Inspiring our School Leavers

Last week i had the privilege of attending Senior Prizegivings at two of our TaraNet Schools. Apart from recognising the achievements of our students in the awards that are given, this is also a time to farewell them in their journey into the wider world beyond the school gates. (As one student put it ‘the real world’ – though we should be bringing  more of the ‘real world’ into school but that’s another story). Speakers at both of these events talked about the rapidly changing world our young people are moving into, the skills, values & dispositions they will need to develop to thrive there, and what changes schools will need to make to enable  young people to develop as life long learners. Both speakers specifically focussed on the power of web 2.0/3.0 to enable students to collaborate, connect, innovate & become global citizens.

Kelvin spoke at Stratford High School and shared this video to illustrate his point of being connected, collaborative global citizens:

 

Marg spoke at Inglewood High School and the video she used to illustrate her speech was this one:

DOC Digital Conversation

Students from Stratford, Inglewood, Patea & St Mary’s joined with other schools around the country in the second of our Digital Conversations with DOC. Today Otago area was talking about Biodiversity of Freshwater Fish. It was a bit disappointing that we couldn’t see the pictures & slides the presenters were running & though we did ask for them to turn their screen around & zoom in on it, it seemed to present too much of a technical problem for them… Most of our students at the Stratford site went back to class to investigate the topic on DOCs website while the rest of us persevered. I think the cause of the problem would be the difference in Polycom equipment & compatibility. The delivery site was running with up-to-date equipment & our schools have probably got the oldest equipment still be used in the country. I will be spending some time with Asnet support to see how we can work around this issue.

Tandberg - Serving up the Content

 
Our eteachers are beginning to use the Tandberg Content server on a more regular basis to record oral assessments. I worked with Marg today to show her how to access her recorded VC session. This will be useful so she can take her time & revisit the assessment of student work, it could be used for moderation purposes, and copies will be made & sent to students for feedback/feedforward.

I tried to access the VC recording that Rangiroa made at the end of last term by using the url direct but am having a heap of trouble with any of my Tandberg passwords working. The server is a bit confusing with a variety of admin & user passwords. Yet i can go straight to the front page of the Tandberg Content Server and view or download this video without any Tandberg password (except for the one i originally set on the video) How crazy is that? I don't really want to direct students to this page - i thought a single url would do it. But after wasting a whole afternoon on this it looks like i'll have to. I think we need to revisit how Tandberg is working for us with Asnet the providers of this service. We did have some meetings around this earlier in the year but many of us were only just beginning to explore Tandberg then and hadn't encountered the vagaries of the system by then. How are others finding Tandberg now we have a bit more experience with it?

Promoting TaraNet to Year 8s

Many of our schools have had their Open Days for prospective Year 8s.
I attended an evening at Stratford High where my own daughter will be going next year. I talked to parents about what TaraNet was all about, how our students can now have a wider range of curricula choices as good as if not better than any of the city schools. I also talked about some of the elearning opportunities for students aside from VC distance learning.

Principal, Warren Purdy, writes about the Open Evening on his new blog.
Great to see Warren using a blog to communicate with our wider school community.

Second Hand Wedding

Stratford High School Media Studies students met with Jeremy Macey, Development Assistant at the NZ Film Commission and Linda Niccol, Writer of the recently released NZ movie 'Second Hand Wedding'.

This was a great opportunity for student to learn more about the film they were studying with experts on hand to answer their questions. Hopefully this will be one of more VC conversations hosted by the Film Commission. Media Studies & English teachers are welcome to join Jeremy to discuss further VC opportunities Monday 4th August. Contact me for VC bridge & pin # number.

Say Ahhhhh! Life after Interact?

Yr 3 & 4 kids at SPS were exploring using the cameras today in preparation for their big day out at Puke Ariki tomorrow.

Jane has created a really useful resource for teachers starting out with photography in the classroom it can be downloaded through the Tai o Rupawai cluster area on Interact.

Of note for users of Interact & there are heaps of us that do (especially for the hosting of ICTPD cluster resources) is that Interact is on the way out. Not tomorrow but in the foreseeable future. I only heard about this by accident as a kind person emailed me the details. I host two sites on Interact. One is a repository of shared resources that were developed during our time as the Bard Wired cluster. The other is our TaraNet ECampus site that i was hoping that in the years to come would develop into a vibrant and busy place to support the elearning needs of our secondary school distance learning students. So now to cast an eye across the alternatives - most likely to be Moodle. Time to start playing :-)

Here is the full information for those who don't already know. Contact Glen if you have any questions.

"DearInteract User
Some months ago we informed you that the future of Interact developmentat the University of Canterbury was being reviewed. This process has taken longer than expected but we have now made some firm decisions and are in a position to communicate these to you.
Approvalwas recently given for a project to review the University's LearningManagement Systems with a view to moving to a single system by 2010. This review will consist of an evaluation of a short-list of opensource systems in comparison to Blackboard. It was decided that Interact will not be on the short-list of evaluated systems. This was not an easy decision to make as we believe that Interact is a good product that is meeting the needs of a wide range of users both within and without the University. The following reasons were the basis for this decision:
* For whatever reason the open source release of Interact has not generated a development community. There are a wide range of users of the system, but none of these are contributing development back to the project(perhaps it is because the system is so good they don't need to do any additional development!). This means that the University is 100%responsible for ongoing development, with associated costs and risks.To realistically keep pace with developments in this fast changing area would require at least 2-3 full time programmers, which means that it ceases to be a cost effective solution.

* As mentioned in our previous communication, the other major open sourceplayer in the New Zealand education market, Moodle, has had millions of dollars poured into its development, as well as a worldwide network of voluntary developers contributing back to the project. We don't believe it is viable to compete against that in a market as small as the New Zealand compulsory education sector.
This means that the University will only be supporting Interact for the next two years, until December 2009. We will continue to provide hosting and technical support for this period but there will only be limited development work done, mainly bug fixes, etc. During this time we will be working on migration strategies for moving our own dataout of Interact, which will hopefully provide other users with migration options also if they need them.

Interact is Open Source, so you own all of the source code as well as the data. This means that you are free to keep using Interact on your own or other hosted servers for as long as you wish, so this announcement doesn't require any immediate action on your part. We would however recommend that you review your LMS requirements some time in 2008 so you are in a position to make a decision about your future direction some time before the end of 2009.

It has been a pleasure working with you and we regret any inconveniencethat this move may cause, but given the circumstances we believeit is the best decision for all parties involved. Please feel free to email me at glen.davies@canterbury.ac.nz if you have any questionsabout the above, or wish to discuss this further."

Promoting VC @ S.H.S.

Last night I presented a short promo session at Stratford High School for the Year 8 evening - where prospective new students and their families come and learn more about what our school has to offer.
The school's new 'slogan' couldn't suit VC learning any better:
"Staying Local - Going Far"
In a nutshell this sums up how VC can really benefit our students. A world of opportunities can be opened up to them without having to leave town.
My talk focussed on how VC learning was a collaborative initiative with other schools & learning institutions regionally & nationally and that our children now had a wealth of choices available to them through the Virtual Learning Network. I also talked about the the opportunities our students have to talk to experts and other interesting people through Digital Conversations and through Telecom VC promotional events.
It was very timely that Telecom had contacted us that day to let us know we had been included in the upcoming All Blacks VCs. We will be making a big event with this - moving the VC gear out into a classroom and having our Primary School children participate alongside the older students. The last time we had a big event like this was when Telecom hosted the NZ Idol Ben Lummis VC 3 years ago - we had children ranging from Y3 to Y13 joining in together and when the parents heard that Doug Howlett was also part of the VC we couldn't get them out of the room either! Although it was unashamed Telecom self promotion (Helen Clark & Theresa Gattung also made appearances) it was a great event for the children to be involved in.

First Weeks @ SPS

Today I worked with a small team of Y5 & 6 students as they took photos of New Entrants at Stratford Primary School to create Digital Stories of their first weeks at school. It was quite a logistical exercise with 14 new children starting at school this term! The older kids were great at organising the younger ones, getting them to pose for 'natural shots', lining them up for group photos & keeping them amused as they waited their turn. By the end of the day the Y5 & 6 students were exhausted :-) The photos will be compiled in Movie Maker with captions & background music, burnt to CD & presented to the New Entrant children at assembly.
On the more technical side of things the CDs are burnt with an Autorun programme, so they start automatically on a start page that explains what the CD is all about, links to the First Weeks @ SPS movie file and links also to a range of software on the CD - just in case they don't have the right software on their home computers to view the movie. Previous experience of sending students digital work home has shown that not all families have the right software to view the work. This initiative has been running since the end of last year and there has been no feedback from families to say they can't view the movie.
I know if i was a parent i would love to have a lasting memory such as this.

IWB @ SPS

Over the holidays Stratford Primary School had Interactive Whiteboards installed in all the senior classrooms, as well as making 8 tablets available for use across the school.
It was very exciting to come to school last week and see into all the classrooms, students interacting with Maths Learning Objects. This is early days yet as teachers and students together explore the possibilities for this technology in their classrooms.
Today i began to load some Interwrite Software on my computer so i could have a play and develop some resources. I also visited the Sitech E-Learning Zone (a moodle site) to check out the resources, links & PD material there. Stratford Primary along with many other schools have joined the Sitech Champion Schools - a collection of schools who in partnership with Sitech have the following Vision:
"To bring together technological and pedagogical expertise to explore the impact on teaching and learning of digitally enhanced classrooms and to offer effective strategies for their future use"

and Goals:

"To work with teacher-researchers to obtain a picture of present teaching practice in digitally enhanced classrooms
To build on observational work to develop, trial and evaluate theoretically-grounded teaching strategies for the digitally enhanced classroom"

I look forward to following their progress & joining them on their learning journey :-)

IWB - Decisions Decisions

It seems now it's not a case of should we get an IWB, but which sort of IWB (Interwrite, SmartBoard, Promeathean). Do you go the whole hog and get a board or start with a tablet or both? Where should we put them in the school? Lighthouse teachers throughout the school or a syndicate (faculty) focus?
I was impressed at this Demo (Sitech Interwrite) at SPS today. Mainly because teachers were tuned into it - its was great to see them with their tongues hanging out rather than with their eyes glazing over and rolling back in their heads :-) So what better place to start - teachers with a positive mindset - you won't get anywhere without that, whatever technology you put in their classrooms.
Another great thing about this Demo was the whole pedagogical approach - every opportunity was used to involve teachers in real learning examples across the curricula & at various year levels. Sitech offer free on going PD support after the installation of their IWBs with a focus on learning & teaching not just technical. Tools & features are very similar to any other IWB though i was impressed also with what i thought was a superior capability of converting anyones chicken scrawl writing to text. It will be interesting to follow the progress of our teachers with IWB & see if they can really make a difference or will this be another expensive weapon in a 'chalk & talk' arsenal.

Media Team Prepares 4 the Jubilee

Today we got the whole Media Team together to prepare for SPS Jubilee coming up on Queen's Birthday weekend. It was great to have kids working together tuakana/teina - we should make more opportunities to do this in our schools. They have begun preparing Decade presentations using our flickr photos. Though i can't work out why for some photos we can't download our own pictures & just end up with an empty image - spaceball.gif - this is really annoying. We have all the photos on our own server but its easier to find them from flickr. They also learnt how to optimise their images, upload them to flickr and to make a blog entry too. Over Jubilee Weekend we plan to be uploading pics, audio & short video clips as we go so those who can't be with us can be part of the celebrations - it would be great to get some comments from ex-pupils on the Jubilee Blogspot.

When Web 1.0 Meets Web 2.0

Another thing thats been taking a huugggeeee amount of my time is the redevelopment of our website. It is still a traditional Web 1.0 site in it's purpose, design, structure & hosting but throughout the site elements of Web 2.0 have been utilized. These definitely make it more dynamic & I think interesting. It also opens up the potential for greater interaction with the school community and beyond through these cool little tools - depending on how they are managed by the school... Examples are the photogallery (a flickr site), www.librarything.com integrated into our Information Centre page, and the Sitemeter, Geovisitor & Measle Maps you can see on our front page. I won't make any links here to those things - please go and visit our site and explore them for yourself :-) Another cool thing coming up on the site will be the links into the classroom sites made on protopage. I was totally blown away when i checked back into Room 1's site - a great benchmark for our other classrooms - check it out.
These are just a few tools that we can use to Connect, Communicate, Create & Collaborate through our school website. If you want to read more about Web 2.0 Harnessing the Potential for schools please read my article (any feedback welcome :-)

Jubilee Junkie

Every spare minute of my time (and lots of minutes that aren't spare) have been spent in preparing for our school jubilee. It's been really interesting to be given lots of old school photos from people in our community, scanning them & loading them to our Jubilee flickr site. Memories have been shared on our Jubilee blogspot. All of these will become our "Digital Time Capsule" (Thanks Kelvin :-) - the 21st Century version of burying old newspapers to be dug up 50 years later. Our Time Capsule will be easily accessible for anyone with an internet connection for a long time to come. I have begun to pull together a Jubilee Media team of students from Stratford Primary School & Stratford High School to document the events of Jubilee weekend, taking lots of pictures, short video & audio to be shared in our Time Capsule. This team will also prepare the multimedia presentations that will be on display, along with presentations from SPS classes, throughout the Jubilee. Presentations no longer need to be PowerPoints. With Flash Slideshow Maker you can easily put together presentations and display as a flash movie. Here's an example. Another tool i found was Flash Flipping Book which i used to display a very old handwritten book which really needed to be displayed in it's original book format. (Not sure if this one runs all the way through properly as it is hosted on the School Zone network & it wouldn't upload some supporting files)

Gen-i Engineer 4 Schools

(Carl prepares St Joseph's new pod of laptops)

Carl has been working in our schools for a term now and all indications show that he is doing a great job for the 11 schools involved in the "Gen-i Engineer 4 Schools Project"

This is something i have been wanting to blog about for ages but have just been waiting for Carl & 'the project' to settle in as we expected.

This is an initiative led by Kelvin (Stratford Primary School), myself & Chris (Gen-i) in partnership with Gen-i, 11 Central Taranaki Primary Schools & WITT (Western Institute of Technology) based loosely on the DigiOps Community Technician project which we have previously been involved in.

Here's the blurb from our proposal that explains the project:

"The use of Information and Communication Technology within schools develops year on year. As needs develop the requirements develop, the result is more technology implemented into the school that ultimately should benefit the administration of the school, and the learning outcomes for students. However in a lot of cases the school itself is unable to support the environment due to lack of capability within its staff – who are of course teachers – not ICT experts. This means external support is sought. Unfortunately market rates for external support are in conflict with schools’ budgets and as such a lot of preventative maintenance, and or change, is not attended to, and teachers and students do not use the technology to its full potential.

This proposal sets to establish a graduate program between Gen-I, WITT and Central Taranaki Schools for the provision of an ‘Engineer for Schools’. This engineer would be employed by Gen-I for 6 months and allocated to schools as 1^st level support at a rate that is basically cost recovery. All participating schools would book the engineers time across the school term weeks thereby sharing the resource.

Goals of the project

• Schools have an economical, capable, trained 1^st level support resource to attend to day-to-day support requirements so Teachers and Admin staff do not have to,
• Schools have a technical resource that can assist them to maintain efficient, reliable and fully functioning computer systems
• The graduate obtains industry experience directly after finishing their degree; preparing them for the workforce,
• Gen-I can evaluate graduates with a view to them becoming permanent employees,
• WITT has a mechanism to encourage students to achieve with a view to securing the graduate position

Technical Services offered:

• Identify desktop component and server hardware problems.
• Troubleshoot hardware and software issues, email, peripheral equipment problems and repair and correct as required.
• Install, configure & upgrade software and operating systems using standard software packages.
• Customise software to suit end user requirements.
• Install and update antivirus, firewall and other web security applications.
• Installation, configuration and maintenance of printers, monitors, scanners, digital imaging technologies such as digital videos, digital cameras and scanners.
• Install and configure new desktop components such as hard drives, RAM, peripheral cards, CD Drives etc
• Implement a programme of maintenance for ‘desktop health’ – desktop cleanup, malware scan, defrag, dusting fans & ventilation

Schmoozing with the Dr!

Yesterday was kick off day for Dr Schmooze’s Clues. It was great to be in Charlaine’s class as they discussed and researched the first couple of clues and then the creative team set to work on constructing the photo answer. A bit of rivalry also between the two Toko teams always adds to the fun. Schools registered are Toko, Stratford, St Joseph’s, Ngaere, Midhirst & Marco. Not all teams started on the first day so I have spent some time this morning getting the SPS teams on board. Once the kids are introduced to the game there should be very minimal teacher input – this is their game they can do it all themselves (email, research & photography). Check out some of the creative pictures that are coming in as answers.

I sat alongside Dr Schmooze as the game begun yesterday & discovered, maybe, why the Dr loves these games so much. Its lots of fun to watch the emails come in & track the progress of the teams involved, to send another clue or answer a team’s question is almost a bit like ‘playing god’ ;-) I helped the Dr plan this game & maybe some extra things we could have done (that we have done in the past) is to create a formal lesson plan with curricula tie-ins etc. Just for teachers to explain why they are doing this & yes this is real learning. I know real learning’s not hard to spot when you see it in action, but some people like the piece of paper planning to go with it….

Any feedback from those involved would be handy in planning the next one 2007.

Still Lining up for Laptops @ SPS

Today I spent some time the Yr 5 -6 syndicate at Stratford Primary School as I followed the laptop pod around to see what was happening in our classrooms.
One class was using the laptops as part of their maths rotation & accessing 'tasks' from the school intranet that had links to relevant digital learning objects. Paul has shared his Maths task file with us here - thnx Paul. This gives an idea of how you can direct students to appropriate learning objects without students having to navigate through TKI's Digistore to find them. To this I would also add specific learning intentions to be clear about what are the purposes of this activity (beyond 'play these games'). Paul's class have also been busy with the new digital camera's - all classes now have their own. They have been exploring the Macro feature & been taking some awesome close-up photos of flowers to support their language programme (poetry writing). I suggested Paul take a look at flickr for sharing their photos with a wider audience.
Another class was publishing stories for their home sample books. I would encourage them to start using the laptops right at the beginning of the writing process: inspiration for generating & organising ideas, wordprocessing for editing & yes blogs for publishing! I spent some time introducing Lee to blogs & if time allows on my next visit will help her set up a classroom blog. I have tried to model this in my own use of blogs & today I created a new blog with some of the writing that Lee had collected over the years and produced in print format - just to showcase how easy & awesome blogging is. "A Collection of Literature" is a companion blog to the SPS Jubilee blog and is "A collection of stories by Stratford Primary School written over recent years. Chosen for their significance to our school, our town & Taranaki. These are extracted from an annual publication "Stratford Primary School A Collection of Literature"

I have been thinking lately if I was starting out using Web 2.0 tools for the first time (knowing what i know now) - what tools would i use? Would it still be blogger? Would it be something else? Would i forgo vimeo & flickr & go straight to Photobucket? (it does photos, video and flash) What would you suggest for a classroom teacher starting out at this point in time?? What would be in the basic toolbox?

SZ @ SPS

My last term at Stratford will involve some time every week supporting Clarissa in consolidating her expertise in a number of key areas we have covered before but which we need to establish some documented procedures in: Managing SZ users, establishing Cybersafety into learning programmes, exploring some new software... a range of things - still adding to the list. We started with SZ today & the first thing we looked at was keeping SZ honest - speed checks. School Zone reloaded, launched at ULearn, promises faster speeds for the same price - sometime in Term 4. So keep your ISP on their toes & check your speed. We also documented procedures for bulk upload of new users & what features user groups should have enabled - email, web hosting, file drop boxes?
I also spent the morning with Kim going over the ICTPD budget with a fine-tooth comb as we near the end of the 3 year contract. Not an easy task, definately head-ache material - but our forecast so far looks like we'll be right on the last cent - phew - i think!
The scary thing for me was looking at this budget shows my last payday will be at the end of term! I had not really given this too much thought until now - but can't avoid it now. So if you have a holiday job for me and/or 0.4 FTE for 2007 please contact me :-) I now have to get busy with a new CV - watch this space...

Web CHALLENGE @ SPS

Stratford children playing in the hail storm - my sources tell me this was not the only school where this was going on today :-)

They don't call it the WebChallenge for nothing! The Challenge for this group at SPS (& St Jo's also) has been the need for more time. Our kids are spending so much time on research and developing content for their site which leaves little time to work on building the site. 2 hours a week is just not going to do it well. So one thing to reflect on for next time - they need to work on a topic they have previously studied or have some sound experience and content knowledge of so we can focus on the skills of site building at WebChallenge time. Site building in itself is not a huge technical skill - the learning skills (or attributes) are design, creativity, problem-solving, communication & collaborative skills. A big focus from the beginning has been making sure children respect copyright on the internet in the making of their sites. Here's a link to a list of sites compiled to guide them to some sources online.

Fulfilling Your Dreams

Stratford Primary School 1st IV boys had the opportunity to join with schools around the country to talk with Norm Hewitt in a VC Digital Chat
Norm talked about setting goals, following your dreams, having someone to champion you (and to be a champion for others), believing in yourself and never giving up. What a motivational conversation especially so for our boys (i wish my boys had been there). Norm talks about his desire to be a 'good man' and what it means to be a good man for himself, his family and the community. I wonder if he is mates with Celia Lashlie :-)
Thanks to St Mary's School for making their VC room available to us. Check out the calendar on Digital Conversations to see what is coming up - a few presentations from Te Papa experts about spiders, kereru, conservation, art & maori weaponry. If you are in the Taranaki area and you would like to join one of these session you can contact me and I can help organise access to VC room near you.

Stratford Primary School Jubilee 2007

Have been a little distracted from the blog of late with a few other things going on right now. One of them has been taking over as Secretary of the SPS Jubilee Committee. Mug me? No I wanted to do it! Having been here since i walked through the door at 5 years old - with a few extended breaks in-between of course :-)
So I have taken over updating the Jubilee page and created an online form for registration - which wasn' t too much of a learning curve as SchoolZone has a few templates for forms (so if you are a SchoolZone school you will find the templates in the SINA web tools section - download them and change the details - upload it to your site & voila it works - i don't know how...). I also set up a Flickr page and uploaded all the schools archived photos going back to the year dot. Not forgetting the other important thing that Secretary's are supposed to do - keep the minutes! I thought that i would set up a Wiki to share all our organising documents and so others can access & work on the files (may be important later on when Lynn gets flooded with registrations and needs an extra hand) Well maybe - if there's a need.