Saturday 21 March 2015

#ConnectedRotorua - 20th March 2015

Yesterday I opened the session for the first time. Was pretty cool actually.

It was even cooler to see real collaboration happening in real time. People were sharing, learning and teaching each other skills and concepts within areas they wanted to focus on.

For me, I helped Vicki Needham start up her blog: vickisteachingreflections.blogspot.co.nz and helped to redesign, change the layout, add widgets etc.

I think the best thing about last night's session is that we were able to have a play and have some time to ourselves to try new things, create and collaborate - which we don't often have the time to do.

I added and continued to update my Badges page on my digital portfolio. There is just so much more to do with both it and my class page that I actually have accepted the fact that it is constantly going to be a working document. It can't be completely finished or perfect because then it wouldn't show my learning and understanding as time progresses. Sure it will become better as time goes on - but there will just always be something else to add. Eventually my portfolio will have a huge selection of my years and years of teaching practice on it.

What I'd like to do is spend time adding RTCs to my blog as tags and as a page with links to my blog posts on my portfolio site.

What I actually need to do this weekend is different - watch my mate and our Heights students participate in the Longest Day where they essentially have their longest day and pull a fire engine down the length of Fenton street. I also would like to spend some time at school marking and finalising changes and adaptations to my classroom and making more resources and stapling short stories etc. I'd also like to go back to Morrinville and spend some time with my nan too - looking at the range of possible housing choices in Rotorua for her.

Am so happy we had such a good session last night. I wonder though whether we can begin learning new things ourselves too rather than being the teachers and supporters to everyone else. I think the discussion we had last night around the need to bring everyone up to where we are and move together is important. However, doing those side courses on GAFE has been helping hone my understanding. Perhaps my next step is to push myself into doing GTA (Google Teacher Academy)... I need a serious amount of time to get to where I want to be with my digital skillset.

I need to carve some more time out... somewhere.

Maybe if we had a day doing it rather than a few hours it would be less stressed and more focussed? Though I'd probably end up procrastinating anyway.... like right now when I could be doing that stuff!

Keeping my blog up to date is important... but I wonder where all these site hits are coming from... 200 yesterday? Where from? And at what posts? Blogger analytics aren't specific enough to show the details for what I think I want to see and analyse. Maybe it's just not important? Maybe the writing is.

Anyway - thanks again to everyone who came last night and hope you all come again with more people too :) Spread the word!! :) #ConnectedRotorua

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou katoa

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