Monday 2 September 2013

educampTimaru

On saturday I had an opportunity to travel down to Timaru to attend a unconference. These unconferences are organised by teachers to show what they are doing, discuss, develop their knowledge on a range of topics. Almost any topic goes, from curriculum delivery, assessment, teaching and learning.
Arrive at Craighead, a all girls school in Timaru you get to see the old buildings, the park like setting and the teachers.
The start of day as normal starts with a smackdown, where people inform others about various applications, apps...

However, there was one special moment during the day, one of the teachers from the school introduced us to her work. She is a design teacher who had just been given a App Crayon and was thankful, it worked faster than her stylus. She introduced us to a couple of her recordings, which she makes available to her students. Introduction to Pinterest, dropbox and one other. Now what amazed us was the level of detail, interactions with the students, reflective on her practice. She kept talking about not being an expert. But hey, what is a expert these days. Her words were constantly, "But I have only been doing this for a year", a year of development, a year of interactions with students, a year of BYOD, a year of developing a new Level 3 programme.

Amazed at the what was happening, a number of us in the group want her to share her practice with others. This is a teacher who is passionate, developing the curriculum through the first section, developing effective pedagogy and using BYOD to enhance and encourage learning.

Her response - "But I have only been doing BYOD for a year"

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