Accreditation Application

One of the uncharted territories of my new role is to go through the application process to be an accredited PLD facilitator with the MoE. Once accredited, facilitators can then tout their wares and be contracted by schools under the centrally funded PLD scheme. Being a Manaiakalani facilitator means that CFPLD can be used as we work in schools in our cluster.

Under the professional supervision of Anne, she has cajoled and encouraged me to complete this process. Being the queen of procrastination I found many excuses to not get going like being "busy". Being busy is a good smokescreen that many of us cough and splutter behind. But Anne kept it on the front burner and finally, a wet weekend forced me to confront this herculean task.

The first words that jumped off the application form were "No more than 10 pages in size 10 font".  I have never written 10 pages about myself or my work. How would I fill 10 pages...and in such a small font?

Anne's prompt of looking in our Drive and at the work we have done was my starting point. I looked a the big picture stuff first and summarised what it is that our work as Manaiakalani facilitators is all about.

I remembered one of the first days at our orientation with The Manaiakalani Programme in January and we had to write in tweet format what we thought Manaiakalani is. Good way to start. With that I got going...and once I got going there was no stopping. Anne - you were right, I had plenty to write about.

Three examples of practice were asked for so I chose the Manaiakalani Outreach programme and all that it stands for as #1. #2 was about collaborating online. #3 was about using assistive technologies to support diverse learners in accessing the curriculum. Phew! And those 3 examples are each a blog post in themselves. Watch this space.

Wow - thank goodness for 10 pages and size 10 font or else this would have turned into a textbook. Can see why the limit is put in place because I'm sure some would write a textbook. Now the waiting game for the result.

Google Certification

Having just completed the Google Level 2 certification exam (yes, its called an exam), I was thinking about how stressful exams are. I haven't sat an exam for many, many years. Even when upgrading my TTC to Bachelor of Teaching & Learning way back in 2003, there were no exams. That qualification was based on assignments.

Once again, to be put into the place some of our learners are in is good for us to understand what it feels like.  There was a mixture of emotions leading up to taking the exam - anxiety, fear of failure to say the least. Why is this so? Even having been well prepared by going through the training material diligently - even if I thought I was au fait with the content, I was still quite nervous going into the exam.

Adult training or Andragogy, is well documented and I was aware of this as I prepared and went through the training material and considered my experience and knowledge as I did them.

I considered the assumptions of andragogy [1][2]  following this exam to see if there was something in here to explain the nerves...   Need to know: I knew the reason why I was learning this. 

• Foundation: I was using experience as the basis for learning
• Self-concept: self-concept was not a tick - I wasn't involved in the planning or evaluation of this instruction
• Readiness: this had immediate relevance to my work 
• Orientation: this learning was mostly problem-centered, scenarios were included, and there was some content-oriented material.
• Motivation: and the motivation for me was internal rather than external as I knew I needed to dig deeper into the Google Suite. External motivation was also a factor as it is an expectation of our employment. 

No real clue in there either as all but one was a tick. Maybe I am just an over-achiever? And it just goes to show - you're never too old to learn. 

Upshot of it all is that I now have Google Educator Level 1 & Level 2 and ready to take on the Google Certified Trainer next - but first Apple Teacher.

1. Instructional Design: Theories - Andragogy M. Knowles Encyclopedia of  Psychology. http://www.instructionaldesign.org/theories/andragogy/  Retrieved 2018/08/12

2. Malcolm Knowles, informal adult education, self-direction, and andragogy. 

http://infed.org/mobi/malcolm-knowles-informal-adult-education-self-direction-and-andragogy/ Retrieved 2018/08/12