Changes in My Practice

Over the past 32 weeks I have been on a learning journey with Mindlab that has challenged me and inspired me to reflect on my own practice. It has made me even more conscious that it is not just our students who need to develop 21st-century skills, but also those of us in teaching and leadership positions within our schools. As Meyer (2016) states, “For leaders, thinking about the future is a moral imperative.”
As a member of the Senior Leadership Team at my kura, I have had to reflect on and critically examine my own leadership practice and my role as an e-leader, especially in the context of digital and collaborative learning.

One of two key changes that I have made is the shift to regularly engage with the online learning community via social media. I previously had a facebook, Google+ and a Twitter account which I never used, but now I frequently read, like and re-tweet posts on Twitter and regularly share my ideas and practice via my blog posts and the Google+ community. Through the medium of online networking and the use of social media, I have begun to share my own thoughts and ideas globally, rather than just with the kaiako in my own school. I have been challenged to research and explore ideas, trends, and issues in a deeper and more meaningful way, to be innovative and think critically about the way we do things at our school, and examine why we do them. It has been a big shift in my thinking, as I grew up in a culture where you kept your own opinions and ideas to yourself. I now feel empowered to verbalize and share my thoughts more openly, creating both opportunities and challenges, and ultimately it has allowed me to be part of a supportive culture of learning.

Another key change to my practice over the past eight months has been to look at ways I can encourage, support and challenge my colleagues to create more engaging learning experiences for students, and develop new philosophies and contexts for how teaching happens in our school.

In our ever-changing world it is necessary to constantly reflect on and adjust the way we do things. 

A crucial aspect of future-focused learning, as I see it, is to encourage our kaiako to make a shift from a knowledge, acquisition-based, passive model where the students are expected to fill their kete with knowledge in order to achieve the desired results for assessment purposes.  

A more collaborative model where students focus on the process of how they learn, creating engaging and authentic learning experiences for students, and encouraging our kaiako to view teaching through a different lens is now my priority.

My dream for the future is to continue on this journey of exponential learning and reflective practice, where I can make a difference for students and help to prepare them for their futures, and lead and inspire my colleagues to also better understand and evaluate their professional practice and enhance self-awareness, for as Carlgren, I., Handal, G. & Vaage, S. (Eds.). (1994) state, “The process of learning to teach continues throughout a teacher’s entire career … at best, we can only prepare teachers to begin teaching.” I want to help develop the culture of our school, where we all become researchers, continually engaging in a collaborative process of self-education, and self-reflection alongside our ākonga. My dream is to work together in new ways so that our students have agency over their own learning, taking a more active role in authentic contexts, developing the skills to determine their own pathways into the future.

References:
Carlgren, I., Handal, G. & Vaage, S. (Eds.). (1994). Teachers' Minds And Actions: Research On Teachers' Thinking And Practice. London, UK: The Falmer Press.
Meyer, M. (2016). Reflections on Nearly a Decade in the Education Sector. Retrieved on October 14, 2016 from http://knowledgeworks.org/worldoflearning/2016/10/career-education/
Osterman, K. & Kottkamp, R.(1993). Reflective Practice for Educators.California.Cornwin Press, Inc. Retrieved on 7th May, 2015 from http://www.itslifejimbutnotasweknowit.org.uk/files/RefPract/Osterman_Kottkamp_extract.pdf

Interdisciplinary Connections

My current and potential interdisciplinary professional connections

Jones, (2010) states that "The interdisciplinary approach synthesizes more than one discipline and

creates teams of teachers and students that enrich the overall educational experience." (Pg 1). 

An interdisciplinary connection that I have as a near-future goal, is to have more regular communication and connection with our parent/whānau community, especially our Māori and Pasifika parents, in order to strengthen the partnership between ākonga, kaiako and whānau.

Jones, (2010) also expounds that, "The interdisciplinary approach provides many benefits that develop into much needed lifelong learning skills that are essential to a student’s future learning."

Through these interdisciplinary connections, I hope to focus on interdisciplinary activities that revolve around a set of ideas providing authentic learning experiences in more than one curriculum area. As educators, we need to build on our student’s prior knowledge and assess understanding in a variety of ways. I believe it is about giving students choices for their inquiry projects and how they are presented, it's about harnessing their personal interest, prior knowledge and unique backgrounds and having a consideration of their needs and understanding across a variety of disciplines. We need to adapt our teaching and the opportunities we offer our students to meet their emerging needs and interests.

Through my own interdisciplinary connections, I endeavour to cultivate opportunities to engage parents and whānau in their children's learning. There must be meaningful contexts for learning, and to gain an insight into this, I need to connect with others who can help make a difference. Parents and whānau help to give ourselves, as educators, that insight into who our learners are, what they are interested in and what their needs might be. We need to take into account the whole child - their physical, emotional, social, and cognitive needs.

Just as our learners are complex and multi-faceted, so too are the real-life problems and issues that we want them to inquire about. We cannot simply compartmentalize these issues to be investigated through a single discipline. We need to teach inquiry from a range of perspectives and foster their 21st-century skills across a range of disciplines. We want our learners to have a greater understanding of the complex issues in the world. In interdisciplinary learning models, the development of inquiry skills are a primary goal as we seek to investigate authentic issues, thus providing our learners with a domain for problem-solving and decision-making.

I do not believe a teacher can single-handedly achieve this for their learners. We need to collaborate with our colleagues and gain insight, support, and information from others in our interdisciplinary network.

We need to give our students opportunities to delve into social and emotional themes, encourage them to be innovative, develop a metacognitive awareness, and be critical thinkers, as we relate these issues to their own personal experiences.

We also need to help our parents and whānau members to understand these perspectives and what their role is in developing these connections to support authentic learning as we develop the ability of their children to make decisions, think critically and creatively, and synthesize knowledge beyond the core disciplines of Reading, Writing and Maths.

By actively seeking to make these interdisciplinary connections, we create opportunities to have more meaningful relationships with our students and their whānau, and promote positive attitudes towards various curriculum areas. We are thus enabling our learners to experience life through a variety of lenses and see issues from different perspectives, which allows them to have a more holistic view of the world.

As Pink, (2008), professed, “We need to prepare our kids for the future, not our past”. It is therefore imperative that we not only establish interdisciplinary connections, but that we consciously nurture, maintain, and strengthen these connections to enrich our learning programmes through an interdisciplinary approach as we develop their lifelong learning skills.

References:

Barton, K. C., & Smith, L. A. (2000). Themes or motifs? Aiming for coherence through interdisciplinary outlines. The Reading Teacher, 54(1), 54-63.1.

Lacoe Edu (2014) Interdisciplinary Learning [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA564RIlhME

Jacobs, H.J. (1989). Interdisciplinary Curriculum: Design and Implementation 

Jones, C.(2009). Interdisciplinary approach - Advantages, disadvantages, and the future benefits of interdisciplinary studies. ESSAI7 (26), 76-81. Retrieved from http://dc.cod.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1121&context=essai

Mathison,S.. & Freeman, M.(1997). The logic of interdisciplinary studies. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, 1997. Retrieved from http://www.albany.edu/cela/reports/mathisonlogic12004.pdf:

Pink, D. (2008).  A presentation at the Minnesota TIES conference.

ThomasMcDonaghGroup. ( 2011, May 13). Interdisciplinarity and Innovation Education.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDdNzftkIpA

WNet Education. Educational Broadcasting Corporation.(2004). Concept to Classroom blog. http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/interdisciplinary/#sbs

Professional Online Social Networks

When I first began teaching in a small rural school in the Waikato in the 1980's I took my class on a trip to visit the first supermarket in Hamilton to have price scanners, and then onto Databank, an international innovator of online computer networking.
Back in class we made our own 'computers' using card and knitting needles to sort their own personal data punch cards.
I lived in a farm cottage at the time, where I shared a party-line phone with two of my neighbours.
Not long after I bought my first personal computer, an Amstrad. There was no internet or online social networking then, I unplugged and lugged that heavy PC to and from school in my car most days of the week so I could share this new technology with my class. Wow! How things have changed in the three decades I have been teaching.

Today I am an e-Leader in my school, supporting staff and students to be connected and keep up to date with new technology. After shying away from my first experiences of social media, why would I want to share my personal life with everyone on Bebo, I am now a proponent of using social media to share professional knowledge and new innovations and ideas. I am inspired and motivated every day by what is shared online. I now understand the importance of being familiar with the social media platforms available to not only enhance my own knowledge and keep me up to date, but also to help promote the benefits and appropriate use of these platforms to enhance learning opportunities for our students.

Turner (2010) divides social media into three categories - social media platforms that help you network ; social media platforms that help you promote; and social media platforms that help you share. Using these three categories to reflect on my professional use of social media, this is how I am utilizing social media in my teaching practice.

Social media platforms that help me to network: 
Facebook - at school we use a closed facebook page to help keep parents in our Māori-medium classes informed about upcoming events and other things happening at our kura. The potential challenge here is keeping it professional when we have parents, and potentially students, able to access and comment on this page and also see the profile pictures of the staff who belong to it.
I mainly only use facebook in a  professional context, and therefore my 'friends' are the likes of NZ Teachers (Primary), etc.
Google+ - this is one of my favourite go-to places to learn about new trends and innovations in educational technology. It is also a great platform for requesting support or information if I am unsure about new technology I might want to try.
Linkedin - an interesting platform to network with others and share skills, employment history and education. I see the main purpose of this platform as providing information and opportunity for future employment.
Twitter - I use Twitter on a regular basis and just love this as a quick and easy platform to share ideas professionally. As a school we tweet to the school community to keep them updated and connected about what is happening at our school, almost as it is happening. A challenge with Twitter, is having control over retweets and comments and ensuring photo permission for students in photos.
Social media platforms that help me to promote:
YouTube - this is a great platform to promote our school. By posting videos we create on YouTube, we are able to reach a wide and varied audience. It also has some great features such as Playlists and editing options for supporting targetted learning. The main challenge is to keep the focus on appropriate and useful content.
Social media platforms that help me to share:
Google sites - We use Google sites for collaborative team planning; student sites to share our planning, student tasks and other learning links; to share learning outcomes and processes with parents; and also for our PRT's documentation. A challenge with a site is to keep it updated and interesting to revisit. Adding links to blogs and Twitter feeds are two ways to do this.
email - Used regularly by all staff for communication purposes, and less often by students. The challenge with email is to keep it professional, appropriate and be careful who we email to.
Blogging - This is an excellent platform for sharing information. I replaced our inefficient 'Staff Daily Notices' exercise book with a staff blog several years ago. Not only do we have a great record of notices staff need to share, staff can access this private blog at any time from anywhere, and it has been a great learning tool for those self-professed technologically-challenged staff members. We also have team blogs for sharing learning processes and outcomes with the school community, and students are using personal blogs as e-portfolios, to share their learning journey. I now have this personal blog to document and share my professional learning and ideas. This is a great self-reflection tool.

Using social media allows us as educators to extend learning opportunities for ourselves, our students and staff outside the walls of our learning spaces, and to also invite the world into our classrooms. It brings with it opportunities and challenges I could never have imagined when I first started teaching, but enables us to be future-focused, global, 21st-century learners.
By using social media we can be connected to the 'real' world, develop a 'world view' and empathy for others, and have authentic purpose for developing our communication and digital citizenship skills. The challenge as educators, is to try to keep up and have the confidence to give it a go.

References:
Melhuish, K. Online social networking and its impact on New Zealand educators’ professional learning. Source: p. 36-44 in Chapter 3 of Melhuish, K.(2013). Online social networking and its impact on New Zealand educators’ professional learning. Master Thesis. The University of Waikato. Retrieved on 05 May, 2015 from http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10289/8482/thesis.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Office of Ed Tech. (2013, Sep 18). Connected Educators. [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=216&v=K4Vd4JP_DB8 
New Zealand Teachers Council.(2012). Establishing safeguards.[video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/49216520 
Turner, J. (2010). Top 52 Social Media Platforms Every Marketer Should Know. http://60secondmarketer.com/blog/2010/04/09/top-52-social-media-platforms/ 
Tvoparents. (2013, May 21). Using Social Media in the Classroom.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riZStaz8Rno

Legal and ethical contexts in my digital practice

An ethical dilemma that I face in my own practice relates to how we share our students' work and their images online.

The school where I work has clear guidelines around ensuring that staff are informed and are aware of which students do not have parental permission to have their images shared online. Sometimes we are very clear why this is an issue for a student, particularly if there are custody issues or a family is part of a police protection programme. Sometimes, we do not have a reason, however, we remain diligent in checking that photos on our school website, in newsletters, etc. are checked by one of the student's teachers and also by one of the Senior Leadership Team before being shared.

There are, however, a number of issues that sometimes arise and situations that we have much less control over.

If we run a school sports day, for example, we encourage and welcome our parents to join us and support their tamariki. Parents will eagerly snap photos of their child participating in one or more events, and often these are posted online immediately via Snapchat or Instagram, or might be shared on their facebook page. As a school, it is virtually impossible to control what parents will post online, and they will be unaware that another child, who might happen to be in their photo, did not have photo permission. For me, it would be unethical to prevent those tamariki from participating, just in case they got in someone's photo; but is it ethical to put the child or their family in this situation, and possibly even at risk?

One of our school goals is to provide authentic learning experiences for our students. We regularly do this through digital and online forums, where the authentic audience for their projects are the readers of the school or team blog or website. For students who are unable to share their work publicly, this creates an ethical dilemma. Do we isolate them somewhat from the collaborative groups who are sharing their learning with others, just in case they are accidentally identified online?

Later this term, our Year 7 & 8 students will travel to Wellington for a big day out where they will visit Parliament, Capital E Studios and Te Papa. They have been asked to incorporate their personal or group inquiry project into this day, where they will gather more information, ask more questions, and navigate ideas in preparation for launching their own creations of a solution or presentation related to their inquiry.  We are encouraging them to take their digital devices, most likely their phones, so they can digitally record data to use in their presentation.
Although we will do our best to ensure all students are well informed and understand their rights and responsibilities as digital citizens, we do not have total control over what will happen to those images.
We have asked ourselves, is it ethical for us to expose students without photo permission to the potential of having their photos posted online by their peers? Should we try to shield them and block them from danger and have complete control over their online content and sharing, or do we teach them about ethics, about rights and responsibilities, and give them the opportunity to put that learning into practice?

When our Year 8 students attend secondary school next year, there will be little chance of preventing their peers from getting out their phones and digitally recording people, places and events as they wish. This is now a norm of our society, and we cannot shield and protect our students from this forever.

I believe, however, it is our responsibility as a school to educate our school community about the ethics of being a member of the online community, about their rights and responsibilities and the things they need to be alerted to and wary of.

Perhaps, as a school community, we need to develop our own Online Code of Ethics, which has community input, and community responsibility for the respect and care of ourselves and others.

References:
Educational Council, (n.d.). Code of ethics for certified teachers. Retrieved September 28, 2016, from https://educationcouncil.org.nz/content/code-of-ethics-certificated-teachers-0
Hall, A. (2001). What ought I to do, all things considered? An approach to the exploration of ethical problems by teachers. Paper presented at the IIPE Conference, Brisbane. Retrieved from http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Developing-leaders/What-Ought-I-to-Do-All-Things-Considered-An-Approach-to-the-Exploration-of-Ethical-Problems-by-Teachers 
Henderson, M., Auld, G., & Johnson, N. F. (2014). Ethics of teaching with social media. In Australian Computers in Education Conference 2014, Adelaide, SA. Retrieved from http://acec2014.acce.edu.au/session/ethics-teaching-social-media
Ministry of Education. (2015). Digital technology: Safe and responsible use in schools. A companion to the guidelines for the surrender and retention of property and searches. Retrieved from http://www.education.govt.nz/assets/Documents/School/Managing-and-supporting-students/DigitalTechnologySafeAndResponsibleUseInSchs.pdf