First Whānau Group

Today we had our first whānau group meeting at the new Rehua Building at University of Canterbury.   It was great to be able to meet up with everyone from the block course and find out how they were all going with their learning journeys and how they had found Domain 1 and the first assignment. 

 

Cara who is the coordinator for the Early Intervention endorsement is the contact for our whānau group and facilitated the conversation.  The part of the discussion that I found the most valuable was when we were talking about reflections.  Cara shared how important our reflections were in relation to our practice and that we need to be thinking critically about our learning and making connections to our context - bringing the learning to life.  She explained the following as a possible way of structuring / framing a reflection:  "...based on my reflection.....I noticed.....and this is what I will do to implement this within my practice...." 


We discussed other structures for framing reflections:

i.e. barriers - enablers - what next? 

Cara added that as long as the next steps were integrated into a professional practice contexts then the reflection would connect with our learning and that is the purpose of this course.

 

In terms of reflection on artefacts, we discussed:

• What did I know?
• What did I find out?
• Where to now and what next? (practical practice related ideas)

We talked about how the paper was structured to supported personalized and self-directed learning which for many of us is a new way of learning.  One of the ladies shared that she found it was a lot easier to focus when she followed these steps:

1. Complete the self-assessment.
2. Develop personal professional learning goals using the information and thinking sparked from the self-assessment.
3. Contribute to the forum posts and the glossary.
4. Read the course content that relates to the personal goals or your learning context.
5. Work on the portfolio pages for the domain.
6. Reflect on the artefacts and the whole domain.

I all comes down to, what is important to me now in my learning?  This question should help to guide the direction of the learning.


Another lady in the group shared that she had found a tutorial on YouTube that showed her how to use Zotero successfully to support her APA referencing: "Learn Zotero: Step by step tutorial"

 

One of the other questions asked was about referencing and the expectation is that artefacts including forum posts should be APA referenced to ensure other's work and ideas is acknowledged.