Melanie Hill Mindlab Blog

ACTIVITY 3 : CONTRIBUTION OF TEACHER INQUIRY TOPICS TO MY COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE The two inquiry topics I will consider are: ·          Followership ·          Implementing Technology innovation in the classroom. DESCRIPTIIVE Wenger defines a community of practice as “a group of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion on about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interaction on an ongoing basis” (Wenger, McDermott&Synder,2002,p4) If we are to grow as teachers we need to be part of a community of practice. For me I am part of a department within my school which forms my strongest COP. I also work with other teachers in schools in the Bay of plenty who teach the same subject. This forms my second COP. How these fit the three elements of COP: ·          Joint enterprise – We all wor...

I will use the Gibbs reflective cycle to reflect on subtheme 1: The role of current and emerging technologies in supporting future orientated learning and teaching. DESCRIPTION The context I will reflect on is my own experience over the past 6 months where at our school we have starting a transformation to using the G suite for education platform as a base for ICT within our school. This was introduced towards the end of 2017 and began with making Chromebooks compulsory for the 2018 intake of year 9 students. FEELINGS Initially this came as a shock to me as we had not really been part of any talk around this concept as a staff and while we lacked direction in this space the decision made to go down this path was made by a small group within the school. Once I had my head around the ideas I could see that it was a great opportunity to learn new skills, change my teaching practise and try a different approach. I felt quite excited about the opportunities it presented and th...

Week 17/ My Reflective Practice I will use Jay and Johnsons reflective model (Jay and Johnson 2002) to communicate with you how I use reflection in my current teaching practice. 1.       DESCRIPTION Currently I reflect in a very informal manner. By nature I am constantly reflecting on what I have done and how I could do it better next time and this is true for me also as a teacher. I currently do not write a lot down as I have little time to do this. I find that I do dialogue with my colleagues regularly and adapt what and how I am teaching based on what I have thought or discussed. I do not use a lot of formal research or base decisions on reliable sources but rather my own experience and input from my colleagues and students.   A lot of my reflection is immediate, ongoing and as a result of my students and the way they react to what is happening in the classroom. 2.                COMPARATIVE ...