Augmented Learning Podcast & Vlog

This week we are joined by Gregor Fountain, Principal at Wellington College. Gregor is a brave and bold educational leader; he is passionate about young people and serving school communities. In this episode you get a real sense for the enthusiasm and story telling that would have been evident in the classroom during his teaching career, and is now clearly visible in his role as a school leader.
We talk about:

• Some of the people and experiences that influenced Gregor being where he is today
• Leadership and its many and varied forms
• Values based education
• The role of boys’ schools in nurturing a sense of belonging
• His commitment to Te Reo Māori

This week we catch up with Tania Cotter who is the new CEO of Physical Education New Zealand (PENZ). Tania was appointed to the role just as New Zealand moved into lockdown, so has had a really challenging start as you can imagine! Despite these difficult times, she is already making great decisions for the organisation and moving PENZ in a direction that looks really promising!
Tania previously worked for the Health Promotion Agency / Te Hiringa Hauora (HPA) where she was involved in tasks such as developing the HPA Education Settings Strategy and the HPA Good Practice Guide for Working in Education Settings. She was constantly establishing new relationships with national and regional education sector associations, and other key stakeholders - as well as maintaining these very important relationships. She is very strong in project management where she was key in implementing new approaches, developing new tools, providing group training sessions, and one-one-one support for staff. These are all skills that are going to serve her well in the CEO role.
Lately her time has been spent preparing for and leading the delivery of the PENZ Online Conference for 2020. "Power Up" is for physical education teachers and facilitators who want to share and challenge their thinking and approaches to improve their physical education teaching and learning. This innovative approach replaces the PENZ National Conference for 2020 which was unfortunately cancelled due to COVID. However, this replacement PLD opportunity is shaping up to be an excellent opportunity with hundreds of registrations taken already!
If you want to take a look at the PENZ Online Conference, you can learn more and register by heading along to: https://conference.penz.org.nz/

Today we welcome another Australian guest to the show!
Lenita Abouchabake’s passion for health and young people always empowered her into learning ways to educate youth on how to become healthy, confident and resilient.This passion led her to becoming a Physical Education Teacher, to raise awareness on the importance of student wellbeing.Wanting to expand her classroom, she became a Teen Life Coach to deliver coaching programs for families, schools and communities, through The Wellbeing Warrior Project.
We talk about a number of things around wellbeing:

• Why there is a need for enhanced resilience and confidence in young people.
• What we can do to support learners facing overwhelm.
• Weighing up the balance between practitioners and credentials when inviting “experts” into our classroom.
• Heart-led leadership.
• The Wellbeing Warrior Project.

We only really scratched the surface of what Lenita does and what she is capable of. This was a great episode from a very inspiring educator who is doing amazing things for the young people of Australia and around the world.
Please get in touch with Lenita through the following links:
1. Bring Lenita to your school or event to speak:
Lenita currently oversees her youth organisation The Wellbeing Warrior Project and travels extensively across the world, continuing to deliver her message to young people: http://www.wellbeingwarrior.com.au/
2. Join her community and connect with coaches and speakers in the education market:
It’s Lenita’s Facebook community where youth workers learn to amplify their impact and income in the education market: https://www.facebook.com/groups/empowerteensmakemoney
3. Connect with Lenita on other social platforms:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lenitaabouchabakeLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lenitaabouchabakeInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/1enita

As we shift into this world of remote learning due to COVID-19, we wanted to bring you some short form episodes focusing on challenges, opportunities and also some success stories.
Todays guest is an assistant principal from St Thomas of Canterbury College. Brad Milne has done a tremendous amount of work focusing on curriculum innovation within his school.
He has worked to successfully implement TLIF projects, looking at how to better engage students in their junior curriculum. With a staff that is open and willing to embrace change, Brad has observed a lot of small wins and successes through this period of lock down. He shares some of the challenges, opportunities and a few tips for teachers to engage their learners through this challenging time.

Stephen McConnachie is an educator from Canterbury, New Zealand who experienced some really challenging times during the Christchurch earthquakes in 2011. This has been discussed way back in episode 21, but Stephen (and his school) were without a campus, had access to very little resources, were facing an unorthodox teaching timetable (due to the need to rotate school access to a shared campus) and at times had access to no classroom at all. This forced many teachers to embrace digital technology as a way to reach their students, allow for meaningful engagement and collaboration and was in a way, the precursor to teachers all over the country embracing a digital approach in the classroom.
Over the last 7 days, the world has been gripped in a pandemic that seems to be worsening every 12 hours. With Covid-19 causing issues all over the world, we are seeing a number of schools and educational institutions closing, with teachers placed into positions they have never found themselves before - teaching their students from a remote or online learning space. For some this is nothing new, but for others they are looking at trying to educate their students worrying that they don't have the skills or capability to deliver the content and knowledge required to teach their students.
Stephen shares his experiences from the earthquakes and gives a variety of tips, tools and strategies that will help not just the teachers out there, but school leaders and also students who find themselves impacted by Coronovirus. He is a wealth of knowledge and experience in this area and this is an episode that I hope will help put a lot of people at ease.
Stephen is no longer in front of the classroom having recently moved into educational consultancy. If you would like to get in touch with him regarding any of the topics discussed during this episode, please use the links below:
Stephen on LinkedIn.
Stephen on Twitter.

Carol Dweck with her book "Mindset" shaped the idea of a growth mindset, which really allowed us to explore this concept of failure. According to Dweck, In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. An approach like this views failure in a positive light, an opportunity to learn and further develop our skills, as opposed to thinking our abilities are fixed and beyond our capacity to change.
Today's guest is Chris Desmond, an expert in getting uncomfortable. His podcast titled "Uncomfortable in Ok" is all about the uncomfortable things his guests have done or are in the process of doing. Stepping out of our comfort zone creates just enough good stress to ramp up your focus and drive, and it helps you respond positively to stress when unexpected things happen.
Uncomfortable is Ok on Facebook.Chris Desmond on Twitter.Subscribe to the Uncomfortable is OK podcast.

Shaun is a teacher who experienced some challenges around burn out and mental illness early in his career. As Shaun came to discover different strategies and lessons to support himself throughout this time, he found himself becoming obsessed with the power of the mind and human potential.
This lead to the founding of Smile Teachers where Shaun collaborates with a range of experts to share the most powerful ways to cultivate self-love and positivity. Shaun and his team are passionate about changing lives so that we have inspiring and passionate educators who can make a positive difference in the world. Throughout this episode we spend some time talking about the challenges teachers and students face on a day to day basis and how we can go about filling our own buckets.
As part of Smile Teachers, Shaun runs a number of programmes and some amazing retreats. For listeners of the podcast he is offering $500 off his January retreat to Bali, all you need to do is mention this podcast episode. So if you haven’t booked in your Summer holiday yet, check out what is on offer at the retreat!
Follow Smile Teachers on Instagram.Check out the Smile Teachers FaceBook page.

Celia Fleck is a colleague I have worked very closely with across the last four years. She has become a great friend since our paths first crossed when Rongotai College joined the Sport in Education Project back in 2015. Since then we have had shared a number of podcast episodes, almost travelled the length of New Zealand, toured some amazing schools throughout Melbourne and served on the Board of Physical Education together.
She is an inspiring educator who is true to her values and isn’t scared to tell it how it is (much like her former protege who was on the podcast recently!). She is also a great critical thinker who gives everything for the profession. It’s these qualities which recently had me thinking that Celia would make a great co-host! After a few discussions about what that could look like, she agreed to jump on board.
In this episode we talk about what she enjoys about podcasts, what she listens to, and what she is hoping to add to the Augmented Learning Podcast!
Follow Celia on Twitter.

Celia Fleck is a colleague I have worked very closely with across the last four years. She has become a great friend since our paths first crossed when Rongotai College joined the Sport in Education Project back in 2015. Since then we have had shared a number of podcast episodes, almost travelled the length of New Zealand, toured some amazing schools throughout Melbourne and served on the Board of Physical Education together.

She is an inspiring educator who is true to her values and isn't scared to tell it how it is (much like her former protege who was on the podcast recently!). She is also a great critical thinker who gives everything for the profession. It's these qualities which recently had me thinking that Celia would make a great co-host! After a few discussions about what that could look like, she agreed to jump on board.

In this episode we talk about what she enjoys about podcasts, what she listens to, and what she is hoping to add to the Augmented Learning Podcast!

Follow Celia on Twitter.

If you're a regular listener you're no doubt aware of my former obsession with video games and gamification. This stemmed from time spent gaming as a young teacher where I would get flown around the world playing FIFA competitively for tens of thousands of dollars (which is small time compared to what the younguns are playing for these days). This fascination lead me down a path of exploring gamification in education, a passion that has again earned me lots of fun travel to speak about how we can motivate and engage our learners through the use of game mechanics in the classroom.
Todays guest makes what I do look like small time gamification. Charlie is a Science teacher who is gamifiying his classes at another level. Through the use of powerful narrative, his students are exploring scenarios and solving problems in a way that simply couldn't be done in a traditional classroom. His commitment to the cause is really a sight to behold and the stories he shares with us today will really challenge your perception of what a learning environment can look like.
If anything that we discuss today interests you, please check out our free Introduction to Gamification course. You can access this course here. In addition to this, we mention a book called Actionable Gamification. I promised I would give a copy of this book away, but i'm going to make you work for it! If you want to go into the draw for this book, what you have to do is, leave a review of the podcast on iTunes, take a screenshot, and send that screenshot through to me at [email protected]. Easy as that!
Follow Charlie on Twitter.Check out Charlie's YouTube page.