Mindlab

Activity 7: Bucher's (2008) writing about the importance of cultural intelligence related to me.  The global consciousness and intercultural communication is important because it deals with moving across boundaries, exchanging ideas, and looking at the world from multiple perspectives.  Being half Chinese and half American, this is very important because I have been walking down this very road seeing things from my dad's perspective (Chinese) and my mother's (American). My school  has fostered a very diverse school.  It has a large international department as well as a very established Kapa Haka group.  The school is focused on making faculty aware of our Maori students and this is an integral part of the core values.  There are many school-wide activities including the cultural show, pacifica awareness, and also a Maori leadership club that meets weekly.  These indigenous-focused pedagogies are specifically chosen to inform staff and students and e...

Activity 6: Contemporary trends in New Zealand Step 1 (What): The one trend that is most relevant is the impact of digital learning.  Within the Mathematical field the amount of changes from the old style of pen and paper/route learning is something of the past.  The Ministry of Education site has stated that a focus on the "influence of digital technologies across all aspects of education" should be a trend to focus on. The growing impact of desmos, geogebra, and NZgrapher are a few visual Mathematical digital learning tools that are being used in NCEA assessments at our school.  Being able to stay up to date and build on this trend is of major importance in order to stay relevant within an evolving digital world.   Another trend that I would like to come back and focus on would also be the development of personal skills that Daggett (2014) was speaking about. Step 2 (So What): Career readiness data from the ACT's national studies has stat...

Activity 5: Using social online networks in teaching or professional development Using the Jay and Johnson's (2002) model for reflection, I will be focusing on the epak as well as the team drive for sharing best practices.   Descriptive : The professional development that the Math's department has been focusing on is the shared Team Drive with in the google drive network. Our department has been building on this drive to gather and be able to share our best practices among each other. Pakuranga College itself has been focusing on the up-skill of teachers to keep them up to date with the ongoing technological innovations. Our Epak wheel covers multiple areas to facilitate for the 21st century learner. My objective for this year was to integrate digital innovations and work on a collaborative environment. Not only have I been doing this with the students via google classroom, google docs, and padlet, but with the Mathematics department as well. Comparative : Whit...

Ethical and Legal Issues and Decision Making Practices:  l'm using (Rolfe, 2001)'s self reflective model for an ethical dilemma that occurred when I was the year 9 Dean.  Helton and Ray (2005) mention unethical scenarios experienced by teachers, for me this situation involved school and law policies, and student accusations. The “What”: A student was being bullied online via social media.  I followed the school's protocol for a restorative session to address the online bullying. I took proper documentation notes and filled incident reports. Parents, guidance counsellors, and the tutor teachers were notified of the situation. Unfortunately I was placed in an ethical dilemma with a revised New Zealand law against online bullying . From the Beehive.Gov site (2017) Ms. Adams is quoted as saying “The Harmful Digital Communications Act made it illegal to send messages and post material online that deliberately causes a victim serious emotional distress,” . Each ...

As the course is moving into its final phase, I have been looking over my inquiry process.  Have I been focusing (not the spiral focus) too much on checking for student input and opinion instead of collecting student input on my hunches.  Being observant within my classes I just assumed that what ever I came up with during Maths topics was relevant for the students.  Maybe I should have gathered some data on students for my hunches to develop more of a focus for my class.  Any thoughts from anyone else?

Alrighty then.....have developed my focus for my inquiry question and literature review.  Any advice is good advice. My initial Teacher Inquiry question How does implementing technology innovation into a classroom affect the collaborative writing (with insight) between students in year 12/13 Statistics Course My initial literature review question How does using technology innovation affect collaboration in the classroom. OR What factors of technology innovation might affect writing when collaborating. OR What extent might technology have with collaborative writing with students through sharing ideas