Week eleven

Leadership Camp, up the top in the farmland,
The mist comes out after the heavy rain.

Eleven week first terms are long, they create a huge amount of stress. I look back to what was happening to me around week 7 and 8 and they are when pit falls happened.

However, I probably spent less time in the classroom this week, due to leadership camp. 50 students away for an overnight camp on the night that cyclone cook entered New Zealand. A 20 minute massive downpoar of rain, the rest just wind.

The camp showed the students in different ways, developing new teams and communication were two very big components of the camp. How do we communicate with others what we want, our ideas. This is something I paid particular attention to, as in my role of Learning Design Leader of Technology is something that I need to keep developing.

When the bus didn't turn up for nearly two hours, the weather turns on us, when things don't goto plan. Having to work through problem solving and changing decisions on the fly is something that you have to get used to at camp, while things are planned, outside factors do impact.

The same in school.

How have things gone this term.

Hub, I started off doing well, however, I have let things fall away slightly, araako.com/learn worked well to help students input there goal, I need to work on the next phase. The curriculum checker as well as the habit indicators.
Getting students to up their reflections took some work, however they now seem comfortable writing 150+ words. It seems that the majority of them enjoy reflecting on their week and how things are going. The ones that struggle to do the reflection I am thinking about how to work with them, is it that they are unable to reflect as they feel they haven't done anything during the week?

WOTPOINT Technology/Social Sciences
This module has put me outside my comfort zone, getting students developing drawings of the building that they are creating, I am thankful for the work that I did at Secondary School as well as having a graphics class earlier in my teaching. I must say I am impressed at what the students created and so were others at the show time on Thursdays Professional Learning morning. I look forward to next term and the ideas that we are going in with. The struggle has been working through inclusion for some students. Working at lower curriculum levels than I am used to, as well as I wish that I had rewritten the project brief for some of our students so they could see some success.

WALLE Technology using EV3 robotics
Developing a robot to meet a certain set of conditions. I went outside the normal create a robot to follow a line idea, getting a robot to from one side of the classroom to the other, students tested, refined, developed constantly. Though some students were still developing there robot on the last day was of concern. I need to look at this next time so we have all teams running. Students did do well working together and collaborating, sharing their ideas.

DESIGNW - web development
Developing students to understand the code that the web works by, many of these when faced with challenges embraced them and have develop some great pages through simple design. The one that gets me, is when a students doesn't want to try. This is a struggle, without knowing the tags of HTML you cannot do the create stuff later on. There needs to be a natural development of understanding knowledge to develop skills.

HWMGHTWE - technology
Students have developed a good understanding of database management through khan academy, I was not sure if this was going to be the right move, but students would be able to do the requirements of NCEA level 1, level 2 and level 3 database management. It is the next part that we need to work on, which is the database integration into another program.
Building on this has been the brief development, getting students to think about what they are going to develop. I need to make sure that this cane get down to 2-4 pages. Something that will need to be the focus of the beginning of the next term.

I have started to think about how to support a student that may be finding this too hard. Though this also could provide an interesting brief for a level 1/2 course. Building a website that records the amount of water a students drinks daily. Simple enough, but how to do you develop the marketing behind it.

Where are things going?
3DSPACE PLA - the 'engage' part of our innovate. engage. inspire. engage through powerful partnerships. Working with an outside company on this has provided some interesting opportunities. To be able to develop NZ Mountains through 3d printing.

To start to think what terms 3 and 4 SPINS will offer, one will need to be a programming SPIN, the other, I am still thinking...

Wellbeing...

Has anyone got students developing projects around wellbeing?
I saw one earlier this year this around helping a student manage their NCEA credits and homework. http://www.getblueprint.co.nz/

Looking at other aspects of wellbeing, "the state of being comfortable, healthy, or happy."

Getting students to think about how these aspects can contribute to their life.

Apple have been working on their wellness within business. The Close the Rings Challenge v1.0
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/04/11/apple-close-the-rings-employee-challenge/

However, not all students have apple watches, and probably cannot do the standing within their day. Thinking about other ideas, like removing the soft drink to the 2 litres of water a day challenge, how could this be tracked?