#TeachmeetNZ meets Science – Awesome happened

A couple of weeks ago I get an e-mail from Cath at the Science learning hub asking me if I wanted to be involved in a Science #teachmeetNZ. I hadn’t participated in an online teachmeet before, but was keen to help out in anyway I could, and I love working with Cath, so of course said yes and was given the roll of twitter broadcaster. It also meant I got to worth Sonya van Schaijik again after she did an amazing job moderating a #scichatNZ chat on sharing best practice.

wearing my #scichatNZ hoody for the occasion.

Like all things, there is a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes, and there were practice sessions, checking timings, review slides, making revisions etc. Then there were the last minute kinks and practices, and then we were live. I really have to acknowledge the hard work and amazing support the Sonya put in – nothing seemed to bother her and she always had an answer. She was also incredibly understanding of my occasional dropping in and out due to my todler being a spoon about going to bed.

It was a little bit weird being the broadcaster on the day- because I wasn’t involved in the actually GHO I couldn’t talk directly to the presenters. I did flick a few messages via twitter or e-mail, and it worked really well.

The quality of the presenters was exceptional. I am constantly amazed at both the quality of educators in NZ and how generous they are with their time.

the highlights for me were

@MissDtheTeacher talking about removing the ceiling from students learners. I only wish I had the freedom of timetable and content that she has. But there were still things for me to think about – especially in my approach to teaching my juniors. Why do I have to stop at the ‘prescribed level’? How can I differentiate my lessons so I can meet all of my learners needs? And most importantly, how can I model life long learning and learn along side my classes rather than being the sole bearer of knowledge.

@MattyNicoll is always awesome sauce. His advice – Don’t wait for it to be perfect to get started: Just get started – is something I need to remember. So often it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the quality of resources and educators out there and fall into the same trap my students do – not wanting to start in case it is not good enough. So I need to keep making the effort, finding the time and working on making my lessons more accessible at all times.

There was also an interesting discussion around the ‘stats’ of when the youtube clips where being watched – 2am in the morning before internals was a common time. Is this a good thing or a bad thing, yip students should be asleep, but also at least they are accessing the info at some point. I used to pull all nighters before big uni exams….. horses for courses perhaps

@TheMrsRogers did a fabulous presentation on the importance of being a connected educator. Her advice was heartfelt and summed up my thoughts exactly.

@2footgiraffe talking about making 6secondvideos was something new for me, and I am definitely going to look into using this with my classes. Short, sharp awesomeness sounds perfect for my Yr 10 class.

@Doctor_Harves talking about Kahoot – I have seen this before (at U-learn I think) and had forgotten about it, but will also explore using this with my classes.

I also really enjoyed learning more about the Royal Society Science leadership scholarship from Jennie Lyall, and was super impressed with the work Dianne Christenson – some of the bubble experiments her students had done were awesome. And while coding isn’t a strength of mine, is was interesting to learn about how Belinda is using it in her classroom – coding is on my list to get to.

You can watch the teachmeetNZ session recording via the link below

There will be another #teachmeetNZ happening on April 11, and then another science focus on november and I will be queueing up to help out again. It was a really rewarding way to spend an hour (and a bit) on a saturday afternoon. I also learned alot about running digital meetings and some tricks for presenting in this format. I had some interesting conversations with fellow educators, and got another teacher from my school signed up for #scichatNZ. So by accepting a ‘job’ I learned a whole lot and had a good time doing it.

Thanks everyone, and see you at the next one