Having been fortunate enough to expand my connections through etmooc also has a bit of a downside. So many inspiring educators, so much new learning, so many ideas to try, where do I start? There just aren’t enough hours in the day to read all the blogs or all the great links posted on twitter. My Pocket app is overflowing with ‘read later’ material. And I’ve been quite limited with who I have chosen to follow and whose blogs I try to visit regularly! No doubt I am missing out, but I see some other twitter users who follow hundreds or even thousands of people and I just don’t know how they manage. As I’ve written before, I have to acknowledge that I can’t do it all, and if I try to, I risk ending up with a mess of disconnection that uses technology for technology’s sake, rather than to enhance learning.

It has been wonderful to find others who are doing the same sort of things as I am, to be able to reflect on the similarities and differences in their approaches and to see ways I can make what I do better. On the day before term ended, I was lucky enough to open a tweet from Jennie Magiera just in time to catch her webinar Digitizing Math Metacognition. I particularly liked her graphics and explanation of the SAMR model (see below) and how she was able to link it to examples in maths learning. As mentioned in a previous post, we are also working to implement SAMR at Ringwood.

Jennie and her colleague Linsey Rose successfully adapted Dan Meyer’s Three Acts for junior classes. Following their lead, I created my own video, using the Reel Director app. My Yr 7s are currently studying measurement, so I filmed the neatly stacked pile of left over pavers that have been stored in my yard for too long, the garden that has been missing edging since we had to remove the sleepers due to termites, and the grassless area where my daughter parks her car. The plan is to present the video (it goes for just over a minute) and have the students decide what problem they are going to solve (we’ve been studying perimeter, area and volume). They will then record their problem, their thinking and their solution on Educreations or Explain Everything. The next step will be for them to find, film and solve their own problem.

I’d used Nearpod several times with my junior Science class last year and approached the holidays with a plan to prepare something for my Maths class. In another stroke of good luck, Nearpod announced a collaboration with LearnZillion, providing hundreds of ready made presentations. By cloning these I edited them to suit, saving me hours. I used the presentations on areas of triangles and parallelograms last week. The students enjoyed the interactivity, and I received valuable real time formative assessment, as well as an emailed report.

I currently have a student teacher with my class. He’s at the beginning of his training and I’m pretty sure he’s not seeing what he expected. I hope he finds the experience valuable.