Wednesday 28 November 2012

Collaborative Teaching; my research, experiences and reflections


Ignite is a worldwide event in over 100 cities; this evening I went to one held in Auckland. Presenters share their personal and professional passions, using the Petcha Kutcha format of 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds for a total of just five minutes. It also allows a stage to practice public speaking and topics we love, and making connections with emerging leaders.

Tonight was my second presentation but still the butterflies panicked and I said "um" about 20 times! Still, I loved it, being able to condense my thinking helped me better reflect on what I had learnt; and I'll work on the public speaking!  The live video will appear on the Ignite site soon (it's ready!) and you can count them for yourself, until then I recorded a slower, calmer version for easy listening.

Most importantly I hope you can take something away to use if leading or participating in collaborative teaching.

Wednesday 14 November 2012

Reading Response Graphic Organizers

With the increasing amount of BYOD and classroom devices, I found it useful and fun to design a collection of reading response graphic organisers. I created them in Google Docs because all the schools I have taught at have used Google Apps for Education, and I am a huge fan of them as well as their collaborative and sharing features. They are easy to copy, duplicate, adapt, individualise or turn into a PDF to print.

Save yourself the work and please use these freely, and let me know which ones worked for you or if I should add any new ones. Enjoy.

Wednesday 7 November 2012

Who needs digital citizenship professional development?


How do you rate your digital citizenship as an adult? As a teacher? As a parent?



In an article in this mornings New Zealand Herald titled "Racy photos land teacher in strife" an assistant principal posted a sexy photo on her Facebook page which ended up being viewed by students and community members.  This raised the question for me whether this was intentional, a stupid mistake or an adult who has never been taught how to be a digital citizen.  

As a net geek and teacher committed to my classroom digital citizens I have made it my business to learn about what good digital citizenship looks like. But how many teachers or parent out there have been taught the goods / bads and do's / don'ts or the why's / how's; have you ever had professional development or training yourself?  So perhaps as educators we should be taking a step back and looking at our colleagues and communities. Ask yourself where the education should begin?

Stephanie @traintheteacher tweeted me back with a link to the New Zealand Teachers Council website "Teachers & Social Media". This site aims to promote discussion about the Code of Ethics for Registered Teachers, and they provide a range of scenarios good and bad to promote thinking and learning.  

School leaders could show this video at a staff professional development or community meeting. Use the discussion questions provided on the page "Committed to the Profession" to start a discussion. Perhaps you may find you need to provide digital citizenship skills professional development.

We all (students, teachers, parents, community) are living in a new digital world that has grown at an alarming rate. If teachers, parents and adults in our community don't understand digital citizenship and aren't good digital citizenship models, who will teach them?  Who will teach our children?