Doctopus and Goobric - might just be about to change my teaching life!

Just stumbled upon this Google Add on... looks amazing and like the next logical step in my teaching practice.

Google Docs is working so well in class but how much would writing be improved if students were given access to real-time rubrics which assessed their work against Asttle and SOLO Taxonomy??

I haven't tried this tool yet but would love to have a play and will report back on my thoughts and findings on how this tool works alongside Hapara and Student Digital Learning.  

Really helpful step-by-step blog by Stephanie (Train the Teacher) which will no doubt help my exploration greatly.  http://traintheteacher.wordpress.com/2013/08/22/doctopus-goobric-making-google-apps-for-education-more-awesome/

Watch this space!

EfL - LEADERSHIP

EXPERIENCE FOR LEARNING - LEADERSHIP

Wicked Questions 

• Are leaders just bossy people?

• Do we really need them?

• Could we manage without leaders?

Experience
Leading a special activity - leaderless for a day!

Leading In Our World
Whanaungatanga - leading ourselves and developing our own goals/pathway. Managing self and understanding who we are as leaders.

Manaakitanga - using our leadership to guide and assist others.  Forming relationships and working collaboratively to achieve a common goal.

Kaitiakitanga - using our leadership to make change on a wider scale.  Becoming a guardian and making changes for future sustainability.

Values

Kindness - Willing to help (relating to others, supporting others, collaboration, communicative, hands-on learner)

Perseverance - Make it happen (hands-on learner, reflective, adaptive, challenge)

Context
Children developing an understanding of what leadership means and how it can shape their journey through the different areas of their life.

Key Questions

• who are leaders that you know and what is their responsibility?
• what is responsibility?
• what makes a good leader?
• what different leaders do we have in the world and why?
• do different aspect of the world (countries, schools, classrooms, governments) need leaders?
• what is the function of a leader?
• what affect does collaboration have on leadership?
• what kind of leader are you?
• how can my actions impact on other people?

 

Experiences

• defining leadership/responsibility.
• describing different leaders and their responsibilities
• comparing and contrasting different leaders (understanding strengths and weaknesses)
• identifying good and bad leaders
• Watch 8 traits of a good leaders from around the world (http://ed.ted.com/lessons/richard-st-john-8-traits-of-successful-people)
• understanding personality types (http://www.myersbriggs.org/)
• looking at world leaders in different contexts and what their roles are.  
• discussing the parts of leadership and their function (part whole maps)
• investigate what would happen without leaders in different contexts.
• understand job descriptions

• World Peace Game (http://www.ted.com/talks/john_hunter_on_the_world_peace_game?language=en)
• NPS Leadership Passport - children reflecting on their leadership journey in relation to school, community, family.  (https://docs.google.com/a/newmarket.school.nz/document/d/19GkSJzWm0wrlYYCuDZ06opZHldAZ0nCv_Wf37o_zquI/edit?usp=sharing)
• NPS Connected Educators Passport (for teachers and staff memebers) - (https://docs.google.com/a/newmarket.school.nz/document/d/1V_XcQg8F7DEQsW8qnMFfn4hl-nSF_tfGkDmdwyZHops/edit?usp=sharing)

Resources

Leadership/Values unit: http://www.in2edu.com/thematic_topics/leadership/leadership_index.html

Ted Talks about leadership: http://www.ted.com/talks/browse?topics%5B%5D=leadership&sort=newest

Kid President:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzF23qI3Djw

Let’s Grow Leaders:

http://letsgrowleaders.com/category/leadership-in-children/

Duke of Edinburgh (ages 14 - 18 but so good info on the site)

http://www.dofehillary.org.nz/

Ban Bossy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dynbzMlCcw

http://banbossy.com/

If Life was like the Web - Internet Safety

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ninjJu2tfDc

PASSPORT TO LEADERSHIP

NPS LEADERSHIP PASSPORT

The above link is a working document which is looking at tracking student leadership.  If you use any of the content could you please acknowledge me as the original creator/source.

The idea is that throughout the senior years of school the children have a working Google Doc which they add to and use as evidence of their leadership in different areas of the school and the community.  

Looking at the document, I thought it was important to track both home and school initiatives to encourage children to that their leadership skills into the wider community.  This is similar to the Duke of Ed awards that children complete at High School.  

With the move to teachers needing to provide evidence towards their Registered Teacher Criteria, I realised that there is a need for children to be accountable for their own personal growth and development towards being a leader and a good citizenship.  The inclusion of values will promote our school values and also provide teaching opportunities for teachers, while supporting all students to earn their badge, fill in their passport, receive tokens or PB4L bands.

With +Sonya Van Schaijik we are developing a Leadership Passport for teachers.  This is a work in progress but the ideas are being developed continually - will post more soon.

Weekly Planning - Moving to Google Docs

Planning using Google Docs has been a massive change in my practise this year.  The open access of planning has made me more accountable and also the ease of planning and sharing it with children has made it more relevant!

I started the year my planning in separate documents for each subjects which is what many of the teacher at NPS are doing.  It seemed like a nightmare each week to update and check planning was shared with the correct people and uploaded to the right place.

My answer... Google Spreadsheets.

All the planning for each term in on one spreadsheet which includes different tabs for each week of planning.  I now have four documents for the year (one for each term although Term one is partially in separate docs and partially in a spreadsheet) which includes weekly, reading and maths planning.

Benefits from Google Docs Planning:
- ease of planning each week in one document.
- user friendly planning which is only one page to refer to each day.
- ease of including class description and groupings on different tabs also (have been removed for privacy reasons)
- one document makes it easier to share my planning with my appraiser, senior management team and my own team.
- Google Docs makes collaborative teaching and planning easy with multiple teachers working on a doc remotely.
- For me, increased accountability because I don't like missing a tab (perfectionist trait)

TERM TWO WEEKLY PLANNING

TERM THREE WEEKLY PLANNING