Tilly's Mindlab Journey

Week 29 Activity 5 I am using Jay and Johnson’s (2002) reflective model to reflect on my use of social online networks and Professional Learning Networks (PLNs) in my professional development. Step 1 Various social media like and many other social networking sites complement many facets of our lives. The Personal Learning Networks I use are Blogger and Google+ Community   and The Personal Learning Environments I use are: Khan Academy, Pinterest, TED Ed, TED Talks, Facebook, YouTube and Netflix. These platforms give me the opportunity to share and interact with online information and to connect with like-minded people. They also allow me to to engage in discussions with other educators and to gather teaching ideas. Using online tools is also a good way to gain professional development. Thanks to the Mindlab journey that I have been on, I am now more aware of the various social media tools that I can use in my professional development. I was pleasantly surprise...

In my Week 28 post, I am going to use Rolfe, Freshwater, and Jasper’s (2001) reflective model to address Influence of Law and Ethics in Practice. This takes the form of three simple questions, “what”, “so what” and “now what”. What? As the use of technology in the classroom increases, we must become conscious of ethical issues that arise. It is important to gain an understanding of the ethical issues affecting our classrooms so that this will help us understand how to address them. I found myself in such a situation this year when I introduced my intermediate class to our google site. This was new and exciting for both students and parents. Students were to post a blurb each day of what had transpired during the school week. Parents were encouraged to write comments alongside their child’s work. Little did I realise that students could type over and change each other’s publications. Then a student in my class (X) brought to my attention that her work had been tampere...

Week 27 -  Data analysis and potential impact of the findings To what extent does the collected data answer the research question? I am interested to see whether blended learning tasks have more benefit to my students and their learning in numeracy.   How well does the data collection method proposed in the plan help you to collect the data? I will be using google forms as a means to collect data. This allows for the data to be analysed and viewed via graphs. I will need to look closely during the collection of my qualitative data (observations within the classroom setting) to see which group of students (those who were given the flipped tasks and those not given any flipped learning) were more engaged in their learning during the specified period of time. How might the outcome impact on your communities? How will the outcome of the inquiry contribute to the topic area you are investigating? How will the outcome of the inquiry impact on the perception of membe...

Topic: If I used the blended learning methods in numeracy, how will this affect the level of student engagement in an intermediate class? After doing some intense research on making clear the two main words viz. blended learning and student engagement, I now feel much more confident as to which path I would like my inquiry to take and hopefully this inquiry will help me inform my teaching and my students' learning in other learning areas as well. There are two types of data that one can collect viz. qualitative and quantitative data. I am taking into consideration the ethical implications of my data collection as one of the communities that I am engaging with is my class of 11 and 12 year olds, being children. Qualitative   i nterviews -  person-to-person or one-on-one format  focus groups -  interviews on a specific topic with a small group of people observations -    spending a prolonged amount of time in the setting, in this case the class...

My initial question was: How can I use flipped learning through the use of digital tools to promote student agency? After having a discussion with my MindLab CoP group, I used the  inquiry working template below  to revise my question. I then came to realise that I wanted to focus on "blended learning" to promote student agency. I therefore then needed to develop my initial question further.  I have now come to the conclusion that the literature review question that I would like to focus on is:  How can blended learning methods affect student engagement in preparing students for secondary school?   Please feel free to offer some feedback/comments.

Week 19 - Communities of Practice Activity 3: Contribution of Teacher Inquiry Topics to my Communities of Practice Jay and Johnson’s reflective model Descriptive My possible Inquiry topics: How can I promote student agency through the use of digital tools? How can I use digital tools to teach Level 4 computational thinking? The Communities of Practice (CoP) I belong to are: the intermediate team, school Professional Learning Communities (PLC), MindLab study group and the regional Mindlab study group. CoP’s are defined as “groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interaction on an ongoing basis” (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002, p.4). The three important elements of the community of practice are domain (joint enterprise), community (mutual engagement) and practice (shared repertoire) (Wenger, 2000) At my MindLab CoP we discuss weekly how we can u...

“New kinds of partnerships and relationships: Schools no longer siloed from the community” After having read the article by R.Bolstad and J Gilbert, I decided to choose the theme of “New kinds of partnerships and relationships: Schools no longer siloed from the community”. The text  states that “Learning for the 21st century, should support students to engage in knowledge-generating activities in authentic contexts. This implies that learning will require additional resources/support/expertise/input from a much wider range of people.” I am enthusiastic to adapt my teaching practices and this has led to more collaboration the community. I became excited to look at how I can change my current teaching practices. I engaged the support of a range of people within the community so that my students got a more authentic learning experience. I made contact with the local park rangers in the area and organised outdoor activities based on the topics being studied. This pr...