Week 32: Changes in Practice and Future Plans

As this experience comes to an end, and it’s time to reflect on where I started, what I have thought about/learned and where I am now. I have based my reflection on the Rolfe et al.’s (2001) reflective model.

What

I believe my teaching style was very traditional.  This is to do with my length of service – a 1977 start. Traditionally, if students collaborated, it was seen as cheating, and would lead to classroom management issues as students chatted and were quickly off task.

In 2017 as I headed into the Mind Lab course I took a punt and experimented with 20% time with my Year 10 students. My students loved it. In my mind 50% of the groups were successful and 50% were not. The unsuccessful was generally to do with the frustration with the software not working as expected rather than the students not participating as expected.

The results of this action I believe is that we are back to two Year 10 Digital classes in 2018 as against one in 2017. The surveys held at the end of 20% time, was a thumbs up from the students. They enjoyed the time to investigate and experiment without assessment.

So What

In the second half of this course I joined with two other teachers to collaborate with the Research assignments. I wasn’t very happy with my first half of the course grades and the opportunity came up to join with two others, from my school so I took it as I seriously needed to improve my grades. This worked very well. I really enjoyed the collaborative professional chat, and the results helped all of us.

Now What

In 2018 I have transferred this lesson learned to my Year 11 Digital course. I have a fabulous class. As well as experimenting with Gamification i.e. points for everything, I have offered the students the opportunity to work in groups of no more than three for their game prototype NCEA assessments.

So far this is working well, I wouldn’t say very well as the physical set up of the room makes it very difficult for me to pull the students away from the computers. Also 50% of my students are average to below average students so I need to scaffold very carefully what I want the students to do.

Discussion is underway to revert the bookable classroom in the middle of our three classroom suite into a PC free classroom so that we can have a more intimate learning environment for our students.

I wish to thank, all of the presenters who went out of their way to travel to Hawera. I know it can be an onerous task, but your efforts were deeply appreciated.

Thank you to Frances and the Mindlab team for moving me into the 21^st Century and making this a fees free course, such a bonus.  I have two disappointments; that I didn’t file my readings into a week by week file and that this opportunity has come in the twilight of my career, but I suspect I wouldn’t have done it  if my children were still at home. Just pleased I will be able to make a difference to my students on a daily basis.

Next Steps:

1.              Complete the Digital Passport

2.              Complete the Microsoft Educator online training

3.              Work on the Minecraft Teacher Tutorials

4.              Await instructions to continue with this learning and challenge myself with the Masters. That      would be an achievement.

References:

Adapted from: Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D., Jasper, M. (2001) Critical reflection in nursing and the helping professions: a user’s guide. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.