Greg’s Blog – principal (le?) learning

This week we have begun sharing back the Action Research Projects which teachers have been engaged in this year focused on our ICT PD Cluster goals.  Staff meeting on Tuesday was almost completely devoted to people sharing the things they have been the focus of their learning  this year.  The thing that struck me was the quality of the reflection people have been engaging in.  The sharing was very much focused on the learning not simply listing off a series of activities with some sort of glib summary at the end.

Many teachers have really challenged themselves and struck significant hurdles to be overcome in what they were trying to achieve.  They have worked hard to achieve their goals and for some the shifting sands of their evolving projects and learning have made for difficult times.  This has ultimately been a ‘good thing’ for them though as they have learned a lot along the way about what works (for them) and what is not as successful.  It has also highlighted a number of common lessons for us for me; things like:

• robust and quality infrastructure is vital.  Stuff needs to work when you need it and every time.
• the value of teachers ability to problem solve technical issues.
• in most classes the kids prefer the macs to the pc’s
• the value of explicit instruction in how to use different sites and software
• all teachers have an incredibly strong drive to be the best they can be, for the benefit of the kids and their learning
• there is no one-size-fits-all solution.  The importance of knowing your class – collectively and more importantly as individuals.
• the way our support for each other has changed with techie things – from a small number of people having the understandings to a much greater shared knowledge where there are lots of people who can help with any challenges.

The various ways the learning is shared will go on our staff wiki so it can be referred back to.

No one will approach 2010 in the same way as they have 2009, and that is the point.  This has been very much Teaching as Inquiry as intended in our revised NZC.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 27th, 2009 at 9:03 pm and is filed under Learning and Teaching, Pedagogy, professional learning, school leadership.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.