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.