Digital Learning Spaces

Yesterday we had a group of teachers and Alison, principal visit us from Kohia Terrace School. We also had Hazel @HazelAbraham1, who is on a study sabbatical join us.

Virginia had asked what their visit focus would be to help us frame our thinking. The group was a little bigger than what we had realised but that was fine too as school visits like this allows our teachers to share their learning and to consolidate their thinking and you know how keen I am on teachers sharing their learning.

Anna shared Kahikatea's learning with google using Hapara and Edmodo. She also shared her ongoing professional learning with mindlab and how she was developing her teacher's digital portfolio. She shared the learning that both Waveney and she had recently undertaken presenting at the GAFE conference. 

Ginny spoke about general learning and shared what she learnt from our recent Singapore conference attendance with regards to using 1 device between groups. She also spoke about our school's current expectation about teachers being visible online using a variety of tools such as Twitter, VLN, POND, Edmodo and blogging. 

Both teachers spoke about how they were continually reflecting using their blogs.

I put in a TeachMeetNZ plug and highlighted the recent learning of Belinda using Google Hangout and then her blog to reflect her learning. I shared what Ginny spoke about and showed them our curated teacher's space where our learning is transparent. I reminded them that everyone must be on the same journey including the principal, if we were expected to reflect using blogs, so was Wendy, if we were expected to be in these spaces, so was Wendy and I shared how Wendy was doing both. 

Where to next? I think if schools put in requests to visit us then lets create a shared Doc of questions they are searching answers for. I also think it would be great to have feedback from visitors so I will create a generic form as this will also help us track our learning.