Digital Immersion (Term 4, Week 7)

Today was our last MDTA Digital Immersion of 2016.

We started our day off with a photoshoot at Point England Beach.. in the wind.. haha!

But we did get some good ones...

We also organised a special morning tea to celebrate the end of an era, and to thank Dorothy and Anne for their support throughout the year. 

 

For the rest of the day, we worked on a CV site. 

Yes, we do already have a CV/resume, how else did we get a job in the first place?

However, we have grown so much throughout the year and need a way to show off our skills and achievements, hence, we created a site. 

Here is mine. 

Feedback welcome of course! 

Digital Immersion (Term 4, Week 6)

Today is our second-to-last Digital Immersion Friday.

We have been asked to make a reflective video on our year's experience as an MDTA.

I actually found it very difficult to write a reflective script for this video. 

I don't know how to articulate my years worth of experiences in 3-5 minutes... 

I had a look at my reflection from June (a mid-year marker) and found that it will be quite different.

That video was more explaining what I'm doing and how it is going, rather than focusing a lot on myself and my experiences personally. This is how the two will be different.

I will post it here once I have finished it... (to be continued)

The 9th Annual Manaiakalanai Film Festival

The MDTAs were required to make a movie each for the Manaiakalani Film Festival. 

Here is mine.

This video was shared on my class blog - check out my classes post (and the gazillion comments) here. 

The side of the Film Festival that people don't often think about is the hours and hours and hours of prep that go on behind the scene.

I made the slide/drawing that made our schools videos available to the other schools
(this included helping other new teachers to blog their movie in the right way)
 

And I also made our school banner.

This...

Turned into this...

I was very proud of my banner and got many compliments on it, which made the extra hours at home and at school worthwhile. Our students and staff were very proud to say they were from TPS.

I got to have lunch with our presenters at The Coffee Club, along with Juliana and Aireen. 

The kids after the evening show being silly with our display (they were crazy but we love them!)

Overall it was a great experience and I'm so glad I got to be a part of it. Next year is the 10th annual FF, so it will be an even bigger deal than this year and I am already thinking of what movie I will make...

Presenting to parents

Today ended up very differently than I expected.

We had a presentation for year 3 parents on the school overview, that nobody seemed to know what was happening with. 

Archana has never done one of these information evenings before, so we decided to have a look at it together.

I created a presentation and Archana and I worked on it together on Monday night.

As neither of us had done this kind of presentation before, and there was no previous example to look at, we did feel a bit lost and just did what we thought would be best.

Archana linked in lots of great examples of students 'create' work, especially on slides 17 & 18 which show powerful meaning ways that students use their chromebooks for learning.

Reflection

The presentation went well, I felt it was very awkward at first as we all were a bit unsure of how it was going to go. I really liked the team approach we took to presenting - Archana and myself took turns to talk to the slides, Juliana clicked through them for us, and Rhonda and Sally added in whenever they felt we had missed something. We were also mostly either sitting or leaning as well (rather than standing) which I felt made it more comfortable for parents as it was more equal in approach, not a dominating approach.

 I do feel that it was a little lecture-y, and could have been more collaborative to really make the parents feel comfortable and that they could ask questions, talk to each other to clarify understandings etc. 

(Food for thought for next time!)

I never thought I would be presenting to parents in my first year of teaching, but it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. Next year I also think it would be beneficial to do multiple of these events, at varying times (e.g. one at 6pm, one at 3pm), and begin them earlier in the year (term 3) so parents can organise their payments etc before the christmas boom arrives.

Digital Immersion (Term 4, Week 4)

Today at Digital Immersion we focused on our PCT Sites.

I had stopped using my site months ago, almost like I had made this wonderful thing and fallen out of love with it. It just sat there, neglected.

I googled for inspiration, and had so many ideas however my friend and colleague Heath reminded me to keep it simple and not make it too hard for myself. 

I began with this image.

Then I just went to work, literally working for hours on my site. 

I will not link the site here, as it has private and confidential school documents and information within it that are collected as evidence of various aspects of my professional life, but I will share screenshots of it so you can see the design of it.

The home or 'landing' page

As you click through the bunting at the top, each page is slightly different, however keeps the navigation bunting.

This is the 'Professional Development' page.

This is the 'Goals & BT Meetings' page, with links to Google Docs containing the meeting minutes.

 This is the 'Inquiry' page. Each of these is a seperate doc which details the cycle of inquiry undertaken in that particular learning area/time.

This is the 'Observations' page. 

This is the 'Release Logs' page, with my document linked in.

 This is the PTC's. Each of these 12 criteria open up into a new page, each containing evidence for that criteria, reflections for that criteria, and a link to my blog label streams (note how within my labels I have PTC labels - e.g. PTC1 that you can click, and see every piece of evidence related to that criteria).

At the beginning of the day I hated my PTC Site, but now I rather like it and am quite happy with the bunting design I chose as it makes navigation very easy. The colour scheme is some of my favourite colours (the teal mainly) and I am so pleased we had today set aside to re-develop our sites. 

If any of my school colleagues reading this would like help with your PTC site, please let me know I am more than happy to help! :)