AllyGray Mindlab Blog

Hi there Very late reflection entry for the course - apologies for that. Community of Practise (CoP) isn't rocket science is it! All of us that choose to be involved in a learning opportunity, be it short or longer term, do so because we want to receive some benefit or value from it. This might be an immediate gain in knowledge, a clarification or further understanding. For people to properly commit to a long term group there has to be clear shared goals and to receive valuable participation from the group there needs to be a common belief that as individuals we will gain something and that the group will become stronger and more valuable as time progresses. I like the growing the garden analogy as a simple explanation and the true realisation that no matter how accepting the group might be to each other and their contributions there will be a variance in the types of participation from the individuals and that facilitators of PD in particular need to expect, allow and accep...

Musing on this again... "it is important that reflective practice be cultivated and fostered to become effective. It can then be a “powerful tool to examine and transform practice” (Finlay, 2008, p.10) Not the only part of the reading to strike a chord, but does alert me to the fact that I am not reflecting enough or in a way that is even remotely useful to make any meaningful change. If I am going to make an effort to be critically reflective then I need to make it regular, documented and purposeful. I would say that I have certainly thought about my current practice and the things I do in my classroom as a direct result of the Mindlab sessions and in discussing what occurs in my school, my classrooms and experiences of others on the course. Little things like dropping back the amount of instructions I may give the group to allow for more self discovery, allowing for the kids to trial, error and fail as an accepted part of the learning process instead of where I may h...

Well I'm half a week late. What does that tell you about my reflective practice. Can't even organise myself to keep up with the first week out on our own. I guess looking back I need to develop a study strategy for the many weeks ahead or I'm going to fail miserably in the second half of the course which has been so interesting so far. With so much crazy going on at school at the moment you'd think this would be the perfect time to look at myself and what I've been doing with my kids under each one of the 5 reflection headings.  Instead I find myself going home more tired than ever wondering how our school organisation got to be so fragmented at the moment. Tomorrow the entire Yr10 go on camp for 4 days and the entire Year 9 cohort head into the big smoke of Invercargill for sport and activity "Have A Go Day" fun. I have found my mind wandering to whether a complete redesign of my Year9 option taster class activities is needed. 5 weeks of time to convinc...

Was having an interesting discussion with colleagues about the Careers Advisors National conference currently in Invercargill and how difficult it must be for them to stay current and crystal ball gaze for future career information. Then this turned up on my Google+ feed ROBOTS AND AI So incredible the advances being made in areas that we cannot possible keep up with. Ironically started reading Dan Browns new book Origin and "Spoiler!" it's AI related also.Well the first few chapters are

Taken this off a website. Is doing this breaking any kind of copyright rule. I didn't make the image nor do I claim to. I don't imagine the website where I got it from made it either. HERE   If anybody knows anything specific, please let me know.

Class activity to edit an old crappy car into something cool. Introducing students to some of the specific basic tools such as import images, selection tools, layer blending modes, colour adjustments.

OK so here goes. Not a hundy sure what I have to say and why people would bother connecting with me but it's part of the journey and 'm ready for it.