Mindlab Session 1: Leadership

What do you consider a good leader to be like?

After watching the above video, we (Mindlab Participants) discussed what we believed what we consider a good leader and a good follower?

Leader:

• Leads in front of the class
• Encourages people to think for themselves
• Provide learning experiences to students
• Stond
• Decisive
• Humble
• Co-operative

Follower

• Can follow the leader
• Can take instruction and directions
• Collaboration

Being a good follower, can make you a greater leader.

Leader and follower may change roles at any given time

Reflection

For my students to be leaders of learning, I need to give them opportunities to lead when I follow.

Classroom Setup and Organisation Term 3, 2017

I have been thinking all holidays how I could make my classroom more spacious and to allow students some flexibility in where they work. After lots of thinking and trawling through pinterest for ideas, I have decided to remove my teacher's desk.  This required some forward thinking as to where I would put all my 'stuff', but also where I would keep documentation that's usually on my desk.

This is now the front of my classroom.  I had purchased a trolley from 'The Warehouse' and organised it will all my pens, markers, stickers, etc. 

My next big challenge was creating a space that would allow more flexible seating for my students. In my room I had three lower tables (which I always used for storing 'stuff' on), and four large tables with chairs. Again, after ample thinking and rummaging through posts on pinterest, I decided to heighten one of my student tables. 

I used my three lower desks and created a collaborative working area with cushions to kneel on, I removed one of my large tables to create more room, placed chairs around one, and used blocks of wood to heighten one of my tables. This creates an area for students to lead or stand while they are working. 


Against my wall, behind my standing table, I have display a VCOP wall (Vocab, Connectives, Openers, Punctuation) purchased on 'Teacherspayteachers'.

While working on the physical appearance of my classroom, I have also been thinking about ways to change the way my classroom functions, as well as how I teach and what I teach.

I have been viewing several videos relating to '21st century learners' and what is essential for them to learn.  So my next big goal is to "Not teach content, but to teach skills needed to be innovative, independent, leaders of their own learning".

I hope the children are as excited as I am about our new learning environment.

Mindlab Session 1: Purpose of Education!

So today we had our first session of Mindlab. 

Our first collaborative task involved discussing "The Purpose of Education".

Purpose of Education - from Cheryl, Venessa, Penny and Natalie.

Our ideas included:

• Foster curiosity and imagination 
• To be problem solvers 
• Grow in ourselves 
• To be flexible and adaptable 
• Inquire knowledge and skills 
• Work collaboratively and co-operate 
• Socialisation 
• Build resilience 
• Learning how to learn 
• Prepare the for whatever, whenever! 

We were asked to put our ideas into three categories; we chose inspire, develop and grow. We then had to make a visual representative of our ideas.





Our play dough sculpture shows a seed, sprouting and growing into a tree - representing our students. We also included a group of children (the round black balls) representing collaboration and a flexible person showing that you are needing to be flexible and adaptable.








Gert Biesta’s ideas on purpose of education.

We viewed the following video and were then asked to reflect on our visual representation. We then discussed the three purposes for education and how that linked to our representation. Our growing trees represented Qualification, Collaboration represented Socialisation and flexibility represented subjectification.

Reflect on how your understanding of the purpose of education is visible in your classroom.


* I provide students opportunities to discuss their learning with peers. Allowing "think, pair, share" encourages students to develop their own ideas about their learning and compare it with that of their peers. This also encourages collaboration, as ideas my change or grow after sharing with others.

* We are continually striving to improve ourselves, setting personal goals and reflecting on them. Students need to consider how they are going to achieve their goals.

* As a junior syndicate, we provide students opportunities to work collaboratively within other classroom, using mix age/ability groups.

Improvements that can be made:


* Allowing students more opportunities to have a say in their learning, or the direction it is taking.

* To be leader, you need followers. For our students to be "Leader of learning", I need to allow more opportunities for them to lead, with me being their follower.

First "Google Apps for Education" workshop.

As we collaborated on one document, trying to get the feel for google docs, one person wrote, "Wow google is amazing".  I read this thinking, "Yes, but so much, where do I start?" Not long after, someone changed the post to read "Wow google is a maze."

There is sooo much to know about google, so much I didn't know, even more that I didn't think it was capable of, and so much more I still don't know.

So today, I would like to share and reflect on some of the things I have learnt.

1. What's wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology.” Steve Jobs. Technology magnifies what is already happening in your classroom. So really, if your teaching is not up to standard, it will magnify your mistakes. On the other hand, if you are providing your students some amazing learning opportunities, then these can be magnified using technology. Technology is not there to replace the teacher, instead to support the learning.

2. "Why should primary students work collaboratively on a google document?" I got asked this question, and was completely thrown of balance, how do I respond? Often students are working together on one document, powerpoint or movie using one computer, with one person dominating all the input. However, working on google docs, wevideo, or google slides, students can work collaboratively and everyone can add. No one left out! Brilliant!!

3. Want tests that are marked by a computer, but created by you? Use google forms. You select the questions and responses, google can mark, graph and analyse the results. Something I would love to learn more about. Perhaps we can do speed test in this format, it times students and marks instantly. Would save sooooo much time.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow session.