Ulearn 2014
What an amazing conference!
It always is... but to have it in my own city just made it that much more special.
This was my third Ulearn conference and I can easily say it was the best one yet!
We were privileged enough to have our school Kapa Haka group preform on the Thursday morning to 1600+ attendees.
I was able to see and talk to ex students who were working at the conference and was even lucky enough to have one of my own students come and help our with our workshop.
I tried to summarise my experience in a tweet:
We were lucky enough to have 6 of our staff attend the three day conference. This meant when we saw something amazing we were able to discuss and reflect on how we could introduce that into our own classrooms and teams when we get back to school.
Highlights:
- Presenting on Minecraft - Sharing my passion with other educators and helping them on their journey
- Connecting, networking (Face to face and on Twitter)
- Talking and talking and talking about everything and anything with like minded educators
- Hearing the Poutama teams journey (Breakout 5)
- Steve Mouldey's creativity is not just for the arts
- Stephen Lethbridge's session on making way towards a maker culture
- Having so many of our staff attend!
- Sharing my love of Twitter with my staff & teaching them how to use it
- I won a t-shirt
Lowlights:
- Super tired now at the end of the week
- I don't have enough money to get all the amazing things I saw
- I never wanted it to end!
Tweets from the last three days
Day One:
Day One:
Day Two:
Day Three:
Goals
- To use some of the tools and models I saw during the breakouts to develop my students thinking and questioning skills
- Let my students have more choices - let them choose who to work with, how many they need in a group etc...
- I want to try use Trailblazer with my class for evidence of research in their inquiries
- Buy some robotics/electronics kits, get stuff from junk yards for student to have a maker session - get parents involved to
- Help change my staffs mindsets!
- Are our learning spaces being used effectively?
- Read the books Steve mentioned in his session
My takeaway tips/lesson ideas/websites
- The notion of creating problem finders
- What if statements - start engaging discussions and questioning activities
- Creativity challenges
- Trailblazer
- New Twitter friends!
- Kahoot
Our Minecraft Slides (Breakout 4)
Now I just need to find the time to sit down with my other staff and do our team reflection together.
This is my initial basic reflection.
As I go over my notes and resources I will continue to update this blog with how my goals are going.
If I saw you at Ulearn or we tweeted then thank you!
Loved the connections and learning.
