Sunday, September 27, 2015

Flat Connections



This morning was the first day of our holidays here in New Zealand. However, I came to school to have PD with Sonya and ended up joining my first session of a week in the life led by Julie Lindsay.The session was absolutely amazing because I got to meet and see other global educators in the flat connection - week in the life project which my team Kahikatea are involved in.
We have registered all of our eighty students in this global project.


I am still learning about making global connections as part of our concept next term. The aim of this project is to look at Health and Well Being and encourage our students and teachers to work together to solve issues which affect most of us.


This all new and exciting as I broaden my knowledge of using web2 tools such as fuze, wikispaces, edmondo, twitter, google, voice thread and padlet. At this stage I find it all overwhelming but with Sonya’s support I’m sure I’ll get somewhere. I now know how my students feel with new tools and the excitement of working collaboratively with others.


My next step is to sort our students into teams, complete our handshake of introduction in the first week back, and set up meetings with some of the schools that are currently in the project so the students can meet each other in real time.


This is so unlike me that my motivation got me to get my first blog reflection up. I will do my best to continue to reflect on my learning as an educator and to get to upskill myself with the new tools. With this in mind, I will motivate and encourage my students to make connections with other students using edmodo and practise empathy for others.