My blog has moved!

If you have noticed a lack of posts on this blog (and if you care...) it is because I have migrated my blog to another address!
Please now visit: http://major-science.blogspot.co.nz/ for the new blog!

Reasons for this are I want it attached to my personal account rather than a work one, purely for easier management purposes.

Please drop by the new blog and catch up with my doings and ramblings!

Several weeks on...

It is really hard to find the time to sit, reflect and then write a blog. There just aren't enough hours in the day as a teacher. My students get every other Friday to reflect on their learning in my class mainly using Google Sites, although this is very much something that we have started this year, so there is not much on most of them just yet. It would be nice if management within the school were able to give teachers one or two lessons per week, timetabled for reflections, when we can update blogs etc. and just generally think about what we have been doing. Not really feasible, I know, but in an ideal world...

What have I been doing? Why am I so busy? The list grows daily... Part of the reason why I have been so busy is because I have applied for the Google Teachers' Academy held in Sydney in May. This actually gave me an opportunity to stop and reflect on my practice as I had to promote this to the people running the GTA, or Google Apps for Education ninjas as they really are. My video had to be one minute, and I made use of Windows Movie Maker to create my final piece, which was mildly ironic, but I was pleased with the finished thing:

Applying for this actually gave me a chance for reflection on my teaching practice as well. I'm glad to say I was successful in my application, and will be one of three teachers from within the Manaiakalani cluster that are going to be in Sydney for this. Not to mention Fiona Grant and Dorothy Burt who are there as leaders.

Another thing that has taken a lot of my time has been the Envirogroup, which has grown out of all proportions this year. We are entering teams in several large competitions. The group student leader is Jake and he has started getting quite an environmental profile. He has been selected for the Sir Peter Blake Environmental Trust Youth Enviroleaders forum in Christchurch later this year, as well as being MC at the Auckland Green Jam Youth Sustainability conference AND a student leader at the MAD Sustainability hui!

I have been playing with some new e-tools recently; Google Keep appeared properly this week, although it was noticed briefly in Drive last week and caused a stir on various sites and blogs. This comes on the news  of the imminent demise of Google Reader which has had many people concerned. Keep allows note-taking across the web and is being thought of as a challenge to Evernote, although it does have nearly half of the functionality of Evernote (yet).
I have also played with putting a sliding title on my site as well as including my lessons as docs in a folder making them easier for students to find. The slider was just for visual appeal!

At least I feel I can appease my sense of guilt that nothing has been written by me for weeks.

Week 2 and it's all systems go!

Oddly enough, I am really having fun being back as a full-time classroom teacher. I loved being the Manaiakalani facilitator last year, it was awesome but stressful. Now I have a full load and am trying really hard to be as creative as possible without losing sight of what I am supposed to be doing and why.
One thing that is bugging me though, is why can't I decide on a format that I like for my site? Do I put all of the activities up for the kids by embedding them? By creating them as docs and sharing them? By putting it up on the board? A combination of all of these?
It is not easy to give the students free-reign with science. I can't just say "Go find out" because not everything works that way. Practicals for instance. Could be interesting though...
The site is a work in progress, and probably always will be because I find new things I want to do, new layouts I want to try, new gadgets I want to add. It is also difficult because only about 60% of all my students don't have their netbooks  yet, due to holiday breakages etc.
One nice thing I have tried this year is taking my year 10 classes outside for a lesson in plant propagation- no netbooks required! It was pleasant getting our hands dirty and doing something different. The students had for the most part never planted anything before in their lives, and found it a novel experience. I want to do more creative things again this year. Sadly I forgot to photograph the kids in action because I was so wrapped up in showing them how to take cuttings and plant etc. However, we have also dissected some flowers and I remembered to grab some shots!

These are the various parts of the flowers we dissected all stripped out 

Beautifully and correctly labelled by Fiu

Agapanthas ovary showing the seeds

Taking pics with a netbook

The 'before' shot

It's wonderful being able to take a picture of student work and upload it to the web and share it with the student so easily. The digital environment in the classroom really allows us to have so much more creativity! Happy days! Well that's plants sorted, now on to human reproduction...

Back with a bang... or a whimper?

And so we are already into week 2 of term 1. And I am shattered already...
I forgot how a full timetable looks after last year being the Manaiakalani facilitator. That involved a 50% teaching load and an anytime/ any place/ any way/ any where (thank you Debbie Harry for the lyric) approach to the facilitation bit.
I have a y10 tutor class, 2.5 y10 science classes, a y11 science class and a Level 2 Biology (y12) class this year, which is going to mean full on. I have done the "my expectations" blurb for all classes, and actually started in earnest today with all classes. I would love to say that all netbooks were charged, repaired and ready to go, but this was not the case. Having said that, 50% of each class had netbooks, so we made a start. It is crazy that these kids have this fabulous technology and fail to keep them maintained and usable. The only real inspired piece of online learning we really managed was with my y11s learning about NZ ecosystems. I got them on a web/ posters in my room/ book quest for info about a load of NZ species. ALL of the students tried and had a go, and we used the lesson as an impromptu "how to use Google search" session for some of the questions. There was loads of engagement, helped along with a healthy dose of competition ("If you get 10 Class Dojo points, you can change your avatar from the one I have given you, and this is worth 3 points!") and my class were wandering around reading posters and using the internet well. Very happy with this one! I've not taught this subject at this level before so it was a pleasant trial run.
I am looking forward to a lot of things this year; we have the Marine Meter Squared project as part of Seaweek in March, our first load of native trees as a part of our recycling campaign are arriving and will need planting at the creek, various sustainability events, loads of conferences about all sorts of interesting things, and of course the newly formed MITA academy (see previous posts). There is also another interesting occurrence on the horizon as there is another Google Teachers Academy coming up this year in Sydney. Now I need to think what my video is going to be about! SO much to think about, and also trying to complete the Advanced Power Searching course as well... I need time off, and it's Waitangi day tomorrow!

Well, it has been a long time since I lasted posted, however I have a stack of good excuses. It has been a very busy end of term this year; junior classes increased as we got rid of electives- a good thing in some ways. We all have good intentions for this time of year- once the seniors have gone I am going to... Never happens and I still forget this every year! There has been catch up sessions for staff who need help, students suddenly realising that no netbook means no Facebook over the holidays etc. Plus there are all the other commitments that end up taking over time, and now we are finished for the year.

So, what happened? Well, aside from all of the other stuff, the MITA academy was launched, with the intention of giving the teachers in the Manaiakalani programme the chance to extend themselves and do something innovative during 2013. I applied, as you do, and was accepted after an interview (which I found nerve-wracking for some reason) and my topic of research will be the use of social media in the classroom. My theory is that we as educators tend to go straight for the 'block it' attitude, yet kids communicate more via social media than any other way. Email is very early 21st century! So, why not embrace the technology and use it to our advantage as a means to communicate with the students: wouldn't this increase their buy-in? I already use Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn personally and have started playing with Edmodo in the class, which my students have already indicated they really enjoy using- it looks and feels like Facebook so got instant buy-in. Interestingly, the students without netbooks really felt they were missing out with this site and were sharing netbooks to get access. Cool, and a good start (as mentioned in the last post).

The final couple of weeks of the term were taken up with activities, which being a year 9 tutor meant I was 'forced' to go to Rainbow's End, Waiwera, ice skating and the movies. Hard job, really. Rainbow's End was a rather wet day with the wettest part being just as another teacher and myself got strapped into the Invader. It turned out to be more like the spin cycle of a washing machine as the rain poured onto us as we span around. The rest of the day wasn't that wet; just those 10 minutes...

I stayed off the Fearfall this year, but was able to describe the physics of the rollercoaster to one of our kids (while we were going around...) Waiwera was as lovely as it ever is with very warm weather (sunburnt shoulders- ouch). Many of the teachers got into the water and a whole load of the kids didn't. We went in the hot pool (adults only!), some of the cooler pools, the slides, the lazy river and had a generally good time. When we got out we found out that there had been a tornado through west Auckland, motorways were in disarray and traffic was atrocious. Our coach managed a sliding skid as we had to brake hard, causing the car in front of us to accelerate into the next lane to avoid us hitting him. We were very lucky not to have a serious accident.
The final day was spent at Paradice in Pakuranga, with most of our kids taking to the ice for the first time in their lives, some taking to it more posterially... Then off to the cinema to watch Hotel Paranormal which was a pleasant way to wind down.
Final couple of days were taken up with junior prize-giving and the end of the year clear up, meaning farewells and packing up my four frogs to come home with me over the summer, putting the plants out to get watered by any rain (which there has been a fair bit of so far..) and generally clearing and cleaning. It has been a long year, exasperating at times, very funny at times but finally over. This is going to be my last post until the new academic year as we have much to do over the hols, and guests arriving from England. One thing that will take some of my time though: my CHROMEBOOK has arrived! Yay!

Busy week, and Manaiakalani Film Festival!

The seniors have been gone a week and a half, but as usual the intensity of events at school have shifted up a notch.
Firstly, Tuesday was Diwali, and being a Hindu I made a huge batch of chole (chickpea curry) for a shared morning tea for the staff. 4 litres, all gone in the space of an hour or less... not forgetting all of the other food that people brought in as well. Phew. People enjoy sharing cultures at TC; one of the wonderful things about working there.

Wednesday was the annual Manaiakalani film festival, at Hoyts, Sylvia Park with the biggest screen in the southern hemisphere. And the students from the cluster are the big stars. Wow.
It has been a few years since the festival started at Hoyts, and we found out this year that they actually moved the GLOBAL release of the latest Twilight movie forward to allow us to still have the date we booked earlier in the year! Thanks must go to the cinema for honouring their commitment to us and a huge thanks to the movie company for being so understanding!
Having said that, our films are probably thousands of times better than Twilight anyway...
There were 4 daytime sessions and an evening session with over 50 films being screened during the event. Check out the videos here http://www.manaiakalani.org/film-festival/2011-film-festival/2012-film-festival especially "Water" by St Patricks; they use my classroom for the lab scene! The student presenters from some of the primary schools were incredibly confident stepping onto a stage in front of nearly 400 people to introduce their film. They really are incredible. This event is getting bigger and better every year.

Another turning point for me this week has been the introduction of Edmodo to my junior classes. It has gone  down very well as a collaborative tool, looks and works like Facebook and allows me the options of deleting silly messages and controlling who has access to my pages. My students have all taken to it really quickly and love it! There have been several of them not only answering my questions but creating questions for their peers. I can create badges for their profiles as well, which they find really cool.
Here is what my students thought:

More to come on this later in upcoming posts!

Taking it to the next level

It has been an interesting week. It started off with the acquisition of a Samsung Gio smartphone and retiring my old Samsung flip phone with VGA camera. Okay, so I liked the flip because it reminded me of an original Star Trek communicator and I always felt like opening it and making a request to be beamed up...

Also, this week was senior prize-giving with TVNZ's Pasifika correspondent Barbara Dreaver as our guest speaker. It was an awesome night for our students, as always. It actually makes me proud to see kids I have encountered somewhere along their journey leaving the school, having achieved academic and extra-curricular success. Even better, Barbara Tweeted throughout the ceremony with pictures of our kids (@barbaradreaver), and mentioned us on Breakfast on Wednesday morning (http://tvnz.co.nz/breakfast-news/wednesday-november-7-5200957/video?vid=5201215 - the Fiji article). I will, however, not forgive Petra Bagust for calling us a south Auckland school; the cheek of it!

Senior students were then dismissed Tuesday morning, and the panic appeared to set in. How can they log into Facebook (at home) of their netbook is in for repairs?! Sorry, I mean study hard for their exams...
We were inundated with requests for return of said netbooks, most of which were still away being fixed, or in need of the $70 excess being paid. It was also hoped that the workload would start to reduce, not so though it would seem. Perhaps the juniors are the worst at looking after their machines (I know this to be a fact).

On Thursday we had the final ever netbook teachers' meeting for the cluster, as 2013 is going to see more specifically-targeted training being delivered. It was also the launch of the MITA- Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers Award to be offered to 10 experienced teachers within the cluster. I am going to apply for this, as it sounds interesting. Also, I feel that after 2 years extensive involvement with the programme, I am reluctant to move away from it all and return to being a full-time classroom teacher again next year. I have enjoyed the Manaiakalani experience, and I have learned a lot about e-learning and also programming (with the guidance of Nevyn the master!). It was also announced that Nevyn Hira had won the Education category at the NZ Open Source Awards for his work on the image and netbooks that we are using as part of the Manaiakalani cluster. Stunning performance!

To end the week, I have started making forays into the world of social media as a teaching tool. I would like to trial Twitter and Edmodo with my classes, and I am also looking at an application called Grouptweet to make the process easier. It is early days yet, but I am interested in this method of teaching and communicating with the students. This is an area that I am going to spend some time developing over 2013 and beyond, and something I will probably report back more on as this idea develops!