Are you staggered that we are now approaching mid-October, the T3 holidays are over and we're part way through Connected Educator Month? It's commonly stated that time flies when you're having fun, maybe it should read time flies when you're connected!
I'm just approaching the end of Carol Dweck's Mindset, this book was first suggested to me as I reflected on praise in my classroom and most recently has become required reading for a position I'll be starting next year. I've found it difficult to think about a review for this book as I've seriously tried to adopt a growth mindset in the classroom but think CEM14 probably summarises my mindset better than actually reflecting on the book.
T3 has been crazy busy for me, it started with EducampAkl and Edchatnz (both blogged here
EducampAkld post Edchatnz post). I've applied for and secured a job at another school (Hobsonville Point Primary School), this was an intensive process and deserves a blog post in its own right as any other teacher at either the primary or secondary will attest. I then concluded the term with a visit to Rotorua for EducampMinecraft (
blog post). Not satisfied with this level of professional development I've used the holidays to contribute to a
Minecraft in the Classroom GHO, moderated the inaugural #Primedchatnz twitter session to support
@mrjhopkins GHO with Graham Watts, taken part in the 1st KC4F chat (
book review here) and watched several more webinars. I believe that I must have been rather tweety during this time and the Ulearn conference as I've secured close to 70 new followers over this time. As a virtual attendee, one of my highlights was
+Juliet Revell presenting a Kidsedchatnz taster session and some of the many tweets we got afterwards about Kidsedchatnz, my favourite collaboration, hopefully it will be seeing an upsurge in participants this term.
This week, I've also facilitated a
callback day at HNS based on the Educamp model, I believe that this also was quite successful as I am sure that I saw some teachers with more of fixed mindset start to shift by being able to reach '
low hanging fruit'. For some of our staff this was the first they'd heard of CEM14, but I was pleased that many furiously wrote down the website as explained it's benefits.
None of this would be possible or as close to as engaging without adopting a growth mindset that finds an outlet through connection and collaboration. Hence, so much blogging to reflect on all this PD.
On Tuesday I'll be hosting a twitter chat to support
Kidsedchatnz during CEM14, we're hoping to attract current users of Kidsedchatnz as well as many more teachers who are interested in trying it out or just want to know more. I believe that we'll get a lot of useful feedback for Kidsedchatnz and make it an even better learning experience for students and teachers.
It has been a busy few weeks of connecting & collaborating, this will definitely continue throughout term 4 as Kidsedchatnz and #Primedchatnz both have lofty goals in the short term while my own class continues its own journey through twitter, blogging and minecraft. We have to make some more connections so that we can collaborate on projects but like everything, that's a work in progress too.
To celebrate Connected Educator Month the coordinators at Kidsedchatnz agreed that it would be fantastic to host a twitter chat session to connect all of the amazing teachers who have their classes take part. It would also serve as a great tool to help any teachers who were considering having their class join us in our regular Thursday slot.
