Te Rangihakahaka

All the teachers at my school snuggled down in our beddings on mattresses on the 

1. Te Papaiouru Marae floor listening to tales of our ancestors. Although most of us would rather be in our own beds, the tales and kind teasing of the snorers were part of the experience that helped create personal bonds; as well as being given the gift of experiencing a night as early Maori lived.

The marae guides highlighted the history and culture of Rotorua, and how we could share these connections in a way that could be experienced in a real learning context that our students could relate to. We started with a powhiri, dinner then tales of the Rotorua ancestors travels to New Zealand and Rotorua. The following day we heard many myths and true stories about the ancestors of the marae and the history of the area. Then we walked around town and more stories and myths brought our town to life with a history that now played new dramas that explained why places were where they were and the reasons behind the names of streets. I felt a stronger, deeper connection to Rotorua.

My biggest takeaway from this experience was knowing that their was such a rich source of local real life stories and myths that could lead to learning across curriculum areas. Stories are a hook for all humans, and what we learnt was they can engage tamariki as well as provide learning opportunities in reading, writing, science, and more. We are lucky to have such an amazing and supportive marae on our doorstep.

Helping Parents Keep UP

I teach my students to use a lot of different elearning tools to engage them, to help them show off their learning and to help make them more digitally literate. However parents often get confused by the 'tech talk' and what their kids are actually doing with all these strange tools. So on request of a parents I did an evening presentation to introduce them to tools we are using and some I'll be introducing next term.

I think it's important parents know what we are doing, even if they can't use the tools themselves, as a majority of learning is through the discussions between student / teacher, and student / parent.
Are your parents conversant in your classroom tech talk? Should they be?

Searching for Resources? Try our POND.

take a dip in the

The best place for New Zealand educators and learners to discover, share and grow.
Watch my screencast for a quick tour of this really focussed search engine for teachers. I'm finding it useful, especially the resources already gathered by other teachers.

Check out my profile on POND.

POND Starter Pack Videos: This series of videos will help you introduce POND to your staff.

Have you tried POND out yet? What do you think?

How to use Skitch to make Screen Captures

Skitch takes screen capturing to the next level but allowing students to annotate onto web screen captures or photos. I made this video to teach my students how to use it and it will become part of our report writing toolkit. I also plan to get students to annotate digital texts like online informational texts, newspapers, and digital versions of School Journal texts. 

The final image can then be inserted into websites, blogs, slideshows, or "Google" docs.

How would you use Skitch in your elearning classroom?

#educamprotovegas

An amazing turnout and packed room at #Educamprotovegus proved that there are many passionate educators striving to develop their own learning and guide their own PD. It was wonderful to see so many newbies to Educampnz and I believe they all felt welcome and not overwhelmed by the geeks. I especially liked how much focus was on got pedagogy that was not particularly elearning as their is often the misconception that these teacher gatherings are for ITC geeks only.


The Smackdown ruled the day with a huge range of incredible resources being shared. It was a truly inspiring experience and I'm still processing all the amazing things I learnt.


The Twitter feed tells the story of our day and conversations happening. 

Thank you Annemarie @mrs_hyde for bringing us all together.

Handwriting Fonts for New Zealand Curriculum

I originally wrote this post on "Handwriting Fonts for New Zealand Curriculum" in 2009, now after some discussion on the NZ Teachers (Primary) FaceBook page on New Zealand fonts for computers I'm updating it with a screencast on how to install the Jarman font onto your PC. Mac users can follow these instructions. This is the download link for the Jarman font. Enjoy and let me know how you used it.

Making Mistakes Marvelous

Tomas Edison, one of the greatest and most prolific inventors in human history took 10,000 attempts to create a light bulb, that's 10,000 failures, or 10,000 stepping stones to success. I am not Edison but after my first week back at school I felt like I had made 1000 mistakes, but for the first time I felt proud of them, in fact I boasted about them to my students all week.

From my own past experiences and what I have seen from past students, failure can shut down any further exploration or willingness to give it a go. Perhaps failure often instills a fear of failure. So this year I am determine to celebrate failure and turn it around from a dirty word into a positive word. So now I happily admit my every failure to my students and model how each mistake teaches me something new and provides an opportunity to improve. My catch phase this year is "count my mistakes to see how much I have learnt".  

My dream is that my students start their year of learning with a growth mindset that celebrates mistakes as learning opportunities.

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” - Robert F. Kennedy