Rebranding

 Some rights reserved by flyingkiwigirl

This year we are changing some of how we do Professional Development.  What we are thinking of doing is offering drop in sessions during Recess and Lunch and making it more relatable to what the teachers need on demand.  We are always here to help, but this is a less intimidating way to work with larger groups of people.  

We are calling our sessions >Towards Wicked (based on the New Horizons Report). What we are looking to do (eventually) is address some of the truly wicked problems we as teachers face. So the name came from there. 

I've been spending more time outside with teachers as well. We are getting more buy in for the mix between environmental education and technology integration, so that is really exciting. We have many teachers out there using the iPads to uncover some of what they could be learning in the classroom. 

Happy days. 

Why Quantitative?

 Some rights reserved by Ken Whytock

This week I've been thinking a lot about how to actual see where we are in our learning journey.  I know that many schools have a focus on quantitative data.  We use standardised tests to make sure we are learning at the right time. We focus a lot on quantitative data because it is easier to show a big picture with lots of data at the same time (I think anyway). 

So, how can we present more personal qualitative data to parents.  Right now we are entering conference time, and we want to share the stories and make it personal, so I wonder how our teachers are doing that, and what the parents are thinking. 

I was reading this article about Modern Learning and wonder how we can use qualitative data more effectively.  We can use it to paint a bigger picture and a more complete story, but how do we use it to enhance our teaching practice.  How do we use it to drive inquiry? 

Way too many questions this week.