The Mind Lab/Post Graduate Course

30 March - W1 - Frances Valentine

During the first 16 week course only 3 can be missed.  Easter Saturday is closed, make up session Monday.

Ice breaker for beginning of the year.

Miscellaneous items on the table, in a small group learning to make up a news item incorporating all items on the table.

Courses:

Google unitec moodle

Check both

• Leadership in digital and collaborative learning.
• digital & collaborative learning in context.

Check each week media files check homework tasks.

Welcome to the beginning of my Reflective Journal.

Welcome to the beginning of my reflective journal for the Post Graduate Certificate in Applied Practice (Digital and Collaborative Learning) at The Mindlab by Unitech (2015)
These entries are a record of my learnings, notes,  and findings.  I will be reflecting on these and how this course has changed my teaching practice.

Confessions of a Teachers.  Sounds a bit naughty to me.  Not sure what I was thinking when I first started this blog way back in January 2009.

A lot has changed since then.

I have celebrated my 20th year in the teaching profession since then.  I joined a group of friends from those days teaching in Mangere and we celebrated with food, and conversation.
I remember those days teaching in Mangere with fondness and horror.

How could I let a child and parents threaten me and physically hit me?  Gosh how times have changed!  A court case would have ensued if it had happened in this time but back in those days it was restorative care.

I have been in a position of management, changed the platform from P.C to Apple in one school, ICT lead teacher, P.E specialist, Maori mentor, sports coordinator, classroom teacher, and reliever.

I have had the opportunity to present at various ULearns, South Cluster and Eastnet Cluster networking seminars.  I have throughly enjoyed my teaching career.

After 20 years though, I found that I needed something else....

I have been teaching at Elm Park School for quite some time  I started off as a reliever, and then was asked to open a new entrant class in Term 3.  Thus began my journey here.  I taught Y1 and 2, then moved to Y4, then on to Y5 and this year a job shared position in a Y6 class.

I have often thought about how I go about teaching my students.  If I sit down and really think about this, I can honestly say that over the years my approach to teaching students has changed.  I am sure my approach will continue to change as well.

With a colleague we were given an amazing opportunity to begin a MLE (with 25 students) using two different areas as our learning environment.  We were also lucky enough to be able to teach one week in class and one week as a P.E specialist and my colleague as a music specialist.  This gave me some flexibility with my personal time.  Because of this extra time I have decided to enrol in the Post Graduate Certificate in Applied Practice (Digital and Collaborative Learning) at The Mindlab by Unitech (2015).

I am looking forward to the year ahead and being able to reflect on my learnings.

References

Elm Park School. (2015). Retrieved September 23, 2015, from Elm Park School:
http://www.elmpark.school.nz/
The Mindlab by Unitec. (2015). Postgrad studies. Retrieved June 23, 2015, from The Mindlab by Unitec: http://themindlab.com/postgrad-studies/

Another year passed

Another very busy year.

Moving from Y4 to Y5 was great for the students who were with me the previous year.  As there was already a relationship there, we were able to get straight into the learning from the beginning of the year.

I did find being 'removed' from the team hard.  I found that I was left out of many team situations, meetings, group gatherings.  This was because we were downstairs and in another part of the school.

Next year I am taking of the responsibility of Sports Coordinator for the school.  This means that I will have release to take the GATE (Gifted And Talented Education) programme with the Y5 and Y6 students.  I will also be in charge of the school sports programme as well as begin responsible for all the HPPA Sporting events.

A whole year later!

Its been a year since I posted last!

2011 was a difficult year for me.  Enough said!

And now we are through the beginning of the new year.  What a new year it has been.

New team, new class, same kids.  I have moved from Y4 to Y5, Room 12 to Room 28 and have kept most of my 2011 students.

The rest of my Y5 team are in a completely different building to me so I am interested to see how the dynamics go with being so far away from the rest of the Y5 classes.

Its been busy again at the beginning of the year.  This year I am looking forward to moving more into the senior sector of the school and being part of a team.   

End of 20 10

2010!  Our post code, and the end of a great year.

ULearn, Eastnet Cluster days, ICT Lead teacher, classroom teacher, wife and mother!

BUSY, BUSY, BUSY year.
You can probably tell this by the great span of time that goes in between each post.

Prioritising my time has been key this year.

My class have been amazing.  They have put up with different relievers at random times and been great.

Next year is going to be another new challenge.  WATCH THIS SPACE.

uLearn10:3

3rd day. Although it is only day 2 of the conference. Sitting in a really uncomfortable seat in the Christchurch Convention Centre listening to Lane Clark.














Workshop 3 today is with Stuart Hale. OSX The new Cat - making it Purrr.
I am hoping to share some of my new found skills with collegues at work. If I miss anything Im sure Veronica will have my back!
Workshop 4 today is with Mark Buckland. 37 free tools on the net. Sounds interesting. Wonder if he is going to share the 4 tools that we are presenting about tomorrow?? Hmmmmm!

uLearn10:2

Breakout 1 was a bit of a disappointment. I guess not getting any wireless didnt help either. Time went by so fast. Only used 2 of the 7ish apps that I downloaded so will have to have a tutu with the apps in my own time. Used Strip Design, Instant Poetry and a piano app. Strip Design is a bit like Comic Life. I was hoping to learn how to put my design online but we didnt get to that as the network kept dropping off. So I emailed it from my iPhone to my laptop and here it is.














Instant Poetry is a bit like the magnetic poetry that you get for your fridge. You type out a whole lot of individual words (give a time limit) based on a topic. Our topic was ANZAC. So here it is.



















Googlefest was cool. There is so much more out there! Dorothy was ever the professional. Presenting in an art room and every time you moved in your seat it scraped along the ground and made an awful noise. The discussion and collabarative discussion that was going on was great. Googlefest.