Wine Not Network @ Toko School

Thanks to Toko School for hosting the first Wine Not Network for 2007! Teachers from Toko, Eltham & Marco Schools met to share what they were doing with ICT in their schools.
Toko teachers shared examples of the work their kids had done with lots of different things:
Use of visual images & creative writing – poetry – acrostic, cinquin, feelings poems – flickr images, photostory, photoshop – manipulating flickr images.

Spreadsheets for mathematical investigations & charting.
Logo for programming mathematical concepts - for the Methanex Maths Spectacular.
Using Interact & SmartNet for notices, shared calendars, shared links & posting topic & class work resources.
Use of Inspiration to prepare for writing experiences – get ideas out in Inspiration and converting to Word to finish the writing and editing process.
Great use of the simple programme Paint – detailed drawings instead of clipart.
Using mp3 players to support the reading programme – eg recording reading activity (a play), listening on the listening post, discussing quality of reading (expression, style, delivery etc), re-recording.

Thanks Rich, Charlaine, Kelly & Scott for all the great ideas. Looking forward to our next Wine Not Network @ Eltham later in the term :-)

Wine Not Network

We had a healthy turn out for our once a term Wine Not Network at Toko School last week. It was good to see all our PD team presenting to their peers. Everybody on the team has really been stepping up to the mark and making an impact around our schools. I am hoping/ hopeful that their great work will continue beyond the end of our PD contract funding and i will still be able to continue to work with them in some way...
Here Carol feeds back to the group on her recent trip to Opoutere School for a regional meeting. Opoutere School is part of the Kopu ICTPD cluster, has DigiOps funding & an e-fellowship as well... Carol also demonstrated 2Simple Create a Story software (more info in previous blogposts) Our RTLits & RTLBs are trying this software out with their students - supported by Carol & myself.
Megan shared the work she has done with her students with a focus on values, thinking skills & cooperative learning techniques, revolving around a web based resource the Values Exchange
(see earlier blogpost) Planning for this will be available on Interact soon.
Clarissa & Kerry talked about what was happening at SPS with the use of Data Projectors in the classroom and shared some conference notes from Kim. Teachers are applying to have Data Projectors permanently set up in their classrooms. They are trialling their use and sharing with their ideas with the rest of the team @ SPS.

Richard showed an Interactive resource supporting an Inquiry topic on Explorers which his class was currently working on. The resource comes from Birkdale Intermediate which gained funding from the Tindall foundation to hire a researcher & a web developer to create this resource. Not for open sharing though if you would like to see this resource you can contact Birkdale.

Room 5 Toko School

Wine Not Network @ Eltham Primary School

Another great Wine Not Network was held at Eltham Primary School. It was great to see so many teachers from the old Bard Wired ICTPD cluster attending :-)
It was great to visit Eltham Primary School as i haven't been there all year! The school is looking fantastic with all its renovations completed.
Schools shared examples of what was happening back in their own classrooms and the topics ranged: photography, interact LMS, smarnet servers, IWB, skype, blogs and feedback from the ULearn attendees.
I discovered a number of new blogs that have popped up amongst our schools (largely due to the ULearn influence). Check them out and leave some encouraging comments:
http://room1tokoschool.blogspot.com/
http://room6-sps.blogspot.com/
http://room3tokotaranaki.blogspot.com/
http://room5toko.blogspot.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tokoschool
There was some discussion that ensued after this meeting about internet safety and appropriate use with blogging in the classroom. Rather than join this discussion (again as i know it comes up every time a new school blog is born) I directed those schools to previous discussions and links.

(Paul demonstrates how he uses Interwrite software and tablet)

Bards Last Blast

Big thanks to O'Donoghue's Irish Bar for hosting our Last Blast - final Wine Not Network of the year & of our 3 year contract. We hope to organise more Wine Not Networks for next year but maybe not in the same format as this last one ;-)
We had a great turnout of teachers from across our cluster schools and we set them up Quiz Nite style with a number of questions about things relevant to our cluster school, events & people of the last three years & ICTPD things in general. It was lots of fun so maybe we could use this as a format for our next BardKidz online game (without the prizes of wine!)
The presentation is way too big & probably not appropriate to share online but here's a sample question: "Who holds the record for the most number of pens stolen from conference? How many pens?"

Wine Not Network - Toko

Thanks Richard, Cathy & Kelly for hosting us at Toko this afternoon. Thanks also to Richard (Barnes) for sharing your Matau kids blogs with us. Lots of discussion about the access to a wider audience & the associated improvement in the kids written language, alongside that was discussions about how to keep our kids safe online in such an environment - using the blog tool settings to have all comments posted to the Principals address & raising kids awareness of issues associated with interacting in an online environment and how to deal with this. If you are interested in setting up your own blog go to www.blogger.com - follow the online instructions to register and set up your blog & then tell us all about it!! Cathy walked us through a webquest she had used with her kids and described how they extended from this into written language and then movie making. Cathy has posted information about this at this Interact link. Richard shared examples of how their kids had used Movie Making within the Prep programme to create snapshots of school life (eg Jones Cup Day) and using Flash to animate the retelling of Maori Myths and legends. Using these tools across the curriculum is another way to present learning that involves just as much 'work' & definately more engagement & no dumbing down of cognitive skills. Kelly shared her story of the email buddies her class have been corresponding with - how this was structured for kids to be able to use the email programme efficiently and they types of interchanges they had with a class of children from Wimbledon. Some concerns about their buddies during the time of the London bombings and how they hope their kids will continue to write now that the UK class has moved onto a different teacher. (They are sharing a hotmail address) Thanks to those who made it out this afternoon - good to see you all there - next Wine Not Networking at Eltham (maybe a hands on Apple time) Bring a friend :-) !

EPS Update

The original purpose of this blog was to record what was happening in our schools! To inform school communities, & to cut & paste into milestone reports ;-) A bit of catching up to do in that department. So a round-up of what's happening out in our schools.
Eltham Primary School
It is good to see ideas picked up from Rotorua being adapted and used in the classroom already - good stuff Megan! Megan has been exploring issues with her students based around ideas raised on the Values Exchange. This is a site that profiles a number of topical issues - students can register, share their point of view and vote for what they believe. Megan used the data projector to introduce her class to the values exchange and to guide some background web research around the area of focus. Students went home and discussed the current issue with their family. Today they shared their ideas using the thinking hats to structure their thinking and cooperative learning strategies to share their ideas. Great to observe. Watch out for more detail on this at our next Wine Not Network.
Megan and i spent a little time discussing ideas for using the data projector in the classroom. Some ideas on Interact. We looked at a couple of sites - echalk was one to note - some useful resources there.
I had a lot of one on one time with teachers over the last couple of days. Some of the work we did was looking at record keeping and managing data with Excel - as this was a common area of need it highlights the need to adopt a school-wide system using a Student Management system. I know that this is an area that Eltham has been looking at and will move on as soon as the network system is back into place - not an easy year for this with the huge building upgrades & disruption to classrooms.
It was great to spend some time with 'PC teachers' and turn them onto the joys of Mac. Simple little things in i-Photo that Mac users take for granted were really generating some wows - that is so easy, that is so cool!! My advice - to them was take the school Macs home & have a play - they weren't hard at all - just different.
How's this for an analogy - How many people can you get in a mini? How many little people can fit around a Mac? Well maybe not a good comparison but thats what it reminded me of when i saw this keen little crew!
A different scenario next door in Elise's class as she had booked the 'apple boxes' and kids were spread out all over the room.









My highlights today- definately spending time with Sue's kids at lunch time watching a newly hatched butterfly spread it's wings and discovering with the children that pumice will float whether it's the size of a button, a tennis ball or a watermelon!

Eltham Primary

Great to be back & to catch up with everyone around the cluster. Have been busy planning ahead for Learning@School, sorting out Infolink enrolments & the Teacher Only Day - Phew lots to do & busy out in schools too!
Very interesting to be involved with Eltham on their PD Day - Zeroing In On Quality Teaching. Chris Harwood is researching Curriculum Integration (CI) in partnership with Opunake and Eltham Primary School. There will be a lot that Eltham will be able to share with the rest of us in this exciting new project - schedule a couple of Wine Not Networks @ Eltham!

It is really positive to return to Eltham & see so much progress being made on the Infrastructure & the learning & teaching with ICTs - It just goes to show you that it won't happen overnight but it will happen! There are 10 Apple desktops all working (most things are) in the IT room and all the classes now have their own network log on. 5 new iBook G4s have been purchased along with a COWs to trial. Kimberly's PC Pod is also up & running in her classroom. And everyone is busy using them! Lots of kids around school with cameras now that Elise is on the job :-) and they will be used more and more for 'autophotography' & 'photoelicitation' Some of the tools of Chris's research.

On my three days here i have spent much of the time in the IT room. Yesterday I worked with Heather & Sue to help them reintroduce their classes to using the Apple desktops. A major focus was learning how to log on, open applications and save their work. For littlies this was still probably quite a big learning step. But little and often and it will be second nature to them. Need some suitable software for the Junior School - Image Blender (instead of KidPix) & Kidspiration would be good. Media Blender would also be good across the school. It would be great if Software companies provided Facilitators with free full versions of all software so we could model its use in classes (& get lots of cool stuff on our computers!)

Working with Kimberly and her kids using Keynote for presentations. Tomorrow i try & help Bernadette sort out the management & uploading of the web pages - hopefully with more success than i had last time. Will also be spending time with Megan reviewing IT & Cybersafety Policies, Strategies & Action Plans. Not to forget time spent working with possible computer mentors (?) Brushing them up on network, file management, internet, applications skills. But as usual i know that they are going to be able to teach me more than i could ever teach them :-)

Bard Wired's Bigger Bang...

Congratulations to the BardWird team - Kim, Richard, Carol & Megan for an awesome effort in organising our Regional Meeting, Teacher Only Day & BardKidz Expo. Thanks also to our willing band of helpers: Doug, Clarissa, Kelly, Kelvin. Sharon for the lovely food & Marlene & Karen for looking after us on those days. Bard Wired teachers too - giving of their own time, especially a Saturday! to be involved.
The hall looked great for the BardKidz Expo - it was disappointing that we didn't get many of our school community visiting the expo though many of our teachers and visitors for the Regional Meeting took the opportunity to check out the children's work. An expo like this though only showed products of learning as opposed to the processes they went through to actually get there (which is where the real learning is happening) I think next time our kids should organise this sort of day themselves (with our help) perhaps like a Kids Conference - there would be greater school community interest & involvement (like our recent KidsDay) & more meaningful for our students. Even so all the examples displayed around the hall would have been sowing seeds of ideas for many teachers for learning opportunities back in their own classrooms.

The Regional Meeting on the Friday, as always, was a great opportunity to network with other cluster people from around the region and to share in some PD together. Bruce Hammonds presented a workshop "Getting on Board a Vision to the Future" His presentation can be found on our Interact site. The Bard Wired cluster had the opportunity to share some of our cluster highlights & the BardWired blogspot was the presentation tool for this. So also an opportunity to showcase how blogging works for us. I spent some time (& it wasn't easy) working out how to put categories into this blog. Now each blog post can be categorised (through Delicious) & on the sidebar of this blog are category links - pretty useful really. Tessa led a session on the Learning Federation digital learning objects & everyone had some time for a play with those. We had a great turn out of about 20 people from other ICTPD clusters & our group certainly didn't go unnoticed in the small town of Stratford when went out in the evening :-)

Saturday, and the Teacher Only Day, we had a great turn out of about 80 teachers from our own schools, regional clusters and other local schools - Manaia, Omata & Hawera Intermediate. I think everybody, to some degree, was able to take something from this day to reflect on & perhaps influence their future thinking & practise or even to affirm their existing beliefs about learning & teaching. Thanks to Bruce, Jill & Jamie for their considerable input into our day. Presentations & links to our presenters sites are on the Interact site. All the photos from the day are on Flickr.

One of my highlights was to meet Jamie McKenzie, who i have been reading for a number of years and had seen deliver a fantastic keynote in Rotorua last year. Jamie delivered a great keynote for us in the morning on 'The Smart Use of Technologies'. I was a little disappointed that in our afternoon session I think we missed the mark with some of our teachers, perhaps not the best choice of workshop for such a large and diverse group. The activities were challenging for some & i think they found it hard to tie it into the bigger picture. Feedback was mixed about this workshop - some enjoyed the challenge & Jamie is definately right that learning (in this case teacher learning) should be rigorous. Some reflections from Richard of the day: "The big theme for me was again getting the kids thinking... and what makes for improved thinking in a classroom.. Well I guess it is insightful questioning that leads to enhanced thinking! Clearly a message for teachers... The accessing and then using the wealth of information on the web. Jamies slam dunk lessons are a step in the right direction, when used along side the unit that was planned and prepared for the children in our own class!"
We finished a hectic couple of days at Malones where Jamie proved he shares the same good taste in wine & showed what a mean end game he has in pool!
Please share your feedback and reflections about the day by clicking on the comments link below.