When I was still in the planning phase of this initiative I recall speaking to a fellow educator about their journey. This educator said to me that when teachers at her school were making the transition they found it difficult existing in both worlds (physical and digital). Now that we have made this transition I find myself knowing exactly what she meant. There is a 'headspace' that you adopt when planning for a digital class and a 'headspace' that you adopt when planning for a more traditional environment. Trying to plan and implement a learning programme for both of these environments simultaneously can provide an educator with logistical problems, to say the least. For example, if you decide to plan your programme digitally you can create access issues for students who do not have a device when they are trying to plan their day. A teacher could plan around this by printing out timetables and learning links for those who do not have a device. However, issues like this begin to eat into already valuable preparation time and, as every educator knows, we never have enough time! I realise that many schools do make blended models work, and I have seen many such excellent models in action, but all I am saying is that with ubiquity you have more resources at your disposal and more options for teaching and learning.
Planning is an area of my practise that is beginning to change. Rather than my planning being a sole record for me and my colleagues, it is now becoming a resource for students and parents. I used to fear this notion, but recently I have begun to enjoy and appreciate the importance of having your planning accessible to everyone, as it enables students to talk about their learning using the planning resource as a guide and scaffold. Parents can also use it to ask their child relevant questions about the learning at school. Is this not a valuable exercise? It is a work in progress at the moment but isn't everything? I must say that I was inspired by seeing what the ever-inspiring Point England School did with their planning programmes, which were accessible through their website.
Finally, I would just like to talk about the individual blogs that are slowly becoming widespread at our school. Having ubiquitous access to a device enables the power of blogging to come to the fore. I am excited about seeing how students are able to publish their learning and writing. Previously, when using devices with students, there were issues around access and reliability. I admit these issues were exaggerated because this was before our school's infrastructure was upgraded - our hardware was aging. This year, however, students have been able to blog when they want to blog! This gets their thoughts and ideas to the world more quickly. I am excited to see how this development continues in the coming months.
I have been enjoying teacher more than ever before in the last 4 weeks. Our infrastructure is good and reliable and I am able to plan without the fear of needing to try and fit a square peg in a round hole. I am able to focus on teaching, learning and developing student agency and I LOVE it!
