How the heck did that happen? We are in February already. This year, I will be teaching 1 year 9 science, 2 year 10 science, year 11 Earth and space science and year 13 general science. An interesting mix... I've already spent a little bit of time playing with my planner, attendance sheet and markbook (the latter two are duplicating information on our SMS, but I like Sheets, and I like to nose at data in my own way). I am trying not to plan too far ahead at the moment as this part of the year is notoriously changeable. I get to meet my new whanau y9 students and my y9 science class this week, as well as one lesson of year 10s on Friday p5. We have also got Waitangi Day on Thursday which is a public holiday celebrating the founding of Aotearoa New Zealand.
I'm not sure I have the word for the year, and I certainly haven't looked at any of the "wrap" summaries reminding me of things I've not done enough of/ too much of from last year. I know I haven't spent enough time on things that I love (such as reading) - too much mindless scrolling on social media. I could have spent less time on this, definitely, but as someone I follow online (I'm aware of the irony here) reminded me, we make time for the things that we think matter.
I have made a conscious decision to scale back the number of tools I use, especially in planning and admin, where I'll usually subscribe to anything going (free) and then get bogged down - I have blogged about that before... My lesson planning is a great example of this. For some bizarre reason I still have a black planbook (one of the standard ones here in NZ), a subscription to Planbook (until May, then bye bye), Planboard, Notion and my Google Calendar. Notion took a lot of setting up, and while it has some good features, I'm not sure it is what I want. I always end up going back to Calendar.
I have been thinking about AI for obvious reasons as well. I am concerned about it as an environmentalist; the warming this is going to cause could be devastating. But, the time it can save people in their work MIGHT be worth it as a pay-off (the jury is still out). I passionately dislike AI art and music - it should be there to allow people to save themselves time for work things so they have more time for the creative stuff, such as art and music. I also dislike the way that so many AI models scrape from artists and musicians and they get nothing as a result.
As they say, watch this space. I am going to use some of the teacher AI tools judiciously this year and I'll report back as I do.
After a day with new year 9s, I'm shattered. So time to make like Led Zep and ramble on.
It is disturbing how quickly this year has gone past. I feel there is so much to reflect upon, but so little inclination to actually commit my thoughts here. We have 3 days left of the final term; the students have checked out already, and I'm not far behind.
It has been a busy year; the first one in a long time where I have shed a lot of my additional responsibilities and just mostly taught instead. It has been tiring. I am not sure I have used my time wisely and there may have been some serious procrastination going on at times. I think it has been a coping mechanism as I have felt quite stressed at times this year. All under control now, but hey, still enjoy procrastinating... I am more determined to work smarter next year, and may use a bit more AI. I am still wary of it because of the environmental impact it has, and I am not keen to add to global warming.
In July, I managed to get back to England to see family for the first time in 6 years. It was a much needed break and did actually help me to feel a bit happier about things. It did also confirm that we really do want to move back, and that leaving NZ is now a priority. The house has gone on the market already, so we'll see how that goes.
Just after getting back from England, I flew to Melbourne for the EduTech conference, presenting at the Google theatre. Most of the stalls were either focused on the primary sector (not really relevant to my school) or were very Aussie-based (obviously). There were still some displays that were very interesting and useful. It was an enormous event, a lot of people, loads of trade displays. I felt a better map would have been useful for delegates, and the food options were actually really limited. It was good to catch up with my extended digital learning family; especially the Google peeps. There was a huge focus throughout on AI, as one would expect.
Now, we are looking ahead to 2025. A quarter of a century since the Millenium. Today also marks exactly 20 years since I moved to NZ. Hopefully, I won't be here for the 21st anniversary of that. I am already half planning courses for next year, difficult when there are so many uncertainties with it all; however, I'd like to leave everything ready to go for another teacher if it all goes according to plan and the house sells. It's a terrifying prospect in a way - we will not have a lot of time to get everything finalized, the house contents packed up or sold, the cars sold and the cats on their way back to England as well.
A year of challenges, but I'm feeling like I can meet them head on and overcome them. Bring it on!
Good grief, really a year since I updated this blog? My inspiration has been that I don't feel I've been reflecting (on anything...) enough and need to get going again.
I have redirected (hopefully) my custom domain back to this blog, after all it was pointing to a Google Site before, with this blog embedded and exactly the same content on both. What is the point? So, until I can afford a suscription to Wordpress, I am going to continue using Blogger. The custom domain name is https:www.nick-major.com just in case anyone actually has a look at this blog.
In the near future, I am going to add some more thoughts about using Chromebooks, my interactions with Google, my classroom practice etc. Back to doing this regularly (ish). I firstly need to make sure all of the information is correct, all images are still in place (time to create a folder called "Blog" in Drive, perhaps?) and that DNS name servers are pointing in the right direction. Or something along those lines anyway
I've neglected my personal digital stuff for a long time. I haven't posted anything on here for so long it's ridiculous, and having just paid for my website renewal for the next two years, I realised I haven't done anything there either. Bogged down with work, doing the Earth and Space Educators of NZ stuff and the Morris dancing side websites as well, so have really not been showing my spaces some love.
Time for all of that to change. I want to be more reflective in my teaching practice; I've neglected a lot of that sort of thing over the last year. I've fallen out of a lot of my reflective habits in my work, which is not good. Perhaps next year with no senior classes (looking likely that this will be the case), I might focus back on the core aspects of being a science teacher, and try and really work on my delivery and pedagogy. There have beeen so many things thrown at us this year (and the two preceding years) because of COVID and the changes that had brought about. It has meant not really knowing what the heck is going on most of the time. Hopefully this will all start settling down now and we can start going back to a sort of normality where the students enjoy learning and we get to re-enjoy teaching.
I've virtually given up on my ESS students this year as they are really not interested. We didn't get to do any field trips this year (mandate from SLT) and it has impacted on the course I feel.
Onwards and upwards for 2023.
Hi, my name is Nick and I am a digital hoarder. There, I've taken step one.
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| From the WSJ |
