UPPING THE GAME

We had a visit today from a school near Wellington who are embarking on their own digital learning journey.  We have schools come through each term, seeing our teachers and students in action in a digital world, asking questions on where to start and where not to.  It's during these visits that I get a certain feeling of pride for what we've done in our little school, knowing where we have come from and the obstacles that face this community of learners everyday.

One of our visitors asked us...so where to from here?  It was such a loaded question, we sort of skimmed over the answer and talked about hardware for the junior school.  But, looking at the bigger picture the answers are endless and to some degree daunting.  So, determined not to be overwhelmed by the immenseness of the question I narrowed my focus to the 'teaching' and here I am writing a reflection about it.
We have a school full of talented, dedicated teachers who are committed to and passionate about elearning.  Our journey is only in its infancy and who knows where it will take us.  I.T is evolving all the time...there are new aps, new websites, new hardware rolling out daily and the question of 'how are we going to keep up?' often comes to mind.  While these exciting tools are there for us to use in our practice, we have to remember that they are just 'tools'.  These do NOT make us better teachers...but enhance what we do.  Just as these tools can compliment our teaching, they can also magnify bad practice.  Which leads me back to my narrowing of 'focus' from the big question.

During our Manaiakalani Lead Teachers meeting we had an opportunity to get to know the SAMR model for elearning.  This model emphasizes the link between technology, content and pedagogy.  Throughout the session reference was made to the model and our task was to randomly select a grade/level, a subject area, a learning intention and an app and create a very brief idea for a lesson outline at each 'level' of the SAMR model. 
This was a challenging task, especially because the level we randomly chose was Year 1 and neither myself nor my team mates had taught at that level...through a lot of discussion and brainstorming we came up with what we thought hit each of the elements in the model.

This use of a 'thought process' to be used in planning is not new, but SAMR is, I think, of benefit to teachers in a digital environment as it is a guide for pushing the envelope (so to speak) in getting us to think at the highest level - a sort of digital taxonomy. 

Also during the meeting, we had teachers sharing recent experiences or knowledge with the group.  We had the TPACK model shared in relation to SAMR.  This was an extention on the SAMR model which gave an even more in depth guideline to consider when planning or creating lessons.

Both of these models are great tools to use in planning classroom programmes.  They are current and serve as a challenge to 'up our game' so to speak in developing critical thinking through engaging activities for students at 'all' levels.