Happy Birthday Bardwired - 10 Years Old Today!

Wow what a milestone, I am feeling old today as my baby hits double digits!

I was introduced to blogging by Richard & his students at Matau School & thought this would be a great way to keep schools in touch with what was going on around the Bardwired ICTPD cluster. Sure beats stuffy reports to Principals' once a month. It has been quite a journey over that time, with many highlights and in the last couple of years quiet patches too. My first post was a very factual account, in fact a list, of what i did at work that day...i think it only got better after that.

To start with it was text only, you had to have some working knowledge of  html to make anything else happen. Pictures weren't easy and it was four months before any images appeared on my pages.

Flickr arrived early in 2005 and that was the beginning of my love for Flickr. That was also the time i began to use hyperlinks but it was still awhile until hyperlinks became part of my deliberate writing style. My writing here waned when blogging became a professional requirement for my two other roles with the VLN Primary & VPLD; Twitter & Facebook also took over my attention. As with any pride & joy there are special milestones & highlights - here are a few of mine.

Here are some of my babies milestones:

First podcasts May 2006 - Prensky@School Marc Prensky's keynote from Learning@School
First video May 2006 on Vimeo - Kidz & Kitez @ Makahu,
First flash animation - Christmas 2006
First friends -  Tom & Graham - when i learnt that blogging is about conversations and learning together
First blog post from my phone - moblogging February 2007
First Youtube video embeds TUANZ 2007
First embedded slideshow - Around te Maunga May 2007
First avatar - Meez May 2007
First Panorama - Panoramic Pitt August 2007
First slap on the wrist for this post May 2009

Highlights:

Where Are We Going??????? - 2005 thoughts about Google
Connecting with others - Edubloggers Offices Photostream
Starting nzedublogs with Jedd
Life changing highlight - getting to know my darling Rick
Time 4 Online Conference
Dead Cats & Laptops - most interesting/gross picture
Helping Bruce update his blog
Connecting with others - 8 random facts meme (great to be reminded of those connections :-)
VLN Primary kicks off at Matapu School
The Future of Education (i just like this post)
Being 'published'
eLearning eBooks (i liked this one too)
N4L consultation  early conversations

Now we can really focus on the learning!

Apps make eLearning easy! #pld #lwdt workshop with @barbs1 pic.twitter.com/chlkcViPIt
— Rachel Roberts (@rache65) June 5, 2014

There is no excuse now for teachers who don't use technology to support student's learning. Pick up an Ipad (or similar) and there is an app that will do anything easily. Students can Connect, Communicate, Collaborate, Create with ease - point, click, move things around, upload, share.

When I worked with ICTPD (professional learning for teachers with ICT) there were many, many frustrating hours spent on developing teachers 'soft skills' of how to use technology, & troubleshooting a range of technical & connectivity issues before we could successfully bend the tools to our learning purposes. All that 'Structural Stress' is being removed with ubiquitous, accessible & easy technology. Now a teacher who says i don't have time to learn this is giving the time old kids excuse 'the dog ate my homework!'

Changes to PLD for Schools

At the end of 2010, the MoE went through a process of retendering all it’s professional learning development (PLD)contracts for NZ schools. More information can be found about how to access PLD here on the Educational Leaders website.

One of the big changes in the elearning area was a move away from the ICTPD clustering model to a regional model “Blended e-Learning Professional Learning and Development Programme” in addition to this there are other supporting initiatives such as VPLD (Virtual Professional Learning & Development) – which i now have a facilitative role in. You can see an overview of the VPLD programme here. The PLD projects in the elearning area, as well as other areas, are provided by Te Toi Tupu. Check out their website to find more information about Te Toi Tupu and what programmes they are providing.

“Te Toi Tupu - Leading Learning Network consortium (CORE Education, The University of Waikato, Cognition Education, The New Zealand Council for Educational Research and Waikato Tainui) are providers of professional development and professional learning programmes.”

Mount SPA – ICTPD workshops

Here are the presentations used in today’s workshops. Please feel free to give me feedback or comments in the comments box below this blog posting. Hope you find it interesting digging a bit deeper into some of these things – let me know how you go with this and add me to your skype contacts :-)

E learning landscape2011

View more presentations from first last.

Skype

View more presentations from first last

eLearning eBooks

I have been looking at a couple of free ebooks about elearning available in the last few days which would be very handy to share with other teachers to guide them in their professional learning. The first couple are recent & Reach is only available as a free download for another couple of days. The others are ones that I have accessed in the past. As i looked up the links for the original downloads I found this presentation from Zaid which showcases more ebooks about elearning.

Amazing FREE eLearning eBooks Collection

View more presentations or Upload your own.

Web Tools Applied to Teaching

“20 webtools EFL ESL teachers can use to maximize learning.”

 Reach available for another couple of days

“Building learning communities and networks online means reaching beyond the walls of your classroom, the walls of your school, and even the walls of your own state, country, or continent to create connections. Once you reach out and make connections with other educators, professional learning like you have never experienced before starts to flow your way. You will soon find yourself in a state of continual learning. Taking advantage of the constant stream of information available today on the web at any given moment and using it for your own professional growth is what it means to learn in today's digital world. It is the ability to connect to the information and people you want to learn from. It is literally having the resource that is the Internet at your fingertips when you need it.”

 

eLearner Survival Guide

 

“This broad reaching collection of essays on e learning examines accomplishments, new directions, and challenges from many perspectives. The essays are arranged in categories, which include e learning and e learners, teaching and instruction, student en-gagement, learning communities, outcomes assessment and institutional leadership, all of which relate to learners and programs from college, K 12, career, to corporate training. Of special interest is a focus on successful outcomes for students and programs, and essays on often overlooked niches of learners, including generational differences (Gamers, Boomers, Gen X, and Gen Y), stay at home mothers, working mother e learners, homeschoolers, bilingual online education and training.”

Facilitating Online a Course Leaders Guide

“Facilitating Online is a course intended for training educators as online facilitators of fully online and mixed mode courses. The Centre for Educational Technology (CET) produced a Course Leader’s Guide as an Open Educational Resource to assist educators and trainers who wish to implement a course on online facilitation within their institution or across several institutions.”

Using Moodle - Teaching with the Popular Open Source Course Management System

The Amazing Web 2.0 Projects Book

 

87 projects.

10 further resources.

52 applications.

94 contributors.

The benefits of using Web 2.0 applications.

The challenges of using Web 2.0 applications.

How the folk who ran these projects handled the issues...

... And what they recommend you do if you run them.

What were the learning outcomes?

Coming of Age: An introduction to the new world wide web

“A collaborative venture between 14 people from the USA, Canada, Thailand and the UK.
editor Terry Freedman www.ictineducation.org The main objectives of this free publication are first to inspire teachers to want to try some of these "new tools" (web 2.0) for themselves and with their classes, and then to provide practical advice and guidance on how to do so.”

eBooks from The eLearning Guild!

eBooks from The eLearning Guild are guaranteed to put a wealth of information at your fingertips! The Guild has two formats for eBooks. While each eBook is focused on one theme, some are collections of tips we gather from Guild members from around the world, and some are collections of articles from key industry leaders. In either case, you'll find valuable information that you can use in your organization!

Central North Island VLNC - Professional Development Days

TaraNet teachers joined with teachers from the Volcanics & CoroNet schools for two days of  very focussed professional learning at Stratford High School. There was such a range of experience, from those yet to begin to a few of the first original eteachers. The continuum of confidence & capability in elearning technologies was also very broad from the ‘old school’ not too sure of any of the technology but willing to give it a try, to the very technically savvy. All had something to share and conversations between eteachers was very important to those who spend much of their year in elearning isolation. We had  3 Spanish teachers so there was a lot of conversation happening there, as well as an ebaby, Sonia’s baby Amelia who was very happy for two whole days … thank goodness ;-)

A big thank you to all who contributed to our day – Lynda Walsh-Pasco (OtagoNet), Trevor Storr (AorakiNet), Derek Wenmoth & Jason Reid (SILC). Also to the staff at Stratford High who made the organisation of this day much easier with the allocation of classrooms, technical support and catering.

You can see our programme and resources here.

eTeacher Professional Learning.

I have spent some time with eteachers over the last few weeks reviewing their professional learning goals from the year. Joel has now put his L3 Statistics and Modelling class into Facebook. I am looking forward to following this in 2010. One of the areas that our eteachers have sometimes struggled with is engaging their students with communication & interaction online. This was also identified by our students as something they felt they needed more of in their VLN classes – more opportunities to interact. This is one way to produce an Open Educational Resource and to engage our students in interactive environments.

 

I have been collaborating with Conor & Jan from the Volcanics & CoroNet cluster to provide 2 face to face days of professional development for our eteachers & possibly also could include others in our schools who are interested in any of our workshop sessions. So far we have planned out the programme. Now to spend some time on developing the workshops so they are ready to run. I am really looking forward to hearing from Derek and also from Lynda with feedback from the NZCER research.

TaraNet Lead Teachers Meet

TaraNet Lead Teachers met yesterday to discuss elearning in their schools.

Items on the agenda were:

• Learning Management Systems – Coastal shared their schools implementation of KnowledgeNet
• Adobe Connect PD ––– NatColl courses – Marilyn shared her experience of Blender 3D Animation course
• TaraNet Photography Workshop – feedback from participants was positive
• Digistore pd for TaraNet teachers in using digital learning objects planned for next term
• In-house PD – discussed PD how schools are approaching PD with their own staff
• eTeacher PD – planned for 3rd & 4th December in collaboration with Volcanics & CoroNet – opportunities for all teachers
• Conservation Week VC series – these are taking place next week – all schools will be participating through C4 GATE students
• Update – Fibre Networks, SNUPs – shared information from PPTA ICT Task Force MOE presentation
• ICTPD Collaboration Programme: Regional Educational Cluster – discussed opportunities to work with secondary schools outside of TaraNet, not in a position yet to apply for support from contestable funding.
• Connected Secondary Schools – PPTA Conference paper – link here
• Moodle – cluster documentation (minutes etc) in staffroom area http://moodle.minedu.govt.nz/taranet/

Even though there were a few missing, it was good to catch up with this group & discuss & share what is happening out in schools. Without these dedicated teachers in our schools, we would never find our way into the 21st Century :-)

TaraNet Video Workshop

Another successful PD workshop today. Teachers from Patea, Opunake, Stratford, St Mary's & Inglewood attended this session. This time we focused on Video with Mark Bellringer from DigitalStory facilitating the session for us. Mark has many years experience in this area within industry and in education. He tutored Graphic Design at Polytech for many years and has worked with teachers & their students in many Taranaki Schools over the years. It is great to have someone with this passion and experience in Digital Imaging to work with our teachers.

This was our programme for the day:
A look at “the gear”
• Cameras
• Sound equipment
• “Other stuff”
• Computers
• Software

What are you going to do?
• Documentary
• Drama
• School video magazine
• Allowing students to “see” themselves - sports, speechmaking, experiments, processes
• Students documenting work
• Teachers documenting work, assessments etc
• EOTC

A process
• Planning
• Types of shots

Capturing and Editing
• File types and jargon
• Different software
• How to “get it” into the computer
• Using Moviemaker

Publication
• To computer
• DVD
• The web

A step-up from Windows Movie Maker but still an affordable option for schools is Adobe Premier Elements. This can be bundled with Photoshop Elements and has educational pricing. Find out more from the TKI Software for Learning site. (Though this site has been recently upgraded it seems they haven't upgraded the content - still showing Adobe Version 3.0....)

St Mary's PLGs

Every week I have been attending St Mary's Professional Learning Groups. These are groups have an ICTPD focus and work together for 40 minutes before school one day a week. Today we had a sharing session with feedback from the different groups:

Wiki spaces – easy to use & free, www.wikispaces.com , problem was blocked at the time, survey monkey www.surveymonkey.com – design surveys. Need to try these out before hand. Use plans, b & c. Kids very positive.

Protopage – not for all, but interesting to play with. Embedding videos – again blocking problems (You Tube). Can’t upload whole documents. Photos sometimes not clear. Handy as a home page for students.
www.protopage.com

Discussion on trial of unblocking YouTube www.youtube.com Will focus first on teacher's use of YouTube and learn how to download and share video.

Powerpoint – steps of students making a product – photographs – visual instruction for students on the big screen.

Using the IWB – energy transformations – student were really engaged – manipulating objects to come up with an energy equation.

IWB – shared ideas, Created How To files on the Teacher Drive (Interwrite folder).

Digital Learning Objects – need to be clear about learning objectives. Front page of TKI, Digistore.
http://www.tki.org.nz/r/digistore/

These PLGs are a great way to slowly but surely bring teachers along in their use of ICT in the classroom by  making time for hands on ICTPD within a safe & supportive environment. Throughout the discussion this morning it was good to hear the connections were being made between what teachers were learning & trying out in their lessons and the benefits for students. All had to say the students were really positive, motivated, & enthusiastic about what they were doing - even when it sometimes didn't work as they expected :-)

Heads up @ Patea

I met with staff at Patea Area School today and ran "Heads up on eLearning Workshop" via VC. Here are the staff at Patea in their Personalised Learning Centre watching 'Shift Happens'. I thought the workshop ran well from a distance - I was able to run through my presentation, including the movie without too much loss of quality (I think - that's the feedback I got anyway ;-) and engage in discussion with teachers. It was easier too to set up a presentation from the VC room than travel to Patea (save my carbon footprint), setup a data projector and try & configure internet access at the school.

Patea are looking to focus on ICTPD for their teachers & I will support them in working with their lead teachers, developing a vision & a strategic plan, goal setting and bringing in facilitators to work with staff in PLGs (Professional Learning Groups), regular in-class support & workshop sessions.

Digital Story Telling @ Inglewood

Teachers from Inglewood English Faculty, Stratford & St Mary's joined me to learn about Digital Story Telling. Inglewood English Faculty requested this PD session so we opened it up for the whole cluster to send teachers.
We explored how Digital Story Telling could be used across the Curriculum and had a play with PhotoStory3 to create our own stories based on key words from a poem and using Flickr pics. We also spent some time looking at sites online where you could tell your stories such as:
Voice Thread
JumpCut
EyeSpot
Scrapblog
BubbleShare
Bubblr (Comic Strips)
I look forward to hearing back from teachers about the digital story telling they do with their students back in class :-)

This was a great session for the teachers who attended, it would have been good to see more schools take advantage of this free opportunity for ICTPD...
Workshop notes for Digital Story Telling & PhotoStory are here.

 

Fleur's Digital Story (Fleur you can download it from here)

Coastal T@T

Teacher's at Coastal Taranaki School hosted my 'Heads up ELearning' workshop presentation for one of their regular monthly Tech @ Three PD sessions.

Great turnout & discussion helped along by a great afternoon tea, leftovers courtesy of the TaraNet Principal's meeting we held at Coastal earlier in the afternoon.

Heads up on the eLearning Landscape

I was at Inglewood today presenting an overview to staff on what's happening in the eLearning Landscape. There is so much going on to talk about in a short session and overwhelming i'm sure for those who are hearing some of this stuff for the first time. A message I tried to get across to teachers was not to get hung up on learning how to 'do' all of this technology stuff themselves but to be aware of what was out there and how they can enable their students to use this in their learning. This means things like - accessing appropriate resources, curriculum design and teaching strategies. Teachers sit on a wide continuum of capability & confidence in educational technology and its unrealistic that all should be able to become IT whizzes - there is just not enough time and also that's not what its all about. Its about equipping our students with the skills for learning in the 21st Century which means a change in shifting 19th Century teacher mindsets. Many of our students are quite confident & capable technology users, this is where the teacher/student roles change and teachers need to let go & let students take the lead in the classroom. I like this section from Hargreaves Educational Imaginary which talks about the roles of teachers & students. This point about teachers roles hit home to me yesterday when during our workshop session one teacher asked 'Well what do we do? What do teachers do?' If we don't need to learn all this ourselves but our students do... I guess this comes from teachers who have always mastered their 'subject' matter before they teach it to their students. Now its not just content knowledge - trying to fill a students head with all the important stuff thats going to be in the exam, but skills & processes are really important too.

E Learning Landscape

view presentation (tags: ictpd elearning taranet)

Expanding Learning Horizons

view presentation (tags: elearning vc taranet)

These presentations can be downloaded from http://www.slideshare.net/rache65 as there are a few links embedded in them. The following are the two videos we watched.

Shift Happens

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

Windwand Sharing

A VC was scheduled for today for TaraNet teachers to share ideas & resources from the windwand miniconference last week. Unfortunately i was the only one to attend this meeting. How frustrating being an ePrincipal - it is so much like being the invisible woman. Because you are not physically in peoples faces all the time it is easy for them to 'forget', make an excuse or just let things go. This is something i have always battled with from eteachers to TaraNet Principals. Next term we will have more f2f workshops for lead teachers - maybe a more blended approach will get some more commitment to the cyberside of our activities.....

Links from our TaraNet wiki here.

An interesting one - Identity 2.0 Dick Hardt

Windwand ICTPD

8 teachers from all our TaraNet schools attended a PD day in New Plymouth organised by New Plymouth Boys High School & Francis Douglas Memorial College ICTPD cluster. It was disappointing for the organisers that Wellington airport was fogged in all day and a number of workshop presenters couldn't get here.
I presented a workshop on Flickr & one on Blogging. I really wanted to present about the virtual learning network and the opportunities we are able to offer our students with distance learning and video conferencing. But was turned down as this is not what they want to hear about they want to hear about Web 2.0. Though I did take the opportunity when introducing myself to do a quick promo for the VLN & direct them to the website ;-)

I have set up a wiki page for our teachers share their ideas & resources from the days PD.

Cool Things @ Coastal

Image courtesy of dcysurfer http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcysurfer/2469673205/

Coastal Taranaki School are moving ahead with ICTPD in their school largely due to the efforts of Hamish & his team and the work they are doing with an ICTPD Development Project with Oakura & Omata Schools.

This is a great case for supporting Lead Teachers in our schools. Hamish has a day's release each week to work with others in his school & to initiate and support ict projects. His enthusiasm, expertise and time does make a huge difference not only for his school but for how Hamish can work successfully with our TaraNet Lead Teacher team.

Lead Teachers Developing Critical Netstudents

 

TaraNet lead teachers met today for our regular termly VC catchup. We had a PD focus on Netsafety & Info Literacy. I presented a workshop session on Developing Critical Netstudents which was one of my first conference presentations. Presentation & supporting resources are all available here.
We discussed explicit teaching strategies & resources for educating our kids to be responsible 'cybercitizens' This ranged from modelled & guided use of the internet with our younger students, information literacy, to learning about issues such as plagiarism, copyright, cyberbullying, web evaluation,  our 'digital footprints' in a Web 2.0 world. The new look NZ netsafe site has started to provide some structure to this with their 'cybercitizenship pathway'.

Also of interest was a new resource supported by netsafe & other organisations - a 3D animated series 'see how the Jones family fares against the nastiest stuff on the internet'

Studyit

On Wednesday Colleen (HOD Maths @ Inglewood) and I joined the Studyit VC to find out more about using this site with students. I was hoping to get some tips on presenting pd online particularly in the display of webpages online. Unfortunately they had all sorts of technical problems, firstly we couldn't see them & then we couldn't see their laptop display. I think it was a real nightmare for the presenters but they soldiered through it. We were able to follow along on our own laptop (thanks to my 3G card) as they walked us through the site. This was organised by FarNet (thnx Carolyn) and there were schools from Kaitaia, Whangamata, Inglewood & Timaru attending. This weeks focus was on the Maths area & last week was English. Ben from Coastal Taranaki school attended the English session "It was great and I have since been plugging the site with my students. Well worth the time and I can highly recommend it."

ICTPD @ Inglewood

In the last couple of days at Inglewood, i have been catching up with my elearners but i have also done a bit of ictpd and talked to individual staff members about their ictpd needs.

One recurring response from staff was their biggest ictpd need was time to explore using ict & to prepare resources. Some wanted specific training in  applications directly relevant to classroom use & a request was made for a digital story telling workshop using Movie Maker and/or Photostory. I will have to organise a cluster workshop for this.

I worked with staff who had a wide range of confidence & capability on things such as: using webmail effectively, using interactive maths resources, & digital learning objects, exploring features of the smartboard, we also looked at flickr, wikispaces & blogs. (though a lot of our time was spent unblocking website categories - grrrrr) It was interesting to note that when we unblocked most of the categories for Henry his internet ran noticeably faster than it had ever done before. I wonder how much the sina filtering system is slowing us down...

My 3G network card has proved invaluable to me as i work in different places around the school - 2 schools out of 6 so far all working well - I will see when i have visited all of my other schools if this 3G is going to pass the test or not. I'm not sure how to check my datausage on it though - any ideas - Darren?