My name is Arnika Brown, I have been teaching at MTSS (Mt Somers Springburn School) for the past 5 years. In my spare time I do like to get outdoors, but when I am indoors I love going onto my Microsoft partners in learning profile http://www.pil-network.com, and working on my ICT skills towards badges, there is so much free PD on there. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
Well, I have just realised that I did start a blog in 2010,(as I found it) and I tried to make it work in my classroom, but alas, it all fell apart.
I have a 1:1 laptop classroom that has been running for 4 years now, and I am just feeling like I am starting to work it effectively. In my class I have a huge range of learning styles and abilities, and I find that the laptop programme supports students in numerous ways. We have been predominantly using Microsoft over the years, which seems to have paid off, as we are now hopefully going to be part of the IT Academy which will be interesting.
In class,I use an Apple desktop so we have also used iMovie, iPhoto and Garage Band as a class. I think it is important for the students to experience as many different types of learning platforms as we can offer. We also have an IWB and a 50inch plasma that we use for shared learning. I am very passionate about e-learning, and am working towards my Post Grad.
Last year we set up a Weebly as a staff, and we feel like having a blog is our next step. We have had a look at numerous other blogs and are just trying to figure out how we can set one up to benefit all Teachers, students and our wider community.
I would like my blog to motivate parents to become involved in their childrens development and learning online, and to be able to comment on work they have done. We have our Weebly set up as our school website www.mtss.school.nz, and our next step is definitely to have an open space for parent feedback.
I have attached a picture of our lovely Mt Somers, I have an amazing view of it from my classroom window.
I am really looking forward to this course, and can see already that it will be great for me professionally.
Thanks, Arnika
Hi Arnika,
ReplyDeleteYou live and work in a beautiful part of the world. You can't complain about the outlook on Mt Somers from our classroom. Would be interesting to ask all EDEM630 participants to post a photo of their view.
Thanks for taking the time to record a video -- I'd be interested to hear more about the BYOD challenges you experience and why it didn't work -- perhaps a topic for your research?
Hi Wayne,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment. I hadn't thought about that topic for my research...It would be very interesting. There would definitely be links between this and my online tutorial topic I have chosen to go with. I wonder if using online tutorials in class with students own devices would motivate them to lead their own learning outside of the classroom.
It didn't really work for us as I did not have 100% of students bringing a device, they have a PC laptop each that is funded by the BOT, but we did not have any collaborative learning as there were too many different devices coming in.Interestingly, I took 8 students on a film making course hosted by Outlook for Someday, and most of them brought a device from home, this worked very well because they all had hardware and software that was useful, and they could make a movie on a range of programmes. I wonder if my vision was too narrow with BYOD....