Planning for 2011 & Beyond @ Patea

 Patea Area School 2011 & Beyond by Rachel

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.

Patea First VC Class

  I visited Patea Area School again on Monday this week. Kathryn has taken over the role of VC Coordinator so I spent some time with her discussing her new role, looking at how to use the VLN, and using the VC gear.
We practised by VCing into Carolyn (ePrincipal, FarNet) who has just got her VC online in her home office. Carolyn is nearly an hour from her closest school and is also an eTeacher - having VC access from home is a huge enabler for her to be more effective in her job. It was great to take control of the far end camera and have a nosey around Carolyn's office and zoom in on a beautiful view down a bush clad hill to the beach below. The best of both worlds - the world at your fingertips & the beach 5 minutes away :-)
Discussion with Carolyn gave Kathryn many insights into what were some of the issues our students faced as elearners and how we could best support them back in their home schools.

Patea students engaged in their first VC lesson today as 5 students are participating in a Beginners German class, along with students from St Mary's, Opunake & Stratford. Their first VC went really well, with lots of emails buzzing back to me about the experience.
Courtesy of phutran on Flickr

Patea's New Personalised Learning Centre

It was a buzz to hook in with Patea today and to see from the  VC room background that they had begun to set up and use their new learning space. Today was a good opportunity for all staff at Patea to experience a video conference and to talk to Ken from OtagoNet. The discussion was around what were the possibilities their learning centre would bring for their students and what were some of the pitfalls they may need to navigate. Having experienced and researched this at Roxborough, Ken was able to offer some practical ideas and insights. Between Ken and I we also gave staff a bigger picture view of the activities of the Virtual Learning Network and the opportunities available for our students.

Personalised Learning @ Patea

Patea Area School are on the verge of joining our VLN . They have their VC gear up and running and are working now on developing a Personalised Learning Centre (PLC) to support students - not only those who may become online learners but all students who need a flexible learning space and support outside of the traditional classrooms setting for a whole range of reasons. It is really heartening to see Patea is putting the horse before the cart (learning before technology) and planning to have good systems in place before jumping into learning online. Te Aroha was really impressed with what is happening at Roxborough Area School and the whole staff at Patea have been involved in exploring the idea of a PLC and planning for its development.

We VCed into Turakina Maori Girls College to speak to Dawn Mitai-Pehi about how they are using VC in their school & with the Paerangi cluster. Though they are not currently running any VC classes they are using VC a lot for teacher PD, shared curriculum support & socialising for their students to keep in touch with whanau at other schools.