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

Falling behind

 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.

Digital hoarder

 Hi, my name is Nick and I am a digital hoarder. There, I've taken step one.

From the WSJ

I stopped to take stock of my digital 'stuff' recently and came to the conclusion I have way too many links, bookmarks, saved pages etc than I can ever get through. Just a quick stocktake - I have several thousand bookmarks across my personal and work accounts for a starter.

Then there are the saved pages on Facebook, the likes on Twitter and a few saved posts from Instagram (the least of my 'stashes') that I need to actually go through and look at. I never got into Pocket or Pinterest, so no issues there. I do have over a thousand saved items on my Wakelet account, though but I am working on making these tidier. Another issue is using OneTab to minimise everything. I then save these hoards of additional links as yet another bookmark. 

I know this is ridiculous; I can never get through all of these, without taking a lot of leave and hiding away to read everything. I also know that most of it is probably no longer relevant; after all, if I have not used it recently, then I probably won't use it. I do organise bookmarks etc into folders, supposedly by class and subject, but then I don't use them properly. I am trying to get everything into Wakelet, organised into Spaces and then these can be used as a class website (also allows whanau to connect with what is going on in my classes). If you have never used Wakelet before, it has been described as Pinterest on steroids. It has a myriad of uses and functions and is a very useful tool. If you want a more detailed description of some of the superpowers this tool has, check out this awesome blog post by @pdubyatech 

Maybe I just need to take the time off and hide away to get everything organised... My body certainly feels like this is the best option!

Planning - a nightmare...

I used to have the ubiquitous black planner when I started teaching and this was carted around to each of my lessons (I'm not sure why...) Since I decided that this was not a good idea, I have played with various digital solutions instead, as this is more accessible (and portable) and also has in-built flexibility.

My problem is, I can't decide what system to use, and spend more time than I should trying, creating and scrubbing digital planners, many of which start with the basics of the black planbook and build on that.

I started with Planbook which has a myriad of features, but costs money I don't want (or need) to be
spending. Also, there were issues in terms of timings for me. Our school has a six day timetable with Tuesdays and Thursdays having different timings to the other days. I had to create an 'alternate schedule' for Tuesday week 1, Thursday week 1 and so on, meaning a LOT of additional messing about. 

The next stop was a free programme, similar but with not as many features (still very good though) called Planboard. Visually appealing, and easier for the changeable schedule as I can just adjust the individual day as needed. It irks me that I cannot see the whole day in one go as the boxes are a bit large. Just a small niggle, but one that pushes me away sometimes.

Both of these have grading features and class attendance recording, but both are geared towards the US system for grading - the grade for each piece of work counts towards an overall final grade, not something I want for New Zealand style assessment. Also, both of these features are completed by my SMS (Kamar), so why duplicate?

A NZ-based planner is iUgo. It is designed for our schools and curriculum but is so stupidly expensive (over $100 per year per person!) that I am going to say no more about it. I tried the trial version, and it is not as intuitive or nice to work with as the price would suggest it should be. Absolute fail on most counts (especially the cost, do they think teachers are paid well??)

Another option I have tried multiple variants of is using one or other Google Apps. Docs - created a list of lessons, have done lesson plans through a form that automatically generates a lesson plan etc (like I put that much thought and effort into planning...) Sheets - one week per tab, one sheet per term, have to use Ctrl+Enter to write on a new line, keep fiddling about with the format etc. Slides - I've created my own fabulous planner and tried some of the available ones (Slidesmania has some good templates, but not quite what I am looking for). The other issue is then having to add things like date, day, times, school cycle day etc. Then when you factor in all of the stuff that takes students from the classroom (photos, sports, swimming, relationship talks etc), sometimes things need a whole rejig and a lot of copying and pasting of events from one place to the next. #SIGH#

I'm starting to run out of options.

I tend to fall back on Google Calendar, colour code each class and add links to Drive items etc as necessary. It's not visually the best system (can't tell at a glance what I have planned or whether I need resources such as science gear etc), but I tend to just use emojis to denote specific things to jog my memory, like in the image below, and I can download it straight from Kamar to make it easier to load all of the timetable for the year in.

I don't suppose the perfect system exists for me, but I know I'll keep playing and trying (and getting frustrated and getting rid of) different planner systems. I never seem to be completely at a loss in the lesson, even if not planned to the nth degree (actually, these are often my better lesson...)

I would love to know how everyone else copes with planning. I view it as a necessary evil and will continue as I am for now!