Teacher Action Inquiry - T.A.I.
Following on from Learning@Schools where I attended Lorraine Watchorn and the RELLCO cluster's breakout Unleashing E-Learning Capability In Your School Through Teacher Action Inquiry.
I have been working through an inquiry process of my own in order to implement T.A.I. in our school. After talking with Barbara, our ICT fac Jilitator, I have even more questions than answers. She directed me to Rocky Jensen's blog http://rocky11.blogspot.com/2011/03/meaningful-and-manageable-teacher.html?sp... post. I am planning to use the slideshow with my teachers to get us started on this journey.
We will use the Teaching as Inquiry model http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-stories/Case-studies/Inquiry/Teachi... and our current target data to focus our inquiry.
We will also be blogging about our learning.
First Photostory - Overcoming Problems
First problem to overcome: Reinstall the software as it is not working.
Progress: First problem solved.
Second problem to overcome: Talking into laptop microphone makes means I need to be a contortionist.
Progress: Second problem solved via Kristen (headphones with mikes attached).
Third problem to overcome: No photos of our art session today due to leaving my camera at home and being too busy helping my wonderful students.
Progress: Third problem solved tomorrow. The camera is packed and the hardest parts are completed, freeing up time for me or some children to take some pictures.
I had an epiphany!
I got organised to do a dummy run of our Takahe Collage for Art and how to teach it to the children when "lightning struck me" and "I had an epiphany".
Usually I prepare a number of stages of the art, which naturally uses more resources and since I only had a limited supply of felt, I had a problem. Thinking how to solve the problem it came to me. You have a digital camera, just take photos of each step and use these for teaching the children.
Habitat
I have now made a powerpoint to use with the class and I am going to get the children to explain in one sentence what they have to do. We will work through the task one step at a time.
I have even decided to make a photostory of our project. This is going to be our first photostory and will be good practise for our end of unit photostory. I'll work out all the problems with this one.
And the almost finished product . . .
Where did the weekend go?
Okay so the weekend is almost over and what happened to the playtime? It got swallowed up by work. Hang on, I'm not complaining. I got to add to our class blog http://room1ops2010.blogspot.com/ and catch up a bit with the Student Blogging Challenge. Yeah I know it is a "Student Blogging Challenge" but as I am teaching 5 and 6 year olds it does tend to be me doing most of the work.
So what did I do? Changed the background (again) and added some widgets (translator, virtual pet and clock) I also shifted the counter so that it isn't going off the end of the page anymore. I added a few new posts and have decided to just point this out to my class so they do the reading rather than me.
Okay, what else did I do? Well naturally I planned out the week and this meant hyperlinking to all my new documents for my Maths and Reading groups. I also hyperlinked to the Writing task as well as our Inquiry and Art.
All in all a good weekends work but next weekend I will play more too.
My Pre New Year Resolutions
End of Week 1 Term 4 and I have been run off my feet. No time for myself or my family but that is going to change.
In terms of my ICT capers . . . hasn't been happening so I have set myself some resolutions. I am going to:
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post more regularly
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make my posts more interesting
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comment more on others posts
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set aside more time for play
Okay. Now you know you can check up on me. Setting aside some serious playtime this weekend.
The Journey Continues
The journey so far:
- I am a lifelong learner who has tended to learn the ICT skills I have needed for work and play on an adhoc basis.
- In 2009 our school signed up for a 3 year ICT Professional Development Contract starting in 2010.
- Working with the lovely Barbara http://barbs.posterous.com/ I have set up class and teacher wikispaces
- I started blogging only 3 months ago with my class blog http://room1ops2010.blogspot.com/ . The objective being to give my students an audience and purpose for writing.
- After participating in a workshop with Ewan McIntosh http://edu.blogs.com/ I started a 100 hour challenge and my first personal blog http://catrionachrystall.posterous.com/
- My class joined the student blogging challenge http://studentchallenge.edublogs.org/ and have really enjoyed posting on other class blogs
- I created my first form in google apps and some of our students completed this online
- Today I started a new blog http://catsictcapers.posterous.com/
