Applied Practice Reflection Week 25 Activity 1 My Practice within the Community

My Practice Within the Community of Learning. 

As a secondary Social Sciences teacher of Social Studies and Geography, my community of practice has grown rather large of the past 13 years of teaching. My communities of practice have also changed significantly over those years of teaching. My current community of practice is the Social Sciences Faculty, BYOL Pilot Teachers Group, and my students, Year 9 and 10 Social Studies, 11 Geography classes. 

(Wenger, 2000) Said the following things about a Community of practice, 

• Joint enterprise: is a shared domain which is the “collectively developed understanding of what the community is about”.
• Mutual engagement: within the community, the members engage through interactions, building mutual trust in the relationships.
• Shared repertoire: is “the communal resources” that the community of practice produce 

The community of practice which is specific to me is the Social Sciences Faculty and the BYOL pilot teachers learning group, My students, Years 9 and 10 Social Studies and Year 11 Geographers. 

We have shared Social Sciences goals inline with our school goals:

The Social Studies programme will support an improvement in the ability and achievement (to show an increase of at least 15%) of all students to communicate ideas and skills from the February Pre Skills Test to the November Post Skills Test. This goal will be achieved if students have increased their original result by 15%.

Last year I was the acting assistant HOF and TIC of Junior Social Studies, TIC Year 11 Geography. and the Tech Leader in my Faculty. I believe that my role within my community is a leader, but also an active member. This is my joint enterprise. 

This year I have continued to be involved in leading technology in the department and have delivered professional development in using Edpuzzle as a learning tool in the classroom.

Shared repertoire: The Edpuzzle assignment is now in the Edpuzzle Classroom for Social Sciences Teachers. 

This is me delivering Edpuzzle to my Social Sciences Faculty in my classroom, 22/2/17. I set up some flipped learning with my Faculty, made an assignment and shared before delivering my PD. So Far, my assisting HOF and HOD History has been using the tool, I have continued to branch out by designing some flipped learning tasks for my 11 Geography students who will complete the skills and concepts paper at the end of the year. 

I have also developed social studies and geography curriculum unit plans and resources to integrate digital learning in the classroom, these have been shared and developed with the help of feedback from colleagues and student voice from my digital year 9 Social Studies class, whom it is the only digital class at my school.  

My Example of trying to Build a Waka Using Tinkercad. Only built the Hull!

Student Examples of WAKA desgin using Tinkercad. 

Class Brain Storm using coggle it. The Legend of KUPE.Shared repertoire, with students. They really enjoyed this learning task, and many have used this tool again for other brainstorming. 

Resource Sharing happens Frequently the above image is a scheme of work called 'Exploration and Innovation, the initial unit was collaboration between myself and Assistant HOF, In the red text I have integrated places where SAMR, digital tasks could be used to enhance the learning, some worked better than others. Focusing on the Augmentation and Redefinition of Tasks, rather than pure substitute, which I noticed some of my colleagues and students are at in the SAMR model of learning. (Puentedura, 2015).

Shared repertoire Unit Plan Collaborated and Shared with Department, students feedback, enjoyed Tinkercad, Coggle it and using Edpuzzle for their learning in this unit. 

We have departmental meetings every Monday lunchtime, where we share ideas, resources, We take turns are bringing something to eat, Resource sharing also happens via email, our Microsoft cloud, verbal informal conversations about resources, 

I feel very connected in my community of practices with staff and students.

Sharing of Kai, at meetings is a great way to get people to relax  and connect in a community. 

References:
Wenger, E.(2000).Communities of practice and social learning systems.Organization,7(2), 225-246 
http://journals.sagepub.com.libproxy.unitec.ac.nz/doi/abs/10.1177/135050840072002

Dr. Ruben Puentedura, (2015) APRIL 10, Dr. Ruben Puentedura

 Creator of SAMR | Education Vanguard Show #4. Podcast retrieved from

 http://21clradio.com/education-vanguard-episode-4-dr-ruben-puentedura-creator-of-samr/