Category: Planning and Organisation

Stress and uncertainty

Marika SimonPlanning and Organisation / Practice / UncategorizedLeave a comment

Hot on the heels of my feelings of triumph and competence came the creeping panic and overwhelming stress of the end of the year. Last Thursday, I had little stress flutters all throughout the day, which was not helpful when trying to accomplish the tasks that I assume were setting off these attacks. I am lucky that I work in a small school with supportive staff. Several times that day I was asked if everything was okay and help and support were offered to me. This was helpful on the one hand, on the other hand I felt like something must be seriously wrong for everyone to notice that I was so stressed out. I want to project the image of having it all together and being a source of support and assistance – not the beneficiary of it!

I guess my lesson for today is: it takes a village to build a library (and to build a librarian). None of us can be truly successful on our own – together we are stronger, better, and brighter. So, I am giving a shout out of thanks to the staff members who asked after me and offered their help on Thursday. I am also giving a big shout out to Lindy at Abbey’s Bookshop who helped me find some library award books on Friday – the time spent poring through the children’s section with her was deeply restorative to my soul and equilibrium. And today or tomorrow, I will also try to take a piece of advice given to me by my library assistant recently and make a list of what needs to be done. I did not really want to face everything in black and white, but I think I need to organise and prioritise my tasks to get it all done.

How are you handling the mad rush at the end of the year?

School Leadership Structure – Brainstorming Session 1

Marika SimonETL504 / Planning and OrganisationLeave a comment

Inspired by my classmate Liz’s post  where she started to get out her ideas for the first ETL504 Assessment, I think I will start some brainstorming of my own.

Icon: Brainstorm by Simon Child from the Noun Project
Brainstorm by Simon Child from the Noun Project

My understanding of our task is:

Using what you have learned in Module 2 and 3 – design the ideal 21st Century Learning change-oriented school leadership structure, including the TL/Library within that structure.
Pick 15 – 20 key concepts to portray that leadership structure visually in a concept map.
Write an argument that critically analyses your leadership structure – referring to your concept map and the literature.

Here are some potential concepts:

Continue reading “School Leadership Structure – Brainstorming Session 1”

New Session – High Goals

Marika SimonETL504 / ETL507 / INF520 / Planning and OrganisationLeave a comment

Subject Outlines have been released for 201960 – Session 2 of my second year in the course. Even though I am feeling fairly tired, I am raring to go as I am (perhaps recklessly) aiming to do 2 1/2 subjects this session along with working 3 days per week. I am motivated to try to get the Dean’s List award for my second year as well as my first, which requires finishing the course by the end of Session 3. Additionally, I am more interested in the elective available this session (INF520 Preservation of Information Resources) than the one available in Session 3 (INF506 Social Networking for Information Professionals).

So, I am charging out of the gate to see what I can get accomplished in the lead up to the actual start of session in a fortnight. Here are my goals after a brief look at the Subject Outlines.

ETL507:

  • Do the pre-study visit modules and quiz, when it gets loaded
  • Follow up with Uni of Sydney about placement application
  • Try to get placement sorted during the first week of school holidays

ETL504:

  • Read through assessment requirements carefully for both assessments, especially Assessment 1
  • Look at the supplementary materials on concept mapping in the Assessment 1 description
  • Do any other preliminary requirements, like logging Thinkspace blog, Intro on Student Cafe, etc

INF520:

  • Read through assessment requirements carefully
  • Do any preliminaries
  • Start in on Module 1 from the PDF versions in resources (making sure to compare once live versions are available)

That should keep me busy!

Final project feedback plea

Marika SimonOnline Learning / Planning and Organisation2 Comments

Desperately seeking collegial collaboration!

For the final project for my subject on Literature In Digital Environments, we need to create a digital storytelling project that is applicable for use in our professional context. Our proposed project is meant to have collaborative input from colleagues and classmates. To that end, I would love feedback regarding the feasibility, appropriateness and interest factor of some of my project ideas.

My context in brief (or as brief as possible for me):

  • Primary Teacher
  • Currently working as a casual only when Uni is not in session
  • I have a school I do most of my work at – I’ll call it “XPS” – but I have not done much this year because of Uni and they are currently having a major shuffle in the exec as the Principal and a DP moved on in the past 6 months, so the entire Exec Admin level is shaken up.
  • I will be exploring the possible creation of NESA-Accredited PD courses with a colleague who has attended their training session – in the English KLA, likely centering around English Textual Concepts.

Ideas:

“Quarantine Station Stories” – Looking at stories from the Quarantine Station in Manly – basing on a piece I wrote for Historicool magazine with several pieces of short historical fiction based on actual stories related to quarantine at the station. – Look at creating interactivity, perhaps content creation facility… connection to source documents.

  • Links to curriculum – geography – places, spaces, features that suit the site for quarantine, different uses over time; History – local history (reasonably local (45 min drive) to most places I teach); English – authority (primary sources, secondary sources), genre – historical fiction
  • Context – could be used at multiple schools, could be used in PD context
  • Drawbacks – technical skill, might need to coordinate/get permissions from State Library NSW or Q Station for materials

Continue reading “Final project feedback plea”

Picking literature to review

Marika SimonPlanning and Organisation1 Comment

I had really hoped to have my first review done for the second assessment task in INF533 by this past Friday. The thing that is holding me up is the question of what to choose.

I would really like to have my three examples cover not only three different digital literature categories, as specified in the assignment, but also to cover the breadth of my K-6 teaching context. If possible, they would represent different genres and/or text purposes as well. Therefore, I am hesitating to commit myself to a review until I am sure which items will be part of my suite of reviews.

One issue I am struggling with is what to count as “literature” as some examples I find stray more towards music, visual art or performance art (Andrews, 2000-2018) and other fine examples of works with digital affordances that enhance quality text are informational (Field of Mars Environmental Education Centre, n.d.) or journalistic(News Corp Australia, n.d.) in nature.

Another area of struggle is that many of the really interesting web-based works or born-digital works using app or online platforms that I have found seem most appropriate to only the highest level of primary school or, truly, to high school or beyond.

The Boat Interactive Webcomic – Matt Huynh. (Huynh, n.d.). A bit too intense for Year 6?


Device 6 – one of the most enjoyable text-based experiences I have had in months! (simogo, 2013)

I think that I am narrowing down my list, though, so hopefully a review post will be hitting the aether soon!

 

References

Andrews, J. (2000-2018). Oppen do down. Retrieved from http://vispo.com/vismu/oppen/index.html.

Field of Mars Environmental Education Centre. (n.d.). Multi-touch books. Retrieved from http://fieldofmarseec.nsw.edu.au/digital-learning/multitouch-books/.

Huynh, M. (n.d.). The boat interactive webcomic – Matt Huynh [Streaming video]. Retrieved from http://www.matthuynh.com/the-boat/.

News Corp Australia. (n.d.). Kids news: News for kids. Retrieved from https://www.heraldsun.com.au/kids-news/news.

simogo. (2013, July 31). Device 6 – reveal trailer [Streaming video]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/KrpAzVcebhg.

Planning for session 2 week 1

Marika SimonPlanning and Organisation / UniversityLeave a comment

So, this is it. Tomorrow the second session officially starts. I have planned my week in my usual way from last session:

planning sheets for week 1

As you may be able to tell, I have a lot of Teaching Guide writing to do this week, so it is a good thing that I have already gotten started on some of the Week 1 material from my subjects. Hopefully I have allocated enough time, because I am apparently going with my husband to pick our daughter up from the airport tomorrow rather than outsourcing it completely… goodbye sweet couple of hours!

I am wondering if my relatively unstructured planning is sufficient for this session. I tend to make a list of things that need to be done (or that I hope to achieve) in the week and then allocate blocks of time to Uni (the dusty pink unlabelled blocks on the schedule). I wonder if I need to specify some time slots this time around. Perhaps at least allocate a blogging time. Perhaps I’ll allocate Friday afternoon for weekly blogging reflections in both subjects, with bonus slots during the week for particular assigned blog posts or module-review posts.

If anyone is actually reading this and has any tips for how you plan your week to balance Uni with other facets of life – and make sure you get all or most or at least the most vital things done – please share them in the comments!

Back To Top
Skip to toolbar