Term 2 concluded with another awesome Hui with the Manaiakalani team in Auckland. Creativeness played a huge part for me this time as bad weather cancelled the first leg of my trip, meaning my connecting flight was just not going to happen. With bag packed, I needed to be there face to face as no Hangout was going to suffice for this 3 day Hui. So I began the 3 hour drive (no comparison to what would have been a 35 minute flight), and managed to avoid being blown off the road, surface water and slips to make a slightly later flight. With the focus being on SHARE, it was so beneficial to do just that with my colleagues from around NZ.
Blogging is a huge part of sharing and is something we discuss in our family quite a bit. Having been a parent for 34 years, I sit back and smile at how things have changed over those years. Phones were joined to walls and one would never have imagined they would be carried in our pockets, and certainly not a way of taking photos or sharing our learning via social media. I remember training for Reading Recovery in the early 90's and being told we would be facing an ongoing battle of getting children to focus and concentrate when they were watching TV before school. (Yes, children's programmes had just started playing from 6-9am and who would have thought they would now be available 24/7?).
With my youngest just reached the double digits, it was impressive to think that I would have some well earned down time these holidays while she visited relatives. However it has been far from that as I field sad phone calls because she has run out of things to do. Yes you guessed it - there's no internet! This child loves the outdoors, enjoys reading, and has a wonderful imagination, but tells me it would be nice to be able to share what she's done with us and see what her mates are up to. I totally get that because that is the way she is learning, but the 'Y generation' family members she is staying with don't understand it at all. The 'we never did that' conversation keeps rearing it's ugly head, and they don't want to share how things have changed and that she's not complaining to annoy them, she's simply trying to voice that a part of her life is missing. Don't get me wrong, we have lots of breaks away (usually in the summer) where there is no internet, but we are usually so busy doing new things that we don't have time to contemplate it's not there, and because it's rained everyday these holidays ... things are a little different.
These relatives struggled to learn by conventional methods and would have benefited greatly if they had been in a 1:1 learning environment where the 'Learn, Create, Share' pedagogy was used, but sadly they won't see this while they have their heads buried in the sand and refuse to get internet connected. After all we are simply sharing the learning we are doing, as we have always done, and there is so much learning happening, what better way to share it than on platforms such as blogger. So, my answer was to write it down and together we will share it when she gets home, don't think a smile was born with that answer, but it's the best I can offer from 500+kms away!
