With the Makerspace temporarily out of action in our dedicated (temporary) space I am working alongside teachers to support them creating 'pop-up' spaces in their own classroom environments. By sharing photos like these and reflecting on these learning opportunities I hope to inspire teachers to support and value the Maker Movement.

I presented two workshops at Ulearn in Hamilton this year, "Developing a Makerspace in a Primary Environment" and "iPad in the Early Years". The Makerspace workshop had a very large group (in a very challenging space!) and many schools have said they would like to visit us in the future. I also supported fellow ADE's and our Principal and DP who also presented. 

I attended an ADE dinner at Ulearn hosted by Meredith Bean (DE) and Jeff Vardy and enjoyed the opportunity to have rigorous discussions with likeminded colleagues.

The beginning of August saw the first day get together of our newly formed 'Content Creation Team'. This team consists of ADE's, myself, Doro Collier, Trudi Fausett and prospective future ADE's Richard Williams and Joanna Weldon. Our purpose is to create and publish  content both multi touch books and iTunes U Courses. this content may be teacher directed or student focused. My role within the team initally  is to build teacher capacity and foster sustainability moving forward.

We plan to meet once a term, this first get together was purely professional development focused with me taking teachers through the design process and principals of creating a Multi touchbook. I shared content created by other ADE's, Cathy Hunt, Craig Smith and Steve Papp. I hope to have everyone publishing their first book by the end of the year. In November we will meet to strategically plan for 2018.

This process was hugely reflective for me as I realised just how much I had learnt and far I had come in my authorship. I had certainly learnt the hard way and throughly enjoyed sharing some tips, tricks, tools and online assets (e.g. Flat icon, Noun Project, Status Barred) with my colleagues to make their journey not only faster but certainly less stressful.

In August we also had a group of educators from Seatoun Primary School in Wellington visit us. I had previously been a keynote speaker at an Apple Leadership conference and had shared the stage with their Principal John Western. One of TAKP's ADE's currently contracted to Apple (Glen Storey) is working with this school and accompanied them on their visit. It is always useful to share, reflect on and challenge your own school wide practises to better inform and impact on next steps. 

Wow, what an exciting month!

I was extremely privileged to be selected to attend the Apple Distinguished Educators Academy in Melbourne as Alumni along with our two new ADE's (Trudi Fausett and Dorothea Collier). New Zealand was extremely well represented with 5 new ADE's for the class of 2017.

In June we had a group of 12 Principals from across the Cambridge Principals Association visit our school and the Makerspace. 

Preparation for the MADE Awards (Movie and Digital Excellence) continues with me chairing our first big meeting for this Year. It's such a wonderful opportunity to be able to offer NZ Year 0-8 students the chance to share their learning and to celebrate their talents. This years event promises to be even bigger and better than before!

I continue to work alongside our Senior Leadership Team to guide and support our teachers working in ILE (Innovative Learning Environments). This involves guiding and mentoring teachers through the 'Open to Learning Conversation' process and challenging them to 'Lead their own learning' alongside their students. Change can be an unsettling process and several teachers are currently 'in the pit' (James Nottingham).

During the month of May I have had two groups of educators from schools across the country visit the Makerspace. Sharing our journey of discovery in this space has been rewarding as I reflect on what has worked and what needs refining. I love the fact that I have never actually visited a Makerspace in action so wasn't strongly influenced by other peoples choices. I researched over a period of 2 years and connected via Twitter and the ADE community with those already immersing themselves in this 'movement' and had rich and informative conversations. I took from each connection or reading what I felt best fitter our Kura (school) and the needs of our tamariki (children). Even though I am obviously technology passionate my love for books and all things literacy drove my decision to base lessons in our Makerspace around a picture book, I stand by this decision 100%.

During May I was asked to Keynote at an Apple Leadership Conference in Auckland. I was one of three presenters, joined by Maurice Rehu (Principal of Richmond Primary in Napier) and John Western (Principal of Seatoun School in Wellington). Once again this event proved to be a wonderful opportunity to make new connections and to share our school journey with another group of Educational Leaders from across Aotearoa.  

April was such an exciting term with a very busy presenting calendar. I was asked to Keynote at a series of Apple events catering for teachers in the Early Years (in Perth and Sydney). I presented alongside fellow ADE Jenny Jongste and formed a strong connection and lifelong friendship. Jenny is involved in the pre-service side of teacher professional development and I found her Keynote very inspiring and was left wishing New Zealand did something similar - all too often beginning teachers are coming out with very little if any digital technology experiences. When more and more schools are becoming well resourced ALL teachers need to ensure they are able to meet the needs of today's digital savvy students. I was also lucky enough to visit two Apple Distinguished Schools while I was in Australia and found this very humbling when I was approached as 'the author of the Oral language book'......I found it interesting to hear that so many teachers were using this resource.....I wonder if this is the same in my own country?

The Makerspace is well underway and feedback has been overwhelmingly positive both from Teachers, students and whanau. I blog almost everyday and share the learning experiences that have taken place, click HERE to view the Makerspace Blog page. I also cross post some of my reflections onto the NZ Teachers Facebook page which has more than 25,000 members, so the blog is getting a lot of hits and interest. I have had several requests to visit our space and are connecting via social networking and FaceTime with many teachers embarking on the Maker space journey. 

Earlier this year I supported three teachers from our school in applying to become ADE's and with that taking on board their Apple Teacher PD (as well as completing my own). We all had such a positive experience in completing these badges and knew our staff would benefit greatly from taking part as well. Having Donna Smith (our ANZ Apple Board representative set down the challenge via our ADE Facebook page certainly helped spur our competitive natures too!) So this month I introduced the possibility of our whole staff becoming Apple Teachers and within 2 weeks 31 staff had completed a minimum of one of the three options - Apple Teacher iMac, iPad or Swift. Our Principal and the whole senior management team were on board and staff appreciated learning alongside them and seeing that we are all in this together regardless of our role within the school. In fact as at this week we have almost all staff with both iMac and iPad badges completed and many with all 3! We are the first school in ANZ to complete the challenge - hopefully the first of many as this PD was invaluable both to affirm what we already knew, to deepen our understanding and to introduce new learning in some instances. Many teachers mentioned they just didn't realise what they did know until sitting the badges and also just how competitive they became to complete all 8. A HUGE shout out to Apple for this initiative which has certainly helped to support our school culture of inclusion, support and guidance to be the best educators we can be (which of course impacts on positive student outcomes which is why we are all here!).

​Visit this link for more about the Apple Teacher programme

This has been an action packed month with the beginning of my Makerspace, you can see frequent updates and sharing on my Makerspace blog HERE. Over the term I will be working with all 650 students at the school at least 3 times! I have been inspired by Cathy Hunt and although not totally ART based it will be an infusion of divergent thinking, creating, designing and innovating with a strong emphasis on storytelling and student voice.

This month I have also published my collaborative ADE project with Bec Power. We connected with another local school and 6 teachers to produce what we feel is a very valuable and easily accessible iPad resource - Developing Literacy with iPad. I am hoping that this year I can initiate a NZ wide project and then perhaps even a global project!

School began again this month with three teacher only days to launch our new curriculum and set ourselves up for success for the forthcoming year.

I continue to work on my ADE collaborative project with Bec Power (ADE) which has teachers contributing from TAKP, Tahatai Coast School and Gold Sands Primary and hope to publish this next month.

I am researching, reading, experimenting and trialling new ideas to implement in my new Makerspace. I won't be able to set up the new space until February but have began planning lessons, collecting resources and recycling materials (we are going to need a mountain of 'junk'). With every class in the school (over 600 students) rotating through I have so many wonderings about how this space will evolve. I will gather a Tech Team of capable Year 5 and 6 students to support teachers, experiment with new technologies, build robots and lego ready for programming, immerse themselves in coding apps to feedback their thinking.....so much to do and so little time! I'm sooooooo excited! Don't forget to visit our Makerspace website to learn more. I'm also eagerly awaiting another delivery of books from Amazon.....these ones are all creativity and values based. Many have come from suggestions through the ADE community and social networking.....how did we ever cope without Twitter and Pinterest?
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