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 @ 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.