ISTE 2024

This year for the first time Manaiakalani announced 2 opportunities for facilitators to apply for fellowships to attend the ISTE Conference in Denver in 2024. I decided you had to be in to win, I probably wouldn't get chosen as we have lots of very good academic people that would write amazing applications. So with the wonderful support of AI tools Bard and ChatGPT I added the application questions and got some interesting answers and different ways of looking at the questions. So I pulled out the key points of both AI tools and then added my personal touch to the answers. I had just got back from my leave on Saturday and the application was due on Sunday. So I spent a few hours putting it all together and sent in my application. To my surprise I got an email from Jenny to tell me that I had been accepted and would be off to the conference. I was very shocked and also very excited. I danced around the house and rang my husband and daughter to let them know.

We leave on Friday 21 June 2024 and return Sunday 30 June the conference is 23-26 June so we have a couple of days to have a look around Dener. The countdown is on.

Term 4 Toolkit Mathigon

 After my BOI Summit workshop on creativity in Maths I decided to unpack one of the apps I modelled in more details. So in the holidays I choose Mathigon mainly because the manipulatives on there are so amazing and easy to use. So I upskilled myself by watching all the turorital videos and practicing all the fantastics opportunities to use this site in your maths lessons. Also another very attractive reason it is free and not only can be used in your brouser but also apple and android apps available that are also free.

Being term 4 I did not have a lot register my numbers where down to only 12 and knowing from the past that meant I would probably only get half turn up. This time I was wrong only 5 turned up. One registered person did do the professional thing and email me to say they could not make it. Thanks Penny from Paihia. The 45 minutes was probably not long enough to show everything as there is far to much but they did get a better insite into all the things that area available and the turtorial videos are there to rewind back to and watch if needed. 

Having my workshop at the same time as the Melbourne cup was on was probably not a good idea either.

Wananga 2023

 This year thanks to our convenor John and the embarrassment of only 3 of us there last year. We had a good turn out of representatives from the Te Hiku cluster, 7 of our schools were represented and Diane from the Te Hiku Trust. 

I travelled down on Tuesday night and stayed the night. This was much better than trying to get the early flight from Kerikeri. I was fresh and alert for the day. We went over the researches presentation as a group of facilitators. We also looked at the activities we would be supporting our clusters to complete. This was a good opportunity to ask questions and clarify things that the leaders would ask. Also a good opportunity to up skill ourselves in areas we were not to sure about or experts in. The bonus was our research team on the day was only a viber chat away. 

That night we had our christmas dinner at the Panmure Yacht club and farewelled some very special people Makore, Cheryl and Anne. With a busy 2 days ahead of us I was not up to late night so we got dropped off by the wonderful Andrea in the van. 

Using the theatre this year was great to hear the speakers and a very big screen to view the slides. The theatre was comfortable and also stopped leaders from working on their computers. The presentations where to the point and perfectly timed. Then we moved to break out rooms to work as a cluster. We had great discussion and conversations around the data. Some leaders did need training in how to navigate their way around edpotentail. Our cluster realised the importance of 5 or more observations in each school to get school data and would make a better effort next year to achieve this. 

The first day was a great success and a nice surprise with an open bar thanks to BP tech. It was a real treat to sit outside in the sun catching up with leaders and colleagues over a few drinks. Then off to dinner in the restaurant which was beautiful. It was very crowded and hard to talk as it was very noisy. I snuck off after dinner for a early night with another big day ahead of us.

The next day our cluster at dinner had convinced John to carry on in the convenors role and Sacha would take it on in 2025. Which is great and I really enjoy working with John. He is collaborative and very well respected amongst the leaders and educators in Te Hiku.  

It was a fantastic event our cluster had great robust discussions and set some goals across the cluster for 2024. Our leaders that came really enjoyed the 2 days and felt they had a much better understanding of Manaiakalani and the great resources and oportunities there are available for the teachers and schools. They also realised how innovative and forward thinking Manaiakalani is and how lucky they are to be part of the fantastic program. I myself also came away feeling motivated and enthusiastic as our cluster is positive and paddling our waka in the same direction.