A time of reflection

Currently, I am working with my feet in two worlds. On one hand, I am trying to get my seniors sorted for exams, final hand ins of assessments and making sure my juniors are engaged, despite the fact we are in term 4 and everything feels like it is all over the place. On the other hand, I am in the middle of leaving NZ permanently to move back to England and am applying for jobs and trying to get the massive logistical operation in place. I am being pulled in multiple directions and do not want to compromise either world.

The move is something we have wanted for about 3 years, but has just become feasible as we have sold our house (finally...). The timing is not too bad, as the NZ school year is winding down and the English school year will be back in action after Christmas. Once we are there and I am in a better position to think single-nationally, it will be easier and I can just get cracking. In the meantime, it is being a pain in the proverbial.

One of the issues of the move is the change in curriculum. The KS3 and KS4 curricula from the UK are nothing like they were when I last had experience of it, which while the content is much the same as NZ, does mean a bit of an upskilling in the way English schools work. And as for the acronyms and jargon, wow. Still, once I get my feet under the table over ther, I'll find it all easy to come to terms with.

Wish me luck.

Getting my A into G (that's GEG...)

I have been a leader of the GEGNZ (Google Educators' Group New Zealand) for over 10 years; I think I may have even been a part of its inception. I love the idea of connecting educators that have a passion for something - I am very passionate about Google Workspace for Edu, and love to share good ways for people to use them.

Late last year, Google formalised the process of being a leader to make it all work a little better. We had to
do a simple application with a 1 minute video about what we hope to do. I suck at doing videos, I never believe in myself and just hate video/ audio of me (even though almost everyone hates this for themselves as well...). Today, I just got on with it. I am not going to post it here, as it is still too "cringe" as my students would say. And it was easy. A few notes, 2 takes and that was it, pain over. 

GEGNZ is not a huge group (about 800 members, not all of them very active), which reflects the fact we are a small country.  And yet, there are educators here doing some stunning and inspirational stuff - at one point, we had more Certified Innovators per capita than any other country (except Iceland, which with a population of less than 400,000 people, even one Innovator will tip the numbers!)

I see our GEG growing and progressing - I want to see these educators championed and their work shown off. They are people we can all learn something from, and I think that needs to be the strength of our GEG - we need to have these people talking to others about what they do and how. We no longer have a nationally-run education technology conference, uLearn has closed down. However, we are going back to having a Summit this year (hooray!) with Deploy Learning leading the charge. This is exciting. Another place for our fabulously clever people to showcase what they do. 

Here's to many more years of GEGNZ, whether I am here with them for the journey, or somewhere else. It has been an important part of who I have become, and will stay with me as well.

Term 2 thoughts

I always think blogging seems like a good idea, but in reality I never get myself around to writing anything. Something I think I need to rectify; as a friend pointed out, it could mean ownership and permanence when as Chris Betcher points out any billioinaire tech bro could pull the plug or change things irrevocably in a direction that means losing my stuff. He has really got me thinking about my online presence.

Revitalising my blog might be a way to maintain a safe space for my thoughts and content. I am nowhere near as prolific as Chris in that respect, I've only done about 60 posts on here in total. But a lot of the other places online have become toxic and I am no longer keen to be in those places. 

I need to make a commitment to post on here more frequently and I'll see how it goes. I'll give it a year - we'll see how it goes.

February 2025 - back to school wanderings..

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.

End of the year fast approaching

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!

A social dilemma

I am in a quandary. I am not a great fan of most social media but feel I need to air my thoughts on here. My favourite of all time was Google+ (or G+, then Currents as it became). I was connected to so many cool educators and we talked about awesome stuff. Then Google killed it, with no alternative to turn to.I have had a Twitter account for 12 years, with thousands of interactions. I killed it because Elon is a dick, and I can't get behind anything he does, ever. The trolls, racists and Trumpists broke it. It became a cesspit of the worst types of people. I checked earlier out of curiosity; my account is dead and gone. No chance of resurrection so I am walking away from it completely. I feel mildly bereft that so many cool interactions in both of these platforms are gone forever. 

I use Facebook, but keep it very private. Not a useful place to connect although it does have times when it is useful. Not a big fan though, and I find plenty I don't like. 

Instagram - not a place for decent social interaction. Likewise Threads. It started with promise but is full of crap. The diaspora has spread.

Mastodon feels like I am shouting into the void and there is not even an echo. Ghost town would be an understatement. 

Bluesky is a bit exclusive as it is invite-only at the moment. Starting to gain some traction among educators though, so it is showing a little (slow-moving) promise. I will be focusing a little more on building this one.

I am using LinkedIn a bit more, it seems to be reasonably OK in terms of the people I connect with, but we don't have fabulous discussions like I had on G+ and Twitter/X. Has the world moved on and left me feeling more anti-social media? Or have I moved on? We'll have to see what happens a year from now if any of these other sites gains traction. It's a shame to have to leave good channels of communication behind. If anyone has any better suggestions for places to connect with like-minded souls, hit me with them!

*SIGH* I'm now bored of Insta, Threads etc. I am sticking to Mastodon and BluSky as well as my Facebook...

A year on: catching up

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