Author Archives: stevemouldey

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About stevemouldey

Geographer, Educator, Pontificator

All is well, or is it?

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I was worried how last week would go. How could I possibly keep up the excited puppy heights of hosting the Geography Awareness Week TeachMeetNZ and being at the inaugural EdChatNZ conference?

The Monday following EdchatNZ conference saw me spend the day in the Take Action big module I am co-teaching with Bryce and Martin. I spent 2 of our blocks helping Martin in the workshop as students constructed marble runs while their groups were affected by changes in government policies.

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Students also had similar experiences with Bryce as they played Volleyball with Government policies affecting the rules for each team. The final block focused in on actions we can take as citizens other than voting and brainstorming issues of interest to the students. Continue reading →

The Inaugural #edchatNZ Conference

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On Friday and Saturday last week I attended the first #edchatnz conference. It was an awesome 2 days of connecting, sharing and engaging in educational discussions. A few things have really stuck with me over the past couple of days:

  1. Our students at HPSS are awesome. here they were having a normal Friday of Extended Hub and then 3 hours in a Small Module whilst over 300 educators visited our school. A group of students had arrived early to help check delegates in and almost all students ended up in situations like this:
    Apocalypse Now students undergo the #edchatnz grilling and discuss their learning

    Apocalypse Now students undergo the #edchatnz grilling and discuss their learning

    I was so proud of how well they handled answering questions about their learning, next steps and how the school structures impact on that by so many interested teachers whilst also getting on with the learning for their module. If you were on of the teachers who visited my module with Danielle, we would love to hear your feedback on what you saw (especially any critique for us to work on).

  2. I loved the comment from Mark Osborne about the conference allowing us to engage in far deeper discussions than the 140 character limit on twitter allows us to do. I was mulling on how we can continue that when Reid started up the Blog Meme which is now doing the rounds. I am looking to extend this connection further so have been working with Danielle on an #edchatnz Blogging Challenge which will be released in the next couple of days.
  3. It was awesome meeting so many people face to face when you have been engaging in discussions with them through twitter and blogs. This will make it far easier for us to use those connections in more depth now that we have a live person behind the handle. Perhaps this is the spark to allow us to challenge each others practices as well as praise them? So many people also makes it frustrating when you realise how many people you didn’t catch up with! A challenge for me at ULearn to meet up with some of those missed this time.
  4. I absolutely loved the discussions that were occurring. So many people with a passion for pushing the boundaries and improving our collective practices. I also loved how many Pre Service Teachers were part of the 2 days. Really look forward to seeing them engage in our teaching community over the next couple of years!
  5. My workshop on Creativity across the curriculum was really well attended. So much so, the late arrivals had to drag chairs from elsewhere to be able to sit down! It was a bit scary at first – A few interactive activities thrown out and a bit more of a Steve rant from the front but absolutely incredible to see so many wanting to increase the development of creativity in their students. Even more awesome to receive tweets over the past couple of days from people showing how they have already used some of the ideas 🙂 Snip20140813_17 I am running a similar workshop at ULearn and have ideas after this one of how I can improve it to help teachers further. Have also had a couple of other possibilities arise to share this workshop elsewhere – crazy and exciting!
  6. EduBookChatNZ is going to be great. If you read this blog regularly you will know that I enjoy reading and sharing edunerdery. Now I get to share those with a group reading the same book at a relatively similar time. Get a copy of Key Competencies for the Future and join us on #edubookchatnz.
  7. A surreal moment as Karen Melhuish-Spencer quoted Hattie whilst using examples from my blog in her final keynote. Snip20140813_18 It showed to me that sure there are big researcher types in this world but lets look to what we are doing in our schools as there is plenty of great practice happening around us if we share it.
  8. Linked to this was some thoughts about what impact my blogging and sharing online seems to have had on others. There were people really keen to meet me and some with a sense of looking up to what I was doing and sharing online. This was quite strange for me to deal with. What it shows to me is the power of sharing your learning online for others to see. I blog to help myself sort through my thoughts but also because I realise there might be someone else out there who those thoughts it might help as well. Your new idea gleaned from a conversation or reading you have been doing; that activity you tried out; that thing you have been struggling with if shared online could be just the thing to inspire others to take a risk or try something new. I look forward to being inspired by all these new bloggers in the wake of #edchatnz.

Why Change My Question Quest?

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Regular followers of my blog will have noticed that my Question Quest came to a halt last week.

I have thoroughly enjoyed asking these questions and have loved the discussions that have been provoked by some of the posts. Lately however, I have found that some of the questions have been rushed thoughts at the end of a long day rather than properly thought out questions. It is for this reason that I will not complete the challenge as originally set out – 1 post a day for July and August.

Instead, I will continue to post Question blogs infrequently but indefinitely. My aim was to role model questioning as an example for students and to develop my questioning ability. I have done that through regular questioning but feel it is now time to focus on asking questions worth asking.

I will try to show how the questions have developed to their final blog form and the posts that support them will end up longer. I feel this will still allow for a modelling of effective questioning strategies whilst allowing me to focus on the issues I consider truly worth pursuing. Hopefully, this will also allow me to return to more of my reflective narrative blog posts that help me process my thinking (the actual reason I blog regularly).

Thanks for following this blog series and I hope to still discuss many of these issues with you all in future.

EdChatNZ Blogging Meme

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If you get included in the blogging meme: copy/paste the questions and instructions into your own blog then fill out your own answers. Share on twitter tagging 5 friends. Make sure you send your answers back to whoever tagged you too.

1. How did you attend the #Edchatnz Conference? (Face 2 Face, followed online or didn’t)

I was there for both days of the conference. On Friday I was teaching through most of the day so my involvement was mainly through inviting people in to be part of my Hub and my Apocalypse Now module. Saturday was far more of the conference experience for me.
2. How many others attended from your school or organisation?
 As we were hosting, our entire school was involved on the Friday – staff and students. On the Saturday there was still over half of our staff and a smattering of students attending (yes, students voluntarily at a conference on a Saturday!).
3. How many #Edchatnz challenges did you complete?
 After setting the challenges for everyone I embarrassingly did not complete them all! I think it was 12 that I did complete. I missed the food sculpture, highest point, new technology (although did get to see the Ultimaker 2 3D printer in action that we have on order) and the dancing challenges. Am most disappointed about the dancing challenges as I often dance randomly throughout the day.
4. Who are 3 people that you connected with and what did you learn from them?
So many awesome face to face catch ups with incredible twitter colleagues that made the weekend feel a bit like Edu-Nerd party of the year! I especially enjoyed catching up with 2 ex student teachers Emma (@emmaotearoa) and Jess (@ikanarat). But have to give special mention here to 3 connections that reminded me of important things:
Reid (@ReidHns1) is brilliant. He laughs often and loudly and as someone with the nickname of Excited Puppy I love to find other teachers who are genuinely stoked in what they do.
Jonathan Finnerty (@FtFinnerty) was a student of mine in my first few years teaching and it is really cool to see him as a confident Geo teacher soaking up the inspiration. It was cool seeing him make his first tweet after the conference (that first risky step done) and I hope we see him connecting regularly online (no pressure now…)
Aaron Huggard (@MrHuggard) spent 3 hours of Friday sitting in my module with students. In speaking with him on Saturday he felt it was time spent well extremely well – if you want to experience a school, do so from a students perspective.
 
5. What session are you gutted that you missed?
 Hard one, lots of awesome workshops I missed while teaching and presenting myself, didn’t get to see Pam Hook talk on SOLO but I would have loved to have been in Heather Eccles (@heccles01) session in support as she helped preservice teachers find the ways to connect with the awesome NZ education communities.
 
6. Who is one person that you would like to have taken to Edchatnz and what key thing would they have learned? 
Would have loved to have taken Michael Harcourt (@harcoumich). He is an incredible teacher who has inspired me over the past 7 years. We used to work across a desk from each other and bounce ideas back and forth, he always had an article or book to suggest for me to read. When I moved back up to Auckland I turned to Twitter for that regular bouncing of ideas (we still skype but once or twice a term isn’t enough!) and so it would have been full circle to bring him to #edchatnz.
7. Is there a person you didn’t get to meet/chat with (F2F/online) that you wished you had? Why
 Would loved to have chatted with Mark Buckland (@mjbuckland) face to face. Looking back through the tweets he was in a session I ran and in a couple of others I attended but somehow didn’t manage to connect. Will make sure this happens at ULearn!
8. What is the next book you are going to read and why? 
 Just started reading Creativity Inc today which I have been looking forward to for a while. If the new Ewan McIntosh book arrives it will be that next as I continue on my journey with Design Thinking. Otherwise Tait Coles’ Punk Learning that I got in the book swap at EdchatNZ conference, have read his blog for a while so interested to see what the book adds.
 
9. What is one thing you plan to do to continue the Education Revolution you learnt about at #Edchatnz?
 I want to help encourage more people to connect not only on twitter but by sharing their learning through blogs. Mark Osborne’s keynote pointing out the depth of discussion available when we meet face to face can also happen through blogging and commenting. Would love to see more people start with this – this blogging meme will help!
10. Will you take a risk and hand your students a blank canvas?
Have become reasonably well known now for some of the risks that occur in my classes…A blank canvas is all good but I would also add a couple of constraints to the activity – this is what causes the creativity to occur.
Who do will I tag with this meme:
All people I’m not sure are blogging yet, hopefully this meme will extend their connection with #edchatnz:
@MrHuggard (ok one that already blogs but I’m still keen to see more of his ideas online!)

How Might We make the most of a conference?

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I love conferences. Incredible learning, great networking and a lot of laughs and fun. This week will be full of those at the EdChatNZ Conference but I want to ensure there is the final fun part involved as well. Inspired by what the Geography Collective challenged conference attendees to do at the GA Conference this year:

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I am creating a list of missions for people to achieve during the EdChatNZ Conference on Friday and Saturday. The missions for the speakers are the same as above but there are some changes to the rest to reflect the sharing ethos of the #EdChatNZ conference.

At this stage it includes such things as new technologies, food, post-its, autographs, questions, selfies and grelfies.

See you all Friday morning!

 

This post is part of my Questioning Quest.

How Might We best share our Geography practices?

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Each year I help to organise our Geography Awareness Week in New Zealand. Most of the time it is about creating some quiz resources and a couple of fun activities to help students see the relevance of Geography to their lives. This year I wanted to get Geography teachers across the country sharing their best practice. Some subjects have started twitter chats (#engchatnz and #scichatnz) but I wanted to have an event that would enable non-twitter users to engage in conversation as well. This led to us having a Geography Teach Meet NZ online yesterday:

Thanks to the amazing Sonya Van Schaijik for helping us get this together. There were some great ideas shared and I have had really positive comments from Geography teachers (both on twitter and in the “real world”) about how they found it.

Kim Randall shared Google Maps Engine Lite which is a free web based GIS tool, an incredible resource for us Geo teachers. I look forward to playing with this and getting to know it better!

Steve Smith spoke about taking overseas field trips. Although harder to organise, the payoff is definitely worth it with the passion and engagement it brings.

I spoke about how Design Thinking can work in Geography. If you follow this blog you will not be surprised about this topic (see my other posts on Design Thinking here).

Craig Perry shared how he uses SOLO Taxonomy in Geography to help make learning visible for students.

Heather Eccles was lucky last sharing the power of making authentic connections around the world with her students.

Hopefully, this has helped provoke discussions about effective pedagogy in our Geography classrooms. The challenge now is how do we keep the discussions going? The Pond may provide space for this in future when the Communities function is set up but this will take some time. I’m not sure enough NZ Geographers are on twitter for chats to be the answer. Leaving me with my question for today:

How Might We best share our Geography practices?

 

This post is part of My Questioning Quest.

 p.s. mind turning after posting this. VLN could be a good place but I like the idea of international connections being able to contribute as well. With so many schools moving to GAFE is a Google+ Community the answer for this?

What if you could ask anything of a teacher at HPSS?

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A gimme for my birthday!

This week Hobsonville Point Secondary School is playing host to the inaugural #EdChatNZ conference. Amongst all the amazing workshops, Ros Maceachern (@rosmaceachern) is giving a presentation on the way we operate at HPSS. What we (particularly Ros) need to know is what you would like to hear about?

Please contact Ros either via twitter or email her any questions or topics you would like to hear about at ros.macheachern@hobsonvillepoint.school.nz. Or of course you can comment here and I can pass it on to her.

 

This is a gimme post for my Questioning Quest.

What if you had 2 more hours in your day?

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What if over the next month you had 26 hours in your day? What would you use those extra 2 hours for?

Sleep?
Spending time with family?
Giving deeper feedback to your students?
Learning that new skill or tool that you have been wanting to learn but haven’t had time for?
Reading that great book your colleague/friend/cousin was raving about?

It only lasts for this month so you want to make the most of it! What if you had 2 more hours in your day? How would you spend it?

This post is Day 32 of My Question Quest