"Never stop learning because life never stops teaching"

MINDLAB: SESSION 1:

Today I had the great opportunity to meet  a range of teachers from a range of teaching backgrounds at my very first mind lab session. To begin with we started with writing down 3 main reasons of why we were here on different post-it notes and stick them on the back wall.

We looked at the future of teaching/learning and where it would take us in the future in terms of what types of occupations there would be.

We also did a collaborative Icebreaker at beginning of our session where we were given a post-it note where we had to write something about ourselves that no-one else knew and then we had to walk around and find our match and share something about ourselves with our match. We then we had to introduce our partner to the class and tell the class something that we learnt about our partner. This was a really good ice breaker and I can really see using this in my classroom. This was a fun way of engaging with each other and finding something we didn't know about another person in the class.

We then went onto looking at the 4 platforms we would be using during our postgrad journey.
These are as per below:

4 main platforms of learning:

• Portal
• Google+ community
• United Library
• Your reflective blog.

Discussion:

What is knowledge?

Is to google to know?

What is the purpose of Education?
I really liked this quote about the purpose of Education which really caught my attention:

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION:

As s group we were to work together collaboratively to create a presentation on what knowledge means as well as the purpose of education. Here is what we came up with as a group. Great work team! Great collaboration and team work! Ka Pai!

Some of the key words that we came across which is new learning for me are as per below:

Ontology, epistemology, axiology, purpose of Education. 

I am really looking forward to further learning in this postgrad what these words mean and how I can apply these terms into my teaching and learning. 

We looked at what is Epistemology. Here is a video that we looked at that defines this theory. 

(Gert Biesta's Domains)

PURPOSE OF EDUCATION

We also watched this video on Gert Biesta's "Purpose of Education" Here are some points that I got from his video: 

• Questioning what is means to be in the world.
• The need to understand the need of Education.
• Infertile desire-Education about human being who are interacting.
• "Focus on the child" education being personalised and tailoring learning to meet the child's needs"
• Education should help children to exist in the world in a grown up way.
• Fuel the desire to want to exist in the world in a grown up way. 
• Identity, finding your identity. Where we live with other human beings in the planet and how we interact and engage with them. 

We also looked at leadership. We watched this video and below I have included some points about leadership. 

• Engagement and close attention: Working alongside and in partnership  (insync)-more expression.
• Misconceptions/ being passive. 
• Showing off follower: more about them then then working in partnership and working together.
• Approach on the follower can affect the leader. 

In regards to to the purpose of Education on my classroom and weather it is visible in my classroom, I would say, yes it is.  Education in my classroom is meaningful-meaningful to the leaners. Learning and teaching activities that are done in my classroom are ones that children can make connections with where they are using the knowledge that they already had as well as adding to that knowledge like a evert growing tree.  It not only is it a digital classroom but children are able to be creative in the classroom and they are able to use the  "Learn, create, share" theory as a form of sharing their thinking, knowledge and understanding.  In terms of my classroom, we are still working and developing on children becoming more independent and self managed learners.  I have a range of different learning abilities in my class, and to be honest at times it can be hard and I try my best to be able to cater for those needs in an engaging and interactive way. I believe this course will help me in terms of giving me more guidance as well as ideas in terms of how I could best cater for these children so that they are able to collaborate more with each other and set them up for success in the future.


Today was the beginning of a new journey and I am looking forward to the rest of this journey and engaging in the learning as well as interacting and forming new relationships with teachers from different walks of life.