I am attending a Principal’s Google Day and Rob Clarke is discussing the values of blogging.  This has made me wonder – how long has it been since I last posted to my blog??  OMG – 10 months!!  I have gone from being, at times, a daily blogger, collating resources for myself and anyone else who was interested!  I used it capture my thoughts and reflective thinking, and I’ve used it as a spot to celebrate and share new learning.

So where have I been?  I have been learning . . . I have been collating resources . . . but I haven’t been blogging!!

Term 1 – I enjoyed a 6 week sabbatical – investigating the aspects that successful schools of BYOD were implementing.  This learning is posted on my wikispaces page.  (It isn’t all organised – but it is there).

Term 2 – I have started a new role as a Principal at Waitaki Valley School in Kurow, and this learning and reflection is put away on a google sites (I won’t link to this as it also forms part of my appraisal) but it does look like this:

My start to Principalship has been a very positive one.  Waitaki Valley is a wonderful wee school in a great wee community. The school is well resourced and is a purpose-built new build of only 4 years ago.  We have things to work towards as a teaching team, however my team are all responsive to the direction that they are taking.

Maybe I should be blogging our journey!!

Watch this space . . .

I love the messages in this video – from students, teachers and the Principal. While these students are using Chrome Books, the philosophy behind this supports any model of BYOD.  What a lucky school to have the support of this trust to enable this to happen for their kids.  The benefits are obvious and the school and it’s community are appreciative of the backing of the trust in order for this to happen.

I have started working with new teachers at the beginning of the year and working through the process of making them aware of their presence on Social Media sites. This is becoming an increasing issue that teachers (and any other professional) needs to be aware of.  The NZ Teachers  Council have put together some great resources for supporting these conversations (and I use them in an ‘activity’ based way).

And while we can be specific to school based settings and Social Media it is important that ALL teachers (both young and old!) understand the implications of their own digital footprint.  Once upon a time you could have a professional profile and a personal profile, but the clever people at the likes of Google and Facebook are now able to put the connections together and often merge the two together for you!!

This is a really interesting article that discusses the implications of your Social Media profile.  Article here

This is an interesting article

I love this wee video about the development of the brain – for those of you teaching adolescents, or living with one (or more!!) then this will answer a few questions!

It has been a LONG time since I posted (quite a tumultuous time in our family!!) however I have read this and have a need to share it!!

I know that most of my teaching colleagues will be nodding while reading this – I’m not so sure what the general public think.  This is one reaction (which scares me!!)  How can we get the professional focus across to these people?

What do you think of this article?

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/education/news/article.cfm?c_id=35&objectid=11114247

Here is a blog post that is interesting – Swedish Charter schools have often been the measuring stick for our Government to use to ‘encourage’ this in NZ. It seems that they haven’t been as successful as we have been lead to believe. How strong of them though to recognise that this isn’t working and to pull out of this initiative. It seems that it isn’t anything to do with the programmes of learning or the quality of teaching – unfortunately it is all down to money!! Interestingly enough – Schools don’t seem to be good economic models for money making! Now that is a surprise!

Check out the blog post to read more about this.

For many of us – our digital footprint has only started in our adult life.  What though – of our kids born today?

I think that this is an interesting video to share with students to have them think about what footprint they are leaving . . .

I’m interested to track down this book – ‘Born Digital’ – life is so different for children of today compared to 30-40 years ago and I think we have to begin to understand ‘how they are wired’ being brought up in the environment that they are.

There is some really important thinking to go on here -by us as educators.  What are we doing to enrich the lives of our students?

I love this quote from about half way through the video –

“Education is about inspiring one’s mind – not just about filling their head”

we need to be VERY careful in this current climate of National Standards – that the inspiration doesn’t go, and we just feel that we need to fill the heads of students.

Watch the video – it will make you think . . .