The end???

So here we are - the end of The Postgraduate Certificate in Applied Practice (Digital and Collaborative Learning)! 32 weeks of learning - some more beneficial than others. I can look back and say I have learnt quite a lot, and have changed aspects of my teaching, due purely to things I have learnt over the course of this course.

The Key Change I am focusing on in this blog is my introduction of technology use in the classroom - particularly OneNote. This falls under 2 of the "Hack Education" themes: Technological and Innovative.  It also is part of the teachers code : TEACHING: Teach and respond to learners in a knowledgeable and adaptive way.

What drove me to make this change? Over the course of my time in the mindlab, a constant refrain was the importance of teaching students 21st century skills. Many of the students I teach don't use computers at home or have access to the internet - so it is vitally important that they learn how to use these skills before heading into the workforce or education. 

There are also many benefits to using the OneNote tool - it allows for instant student feedback, everything is collated in one place, and students can access past lessons if they missed learning.

The data I have gathered is mostly observational - although in their first internal assessment, 95 percent of this class passed - an outstanding achievement - although not fully attributable to the use of  OneNote.

I have also used a range of other educational technologies, including edpuzzle - which I have become a bit of a devotee of and am always trying to convince other teachers to use!

Other areas I would like to explore more in my practice include collaboration and equality. Collaboration - because it is such an important aspect of life, yet one that is unfortunately rather hard to focus on in a classroom. Equality, because I work in a school that gets the rough end of the stick a lot of the time, with students who need as much help as they can get. What ways can technology work to reduce inequality?

It is often only when I reflect on my teaching that I  realise I have used something I learnt over the course of the mindlab. I believe this is a great thing - as it has become part of my subconscious conception of myself 'as a teacher', and I hope that this continues throughout my journey as a teacher.

Kia Tamatane