It's seems so long ago that I attended the EdTechTeam Sydney Summit, but in fact it was only three weeks ago. Since then there has been a family Easter trip and taking on an Acting position for Term 2 - all of which have left me little time to reflect on the time at the Summit and work towards bringing what I have learnt into my College and particularly my classroom. It's good to finally find some time.
One of the very good sessions I attended was Motivating the Masses - Leading the implementation of GAFE in your School by Narissa Leung +RissLeung @RissL. Narissa led us through her personal experience of implementing GAFE in her school but she did this with an excellent underpinning of leadership theory regarding managing change, particularly acknowledging the work of Everett Rogers.
This session was a great way for me to examine at how I had lead the implementation of GAFE at my school over the past 12 months. There were the thoughts of....yeah, I did this...ooh I should do that...wow, didn't think to do that! However, there were two points of affirmation for me and ones I think are absolutely essential when implementing GAFE in your school.
Firstly, ensure that you start moving your own administrative tasks within the school using GAFE. Making them the 'norm' of how it's done. An excellent avenue is in staff meetings. For example, if you have a task of gaining feedback from staff on their thoughts with an aspect in school life, then use a Google Form to survey the staff. Model how easy and quick it is to gain feedback, display the spreadsheet on the projector demonstrating the responses coming in live.
Secondly, develop a Staff Site using Google Sites. This will have staff interacting with a Google Site and seeing its potential, particularly as a Class site.
This was one of the first things that we did as a school. Myself and a colleague, +Matthew Jensen developed the Staff Site. As well as being functional administratively, it also demonstrates the power of Google Sites. The other benefit was to continue developing my skills with Google Sites.
I thoroughly enjoyed Narissa's session, it was practical and theoretically reinforced. As Narissa said 'regularly reinforce/discuss the positive impact of the change' on your school. We are continuing to move forward with more teachers in our College developing their skills and applying GAFE in the classroom.
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