Good afternoon, thank you for giving me this time to share some of the passions that I bring to Teaching.
A brief backstory about me, my name is Matt Johnston, born and bred in Tawa and Wellington to two parents who were also at one point teachers. First taught in Hampton Hill in for 3 years and then in Hataitai School in Wgtn, where I began first as a teacher for gifter and talented students, then moved into classroom teaching as a Year 3-4, 5-6 and finally ending as a team teaching partner with the teaching principal in a combined Yr 7-8 class.

In my career as an educator I have worked in a single cell, classroom, in a team teaching environment, been a classroom teacher, an Acting Deputy Principal, an ICT Specialist. I have led school wide PD, spoken nationally at learning conferences such as NAVCON, ULEARN & Learning@school about my classroom learning environment and hosted visits to let other teachers see the classroom in action.
Now I am older, with children of my own and a passion to make my classroom a place that the students in it feel connected to, safe to take risks in, and challenged to try an be more than they thought they could be.

Modeling this is key in the classroom. Change management and allowing all those who are involved in a new direction to have time to understand why change is happening, voice their questions, fears and to do so in a safe environment.
The learning journey isn't a mystery to be drip fed to students "just in time" it's one that requires their understanding of where their next step takes them, what skills concepts or knowledge they will need to take that step, and how they can show evidence of this once they get there, and where to from there.
This was one of the key understandings that my teaching partner and I realized after introducing our Year 7-8 Inquiry based classroom, talk and share the vision and be prepared to show people each step of the way.

From big ideas to integrated planning, from scaffolding students understandings and explicitly teaching Inquiry. The walls of my class are an ever present reminder for the students to see What they are doing, Why they are doing it, and How is it important in their lives.
One of the keys to developing a culture of learning in a classroom is how we give feedback, the quality of it and how well we break the goals we are setting with our students down, so that they understand the steps they need but also the ways they can deal with roadblocks.

Working in different schools, deciles and countries has made me think about how best to connect with e parents of our students.
In Hataitai, email was king, it got fast responses from almost 100% of the community.
In Hampton hill, newsletters reached many of our families but some never connected.
Cambodia was a mix of both, very high decile with high smartphone ownership, but very low use of email, parents who were often uneasy with written newsletters and poor parent turnout to events because of this.
To counter this we used Qr codes, our TA's as translators and shared what was coming up, what they could see of their child's work and how they could be part of the class using their primary language.

Blog, Facebook page, Twitter feed, unless it is relevant, interesting and useful to the students and their families, it can fail to deliver. It cannot be just the teachers voice. To make blogging less overwhelming for already busy teachers I instead had the students drive the sharing. Blogging pairs can take responsibility to recap the session or the day, by modeling good posting, good comment making offline (using post-it's) the students are empowered to ask rich questions when online as well.
It comes back to the idea, when we reflect on what we have done, we clarify our understanding.

Creating stories so that others can share them is easy and one of the best ways to help students develop the confidence to both share, critique and accept criticism of their written work. Creating epubs or other multimedia laden content enables students to share their voice, work cooperatively and understand what it takes to be an Author.
My last school now has student work available on loan in the library on ereaders, as well as classroom teachers sharing student work home to the community through simple download links on the class window.

To write for the teacher is to write for an audience of 1, having students as editors is the first step, but why not students writing for other students, sharing their writing online, animate a story, record a narration, write and share with others across the world. Google docs, voice thread. For myself and for my students we found the most satisfaction in getting feedback from people who had encountered our work and wanted to respond.

The SAMR Model is one way to view the progression that teachers move through when using technology.
Sub is using tech to replicate something without any alteration eg typing out a story rather than hand writing.
Aug features some improvement in the tools used but they assignment is the same eg use of thesaurus, spell check to the story. These levels are Enhancement
Mod is giving a different type of learning assignment, perhaps using video, audio
Red is when the student is able to do something that was impossible before using tech, eg working colaboratively across the web, being part of a feedback loop involving a world wide audience these levels are Transformation
Voice thread is a simple tool that allows staff and students to do this.

I am using a presentation style influenced by pecha kucha
A presentation style from Japan that limits time (20 secs) and the number of slides (x20)
This format allows students to focus on the language content of each slide, to not speak to bullet point laden PowerPoint slides
Instead Have a strong image and speak to the topic and to the audience.
A mini version of {10*20} is also good for younger students.