Mathletics Ambassador Training

      

On Friday last week I was invited to participate in the Mathletics Ambassador Training with one of our students who has consistently worked hard at Mathletics since he was 7 but I'll leave that story for him to share on his Ambassador blog posts perhaps.

Liam, Karen & Debbie met us at Sky City Auckland and took us up the tower for the New Zealand Ambassadors photo, strong back lighting meant the photo opportunities were limited but nothing a green screen, Godzilla, some kiwis and a ledge couldn't fix.

From there we walked to the Unicef Offices where we learned about School in a Box Kits.

Participation in the World Education Games linked with fundraising for School in a Box is a fabulous combination.  Education and the tools for it are things our students take for granted, for other children it is like a dream come true especially in times of trauma or emergency.

We then met in an amazing space 'Movers & Shakers' where pallets formed individual workspaces, a 'brain' sat in the centre of the warehouse space and a board room was up the other end.  These spaces provided many different ways to work for our Mathletics Ambassadors as they received training and support in the art of blog writing and interview techniques to prepare them for their roles as ambassadors in their schools and communities.

At the end of the day Liam presented the Four Ambassadors with a Samsung 10.1 Galaxy note tablet for their use over the year as Ambassadors - Samsung don't want them back.  The Ambassadors couldn't be happier at that moment.

As a Maths Lead Teacher the challenge is to now support Willem in his role as Ambassador leading up to the World Education Games 2013 and with Mathletics throughout the year. I am also interested in how he finds his Samsung Tablet

Movers & Shakers

Today I am in Auckland. Made possible by 3P Learning, an amazing Mathletics student and our Principal. Willem won NZ Maths Day for Mathletics in 2012 and was invited to be an Ambassador for Mathletics leading up to the World Education Games in March. I was invited tomattend with Willem and his mum. We have been up the Sky Tower, learned about 'School in a Box' with Unicef and are now having a PR and Marketing Session in the fabulous space shown in the photos. Soon these students will be 'presented' with a very cool 'Samsung Product', I have some guesses about what this might be but won't say just yet!

The Movers and Shakers space we are in takes the concept of caves, campfires and watering holes to a whole new level. Pallets form individual workspaces, the boardroom is a fabulous campfire space and the watering hole is a very cool 'brain'. Fun space.

The plan

I shared my wonderings about what learning could be like if we were to take an 'inquiry' approach to all learning areas and my scribblings of ways to merge a few different inquiry models and learning cycles with our school vision. It must have some merit because as a team we worked through it and came up with an initial concept map of sorts. It is vertical in the image however our discussions later see this framework being more horizontal, like a two way street as there will be some coming and going between the phases. We are working on a structure to support our planning for learning and our deliberate acts of teaching based on this framework.

I am excited to see how students coming into our classes from ECE settings may see this as more closely aligned to what they have been used to. I love the opportunities for greater ownership of the learning processes for students.