Personalised Learning #Edchatnz Conference - Part 2

When it came down to choosing what to do in session 2 I was really torn. I had missed the first tour of Hobsonville Point Primary because I was presenting the @Kidsedchatnz workshop with Reid. I would have loved to have gone over to see the school and kids in action, but in the end decided to opt for Amy and Erin's workshop on personalised learning. I loved how they had also brought some of the kids over to share their personal experiences too. 

Here is one of the first images that was shared. I couldn't agree more! I've played around with personalised learning and independent learning plans over the last 18 months, but dropped the independent learning plans when I moved to my new school. Mostly because being in a new school was a big learning curve over the first two terms, but also the school I'm in is what I would class as being a very traditional school. After the #Edchatnz Conference I've decided that it's actually okay to be the lone nut and so am going to give things in my single cell class a bit of a shake up. Yes, I'm a lone nut and try to hack the education system. Why? Because I strongly believe it will benefit my students and support them with becoming independent learners who are able to think both creatively and critically about their learning. Don't get me wrong; I always ensure that I meet school requirements, but am always looking for innovative ways to improve the teaching and learning within my class. 

We were reminded that we are teaching kids, not subjects. I still believe that there are still so many teachers out there that are stuck in the habit of teaching subjects, while failing to ask themselves whether the learning is really meeting the needs of the individual learners? Is the learning personalised? One boy shared how at his old school he always felt bored and wanted to go to sleep. Another child spoke about the olden days and the teacher planning the whole day and everyone doing the same thing. So many teachers are still doing this! 

 At Hobsonville Point Primary learning is personalised by the students. For learning to be personalised it has to be coming from the students, not the teacher. The children start the day by completing a timetable. The children are encouraged to start this before school if they wish, but are still given some time after the bell goes to complete it for the day. The timetables look different at different levels. Here are some examples:

 The children's day is made up of group workshops e.g. guided reading groups, writing and maths groups as well as whole class workshops such as PE. Students also have independent activities to complete, including follow up activities - just like in a normal class. The children first block in their workshops, followed by their independent activities and any negotiated projects. The negotiated projects came across very similar to our Adventure Learning projects in Room 8, that are based on Google's 20% Time. 

Students check off what they've completed during the day and the teacher stamps it to ensure that the students have a balanced day. From memory, younger students planned for one day each morning, while older students completed their timetable for the whole week. When I did independent learning plans I found that doing it day by day worked best for my year 4 class, so that will be my starting point again. 

Hobsonville Point Primary School's planning is all visible both on a wall in their learning environment and on their Google Site. The children can access the Google Site to see what's happening during the week. It also assists them with planning their timetables. 

Up the top you will see I've clicked the tab 'Term 3' and then selected Week 3. The timetable clearly shows which workshops are happening at what time, who is running them, who is attending them, resources needed and whether or not there is a follow up activity. Love the detail and how visible the planning is for both students, other teachers and the students' families. 

After attending the TTLA seminar in Whangarei in Term 2 and listening to a presentation on how Point England School uses Google sites I went away and started having a play with creating one. Here's where mine is at, at the moment. After seeing how Hobsonville Point School uses theirs I've come away with some fresh ideas to further develop our class one. Watch this space :) The reason I created my class Google site was to enable the students in my class to access their learning any time and anywhere. 

Here's a photo of the learning wall at Hobsonville Point Primary School. This is one idea that I'm taking away to implement in my classroom straight away. 

A big thank you to Amy and Erin for sparking my excitement around personalised learning again. Looking forward to blogging my students' progress throughout the rest of the year. 

Quote is one I came across online, but image is my own. 

#Edchatnz Conference

Yesterday I spent the day at the first #Edchatnz Conference in Auckland. It was held at Hobsonville Point Secondary School, which made for an excellent opportunity to have a look around another modern learning environment (MLE). I've been lucky enough to visit a few schools with modern learning environments over the past couple of years - Silverton Primary in Melbourne, Amesbury in Wellington, Elim Christian College, Stonefields and Hingaia Peninsula in Auckland. However; Hobsonville Point Secondary School was the first high school I'd visited with a MLE. Saying I was impressed is an understatement. Not only by the innovative learning spaces, but more so by how the teachers are using the spaces for teaching and learning. That's what is truly inspirational. 

A TED Talk about how to start a movement was shared with us in the first keynote. I definitely feel like the lone nut a lot of the time. It was so refreshing being surrounded by people who are on the same wave length as you. It was also awesome to be able to meet so many tweeps I've connected with online, face to face for the first time. 

Reid (@ReidHns1) and I ran a hands-on workshop on @Kidsedchatnz during the first session. While we have collaborated online for some time, we had only met an hour prior to presenting together! We had an awesome bunch of enthusiastic teachers to work with, which always makes it so much more enjoyable. A couple of them had joined in a @Kidsedchatnz chat before too. 

We spoke for roughly 15 minutes about what @Kidsedchatnz is, the purpose and benefits for students. Then got straight into the hands-on part. During this time Stephen (@Palmyteacher) moderated a live chat from Palmerston North. This provided an authentic opportunity for student voice and allowed the teachers to actively participate in a chat. We also helped others sign up, learn how to use lists and tweetdeck. We even managed to hatch a couple of eggs! 

Here are some of the tweets from the classes that participated in the @Kidsedchatnz during the conference. So proud of how far they've all come with their tweeting. 

The more I think about being a lone nut, the more I think there must be a lot of other lone nuts out there in Northland schools. With lots of lone nuts you can make peanut butter. As Scotty, our DP tweeted yesterday it's time to 'crack them open'.

And of course no workshop yesterday would have been complete without a grelfie! 

EducampTT

The staff room was packed with enthusiastic teachers, morning tea and coffee cups were out and the smackdown was ready to start. You wouldn't think it was an early Saturday morning. What I love about Educamp is the opportunity to connect with teachers from different schools, share ideas and be inspired by each other. We even had one teacher (@mrs_hyde) join us via GHO (Google Hangout). Here is my reflection of EducampTT and smidgens I will take back to share with my year 4 class. 

The day begins with a smackdown. Teachers had contributed ideas they wish to share to a Google Presentation prior to the day. On the day they then simply get up and share for a couple of minutes. The aim is to spark conversations and topics for the day. You can view the smackdown here - http://goo.gl/XMoRuW   

Here were some of my smackdown favourites: 

• AnneMarie (@mrs_hyde) shared about a coding group that has been started. the purpose of this being to learn how to code as a teacher so we can ensure we are teaching students the right things and are preparing them for future jobs. I will be joining and having a play! www.tynker.com was also suggested as a great starter application.
• Here you will find the literacy progressions in kid speak - http://goo.gl/NspXMu
• Free eBooks online - http://goo.gl/TA9LY6 An awesome resource for Daily 5, that I plan to use with my kids. Shared by Catriona (@catrionapene).
• Catriona also shared that all NZ School Journals are being published online as of 2014. Here is an example of the Junior Journals - http://goo.gl/zE1nFe
• Meraki is a Mobile Device Manager, which works well with Apple's Volume Purchasing Programme. This is something I am going to look into further. Could it make app purchasing on bulk devices more manageable? Meraki was shared by Justine (@digitallearnin) 
• Interested in QR codes? Here's a smorgasbord of ideas! http://qrcodetestblog.blogspot.co.nz/ I also discovered that there's a group on the VLN. 

Me getting up to share about Adventure Learning, Kids Cafe and Kidsedchatnz.

(Check out @kidscafenz and @kidsedchatnz on Twitter if you haven't already) 

From the smackdown breakouts were created. The hardest part is choosing which ones to go to! However; if you can't make it to one you can always go back to the smackdown later where links have been added. Here is a snapshot of the three breakouts I attended. 


Breakout One 

I ran one of the first breakouts. I spoke about personalised learning Adventure Learning. You can check my Adventure Learning blog out here - www.nzadventurelearning.blogspot.co.nz 


Breakout Two 

I've recently been having a play with Minecraft in my classroom to further explore how it can be used as a learning tool and lift student engagement. Monika (@BeLchick1) and Annemarie ran this breakout (Annemarie by GHO). Because I'm quite new to Minecraft it confirmed some thoughts and ideas I already had e.g. there's no need to spawn monsters on Minecraft and starting with teaching the importance of school values in the Minecraft World. It also gave me lots to chew over! Room 8 and I have done quite a lot of work around positive digital citizenship this year so this blends in well. For me, I'm learning with my students and I'm well aware that they have a lot more knowledge about Minecraft than I do. For this reason, alongside how I value student voice we had a class discussion on Friday. We decided that we needed a Minecraft contract that everyone agreed on. I asked the students what they believed we needed to agree on as a class to ensure that Minecraft is both a fun and safe learning tool. This was very much a student driven conversation. There were great debates had around trap doors, T&T and creepers. I was so proud of how mature they were and how they each valued each others opinions. Blog post to follow on this next week. 

Today's session really firmed up my beliefs that Minecraft has huge potential to create authentic learning opportunities and has a place in our classroom. You simply just need the ability to see Minecraft as a tool to support learning, instead of only a sandpit box game. 

Here are some examples of how it has been used in classrooms, that were shared today at Educamp:

• One class visited the Napier aquarium and then built a virtual tour the aquarium in Minecraft. 
• Another class had read the book 'City of Ember' and then built the underground city. 
• Perfect for teaching Geometry - 3D shapes, rotation, maps, directions, building to scale and creating Algebra patterns.
• Another example was of a child who had built a castle, but inside the castle was a library and in the library were books that he had written himself. 
• Fantastic for follow up reading activities. 
• Inquiry sharing items. 
• Endless examples on YouTube - need to check these out! 

Here's a link to a Minecraft group on the VLN - http://goo.gl/hw4Cjd A Minecraft camp is also taking place on 20th September in Rotorua. More info to follow. 

Breakout Three

The third breakout I attended was an iPad app fest. Here were some of my favourite apps:

       Tell about this 

      Write about this

    Tellagami (thinking for buzz about books, with QR code links)

     Ollie's handwriting

        Penultimate

        Imagistory

So where to next? 

There is so much to take away from Educamp, but I think the best thing to do is to decide on three things max that you're going to further explore. For me those three things will be the use of Minecraft in my classroom, the iPad apps and to join the coding group and begin having a play in my own time. 



A big thank you to Tania and Catriona for helping to organise another awesome Educamp and for St Francis Xavier School for letting us use their school as a venue again. Ben, you were missed but I took one for the team and ate your share of lollies :) 


Next up for PD is Te Tai Tokerau Connect - http://bit.ly/TTT14Whg (26th August at Forum North) and the #Edchatnz Conference next Friday (8th August) in Auckland. Looking forward to meeting up F2F (face to face) with some awesome tweeps (teachers that tweet) and sharing Kidsedchatnz with everyone.