Growing Techno Kids- Selwyn House Takes a Risk.....

Yesterday I blogged about the way schools can share and collaborate to support one another. Today I'd like to share something we tried at Selwyn House.

I asked you to think about something your school is doing well; something other schools would enjoy hearing about. At Selwyn House, we are deeply committed to the growth of computer science and makered programmes. This is a legacy left by the incredible Jill Pears and her work is now being continued by Liz Fairhall, our awesome eLearning Director and my co-teacher.

As programmes like robotics and computational thinking become more and more widespread, we've had many schools contact us wanting to visit which is fantastic and we love visiting their schools in return. As interest levels have gotten higher and higher, our principal, Lyn Bird called us together to pose the question, "How might we share our Makered programmes to benefit other schools in Christchurch?"

We decided to gather together the awesome people who have inspired us and continue to support us on our Makered journey by holding a professional learning day for interested educators. This was a big undertaking- we'd be responsible for 7 hours of learning! How would we ensure the day was worthwhile? How would a school offering PD be perceived by others? Would it be seen as thinking we knew it all? After all, we don't by any means believe we have all the answers; we just really wanted to share what we've learned and showcase the people that have inspired us.

We were so thrilled when our our inspirations/speakers jumped on board. We eventually settled on a format which involved three keynotes spread throughout the day interspersed with four workshops; attendees selected two of these.

Our keynote speakers were:

Professor Tim Bell of University of Canterbury

Tim was really excited to be involved and started the day with an interactive keynote using resources from the incredible CS Unplugged which has had a great deal of influence over the way Computer Science is taught at our school.

Tim is deeply passionate about the teaching of computer science principles from a young age. He shared how the technology industry is thriving in post-quake Christchurch and talked about the opportunities programming skills give our learners to really follow their passions and make a difference in their world. He shared activities from CS Unplugged which is used worldwide and showed us how to use this resource to teach CS principles without even laying hands on a device.

The ever-inspiring Bridget McKendry

You may know her as @pixelbrid on Twitter. Bridget and Carl Pavletich are the founders of Fabriko and together they started the Christchurch Makercrate soon after the earthquakes, bringing making to the Christchurch community in a container! They also run the incredible Christchurch FabLab in Cathedral Junction.

Bridget epitomises a maker. She is deeply committed to creating a community of makers through open access to the necessary tools and ideas. Bridget's spirit of generosity and her "girl power" attitude has made her a real favourite of Selwyn House learners. She is adored and respected and is a fantastic mentor to our learners. We are so grateful to have Bridget's support.

Bridget talked about the role making has played in life and how important makered is for developing problem solving skills, perseverence, creativity and a sense of fun!


Michael Trengrove and Caitlin Duncan of Code Club Aotearoa

Man, what a team these guys make. Michael is such a genuinely nice guy whose heart's desire is to ensure that all New Zealand intermediate-aged kids have equity when it comes to learning coding. He has always whole heartedly supported Liz and I and the direction we wanted our Code Club to take. He didn't flinch when we insisted it was for girls' only and was fully on board when we insisted that our club be opened to all girls in the Christchurch community; not just those within our school. He has listened to our numerous irate rants about the lack of women being encouraged into Computer Science and has taken our thoughts on board. We feel very grateful to have his enthusiasm and support for what we do.

Caitlin is the cool computer chick our girls all want to be. She is passionate and inspiring and so, so knowledgeable about teaching coding in schools.

These two showed us exactly WHY it is so important that we teach our learners to code. Here's why....

There are over 600 thriving tech firms here in Christchurch and we're a small city of around 400,000 people! We can all imagine the opportunities that creates. Caitlin informed us that for each University of Canterbury Computer Science graduate there were TEN attractive jobs. Most UC comp sci students had good jobs by the end of their first year of their undergraduate degrees! It is our duty to ensure that our learners aren't excluded from these opportunities.

Michael and Bridget offered coding and 3d printing workshops while Liz Fairhall offered a robotics workshop and I offered a workshop on 5 Tools for Connecting Your Class (not exactly computer science but the theme for the day was Growing Techno Kids so it kind of worked!) I have never run any sort of teacher learning before so I was petrified. I needn't be- the attendees were so lovely and so appreciative. I loved meeting them and starting a conversation with them around connecting our classes.

Here's my google pres. As you can see, I packed far too much in for a 55 minute workshop but somehow it worked! I could have explored any ONE of these tools for the full 55 minutes but never mind.  That's the beauty of giving a link to a google pres.....participants can explore at their own pace in their own time. (Some of you may see tweets from your own classes! Thanks so much for connecting with us!)



We had more than 40 teachers join us for the day and the evaluations suggest it was a great success. There is so much passion around this topic and the teachers were fired up, ready to learn and share their experiences and this made for a really great atmosphere where we were all learning together alongside one another. Another thing that helped enormously was having our Y8 students on hand to support teachers in the workshops. Our students really are pretty phenomenal and this came up again and again in the evaluation sheets.

Creating Lego Balloon Car Racers in Liz's Robotics Workshop

Our primary goal for this day was to SHARE the Makered love. We had no desire to make any money from the day, hence the small fee of $60pp to cover the speakers' time/ donations to their causes and lunch/ morning tea. The rewards were definitely not financial but the benefits for us at Selwyn House were huge. It was so wonderful to meet so many passionate Christchurch educators. It was a great day to be part of.

Thanks to everyone who came with open-minds to learn with us. Keep in touch!

By the way, if you are interested in Makered, here's another opportunity in Christchurch. 
The Chched Maker Event- Register by Thursday 23 July- I hope to see to you there! 

The Power of Learning from Peers at #educampchch

Hello blog! Remember me? Its been far too long! Time for us to get reacquainted......

I have come to the startling revelation that I have more drafts and unpublished posts in this blog than I do published posts. Eeeek. So one of my many summer goals is to remedy that!

So I'm going to start working towards my goal of recording my thoughts more with a post reflecting on the amazing learning fest that was #educampchch.

On Saturday 22 November, teachers from all over Canterbury met at St Margaret's College in Christchurch to learn from, encourage and support each other. The unconference was initiated by the wonderfully passionate and generous Pauline Henderson with support from the very talented Allana Taylor from Springston School.

Like all good professional learning events, we began with caffeine, sugar and networking! It is always so great to put faces to twitter handles! I was excited to meet Shaun Wood, @mrwoodnz, who I had not realised was now based in Christchurch- what a win for Chch kids! It was also great to meet educators I had not yet had the pleasure of meeting including Stephen, Jared, Surin, Ruth, Carolyn and Blake as well as catching up with lots and lots of educators who I have previously had the pleasure of meeting and being inspired by. Christchurch is full of fabulous educators who are passionate about teaching and learning and strive to better themselves for the sake of their learners.

After we were suitably "caffeined up"  the Smackdown got underway. Well, it would be more accurate to say that Part 1 of the Smackdown got underway for this smackdown was the mother lode of smackdowns, unlike any Smackdown I have seen before (How many times can I use the word Smackdown in one sentence?) Each slide was presented with enthusiasm and passion and there were questions and comments and it was a big and beautiful thing. There was definitely something for everyone!


This was followed by a selection of workshops including Scratch, blogging, using twitter in the classroom, filming lessons and other gems. My teaching partner, Maker guru, Liz Fairhall led a workshop on using Makey Makeys to teach about circuitry and problem solving amongst other things and this workshop was very successful and loads of fun. It really highlighted how much fun hands-on and discovery learning is for everyone, children and adults.

Liz shares movies of our girls at Selwyn House discussing their Makey Makey creations.  

Blake, Stephen, Ruth and Gerard are very engaged in experimenting with Makey Makeys. 

Educampchch was followed up with more revelry at Brigitte's. All in all it was great day for learning, connecting and feeling refreshed at this exhausting time of year. Educamps are such a fantastic way to learn from our peers and I now find myself wondering if we could have an educamp in my classroom.........perhaps without such vast quantities of coffee!

Edchatnz Conference- the future looks bright

I have just returned from the most remarkable conference. Remarkable because it was the dream of an inspiring young teacher named Danielle Myburgh. Danielle started a twitter chat using the hashtag #edchatnz two years ago and it has blossomed into something big and powerful and amazing. Just four short months ago she had the idea to hold an #edchatnz conference. A small team jumped on board to support her and voila, Danielle created an amazingly inspiring conference and it sold out to boot!

I have so much to say about this conference that it's hard to collate these thoughts into a coherent blogpost. Here are three things that struck me.

Bridget, Ginnie and Aimie from Christchurch are excited to meet the amazing Mrs Hyde from Rotorua!

1. The future looks bright!
Some of the most inspiring people I met were very young teachers, first and second years. They were confident and curious and constantly working to better their practice for their learners. It is a long time since I was a beginning teacher (ahem) but I know for sure I wasn't inspiring others with my zest and passion. In fact, I ended up in hospital with glanjular fever and felt very alone, contemplating giving up teaching. I was so unconnected as a young teacher in Western Sydney where I started my teaching- I rarely even made it to morning tea to connect with other teachers in my large and very low decile school. Has the advent of social media helped new educators to feel more supported? I sure hope so! @chasingalyx, @ariaporo22 and @MissDtheTeacher....you guys inspire me. You are headed for amazing things and your learners are lucky! I'm in awe.

2. Being connected is essential if we are to be effective educators.

Christchurch Represent! 

I am incredibly lucky that I am not a lone nut at my school. I am surrounded by great educators and there is something I want to learn from every single one of them- I want to learn more about Philosophy for Children from Pauline, I want to learn how Liz uses the Design Thinking process so effectively with any age group, I want to learn how Greg uses the Performing Arts so stunningly to teach ANY concept at all from Maths to inquiry and I want to know how Steph is such an incredible whizz at facilitating deep and powerful maths talk amongst her Year 7s. My colleagues inspire me everyday so my story is a little different from those who struggle as "lone wolves" in their schools on a daily basis.
Having said that, joining Twitter was quite simply the most powerful thing I have ever done for my professional learning. And the #edchatnz conference shows why. It gave me access to incredible community of educators across New Zealand who inspire and support each other everyday. Despite the fact that I had never met many of them face to face before Friday, I feel like I have known them forever. My great friend Ginnie put it best when she said,

#echatnz conference - the only place where it’s not creepy to say: “I’ve been following you - can I have a hug?” @MissDtheTeacher @mrs_hyde
— Gin (@ginippi) August 9, 2014

If you have somehow stumbled across this blogpost and you are not yet on Twitter, start lurking, dipping your toes in and the best place to start? Why #edchatnz of course!

3. The Learners must be at the centre of the learning
And my main takeaway from all the amazing learning I did this weekend is that we must ensure our learners are at the centre of their learning. To be successful in life, our learners need to be directing their own learning while we support and mentor them. We are doing far too much for our students. We need to be explicitly teaching them the skills they need and then getting out of their way! Yes, it is messy and at times it might be uncomfortable for us but giving students control over their learning is engaging and empowering. Hobsonville Point Primary School are doing an amazing job of this. I was incredibly inspired by how articulate and engaged their learners are and how effective they are at directing their own learning. What incredibly lucky kids!

Hobsonville Point Primary School- Learning Commons 1.
Stunningly, beautiful design has a real impact on how the children learn. 

I have so much I'd like to add about specific workshops, keynotes and even a somewhat startling political debate but I'll save that for another day. In the meantime, I'll leave you with this cartoon from Amy McCauley's workshop on personalised learning.