ConnectED 2017 @ Southwell School

Nathan Mikaere Wallis
Photo sourced from www.stuff.co.nz

Every year the ConnectED group of Hamilton schools hold a one day conference open to teachers in Hamilton and beyond.  This year I was very excited to find out Nathan Mikaere Wallis would be the key speaker at the beginning of the day and (for a little bit extra) you could attend a workshop with Nathan.  So I made my booking and paid that bit extra to glean more from Nathan.

I arrived just in time for the start of Nathan's keynote - I was somewhat delayed by feeding hay out to cows and jellymeat to a shed full of cats and I decided not to turn up smelling like a bale of hay... or jellymeat.

Teacher Portfolios on Blogger

First of all though I am going to reflect on the workshop I had with Allanah King on Teacher Portfolios/Inquiries.  This has really exploded over the last few years, with teachers needing to show how they met the RTCs which became the PTCs and are now being changed into something else yet again!  But what I really gleaned from Allanah was her Bling Blog that will now be the place I shall go to do something in Blogger that I didn't already know I could do.

At bling4yrblog, Allanah starts with the basic of how to set up a blogger account and then goes on to explain such things and more, as:

• putting up a post with a photo
• changing the layout of the blog
• labels
• adding comments to your side bar
• adding a YouTube video
• embedding a Google Doc
• blogging with your iPad

And that is just a small taster.  So I recommend you visit this blog if you are new to blogging and want to blog with your class and/or do your portfolio in Blogger.


One thing I would recommend, is start your portfolio with your own personal GMail account so you own it.  It becomes complicated if you start it with a school account and leave - sometimes moving it to your own account is not as easy as it sounds.  It also means that you have control over who sees your blog.  You have to specifically share your blog with your appraiser and colleagues you feel should see it.  Mine is private and can not come up in Google searches.  I give the link to the people I want to have it.


Nathan Mikaere Wallis

Nathan is a bit of an expert on the brain and how it develops.  Nathan would be a person who probably didn't have the most conventional pathway into what he now does.  He calls himself an outlier in a family of shearers and labourers, the kid with ADHD who broke all the rules.

One minute he is freaking out parents in the audience with how they have damaged their little darlings and the next he is speaking about the other things they are doing that counter balance said damage and make them ok.


Below is my Storify of the event with notes put in to speak to the Tweets produced from the keynote and the workshops throughout the day.

Networking

Over morning tea, lunch and the chill out session at the end of the day it was lovely to catch up with teachers I have met at other conferences (ULearn, educamps, eduignites, #edchatNZ conference, ConnectED) and through Twitter, NZEI, relieving and from schools I have worked in.  I also met some new people and learned about some new recreational activities from other people.


That networking is so positive and uplifting and allows one to share the learning of the day and how you will carry it forward with you in future days.


And then it was time to go home to feed out the haylage to the cows and feed a shed full of cats.... and a new calf!  This is Little Bub with his mum, Petal.

#educampAKL 2017

On Saturday 29th July #educampAKL for 2017 was held at Papakura High School in South Auckland.

This is the link to the Google Smackdown: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mZONDq79n4LlcXrpTp8GAws2WaaGvYVtsvpQE6EW0HE/edit#slide=id.g22e30cf367_0_74

I went to learn about Drive Slides.  Drive Slides is an extension on Google Chrome.  We were asked to make a Drive Slide.  Below are the steps.

1. First of all we had to add Drive Slides as an extension to Google Chrome.
2. Then we added Save to Google Drive as an extension to Google Chrome.
3. Then we went to Google images and choose three pictures.  To save the pictures we right clicked on the pictures and hovered over Save to Google Drive and then clicked on Save image to Google Drive.
4. Once we had three pictures in our Google Drive, we went to Recent and then held down the Shift button and clicked on our three images and saved them in a new folder.  
5. After this we clicked on the Drive Slides extension up in the extension line.

Here is my practice of doing Drive Slides:

I also learnt about Extensity, which enables you to turn extensions in Google Chrome on and off so you can improve the speed of your computer.

I then went to a workshop about using Voice Dictation on devices led by Jason, who showed us how he can write a text by voice, including punctuation.  I knew that Google Search and Docs and the like respond to voice.... but I learnt how to write a text message on my Samsung Galaxy 6 which will be helpful.

This then morphed into Jason showing us his Swivl robot, which he uses to record his teaching.  A Swivl can be bought from Si-Tech (who has the NZ licence) for approximately $750.  You put your phone/tablet on the Swivl and wear a bluetooth device on a lanyard.  This allows you to voice activate the device to record your teaching and the Swivl will follow you around the class as you move.  A Swivl account is free and will upload the video automatically to the cloud.  You can then share a link or embed it into your blog or website for students to access. 


Jason uses his swivel to 'flip' his classroom so his students can refer back to lessons if they need to remember something and absent students can use the videos to catch up.  Jason said that it is also a useful way to record yourself for appraisal or to help you reflect on your teaching.