It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly 2 years since I last attended a Google Apps for Education (GAFE) summit. Life has changed a lot since then.
When I left the last GAFE I came away with a lot of plans and a zeal to share my plans with anyone who would listen and many who didn’t want to.
My plans were:
- Do a series of 1 minute ‘what’s going on in your classroom?’ video. Review with my tutor teacher to look for improvements in teaching practice. Post reflections to my blog for input from a wider audience.
- Contribute to the digital citizenship project.
- Institute a daily google challenge to improve my class’s digital literacy (thanks Wendy Gorton for the book, I also plan to write some questions relevant to my New Zealand context).
- Design an app for my class to communicate more effectively with my parents/students. Students and parents to have input into key functions.
- Use google maps to develop a virtual tour for incoming year 7s for next year.
- Hold an end-of-term ‘innovation day’ based on the principles behind google’s 20% time.
Did I achieve my plans?
Erm yes and no. I did post a few videos of cool stuff and even a welcome video for my new principal, I still do google challenges and innovation day happened at my old school. But when I look at that list, I realise that there were a lot of things I didn’t come close to accomplishing. My lesson is that I’m very good at coming up with crazy ideas not so good at implementing them.
Coming to GAFE Singapore was a change to reconnect with all that crazy googly energy. To remind me that coming up with ideas is one thing, but implementing is so much harder.
So my new action plan is:
Geek Girl Dinners – Something that bothers me at educational technology events is the lack of women presenting and sharing. Teaching is a workforce dominated by women yet the field of edutech is largely dominated by men. Instead of quietly complaining I’m publicly planning to help do my part to get more women sharing how they use edutech in the classroom. I’m hoping to get the first event underway before christmas
Telling stories better – It’s amazing how quickly I’ve gotten out of the habit of using my phone to video moments of awesomeness. I really do need to get into the habit of capturing things. I took on @shareski point that teachers need to tell stories. I’m using Humans of New York as inspiration to tell stories about the kids in my class.
Share the Joy – I’ve gotten out out of the habit of sharing. Making time to write more instead of faffing around consuming stuff on twitter I need to put time into creating things for others.
Just do it – I’m not sure if it is a fear of failure or poor time management on my part but I’ve become a lot more risk adverse these days. I’ve already got one project on the boil at school and another one I’m in the process of putting together.
Teaching the Teacher 