of "4C's; Collaboration, Critical thinking, Communication and Creativity and the student led Impact Projects we run at ASHS




Tait Cole @Totallywired77 - Nevermind the Inspectors - Here's Punk Learning. This book is at the top of my re-read list with multiple folded over corners to earmark "re-read here". Yes! I love the references to punk lyrics throughout the book as much as the great ideas designed to engage sullen teens........ Follow his blog here

Nicole Price, @NicolePriceNZ  Team Solutions, Technology Advisor - Auckland and Northland. - My go to person to check whether my risk-taking, wacky ideas are in line with meeting assessment requirements. Nicole thank you for your encouragement and support. You rock! Nicole can be found on google+

Other blogs/people I follow are:-
Bo Adams  @boadams1 its about learning   
Mary Cantwell  Deep Design Thinking
Lisa Palmieri @Learn21Tech remake learning
Steve Mouldey @GeoMouldey and his blog

and........
Mindshift and Edutopia


It's all very well being connected, being inspired and dreaming but for change to take place we have to just get on with it -  "walk the talk".......and "seize the day"

"CARPE DIEM"

Please note that all the musings in my posts are purely my own ideas and not that of my school and employer.

How has my teaching practice evolved?

How has my teaching practice evolved?

I'm blogging as part of a challenge laid down as part of Connected Educator Month NZ #cenz15 #EdBlogNZChallenge to try and force myself become a regular blogger...........

The first challenge is to respond to the following.....

• How has my teaching practice evolved?
• What am I currently working on developing in my practice?
• What tools am I using during this inquiry?

Here goes........

My practice is continually evolving, influenced by a number of things; the students I have in front of me, what I've read, colleagues best practice and probably the biggest catalyst is being fortunate enough to be part of the first ever Mindlab/UNITEC Post-Graduate Certificate in Collaborative and Digital Learning (we officially graduated last week - Whoop! Whoop!). 

Two areas which particularly resonated with me and started to explore as I was undertaking the Mindlab PGC were "Design Thinking" and "4C's"; Collaboration, Communication, Critical Thinking and Creativity". The confidence I gained through the Mindlab PGC has helped me to experiment with elements of both "Design Thinking" and "4C's" in my learning environments this year. This has been exhilarating, challenging, a lot of fun and at times scary...... I have been developing this  predominantly in a multi-year "product design"  class consisting of years 11, 12 and 13 and also a level 3 "social anthropology" class - a new subject for me this year. But heck! If I want my students to challenge themselves on their learning journey then I have to "walk the talk". Things I've introduced (and are by no means polished) with plenty of room for improvement in 2016 include:-

• In product design, all students across year groups undertaking the same two projects. The projects had plenty of scope for individualisation and different NCEA assessment opportunities based on student strengths and nature of their project.

• Building student ownership through offering student choice, within enabling constraints.

• Students recording their evidence digitally, predominantly blogs (product design).

• Using google classroom.

• Both product design projects started with a design thinking "How might we......?" question which students interviewed people, brainstormed using a range of activities (100 ideas, hexagons, new useful interesting, organising information using post-it notes) to complete their "class" question.

• Opportunities for group activities of collaborative and co-operative nature which ranged from developing shared class resources, peer teaching, tasks with assigned roles....

• Really exploring critical thinking and making it visible. It's all very well talking about it but what actually is it? How to teach it? What evidence do we have that students have developed critical thinking skills? I've discovered that critical thinking stems from the quality of the questions asked. Grant Lichtman in The Falconer highlighted this for me.

• Developing graphic organisers for process-oriented tasks and also to develop critical thinking skills. This was undertaken predominantly in the social anthropology classes and became the focus of one of my Professional Inquiries. Geoff Petty, Pam Hook and Goggle Draw have all played major parts in this!

At ASHS we are fortunate that we have time set aside every week for our Professional Inquiry and the school has developed an Inquiry Cycle to follow. The Mindlab PGC opened my eyes to digital and collaborative learning and the ASHS's Professional Inquiry Cycle is the tool that has given rigour to aspects of my teaching practice evolving.