Cat's MindLab (Ghost Hunters) Blog

Week 30  Activity 6 : Contemporary trends in New Zealand or internationally.  My challenge this week is to create a reflective entry where first I analyse a trend that is influencing or shaping NZ or international education that is relevant to my practice. Then, critique and evaluate my practice in the context of different audiences (local, national and/or international) and their perspectives. My reflection will be based on Rofle's Reflective Model. What? Classrooms and learning spaces are changing so too then should the education within these classrooms. Educators need to be up-skilled in the use of the digital tools that are becoming more and more a part of everyday life. The issues we have with this is that teachers who are not willing to become up-skilled or are not willing to learn how to use digital tools will be left behind as this is the trend forward. It is an evolutionary requirement now for continued learning for the educators as well as the students. ...

Week 29: Activity 5: Using social online networks in teaching or professional development. So this weeks task is to use Jay & Johnson's model for reflection to critically discuss the use of social media in my professional practice. 1) Descriptive -  I use social media for both my teaching and my professional development but for the purposes of this blog I will only talk about it's use in a teaching capacity. Most of the social media I use is to help me come up with ideas for lessons to share with and teach to the children.  Pinterest has been a favourite of mine specifically for art ideas. It has helped to make my art lessons more exiting and enticing for the children and so has been a fantastic resource so far.  I use youtube a lot to teach children new things, fantastic way to teach something that I personally do not have a lot of knowledge on. I also use it to share their learning. I have made videos of their learning and videos of book...

Week 28 Applied Practice 2 Activity 4 This week we have been asked to ‘Critique and address issues of law, regulations and policy in practice using a reflective model’. I have chosen to talk about an issue I had experience with at my current school where a child was using the ipad to search for porn. My reflection is guided by the NZSTA Privacy Act,  Our Code, Our Standards  and Rofle's Model of Reflection. What? A child's parents came into school to complain that we were letting her use our school ipads to search for porn. This was the first we had heard of it and upon further investigation it was found that she was indeed searching up images using explicit words during class time when she was suppose to be doing some work on the ipads. We inspected the ipads that were available in her class and looking at the history of these ipads it was discovered that one was used to search for these images but as we had software installed to block sites she didn't actually ...

I will be using Jay and Johnson’s reflective model to reflect on this week.   Description: This weeks reflection is based on 2 topics from the Leadership in Digital and Collaborative Learning course - 1) Innovative learning spaces and 2) Teacher inquiry into student learning. How do these contribute to my Communities of Practice? Firstly I need to understand who my CoP is. Etienne Wenger (1999) states that “Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.” So in keeping with this view I would assume my CoP is initially my team at Northcote school as they is who my research will affect first, then the rest of the school and if successful possibly my cluster of learning (CoL) schools. It could even involve my mindlab group and as I seem to be on the road to sharing thoughts and practice theories with them already so it may well be them before my CoL.   I hav...

I am using Gibbs model for reflection this time and the Theme I have chosen to reflect on is - Theme 4: “Changing the script”: Rethinking learners’ and teachers’s roles. Description: In the past teachers have always been up the front of the classroom with all the knowledge while the students are sitting at their desks listening to the teacher who are sharing their knowledge with the students. There have been studies of brain activity during the course of a day that shows that this type of learning is the least effective in any circumstance. Students learn better from other students than from a teacher and, they learn by doing and leading their own learning. It’s time to change things about and put the onus on the students to lead their own learning. The teacher then becomes the facilitator to support their learning rather than the dictator with all the answers.   Feelings: This can be a scary concept as teachers learn to lose some control of the learning and be fre...

I will be using Jay and Johnsons reflective model to support this weeks reflective journal post. Description : At the moment my reflective practice consists of 4 levels of reflection. 1) Personal reflection on a daily basis where I reflect to myself in my head on my teaching and how it went after each lesson. I ask myself how that lesson went, did the children understand this, did I get across my intention from the lesson? I then look at what I need to do for the next lesson, if it went well then I go to the next lesson I have planned but if it didn’t go so well I either have to repeat the lesson or change aspects of it to get the desired result that I had planned for. 2) Daily conversation with my colleague on how things went and what we can do to improve things or offer suggestions to help each other on improving our teaching to support the achievement of our children. 3) Team meetings every 2 weeks where we discuss what is happening in our classrooms and offer s...