Connections to start 2017

The last two weeks have been all about connections for me. Connecting with other educators from around the world, being back at Haeata and connecting with staff and whanau.

Two weeks ago I opened my work email to find one from Anne Taylor, our NZ Microsoft Schools Manager, telling me I had been selected to go to Toronto to the amazing Microsoft Educator E2 Exchange. I spent the next 5 minutes in tears and absolutely speechless. It took me quite a bit of time to actually be able to call my mother and speak clearly to her to tell her. I was so blown away and had no idea it was coming so it was quite a shock.
My next call was to my school to check they were happy to give me leave to go. It means a week away which is quite a lot of time, but Microsoft are paying for the trip which is just fantastic and Haeata is very supportive which I am so thankful for. I then spent quite a bit of time reading and rereading all the emails that came in with information. I looked around websites and checked in to our new Yammer group for the New Zealand MIEExperts that are going. There are 7 of us and I can hardly wait to meet everyone. It certainly is taking some time to sink in and even two weeks later I keep having to remind myself that I am leaving in less than 8 weeks! My next step was to sort out the lesson I will present in Toronto. I only had a few online and I really wanted to do something with StaffPad and my SurfacePro so I decided to put another one together using videos I have on my YouTube channel - Music Sue. It is certainly a draft at the moment, but I can do more as time goes on. I love using my SurfacePro for teaching music (everything actually!) and it really does make a difference to what I do.
I made the decision I would put my name down to sit the Microsoft Certified Educator exam while I am over there. Bit scared - I don't like exams - but keen to give it a go. I have already finished the Teaching with Technology course on the Educator Community which will help with preparation for this, but I'll run through it again to make sure I'm up to it! The connections I have made through being an Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert have been amazing and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more and be part of a great community.

I spent quite a bit of time in school getting the music equipment sorted out and in some semblance of order over the last couple of weeks. There was a lot of equipment from the closing schools and it arrived in boxes so needed unpacking and sorting through. Being back at Haeata and now in our new buildings is amazing. Connecting with the space is important and I felt that week gave me time to work out how I was feeling about our new kura and the wonderful people that work there.

On Monday we had our support staff join us at Haeata. It was great to have all of our staff together for the first time and wonderful to make connections with those we haven't seen for a while, as well as our newbies. In the afternoon we went to Tuahiwi Marae. This amazing photo was taken by Clark Williams,
one of our kaiako, and I feel it sums up the great atmosphere out there. Making connections with the history of the area and our staff was very special. We were treated to some amazing workshops about the history of the area and Ngāi Tahu as well as tikanga māori. Our dinner was provided and we had a wonderful overnight stay sleeping in the marae together - luckily without too many people snoring! I went for a walk in the morning around Tuahiwi township and felt really connected to the area. It reminded me of my hometown of Darfield, a small country town where everyone knew everyone. It brought back a lot of memories and made more connections to my past. I found this article while looking for something about Darfield to link here. I must have missed it when it was published so it made interesting reading about my hometown. There were certainly less people out there when I lived there. After some more workshops in the morning we went for a trip out to Kaiapoi Pā and learnt more about the history of this area. I felt quite a strong connection here with what had happened and I found the information that Corban Te Aika gave us really interesting.

The rest of the week was about making connections with the Haeata whānau. Our hāpori met frequently and planned our Orientation time for ākonga as well as working on our four main ongoing areas of Learning Design, Relationships, NCEA, and Time and Space. Our Learning support and Admin staff joined us this week so making connections with them was a priority and we are looking forward to working with them as well. We made connections with a lot of our ākonga during the week. Many came in for Volleyball practice as well as for enrolments and uniform fittings. It was great to have them on site.

An exciting couple of weeks. New plans, new beginnings and excitement have kept me on my toes. I have more waiata and haka to learn before our powhiri next week and more planning to finish. Can hardly wait for our ākonga to turn up next Friday. Looking forward to it.

Haeata - Week Seven

Day One

During Mai time we spent time calling families to invite them to met with our staff at either an specified time or at our hui on Dec 1st, or at AFFIRM on Dec 3rd. The chance to meet with whanau and ākonga is fantastic and will help us be informed about our community for next year.

I also read this article titled "What schools can learn from Google, IDEO and Pixar" that one of our staff shared (thanks Fred) and found it to be really inspiring. I really liked this paragraph which made me think: 

"What would it mean for schools to have a culture centered on design thinking and interdisciplinary projects instead of siloed subjects? What if the process of education were as intentionally crafted as the products of education (i.e., we always think about the book report or the final project, but not the path to get there). What if teachers were treated as designers?"

The afternoon was spent preparing for our school visit trips. Our Year 1-7 kaiako went to Wellington and the 7-13 kaiako went to Auckland. This was a great opportunity to see what was happening in other schools around the country.

Day Two

Being picked up at 4.50am to catch a plane is not the easiest start to the day, but our hapori were on the redeye flight to Auckland.

From the airport we went by bus to Hobsonville Point Secondary School where we spent the day. The Principal, Maurie Abraham, went through how the school worked and gave us a lot to think about in terms of curriculum and structure. We then were treated to a tour through the school where we got to see students in action. It was great for those of us who hadn't been in that type of learning space to see how it might work for us.

Off then to our accommodation and a reflection on what we had seen and how it might inform our work at Haeata. Dinner and social time wrapped up the day and we are all asleep fairly early that night (well most of us were).

Day Three

On the bus at 7am to get to Rototuna Junior High, with a stop for breakfast on the way. This was an interesting environment as the Junior High had been open for a year and the Senior High is opening in 2017. Their staff are in the same place as us, having a term to prepare for their students next year, although they get just Year 11 in the first year, where we get all our students at once. 

We had some time in the Junior High, having a briefing by the Principal and then students showed us around the school. We asked lots of questions and got a glimpse of what they were doing with their Year 7-10 programme. Our hapori (Ihutai) then spent some time with the Senior High staff and had a look at their programme for 2017. It was a great window into their thinking and gave us a lot to discuss on the bus later!

One of our staff managed to organise us a visit to the Warriors training facility at Mt Smart Stadium and we spent an hour there learning about their training program, getting insight into their data collection and how it is used to inform the training and then had a tour around the training space. I really liked the words above their screen in the tactics room: 

Off to the airport for dinner and then home for a rest!

Day Four

We were thankful for a late start today after two very tiring days. Our first session had us practising two waiata that we are learning as a group. I really enjoyed learning the actions to ***** , but trying to put the words and actions together was fairly challenging!

We then had a reflection time on our school visit from Wednesday, talking in pairs and small groups about what we saw and how we felt about what the schools were doing. It was interesting to hear different perspectives and to realise that because we come from different backgrounds, we see different things. Those of us who have never worked in an open environment had thoughts around the space more often than those that have worked in those spaces before. 

Our second session was around Relationship Management. As a new school, this is something we need to unpack and get an overall agreement on. We were asked the following questions:

What do you personally believe?

What is important in managing relationships? Managing behaviour?

What do you think about positive reinforcement? About reward systems?

What do you think about consequences? About punishments?

Our answers were then collated and we will be unpacking these more next week. I am sure there were a wide range of answers as some of our initial discussion showed. We were given a Blendspace full of articles and videos to look at, many quite polarising about their viewpoint on the above questions. These are some of the ones I read.

Why relationship-building is vital in schools

10 Ways to make effective rewards systems in virtual schools

Creating culturally safe schools for Maori students

Restorative practices in schools: Far-reaching implications

Our last session was preparing for our Enrolment hui for next week. We have parents and students coming in to meet with kaiako and we talked more about what information we would need to be able to answer their questions.

Day Five

Rebecca (one of our SLT) started today with letting us know about the external agencies that will be involved with Haeata. There are a huge range of people involved, from Youth Workers to nurses, After School care and many more. It is great to see the range of support for our students and our community. This is such a big part of helping our students feel supported and there has been a lot of work going on in the background on getting this all together.

Our hapori spent some time today on a survey around NCEA. We were given a lot of statements and had to give a 2 word reaction to each one. We used the tool Poll Everywhere https://www.polleverywhere.com/ which was a good way to see a snapshot of us as a group. There were many things we agreed on wholeheartedly, but also some things we need to unpack a bit more so we are all on the same page.

During Mai time I wrote my blog on my hearing loss and ILEs . I found some interesting articles that had been written on this subject and it was good to see what others had found and were thinking about. This came to the top of my thinking while we were away this week and certainly is something to think about for next year.

At lunch we had a meeting about Out of School Music hours and Itinerant music tuition. This is a difficult space at the moment as we don't know our students for next year so it is very difficult to say what we will need in the way of support musically but it was good to start looking at what we might want to put in place.

We finished up the day by unpacking more NCEA and were all given the opportunity to speak on points that we wanted to expand on. I liked the way we did this, with each person having two blue (for the statement) and two pink (against the statement) pieces of paper and you could play these to speak for one minute about that statement. It was a good way to make sure everyone got the opportunity to have their say, but not for too long!

One of the main things I am learning is about my view on education. Always being challenged and asked about my point of view has meant that I have had to actually have a point of view on things. I have had to work out how I feel and what are important ideas to me. It has been amazing to have this time to think and be challenged. Loving it.

New Office 365 Apps

My waffle menu has been filling up recently with new Apps for Office 365. It sometimes is hard to keep up and I'm not sure what some of them are for, but I've been delving (intended pun) into a few recently to see how they work and what I might use them for.

Delve

Firstly, Delve has been improved. I used this a lot before, when I kept losing documents, but now it has even more features that I am loving. The search feature is still there but being able to look up documents from a specific person is really helpful and it is great now that I can have favourite documents, not just boards. This is so helpful if you are working on a document frequently and want to have quick access to it. If you haven't been into Delve, I suggest you start now!

Soundtrap

As a music teacher this one particularly interested me. We are looking to change from Mac to PC soon and our main composition tool has been Garageband for a long time. I have been looking at Soundtrap as an alternative to see if it would cover what we need.
Things I like about it:
It's easy to use. The interface is clean and simple and I think junior students would find it really easy.
It's online - no more losing files on laptops. You don't have to be an Office365 user to connect.
It's collaborative. You can join up with someone on the other side of the world and write a piece of music together.
It has Soundtrap for Education which gives access to all the Premium features as well as specific education features such as creating groups and classes - see pic.
Things that I'd like to see improved:
I'd like to be able to save it somewhere else, as well as in Soundtrap - I'm sure there will be a limit on space eventually.
In order for it to be used with our senior students we would need to transfer it over to a DAW to focus on more in depth editing tools. This means I would want it to be able to export MIDI or .wav files to take into a program such as Logic Pro.
The other thing is to get our heads out of Garageband and see the new opportunities this will create. I can see huge potential here with students being able to access this from home (as long as they have internet - and yes, some don't) and also the collaboration feature. Here is a review from another teacher, extolling the same virtues. I love it.

Classroom 

I am having a play with this at the moment. Due to the fact that we are halfway through our school year, it is a bit hard to change over to this when everything is already set up in my classes. In particular, we have OneNote already set up with our classes and starting a new one is just too much work at this stage. That is unfortunate because this OneNote has a Teacher Only Section!!!! Yes, a section for me to put my notes in about the class. I love it!
It's almost worth moving everything across...
Another staff member and I have been playing and have created a class for each of us to play in as both student and teacher.  We have been sending messages and creating assignments, as well as working out where things come and go to. Love the ability to send a private message to a student within the classroom.
Some of the things I'd like to change would be the conversation thread adds to the bottom, not the top and also being able to email the whole class that the Classroom has been activated. I suppose this could be done via a message. Still more to play with, but I can see the positives and look forward to using this.

Power BI

What a great tool for the mad statistical geeks among us. Such a great way to collect and present data. I used this to write up my Department report at the end of last year and found it easy to use and really useful in presenting the data I needed. I know that it can do a lot more than I used it for, and as a
mathematician, I get very excited by data, so I'm keen to spend more time on this to get the most out of the tool and use the data to improve learning. The graphs look pretty too! (I have left off the title and x-axis names in this graph as they identify students).

Flow 

I have just got my hands on this and have already created a flow for my email attachments to go straight to a folder in my One Drive. It's great being able to link up some of my other accounts as well and am looking at some of the possibilities to do with my Twitter Account. There are lots of templates to choose from and I am sure as I browse these I will find more flows that will save time from some of those annoying tasks! Check out this review. You do need a work Office 365 account to login and try it out.

Planner 

The latest addition that I am hoping to get my hands on soon. I can see this being a really great tool for those that work in teams. Being able to create tasks, allocate staff to them and move them through phases of completion is great. I can see it being used for my students working in groups and looking at good project management skills. Looking forward to having a play.


I think the biggest problem at the moment is the time to look at all of these, and to work out what is best for what I want to do. It is easy to be overwhelmed with technology so I have had to take a step back, look at the big picture, and see how these tools can save me time and work in the best way for my students. I'll be picking a few bits out of each and making the most of them.

Beginning of 2016

I'm excited. After becoming a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert last year, I have now been given the title of MIE Surface Expert. I love my Surface Pro 3 and am even more excited to be getting a SurfacePro 4 as part of this programme. Looking forward to it!
Thanks to Kurt Soeser for providing the header - it is much appreciated and looks great!

The beginning of the year has been mad. I have been meaning to blog for ages, but all of the setting up and prep has meant that I have had little time to just sit and write.

Enrolment
We have 2 days of enrolling new students at our school and I really enjoy these days as an enroller. I get to meet new students and work on getting a good programme together for them.

School of Apps
We have 11 students this year and they have started the year well. Very keen and motivated, and even with all the admin in the first few days, they are writing apps already. I am also loving the OneNote Learning Tools. These are fantastic for a few of my students in here. One has some sight issues so the large print is fantastic and a couple are dyslexic. How amazing to be able to cater for them with such great tools.

Professional Development
I am really keen to help staff this year and have set up sessions to instruct and support staff on a range of topics. Carmen Kenton and Andy Gorton are great support in this and Carmen and I will enjoy our lunchtime duty in the Computer lab where we can help staff and students. For my own development I intend to spend quite a few hours each week working on increasing my knowledge of Office365 and in particular OneNote.

Year 11 Music
I am looking forward to teaching this class, as it has been a while since I had this year level. Using OneNote for all their work and looking at how I can incorporate a lot of technology in the class is the challenge. It is a large class and has a wide range of abilities. I am keen to use StaffPad for all the music notation instruction so I have work to do on this as well.

Badges
Really keen to get these up and running. Just sorting the graphics and we can get started. It will be good to get them out to students this year and see how they will work.

Along with organising Itinerant Music lessons, School of Music classes, MIE Expert info and reading, keeping up with Twitter, and my own life/work balance it will be a busy year.

Bring it on.

Schools within schools

Over the last five years that I have been teaching at Hagley College I have been lucky to have been heavily involved in setting up and running two "Schools within Schools". These were both developed to improve student retention, engagement, learning and achievement.

My first project was the School of Music. Hagley was already running fulltime schools of Fashion, Dance, Cuisine, Early Childhood and the Theatre Company so it wasn't a totally new idea, but these were mainly aimed at students who had finished school and were looking for the next step, whereas the School of Music was to be based at Year 12, then hopefully following on to Year 13 the next year if it was successful. The School of Music was intended to be a separate, self-contained community with a unique ethos, organisation and a distinct curriculum with qualifications based around a student’s passion or interest, and grounded in their world.

The course was designed to cover numeracy at NCEA Level 1, if students did not have it already, and literacy in the form of English and History at Level 2. However, it was with a difference, all of these

were to be taught with music as the basis. Mathematics using tasks such as your budget for your CD or tour, or dimensions of drums relative to pitch - all things that were relevant to music students. English and History covered songwriting, protest songs, large musical events and biographies of musicians as well as music research topics. We were lucky enough to have staff at school in those departments who were also keen musicians and were motivated to give this idea a go. A lot of work went into designing these tasks and assessments and the staff have done an amazing job.

The students have 12-16 hours of music each week, as well as 4-8 of Literacy and Numeracy. The music time is split between 4 music staff who all have their own area of expertise. The students get the benefit of a range of teaching and knowledge and feel they are part of a family, even to the extent of me having been called Mum a few times. Students are given instruction on the work required then
work as individuals at their own pace. Students can be working on a range of standards at any one

time and have the flexibility to work in depth on one then return to another at a later date. A general pattern is followed but most students are flexible in the order in which they finish work.The teacher sometimes acts as an advisor, sometimes a facilitator and sometimes we have transmission based learning.
Not often are staff in front of the class as a whole and when we are it is only for a short time to impart information on how to start the next unit of work, or on a specific piece of knowledge we need to get across.

One of the strengths of the course has been the pastoral care and the communication with home. All students are interviewed with their parents before they start the course and parents are kept informed of all events and notices via email. We have been very clear to parents, who are a big part of our community, that taking the School of Music narrows students tremendously. The feedback we have had is that students and their parents feel that if it had not been for the School of Music, the students would have left school, or been very unhappy.

These are students who live only for their music and struggle with anything else. It is amazing how they manage to achieve Literacy and Numeracy, when in some cases, they have been told they are not capable of doing so.

This went on to Level 3 in it's second year and we are, 4 years on, in a good place to enable our students to gain UE, NCEA Level 2 and 3 and a National Certificate in Music over the 2 years they study with us. The majority go on to tertiary study and those that don't are helped into the workforce, generally with a music focus.

My next project was the School of Apps. This started up just this year so is still in it's early stage of development. The idea for this was thought up by Brent Ingram and Andy Gorton when they were at a conference in 2014. There were many seminars and discussions there about needing more creative skills, especially around digital technology. When they came back to school a small group of us then took the idea and worked out how we could combine it with the School within School idea. Andy and I then worked on the content and I am now teaching this course for 14 hours a week (and teaching the other 6 hours in the School of Music).

The School of Apps is aimed at Yr 13 students who are keen on developing apps and have creative ideas. The idea is to study, design and create mobile apps within a business environment. It is based on 5 guiding principles:

• Creativity
• Critical Thinking
• Self-Management
• Collaboration
• Communication

The students work on projects both as an individual and in groups using these 5 principles. We use Scrum which is an Agile Project Management framework which enables us to have good teamwork and a structure for projects.The students also do English, through their report writing, and Business Studies, working on marketing their apps.

The outcome is for the students to have a portfolio of skills and designed apps, as well as the opportunity to gain Level 3 NCEA and UE if they wish to. This year, the students have ranged from age 17 to 70ish and not all have wanted NCEA credits.

We have the most amazing work environment in which students feel very comfortable and are keen to be in all day.

As this is the first year, I am still in the learning process and I know I will be changing things for next year to make it even more responsive to student needs. I have been continually reviewing the course and am looking forward to 2016.

I am a strong believer in the Schools within Schools idea. I have seen the change it has made to people's lives. So many students have been re-engaged with learning and are now fully focused and enjoying school. What more could you ask for?

This blog is also posted on the Christchurch Connected Educators site http://chched.blogspot.co.nz/

A piece of music or art that inspired me

Earlier this month the Connected Educator Challenge gave us a task to blog about a piece of music or art or poem that inspired me for teaching. Although this isn't directly about a piece of art or music, the task made me think more about the students that inspire me by their work.

The first thing that came to mind was the work of a student who I had in our full time School of Music course. This student was an interesting lad as he had struggled hugely in year 9 and 10, spending most of his time outside the Principal's office or being stood down. He struggled to write and he had dyslexia. He hated any form of authority and frequently told teachers where to go. He was frustrated, disengaged and didn't want to do anything for anyone. One day, one of our music staff suggested he learn the bass guitar. His eyes lit up and he became motivated to do music. After a struggle in Year 11, we took him into the School of Music (I will do another post on this amazing course). This seriously changed his life, but that's another story.

While he was in the School of Music he had to complete a research project on a topic of his own choosing. His research question was "Why and how are Mark Rothko's paintings so similar to the music of Joy Division?" He wanted to compare the art of Rothko with the music of Joy Division and see if there was a relationship between how art and music can affect people. He felt there was a strong link between the Rothko Chapel painting with Joy Division's song Decades.
He did a survey which presented people with a range of different paintings by different artists and they picked which painting suited the song. Interestingly, almost all of the survey answers chose the Rothko painting out of the 6 they were presented with.

It was the most amazing piece of work for two reasons:

• It was a research project written by a student who could hardly write a sentence just a few years before.
• To look at the relationship between art and music is such an interesting topic for a modern day student to pick and he really did a lot of in depth research about this.

This inspired me to really encourage students to pursue areas of interest to them. It showed me how much could be accomplished by someone who is interested in a topic and is prepared to find out more. The passion he had for this really shone through.

The other thing that came to mind was a group of musicians I had the pleasure of working with this year. These year 13 students have shown me what amazing musicians can do - without me. Just by being given an opportunity to work together, these young lads reached a very high standard. They entered Smokefree Rock Quest as the band Forlorn Bloom and got through to second place in the Regional Final. This was outstanding because they didn't have a vocalist. I think it was the first time I have seen an instrumental group get so far through the Rock Quest process. They managed to make it to the top 20 bands in New Zealand with their original music.

My students always inspire me, and I am lucky enough to teach music which is inspiration itself.

NCEA and Term 4

It is that time of the year when madness reigns. Students frantically dash to finish work, teachers are overloaded with marking and moderating results. We are trying to get students prepared for external exams. Term 4 is a busy one.
My reflection for this week - a Connected Educator Challenge - is about this assessment process and about learning.

One of the things I believe in, and our school supports, is assessing students when they are ready. I have seen many students miss out on gaining standards by not having the opportunity to be assessed when they are ready. Obviously there are some standards that you don't have a choice about when you do your assessment - a practical assessment in Science, a field trip or something that relies on external providers, but in general we work hard to give students plenty of opportunities to present their work.

In Music, we have a number of standards that rely on students making a portfolio of work. Performances can be collected during the year and compositions completed at various times. Along with having checkpoints for these to keep students on track, we have a number of students who finish them early, or struggle to finish them at all - hence the last minute rush in Term 4.

 I know of many staff and schools who would say "it's due this date and after that it won't be marked". I find this quite difficult to align myself with, as I believe that it's hard to push that creative process of composition, and also the physical performance skills. I know how difficult it is to write a piece and have it right, getting frustrated with a chord, or a passage that just doesn't work. Sometimes you have to be in the right head-space or it just won't happen. Perhaps you just haven't quite mastered the technical skill to enable you to play a piece until later in the year. For these reasons, I believe strongly in giving students as many opportunities as we can to get these standards finished. We have numerous concerts during the year that they can use for assessment, as well as performances they do outside of school with their own bands. This, however, leads to a busy Term 4! It's good that students have a focus and for some, it's probably the hardest they have worked all year, but it leads to busy marking and feedback sessions.

 My students at the moment are all very credit focused. What happened to the learning that I felt I had earlier in the year? In fact, I have just had a class where one of the students has copied his pie-chart of credits and made it into wallpaper for his desktop. He wanted to remind himself to get Excellence as much as possible. A nice idea, but I want him to learn as much as possible...

One thing I implemented into my music classes this year was a listening exercise to try and encourage them to expand their listening and give them work that was NOT assessed, but still contributed to their learning. Student felt it helped with all aspects of music, expanding their knowledge. I really enjoyed teaching this, as there was less emphasis on assessment and more on learning new things just for the sake of gaining knowledge.


There was a great tweet by Brett Phipps ‏@Phippsb53 on Sep 19

"If we called assessments "checks for understanding," our conversations would change drastically".

 I believe this is a really good idea - are we far too assessment obsessed? What are we trying to achieve?

How to truly listen

One of the most inspiring TED talks I think I have ever seen is by Evelyn Glennie " How to truly listen".

This clip shows the amazing determination and battle against all odds as well as the most amazing musicianship that I have seen. This clip made me rethink my teaching on so many levels.
One - all students should have the opportunity to follow their passion. Nothing should stand in their way, no matter what challenges they face. Who are we to tell students they can't do something?
Two - Music is for everyone. We work with deaf students at school and now have quite a few taking lessons in different instrument. We also have blind students who have gone on to tertiary study.
Three - Anything is possible. Never say never.
Four - Musically, I look to push my students to do more than just read the music. She says "what I have to do as a musician is do everything that is not on the music" which I love.

What will I take into the classroom? Being open to all students, their dreams and their passions. Giving support to them in any way I can.
LISTEN.

My journey over time - Part 2 - Inspiring people in my life

Throughout my life I have been blessed with some amazing teachers. Both at school myself, then during my teaching career.
Primary school started with Rick Merrington who taught me in Form 1 and 2. He was an amazing man who read us the whole of The Hobbit and always made sure all of us were engaged and excited about learning. I have a lot to thank him for, but sadly have no idea where he went to so I can tell him how much of a difference he made in my life.
My High School days were not as exciting unfortunately and only 3 teachers stand out for positive reasons - along with quite a few that stand out for other reasons that I won't go into here! One was my Form 5 English teacher, Margaret Grundy, who changed the way I saw English and actually made it interesting. She was full of life and always positive and her role as my Form teacher meant we got plenty of time with her. The other teacher who had a huge impact on me was my Music teacher - no surprise there. Stuart Martin was a young teacher who had boundless energy and often went out of his way to inspire students and support music in the school. He gave me opportunities that pushed me and made me a better musician. Highlights included our tour to the Tauranga Jazz Festival, playing in the National Jazz Orchestra and musical productions.
Stu Buchanan was a special person in my life, being involved in my music education, teaching me sax, clarinet and flute and then giving me opportunities to play at a high level with him and Ian Edwards. He also taught me a lot about music arranging and was a good friend with whom I had some interesting discussions with all the way through my life. I do believe that music teachers have a huge role to play in student's lives and can make a huge difference when they connect with students and the community.
University was not the most inspiring for me - with my main outlet being MUSOC and musical directing. I fought the system more often than went with it and this, although not liked by the Music Department particularly, gave me resilience and strength to fight for what I believed in. My time at Teacher's College was difficult as we had a line of relievers who often knew less than we did and I could hardly wait to get out on teaching practice. Tony Ryan was one of my teachers during this time, and while the musical production was on, he showed me how dedicated and motivating a music teacher can be.
Once I started teaching I was lucky enough to be teaching under Ward Clarke as Principal. Ward is an inspiring man and I still see him today. One thing I learnt from him was about the importance of valuing your staff. Every time I did something extra at school he wrote a letter of thanks. These were not just quick notes, but well thought out and heartfelt letters thanking us for how we were adding to the school and the community. This has stuck with me (I still have those letters) and I make it a priority to do the same for my staff and for those who work with me on projects. I look at the staff who supported me in those first few years of teaching and realise the quality of the people I was surrounded by - Gilbert Enoka, Phil Holstein, Mike Fowler - all leaders in their fields. It was an honour to have them to talk to and bounce ideas off.
My years of teaching have seen me work with a range of staff and although I can't single any out, I certainly learnt a lot at every school I went to. I would say the students were the most important, inspiring me to push my teaching and to learn new ways of student management. This continued until I came to Hagley where Brent Ingram and Andy Gorton pushed me to do more, think more and show what I was really capable of.
My thinking has changed a lot over the last 5 years and I feel doors have been opened and I have been exposed to a wide range of ideas. Twitter has been a huge learning base for me - amazing how much I have learnt from scrolling through and clicking on links to articles. I have #futureschools, #chched, #edchatnz, #globaled15, #edtechchat, #OneNote, #EdBlogNZ, #aussieED, #edbeat and #cenz on my check frequently list and I am always looking for more.
My Feedly is a reading kete full of great blogs - too many to mention here. It always gives me something to read and think about and keeps me in touch with new things to learn.
As far as world known educators are concerned, you can't go past Ken Robinson 's famous "Do schools kill creativity?" video. John Hattie and Michael Fullan are wonderful educators with great ideas. I have been to a couple of conferences where I have heard Angus MacFarlane talk about our Maori learners and he is so inspiring. There are so many books I have read and so many conferences I have been to that change my practice and help push me to be the best I can be.
I have discovered that the best way to be inspired is to listen to others, challenge yourself and believe you can change things for the better. Keep learning, keep reading and ask questions. Surround yourself with people that support and push you, people who have vision and who want to learn.

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

My journey over time - Part 1 - Technology

I have been thinking about how my teaching has changed, and how things are so different now from when I started teaching in 1988. 27 years later and classrooms look very different. I thought I'd take a few aspects and reflect on how things have changed for me and my students.

Part One - Technology
My start at Teacher's College included learning to use tape decks and Gestetner machines, and although I was well versed in Music technology, there was very little computing happening in schools. My first school had an Apple IIe which we had in the Music office and I learnt to use Finale - a powerful piece of music software at the time. Jump forward to now and I am using Staff Pad on a Surface Pro.

Students rarely had access to computers at home and we certainly didn't use them in the classroom. Research was done in the library and through textbooks we scrimped and saved our budgets for. At my second school in the 90s we had a computer to do audio recordings on, as well as the office computer, but nothing in the classroom.

After a break in my teaching in schools to lecture at Uni, I came back to a high school just getting a brand new department, where I had the opportunity to have a computer lab. I managed to get a grant to fill this lab with Macs and have our own server so we could keep large files. Running Garageband and Sibelius and Practica Musica, this covered a good range of activities and we used the lab frequently with all classes. This then extended to a Recording studio and yet another Mac. Students were starting to get the hang of working with computers for music, although the majority in this low decile school did not have them at home. Any other work done on them was around research and typing, with very little else. Students saved work on the server and occasionally a pen drive was seen.

Another short break to lecture at Uni and then I arrived in the school I am in now. Here is a whole different ball game. I have learnt so much about technology and e-learning and change that I am excited about where things will lead us. Having slowly moved away from teaching Music and more into the Technology sphere, I realise how much more we can do. Students have BYOD, we store things in the Cloud, we communicate with students via Facebook and Twitter, and there are so many ways to collaborate and expand our minds. My goal has been to transform my teaching with technology and I have to acknowledge Andy Gorton, who is our Director of ICT, without whom I wouldn't have had my eyes opened anywhere near as far.
The SAMR model is one I have been looking at and making sure I redefine the technology in order to transform my teaching.

I read a great article yesterday titled "Three Ways to Improve Technology Assisted Learning" where it talks about mindset before resources. I believe many staff struggle with getting away from anything but substitution because their mindset is still at that level. I always used the "f" word in my teaching - Flexibility - and that goes for technology as well. Thinking outside the square, and outside the circle, just think outside and be flexible - students can teach us so much.

We have looked at Augmented Reality and I have played with Aurasma  which I would love to do more with. I have been designing Digital Badges which I believe are going to only get bigger and more important as we increase our digital skills. What's next?

So many amazing things are being done in classes - I am loving learning.