6 Month Reflection

I loved making this reflection into something more digestible than your average doc; in the times that seem so hard and you feel so frazzled, you can look back on the things you have achieved and think "it seemed hard at the time, but I've come this far and I'm still growing" - It's an encouraging feeling so it seems logical to document it in such a way that is easily accessible!

Presenting my 6 month in reflection of being a beginning teacher in the Manaiakalani Digital Teacher's Academy...

Inspiring Innovators

I have had an epiphany. At 25 years old, still considered young by many, one would expect that indoctrination in the ways of old, teaching wise, isn't a lived out truth. However the reality is that my journey as a learner through the education system has affected me in ways I wasn't aware of. Until I am challenged by a belief, by myself or by my colleagues, everything is done in an unaware, subconscious machine like manner. The question of purposefulness is one that needs to be asked, and just as pressing should be the questions of what else can I do? and how else can we do it? Comfort is a beautiful, warm and fuzzy feeling thing, yet comfort does not create change.

In a provocation to the University of Auckland, Google Class On Air participants challenged the University to reconsider what effective 21st teaching practices looked like and how they might provide teachers in training with the opportunity to develop these particular skills which compliment effective practice. Innovation.


As Russell Burt, Pat Snedden, Dorothy Burt and company work to move the community of Tamaki from subsistence to a position where they can experience capital growth through education, they have questioned other social aspects along the way - they identified that education needed to change and then they asked, well, why not housing? Why not the health system? Innovation.

To be surrounded by such an unbounded amount of innovation jerks me from comfort and inspires me to take risks in the learning environment in an asserted effort to make learning purposeful and authentic.

It's hard work. It makes your brain hurt. It's not always comfortable (actually, it hardly ever is comfortable!) BUT when purposeful, it creates CHANGE! Feeling so humbled to be in the presence of individuals and collectives who are courageous enough to take risks for the betterment of the tamariki and the wider community.

Screencasts & Accessible Learning

This week in our digital immersion class we used Screen recording in Quicktime player to create screencasts about how our learners and their whanau access their learning through our Hub Google Sites. The video highlights the major digital affordances of a Google site, through the enabling of ubiquitous learning and increased learner agency.




This was my first screencast using Quicktime, however, my learners and I use Screencastify, a screen capture software for Chrome, very often in the classroom. The main way I have used Screencasts as a tool has been to record myself solving mathematics problems and explaining my reasoning and the strategies I have used to do so. My learners have then been able to use this as a resource when they have trouble answering certain questions.

The learners have been using this tool to record their own thinking when solving mathematics problems. One really useful tool within Screencastify is the ability to draw/write on the screen you are recording. This enables learners to record their thinking live. Used in this way, their recordings become authentic resources they can use later for rewindable learning or even for their peers to use.

Inspiring Colleagues

It's hard to believe that two years ago the awe-inspiring world-class innovating Teachers of Google's ClassOnAir were in the same seat as my colleagues and I. Today we had Matt Goodwin come in and share with us some of the technicalities of recording and sharing his pedagogy for his ClassOnAir episodes. Their courage to lay the design for learning that they have created for their learners for a global audience is the ultimate visible learning experience and fulfils the SHARE piece of the Manaiakalani pedagogy by making their plans available for anyone to use, 

giving back to the community by sharing their take on what is effective teaching within their context for their learners. Knowing that we might have the opportunity to do this in a year and a half's time is SCARY but inspiring.