Pt England Ambassadors @ MIT - 2019

Today Garth and I took the 2019 year 6 Ambassadors to MIT. Their job was to present to a group of training teachers and show them how they learn from day to day. These training teachers were blown away by the way our Ambassadors were able to talk about their learning, and do so with such confidence. Some of my reminders/takeaways from their presentation was:

• our children are hooking into learning because of a real audience
• they are passionate learners
• our children are learning in a VERY different way to other learners in other schools
• if you give our children a stage, they take it with two hands! Our children lifted hugely in their presentation because of the large crowd today and they lifted more when the crowd were responsive

After the Ambassadors' presentation I was then given the opportunity to stay and discuss further the way in which we teach and learn at Pt England school. I was impressed with the openness of the training teachers and the passion with which they talked about teaching and learning. The things that stuck out for them was:

• why we teach with digital devices (see photo below)
• why it's important to rewind what we teach
• the importance of connecting with our children and then connecting them with a real audience
• have fun!

Pt England Ambassadors @ Epsom - 2018

Today I had the pleasure of taking the year 6 Ambassadors to the University of Auckland in Epsom. We were presenting on how PT England School uses digital technologies to further develop children's learning and enhance teacher's capacity as teachers.

What I liked about today's group was their passion for learning and their obvious love for children. They were a very eager group to learn as much about digital literacy as they could and asked great thoughtful questions. One thing that definitely stood out from todays discussion was the importance of having a very real audience for children to share their learning with. Our ambassadors did an excellent job of fielding questions about this and further making the point that this is why they post on their blogs. Not because the teacher, or their parents told them too.

Thanks again Heather for having us today! We very much enjoyed working with you all and we are looking forward to seeing you in 2019!

Pt England Ambassadors @ MIT - 2018

Today Garth and I took our year 6 Ambassadors to present our learning to students studying to be teachers at MIT. This was a very passionate and eager group who were very impressed with our year 6 Ambassadors!

From their feedback it became clear that there were a few main areas that challenged them the most:

1. Why teach with digital devices? We use Chromebooks and iPads because these devices enable our teachers and children to capture their teaching and learning so that it becomes rewindable and can be re-watched and re-used at anytime. If it is worth teaching, it is worth capturing. If it is worth learning, it is worth capturing.
2. It stops learning from only happening in the confines of a school day - 9am till 3pm. It enables children and their whanau to continue the learning together at home with all of the same scaffolding as they would get at school. 
3. It enables children to work at their own pace - either ahead of the class or slower if needed.

Thank you MIT for having us! All the best for the rest of your studies and for teaching in 2019!

Pt England Ambassadors @ Epsom - 2017

Today I had an opportunity to step in for Dorothy Burt and present our learning to students studying to be teachers at the University of Auckland in Epsom.

I took with me the year 6 Ambassadors to start off the session - and they were fantastic! They did an excellent job of passionately describing how they learn and what works for them. What was interesting for me was to watch young people (the uni students) who were very paper based in their own approach to learning listening to kids half (or more) of their age describe how to learn in a way that is better, more natural for this day and age. The ambassadors were way more tech savvy and described an ever increasingly 'normal' classroom for 2017 to up and coming teachers who were in essence quite anti learning in this way - it was so totally not what I thought would happen! However, by the end of the session I think we had shifted some mindsets and ways of thinking. From questions asked throughout the session it became clear that the uni students were starting to connect to the following key ideas - Rewindable + Visible + Transparent + Personalised + Accessible - and that these result from teaching and learning in a digital way.