Term 3 Toolkit

Another popular and great toolkit. With the new mathematics and statistics curriculum being slowly rolled out to schools any maths PLD linked to the new curriculum is what teachers want. It is also good for me to put them together and link it to the new curriculum. Unpacking and diving in to the phases and teaching sequece statements.

Generative AI for Educators with Gemini certificate

Being a very stormy wet weekend and sick of watching movies I completted the Google Gemini certificate. It was good to learn about the Prompts and how important they are in getting what you wont and changing and adding till you get what you wont. It was good to see the updates and changes. It was also good to experience and tial things as you went through the course. It is good to keep up to date as AI is changing at such a quick pace.

Google Summit

We started the journey on Sunday with a five-hour drive to Auckland Zana, my daughter and myself. We did manage to get a few hours of shopping in on the way down. I also treated us to accommodation at the Horizon hotel which was lovely. On the first day of the holidays Monday 22 September we attended the Google summit at Albany high in Auckland. It was such a great event with lots of great presenters from around the world. The keynote speaker was Eric Curt from the USA I have followed him online and used a lot of his work in the past. I was also lucky enough while I was at ISTE in Denvor last year to attend some of his workshops face to face so I was looking forward to hearing from him again and attending some of his workshops in Auckland. I also attended gemini, Note take LM, Google vids in movie making, and Chromebook tools. It was also great to catch up with the team and other teachers face to face. It was also nice to be sitting and learning and not presenting. A very worthwhile day even though we didn’t win any swag.

Te Hiku 6th Film Festival

Another very successful film festival with 3 schools sitting during the day and an evening session for the prize giving and whanau. The students were very excited and loved the red carpet and dress up photo both. My highlight was the 3 junior movies we had from 3 schools this year. They were very cute. A lot of work goes into writing the stories, scripts, and storyboards. Then the acting, filming, prompts and editing. Some many great skills learned thr oughout the process. It may be a long day for me but it is worth it watching and listening to the students. You can view them all on the Te Hiku site.

Magic school Bus AI Tool

Dorothey shared some great swag she had received at ISTE with the challenge to update our knowledge by completing the Magic school courses and the first 2 would receive the swag. With it being a very stormy night I was awake very early so started the courses. I found them really interesting and learnt a lot about the latest up dates. I finished the whole lot of the courses. Student dashboard is similar to Hapara- you can pause, block, view and delete threads. 
You can also add co-teachers. The content filter will flag content. Students are added by QR code, link or through google classroom.
You can customise the tools for students specific to standards, rubrics, teacher sequence statements in the new curriculum. Add content you want them to only see. 
They showed debate partner, writing feedback and chat bot. 

The image generator is connected (they have partnered with)Adobe Express. 

I need to go and have a play now that I have completed the courses. 

Term 2 Toolkit Building Mathematical Language and communication

I choose another Mathematics and statistics topic that fits in with the new curriculum. I enjoyed putting it together and finding good resources and templates that teachers could use in the classroom. There were 37 registered to attend my workshop and 22 turned up. There was lots of positive feedback and the one measure of success is seeing the templates and resources being shared in schools and being used.

Term 1 Toolkit 2025

First Toolkit of the year was on Rich mathematics and Statistics tasks and how they fit into the NZC. It was a good workshop to put together as I was able to look for great web sites and apps that already have rich tasks or great activities that can be adapted. I was also able to explore the new curriulum and get them to unpack some rich tasks and create enablers and extenders. Also getting them to look at the teaching sequences and where the activities fit into. I needed more time as we didn't get to the last part of the slide. I was surprised by the amount of schools that have not yet completted the day one PLD for the mathematics and statistics curriculum.

National Mathematics and Statistics Facilitator Role

What a journey it has been, with a very long application process to apply for the role. It involved me having to also fill in an in depth application form. It was great to hear in late November that I had been successful in gaining the role of National Facilitator to role out the new NZ mathematics and statistics curriculum. It started off in December with a two-day training in Auckland just before Christmas. It was a bit of a reunion for me because of the 25 facilitators that were there there were only five of them I didn't know the rest of them I had worked for in my past mathematics and statistics facilitated jobs. It was great to catch up with everybody. The training itself was intense as we unpack and dived into the new mathematics and statistics curriculum. There are four days of training for schools over the next two years and we unpacked each of those days over the two days of training. It was great to get a lot of clarification and clear understanding of what the expectations are for rolling out this new curriculum into schools. The days are great having lots of hands-on activities, maths games with some talking and also unpacking of the front end of the curriculum. There were still a lot of resources and information under development that weren't ready for us to actually look at yet but we're definitely coming out over the next month being ready for us to start at the end of January. I am really looking forward to my new national role.