2014 - the year of the Education Webinar

I don't know how NZ stacks up with the rest of the world in webinar participation but it feels like our teachers and the educational community in general are finally starting to 'get it' that they can connect with each other virtually and still have a quality professional learning experience.

We have been encouraging the educational community for some years to come into the virtual space so that our teachers can have access to professional learning opportunities that you don't have to drive miles to attend, find relievers to cover the extra time you need, or fork out loads of scarce PD budget for. Yes there is nothing so good as face to face but sometimes you don't really need to be there in person to achieve the learning outcome you are looking for. Blend it for balance - take the opportunity to f2f when it makes sense to and when you are thirsting for some more social contact or there are practical aspects that are easier to be there for - (conferences are great for this). Then make the most of a growing wealth of pld opportunities that fit more flexibly into your busy work life.

Originally through the NZed video conferencing network we collaborated to bring expertise to schools in our VC clusters for example - Julia Atkins, NZ Film Commission, MyPortfolio, StudyIt,  Now with a stronger, faster, more stable infrastructure, you don't need high end VC equipment or a dedicated bridge to connect, you can come in from the desktop (or mobile device) at school or home. Adobe Connect, Elluminate, Google Hangouts, Skype... take your pick.

ConnectEd Educator month was a real clincher for teacher participation in webinars, with many teachers connecting to a wide variety of sessions throughout the month, in Adobe Connect & Google Hangouts You can check out the recorded webinars archived here.

The Enabling ELearning team hold regular PLD webinars and these are archived here. Before this our VPLD team ran Hot Seat sessions - some sessions still worth checking out are archived here. Would recommend Karen's session on Social Learning (Karen is definitely the queen of the webinar - a fantastic & composed presenter :-) also Christina discussing Teaching as Inquiry.

And those are just our NZ webinars - there are so many opportunities to connect globally for example edWeb.net and Adobe Exchange. So make sure you follow whats coming up and plan your personal PLD for 2015. Love to hear of your recommendations of virtual PLD opportunities to follow!

Pinelopi Zaka from Science Alive running a PLD session on the Nature of Science, supported by the VLN Primary School.

Snacking on Digistore

Check out the opportunity to learn more about using Digistore with their free facilitated sessions "Online Snacks".

Digistore has been around for some time now and continues to grow in it's range of learning objects, take the time now to work out how you can make the most of this valuable resource.

Organise your staff to attend a session together (sign up here) or join in on Rocky's session with VPLD in August.

Learn how to search Digistore effectively, create learning pathways and learn more about Digistore & Software for Learning with DigiAdvisors Suzie & Rocky.

Remembrance Day

Today the RSA launched their speech competition for next year. This one is worth following up with your students as the winner gets to travel to Gallipoli next Anzac Day. (Yr 12 & 13’s only)

The resource page that supports the Speech Competitions is an awesome collection of links for all students studying the Wars.

Computing & IT Secondary Teachers – New Subject Association

“The New Zealand Association of Computing and Digital Information Technology Teachers is a new association created to advocate for our subject. The aims of the association is to create a warm friendly community of teachers where we can share resources and speak with one voice to get our subject area recognised and supported.”

Hmmm ‘warm & friendly’ huh. Maybe the language is a reflection on the journey it took to get thus far…

http://www.nzacditt.org.nz/

For Computing, ICT, TIM secondary teachers.

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?

ClickView Digital Media

Mike from ClickView demonstrates the capabilities of this digital media library & management system to staff at Stratford High School. We held this demonstration in the VC room to enable other TaraNet schools to hook in (though there were no takers this time).

I was impressed with this system and left the session wishing i was a classroom teacher with all of these tools at my fingertips...

Things that impressed me were:

• Learning Federation Digital Learning Objects can be stored and accessed through the clickview system - what a great way to make these learning objects more accessible to students than through the currently passworded TKI Digistore repository.
• 'Snippets' of video can be edited out of the video and into My Documents for including in presentations or uploading onto learning management systems
• Video can be bookmarked with a url - either a whole video or a certain starting point
• Digital media can be 'exported' to 'the school bag' so they can be played on computers that have the clickview player but are not connected to the school server
• Editing feature allows you to add subtitles to video
• As well as video & dlos, there is photo collections, podcasts & a section for sharing your own video.
• A feature for creating lessons - which can be accessed by all on the school clickview server. A great way to provide learning intentions, sequence digital resources and activities.
• All digital media comes with accompanying learning activities & resources that can be accessed through Clickview as word documents & are customisable
• NZ Exchange allows ClickView screens to share digital media (within the guidelines of the Screen Rights Licence)
• Online tutorials on using ClickView

Areas for improvement? Security permissions for teachers to easily upload media to the system. Only administrators working through the Management server can add new content. Quite pricey at $4 a student p/a & approx $1000 setup. Though if a school is serious about providing easy access to a wide range of digital media and providing the tools to integrate them into learning this would definitely be a worthwhile system.

Any system though is only as good as its users so a challenge here to see how Stratford High School staff will work with this digital media available free to them for the next 6 months. Watch this space...

Cybersafe Kids

A popular visitor in Room 5 today at St Joseph's - the next in a generation of kids born in the 21st Century. These 21st C. kids have already been coming to school for the last two years and what are we doing to meet their needs for now & in the future?

“Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for she was born in a different time”

One thing we can do, and should continually return to, at home and at school, is keeping our kids safe in the online world which is more and more a part of their daily lives. They need to be socially responsible citizens of the virtual worlds they inhabit and what better place to practice than in the safe environment of school. I have been working with students and teachers at St Joseph's in discussing the issues around Cybersafety. There are some great resources for teachers, families & kids online. Here is the Cybersafety links I gathered & published on the St Joseph's School website.

Cybersafe Kids @ St Pats

Children need to understand the unique nature of the Internet; and they need to develop critical-thinking skills - to protect their personal privacy and safety online, to distinguish between fact and opinion, and to recognize inappropriate content if they encounter it. They need to learn strategies for being “cybersafe” at home and at school.
So that was the focus today at St Pat's in Inglewood where i worked with the Junior School & then the Senior School. I had come today all ready to make movies (now where did i get that idea from???) so thanks to Inglewood High School for providing a data projector at short notice and Kim for being so patient as i updated my cybersafety teaching resource.
You can find this resource on the Bard Wired Wiki.
Some notable kids cybersafety links to check out are the 'educational games' from the Canadian Media Awareness Network and with a New Zealand flavour Hector's World.
A great blog post with advice for parents "10 Principles for the Digital Family":

1. Play with your child
2. Go low budget
3. Bring digital politics to the dinner table
4. Be an Adbuster
5. Distrust ratings
6. Raise the issue of innappropriate behaviour appropriately
7. Consider a computer in the kitchen
8. Know the limits of educational games
9. Set boundaries
10. Wear your heart on your sleeve.

Read the full article here.

Smart Kids @ Eltham

Smart Boards for Smart kids - let them tell you themselves. It was good to see kids hands on today - a learning tool as opposed to a teaching tool. Here they are constructing sentences on the bbc.co.uk site.
Lots of work going into preparing for the end of year school production - an international theme. Kids are creating presentations of images related to different countries. I helped out a bit with that & have been working at capturing moving images through Google Earth and Cam Studio (software that captures in a movie what is happening on your screen). The movies display on the big screen and will zoom into different places on Google Earth & link the various countries scenes of the production. (Well that's the idea anyway :-)
Here's an example:



Where in the world is Eltham? on Vimeo

Sharon continues to make and use WebQuests - with or without internet access. Without - she calls them PageQuests. Her feedback is that kids who have been through these quests have a greater understanding and recall of their learning long after the event. Hhhmmm active engagement probably key here. You can download these WebQuests from Interact.

EPIC

EPIC If you're not using it you should be! For NZ schools - find out what your school username & password is to access these awesome resources. Especially useful for those overwhelmed by Infoglut, infoglitz & infogarbage (thnx Jamie) that is often the result of a general internet search - go here first!

"What is EPIC?

EPIC (Electronic Purchasing In Collaboration) is a venture between New Zealand libraries and the Ministry of Education. EPIC gives schools free access to an unparalleled range of electronic resources from the following database providers:

• EBSCO
• Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Oxford Online
• Proquest
• Thomson Gale

EPIC is available to all registered New Zealand schools. The Ministry of Education has agreed to fund access for all New Zealand Schools in 2004 until 31 March 2007."

How many more sleeps till Santa comes??

Some teachers have already begun asking about Christmas activities. I was going to spend some time checking this out but look what i found in WickEd themes some great ideas to start with.
Lots more ideas turn up on a TKI search.

Thanks Richard @ Toko for this lovely Flash Christmas tree :-)

Ka Kite Tahora School

Tahora School Est:1897:1997: Closed 2007

Today was my last visit to Tahora School, not only because this is Term 4, Year 3 (effectively the end of our BardWired contract) but because after 110 years Tahora will soon be closing it's doors for the last time at the end of the year. Another 'backblocks' school bites the dust - bringing to 5 in total just from our cluster over the last 3 years. It is a shame to lose the special character of these schools but i guess a realistic reflection of our rural remote population.
Farewells aside, we had a busy and interesting day at Tahora.
Carolyn will go on from here to teach in other schools - we spent some time exploring a range of software all of which have been blogged before: photostory, artrage, serifdraw, photofiltre, audacity... We looked at optimising images - individually & once they had been put into a document (who needs a powerpoint presentation of 50mb when u can cut it to 3?!) The kids had some help with running music in their powerpoints (freeplay) & were introduced to Alice. They also got back onto their blogs & hopefully they have updated them now and spent some time reading and commenting on the other edblogs.
I would like to do some more with Alice & have been working on getting an after-school programme up & running. But with all the crossing of the Ts & I dotting, school coordination (Term 4 is hopeless) it looks like this will be a starter for Term 1 2007.

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.

Hyperlink Queen

More time with SPS's hyperlink Queen, Penny today especially focussing on interactive maths resources. Tidying up, linking and uploading class hot links pages. Yahoo gr8 work Penny!

There are loads of cool learning resources online. It would be really good to see all these learning objects searchable independently instead of having to scour through separate sites for just the right one. So you could key in say year level, curriculum outcomes & key words & you would be directed to just the right collection of DLOs … maybe there is something like this and I just haven’t found it yet! It would certainly make sure teachers didn't have to spend hours on this & there would be some standardisation of quality & expectation of curricular alignment.
This is just a sample of what you can find online using Google & the key words: interactive maths activities

National Library of Virtual Manipulatives
http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/vlibrary.html

BBC Schools Maths Game Wheel
http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/mathsfile/gameswheel.html

Interactive Maths Activities
http://www.cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/index.shtml
(higher level - good ideas for Methanex?)

Mathematical Interactivities - Puzzles, Games and other Online Educational Resources
http://mathematics.hellam.net/
check it out 4 source code to create your own activities

http://www.multiplication.com/interactive_games.htm
Maths games – critically review to make sure that the bang for bucks balance is in favour of learning and not weighed to heavily on edutainment

Primary Resources for Interactive Whiteboards
http://www.topmarks.co.uk/Interactive.aspx
Loads of interactives for IWB can be used with DataProjectors & kids independent work!!

This site aims to bring collect together and order a range of free resources discovered on the Internet, which can be used for teaching Maths in Primary Schools in the UK.
http://www.mathszone.co.uk/

Teaching Treasures http://teachingtreasures.com.au/maths/Maths_more.html

Of course not forgetting our own DLOs at TKI's Digistore. It is really cool how Maths Online has linked directly into Digistore with a grid that is organised by year level & maths strand to the appropriate DLO - check it out!

More on Quick Links @ SPS

Today I worked with Penny extending further on the idea of Quick Links pages to direct students to appropriate digital resources. See Penny's page here. (still under construction) We started with the idea that we wanted to direct students and teacher's within Penny's syndicate to resources that supported the current learning intentions in the classroom. They could access these from the desktop in the classroom and by loading the pages to SchoolZone students could also access them from home. These pages could be updated as the learning focuses progressed in the classroom - i.e. the topic study changed, & different learning intentions in the literacy & numeracy programme. I compiled a teachers resource (not comprehensive - there is so much to choose from!) of good starting places to find supporting interactive activities and from these we chose the ones that fitted with the intended learning outcomes & built them into the hot links page. Penny learnt how to make a simple webpage using Word, how to create hyperlinks & then how to upload these pages to School Zone. How To tutorials can be found on Interact. As we worked we thought that this is a process that should be happening as teachers planned their classroom programme.

Critical NetTeachers

Had a good workshop session with SPS senior teachers, Megan & Lynn last week to look at links & resources about smart searching, cybersafety, web evaluation & copyright issues. Workshop notes can be found on Interact. Some good discussion on copyright issues particularly what constitutes 'Fair Use' - just because content is out in the public arena doesn't make it public property. How to know what you can use or not use from the Internet? A bit of a curly one... A great opportunity to raise the awareness and the ethical behaviour of our students and even some of our teachers as well. It's not hard to ask permission to use someone's work & it is important to reference and acknowledge sources. The notes on Interact have a lot of links to sites where you can access content that is freely available for use.

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!