What Does a Good One Look Like?

ePrincipals & their mentors gathered in Wellington to spend a week of intensive Professional Learning at the PDPC.

Our objectives for the week:

“To establish communities of learning amongst e-principals to provide ongoing professional growth and support:

• To use an action learning model to underpin our approach (transfer)
• To clarify expectations of the role of ‘e-principal’ (e-leader)
• To provide e-principals with knowledge of personal learning styles and how this may impact on their role
• To provide knowledge of and practice in some key interpersonal skills that relate directly to leadership in their role:
• Coaching/mentoring/teaching/directing
• Effective questioning/active listening
• Difficult conversations/learning conversations
• Action planning and change management”

We are a group of people who already have formed the basis of a strong supportive network through our collaborative work in schools and clusters though this opportunity has provided the forum to further strengthen our working relationships. It has given us the time to focus on our own professional learning needs, the skills & strategies to work more effectively in our leadership role and a springboard and structure for ongoing dialogue & collegial support.

Our first task was to introduce ourselves to the staff at PDPC with our own personal vision and cluster vision. We have vision statements, strategic plans & action plans that our TaraNet Principals have developed over the last year but rather than share these verbatim I chose to talk about my thoughts beyond our stated goals and documentation.

I think that elearning has always sat on the boundary of schools because we don’t seem to quite fit existing school structures (especially secondary schools) and that we need to move to the centre dovetailing into all aspects of school life (elearning becomes seamless within a whole school vision & charter without the need for separate strategies & supports all other initiatives within schools) Someday we may look back and laugh that we should ever put an ‘E’ in front of anything (elearning, eprincipal, ementor…..egads!) Though schools and clusters are beginning to collaborate to greater or lesser degrees it is time now to really do this in more strategic ways. Discussion that I picked up from others that I think is important is that we need to get away from the idea that VC is the only way to participate in elearning. There are a range of tools available that support online learning (Adobe Connect, Elluminate…) Encouraging schools to offer classes in other ways would be a healthy option for Virtual Learning and especially so for a handful of eteachers who are still at the stage where they are replicating traditional classroom practice within a VC environment. We should also look more widely than catering for the Senior Secondary Curriculum. What other areas of learning can be enhanced through our network and in what other levels of school? – through to junior levels in Area & Primary Schools.

There is too much to report directly back on and maybe some of it not suitable for blogging (in the words of Steve Dembo – be careful what you blog/podcast – your boss might not like it)

The practical sessions I have worked through here at PDPC will see me in good stead for the challenges I have ahead. These are things like handling difficult conversations, being a coach/mentor, time management etc. I don’t feel, though, that my thinking or my beliefs have been challenged at all or that I have been pushed outside my comfort zone (so far – still another couple of days to go).

As a group that are used to setting their own timetables, moving around frequently, multitasking & being permanently wired I think we have coped really well with being stuck in a small room in an air-conditioned building for 9 hours with no cellphones or internet. We have had a lot of laughs to help us along the way:

How specifically can we generalize? (Chris)

I’m proud of my E-ness! (Conor)

Are you going to strip now? (Conor to CAM)

You are so hot you are just about combusting. (Sue to Vicki in a game of Hide & Seek)

Yes I have lots of people telling me that ;-)

Supporting Student Learning

TaraNet Principals met at Opunake High School to visit their Student Support Centre & discuss how this was working in their own schools. "Personalising learning for secondary students working in a blended environment" was a reading we used ahead of our meeting and as a basis for thought and discussion. A special welcome to Te Aroha Principal of Patea Area School joining our group for the first time :-)

My ePrincipal report included our final student enrolment stats:

• 74 total student enrolments – 51 TaraNet students, 23 other cluster
• 27 students enrolled in TaraNet classes, 47 other clusters (Volcanics cluster our biggest provider)
• 12 students withdrawn – other subject choices, 2 VC classes too disruptive for other classes.
• 62 current student roll – another 25% growth from last year.

Coastal ICTPD

Coastal is one school which has invested time in their lead teacher support. Hamish is released .2 (thats a day a week) to support the school & staff in ICTPD. At the moment Hamish is working on developing his staff ictpd goals into more of a plan for action. We found some IDP goal setting templates (developed for the BardWired ICTPD cluster) which we hope will give more structure in creating a learning path to match those goals set.

How’s this for a laptop microphone? From the $2 shop – I’m off to grab one & try it out. To think of the money I have spent on headsets that my kids have trashed over the years… I know though sometimes there is no substitute for quality especially if you want the best sound for podcasting.

Hamish shared the work his class had been doing on their portfolios. Basically they are using Inspiration to map out their different learning areas and to link into examples of their work. A bit like a hyperlinked homesample book. Children will share these with their parents at their school interviews and later they will be burned to CD. The students are really enjoying making them and I bet parents will like to see them too. The ability to integrate this with an lms would make this sort of thing more readily available to whanau at any time.

Podcasting Te Reo

Today Rangiroa & I had a play with a cheap mp3 player $30 from DSE, we downloaded Audacity & recorded sound directly onto the laptop also. The longer term view is that we will set up a podomatic account and develop a range of audio resources & activities to support Rangiroa’s VC class.
A google search on the above title gives very little in return. There is the Maori Avatar on podomatic, something ‘coming up soon’ on www.tewhanake.maori.nz , a range of podcasts on www.tangatawhenua.com and some on www.radionz.co.nz . Apart from North Loburn School there is nothing I could find that is student produced.

So when Rangiroa and his class get a handle on this podcasting then they will be up there at the leading edge :-)

ClickView

Wahoo I won a 6 month subscription to ClickView. Now I need a server big enough to put it on…. and someone to make use of it.

I have offered it to Stratford High School and hopefully teachers will get onboard with it (I will work with them to make sure they do). We can use this like a trial and see if this is a useful digital resource for our schools. I know there is a significant investment involved in accessing ClickView – is the ROI worth it? Be interested to hear from schools that are using it

Lead Teachers VC

Inglewood students found this little Ruru today. The first one I have ever seen & unusual to see them during daylight hours. Very cool :-) I spent some time making sure all was well with our VC students and Ross our eTeacher here.

After school lead teachers VCed in for their first meeting this year. Good to see some of the old & a few new faces too. On the agenda today discussion around the SMS roadshow, an upcoming ICTPD miniconference hosted by New Plymouth schools, taking our kids to TechHui08 and preparing for a workshop next term on Cybersafety education for students. The lead teachers are the group that really drive elearning in their own schools. There was much discussion on the role of a lead teacher within schools last year. There is no common job description, or time allowance or renumeration for all of these teachers. I came up with these descriptors for the role of lead teacher:

• Main role staff development
  
• Keeping up with changes in ICT
• Those at the forefront of ICT in learning
• Provide examples of good practise
• Drive innovation in schools
• Belong to a wider network (community of practise) - sharing knowledge
  

I think that lead teachers need to have a clear indication of their role within schools and be given the time necessary to fulfill that role. The ICTPD contract had previously provided for this now schools are left to resource this themselves & it varies greatly between schools. If you have anything to change or add to the descriptors above you can put it here.

Cool Kids Video @ Opunake

I was at Opunake today to attend staff briefing (bright & early ;-) and introduce myself to the whole staff. I need to do this in every staffroom soon now i am more regularly on deck in schools.
It is a great exercise to talk about elearning with the whole staff and scan the room to see whose eyes roll back in their heads......... and whose eyes spark up with interest.
One set of sparky eyes belonged to David who later showed me the work his students had been doing in his Y7 & 8 Technology class. It was a cool little video and as we watched it David pointed out all the learning outcomes the students had met in the production of their masterpieces.



Unfortunately we didn't get a lot of time for discussion as i would have liked to talk with David about using YouTube for student work. Should it have been hosted somewhere else where you don't get a lot of other innappropriate stuff appearing on your page?; maybe he was hosting it there - embedding it somewhere else; maybe teachertube would be a better option in this case. Then he could also submit his planning alongside the video for other teachers - that would be handy too.

ePrincipals - What do we do all day?

At our monthly national ePrincipals VC today, Darren shared with us the results of his survey of ePrincipals. As Darren is new to his role he really wanted to know about how other ePrincipals worked. This is a summary from his blog about what he found:

"The survey results suggest that the eprincipals were an experienced bunch in terms of distance learning; they largely work from home with only two permanently based at a school; they visit their cluster schools regularly with the majority doing it monthly, although a few do visit weekly; nearly all have a centralised online learning environment with Moodle the favourite, closely followed by Knowledgenet and Scholaris; they work 40-60 hours a week with a couple of maniacs doing 70+ hours; they intend reporting to the ministry using a mix of tools whether they be written, media or web based; half teach and half don’t (easy stats to interpret those); and they REALLY LIKE Eddie Reisch (or they are lying).".

Tandberg Content Server

A group of ePrincipals has been meeting to discuss Protocols around the use of the Tandberg Content Server. (TCS) the TCS records video conferencing sessions, stores them on a server, where they can be edited and made available for others to view. We talked about it's purposes for use and the management of this tool. It could be used for:

• capturing generic lessons such as demonstrations, practicals, interviews with experts;
• students can use it to catch up on missed lessons;
  
• eteachers can use it in their appraisal process; capturing sessions for teacher pd;
• authenticating student work such as oral language presentations, & practicals that can be performed in front of VC
  

Issues surrounding its use and management were to do with how long to keep the content, archiving & deletion. Access to logons & passwords - only ePrincipals have access at the moment, booking recording time with Asnet who currently manage the TCS, recording with the knowledge & authorisation of all those in a VC, how to allow access to the intended audience without logons & passwords. (This one was solved pretty easily by Trevor who discovered that individual recordings can be passworded - thereby all you need is to provide your audience with the URL & the password to view)
I think this is a great tool for our online learning toolbox but still a little ahead of our time for seamless operation with our still limited bandwidth. The biggest barrier is the huge files sizes - a 2min clip is about 35 mb. A typical VC is likely to be an hour.... you do the math.
Asnet will copy recordings to DVD & post out to schools but to realise the full potential we should be able to stream or download quickly on demand - still away off for us who in the rural remote areas (which is most of the VLN schools) are a long way off joining any high speed loops anytime soon.

SMS Roadshow

I took myself along to the MOE SMS Roadshow to get up to speed on what is happening with developing initiatives.

The day focused on enrol, electronic attendance, early notification, lms/sms interoperability & e-asTTle. The MOE has set up yahoo user groups for each sms so that feedback & discussion can take place around the performance & the development of these SMS.

I was particularly interested in hearing more about the lms/sms interoperability as many of our schools are ready to go into an lms . I don't think we have anymore conclusive information to help in choosing lms than we did when i wrote about this last year. One thing i was able to determine was that the interoperability development was following open standards, meaning that eventually any lms should work with any sms. For example if you have MUSAC for your sms then you won't be tied into using KnowledgeNet. So i guess my advise for schools choosing an lms now would be just go ahead and make a choice (regardless of your sms) eventually all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle will fit together.

Links from the roadshow

Te Reo Online

Back at Opunake today to spend a PD day with Rangiroa. Our main focus today was the development of his course for putting onto his class website on Interact. We discussed the challenges of teaching his L1 Te Reo class of mixed abilities & ages - year 9 through to 12. There are students who are thinking this is too hard and others way too easy. We talked about how best to meet the needs of Maori students learning at a distance. There is an initiative running in all our cluster schools on raising Maori achievement so what about our maori students who are distance learners? We have talked about organising a VC hui for Maori teachers to discuss these questions. There is some interest from other teachers in the VLN schools but have not found someone with the depth of experience to lead and mentor this group of teachers.
A little googling shows me that there has been some research in this area but in the area of higher education. Maybe some of the answers can be found from the KAWM schools.
If you are or have been a distance learning Maori educator and would like to share your expertise with our teachers please contact me.

ELearning @ Waitara

A short visit this morning to Waitara. I met a number of estudents and most seem to be well underway just one needing a rocket to encourage him to do more work when i produced an assessment for him to work on & he was a little unprepared... But students are well supported in this school largely through the efforts of Marilyn who is doing a wonderful job. My only concern is the sustainability of the extra workload put on one member of staff. Still early days at Waitara as this is their first year with any VC students and as a school they have more VC students than others in our cluster. They would be an excellent case study - questions being asked already relate to resource & funding of VC students, from the time it takes to supervise their study, to the setting up of practical lessons for physics, to the costs of providing new texts. It all adds up when you don't even have a budget allocation for any of it.

Coastal Maunga

A view of Taranaki from the Coastal side - not a speck of snow anywhere - an awesome day all around the maunga.

I had my first visit this year to Coastal School today. Coastal is unique as it is an area school with students from New Entrants right through to Year 13 (K1 - 12). It is great to be in a school where i may have a chance to work with the younger students again.

I met with Coastal VC students, a group of four Y11 taking Accounting, another taking Chemistry L2 & another Chemistry L3. They seem to have gotten off to a great start they couldn't tell me of any concerns they had. So just to make sure they were prepared for any eventualities i ran them through a few 'what if' scenarios to do see what they would do... All of these students say that having a class website with all their course work, notes & activities is really helpful especially when they may miss a VC from time to time. It is something that some of our own eteachers need to develop more fully and we also need to provide a better webspace for them to do that.
Joel our Coastal eteacher has developed his own website to deliver his own course content. A lot of work has gone into this site to prepare resources in a range of formats Keynote, PowerPoints, Flash & Podcasts and he is really happy to share these with anyone who visits his site. One thing i would say about this site is that it is static - a repository for the delivery of material, though there is a feedback form. There are no features for interaction here, such as bulletin boards, chat, IM. Having said that interaction around this class takes place in other forms - the weekly VC, emails, phone calls, & skype. We spent some time today looking at getting skype to work at school - we had the right settings from Telecom SchoolZone FAQs, i could get it working on my own computer but noone else could. Has anyone else had problems working skype through their school network - what are we not doing right?
I spent some time with Hamish, Coastal elearning lead teacher. Hamish gets a days release each week to lead elearning initiatives within the school and to work with teachers integrating ICTs in the classroom. Wahoo that would be a good thing for all our lead teachers :-) I am looking forward to my return visit so we can plan how i can best support him in this role.

Adobe Connect

I did a little PD session today on using the meeting feature of Adobe Connect (formerly Breeze). It was hosted by the Adobe Connect User Group Asia Pacific.
ELearning schools have the opportunity to use Breeze to support the delivery of their online classes. Just ask Eddie.
I can really see the potential of this for our classes - VC is not the only technology we can be using. I would also like to use it for facilitating PD sessions with our teachers.
You don't need any special software just a web browser and a fast connection and your away!
This PD session was recorded and can be viewed here.

Inglewood eLearners

OK not the best pic but just trying out my new cellphone ;-)
I met with students at Inglewood to see that they are all settled into their online classes well. They are a switched on group of young people & if they put the effort in are sure to do well this year. Students at Inglewood are studying Accounting, Te Reo & Art History.
I also met with Ross who is eTeaching (Ag/Hort). We looked at optimising images in online presentations to reduce file size & therefore upload & download time. We explored using SchoolZone mydesktop home web space for storing large files for students to access (Interact has a limit on file sizes). We talked about using copyright resources such as dvd, how to access video online (teacher tube & youtube) & sharing it with students. Ross is confident & interested in using technology to support his teaching so perhaps could be a good person to try out things like AdobeConnect, tandberg content server & exe editor tools.
I had some time with Michael who is currently on efellowship. I wanted to work with him on setting up a Moodle site for TaraNet. I look forward to having more time to catch up with him next time I'm at Inglewood.

Teaching Under the Microscope

Another session with Rangiroa at Opunake today. His VC class has really highlighted to me the demands we place on our eteachers as they 'teach under the microscope'. Everyday class dynamics such as mixed abilities, student & whanau expectations, even behavioural management are all amplified in an elearning environment. Teachers have to be quick to adapt to new technologies, extend and adapt their learning resources & teaching strategies, and be on the ball with communication with a widely dispersed group of people. It is not an easy feat to balance with the face to face demands of a busy school life. I guess what would make this challenge worthwhile is that we can make a difference for our students who would not otherwise have this learning opportunity and that along the way we are developing as teaching professionals to the benefit of all our students.

It was good to see Mark having a go at developing a Protopage site to showcase student work in the technology faculty. Check it out.

Clusters Collaborating

A new month, another VC meeting with the VLN cluster ePrincipals. Being part of the elearning cluster leadership group supported by the MOE has given this group a bit more momentum I think than it had in the past. We all share a similar direction (& also have the same accountabilities particularly in regard to funding - action plans, milestones etc) but we are all working through similar issues and have a lot to share and contribute that will be to the benefit of all our students not just our own schools.
The main focus of today's meeting was about the research that will be undertaken in support of this project. Eddie introduced Helen, elearning team research analyst, (sorry terrible pic taken on the phone). As a group we discussed what should our research questions be? What is important to know in our conversations with teachers, students, parents & the wider community?

• Analysis & comparison of NCEA results - compared within schools, vc/non vc & nationally (student achievement)
• Student engagement - what skills do they develop as elearners that they carry over into other areas (& vice versa - what skills are our students bringing to the elearning environmnet?)
• Case study analysis of cluster demographics - what makes a successful cluster?
• Student voice - their experiencee of a complex blended environment
• Equity of access to online learning - often it is only the 'good' students who have access
• ETeacher development - making the transition from a traditional to an elearning environment.
• Teacher efficacy & enjoyment

It will be interesting to have some authoritative data to support our practice in schools instead of only working on what we believe to be true from anecdotal experience & a mish mash of available but mostly unavailable (or really difficult to access) achievement data.

VC Underway @ St Mary's

There's been a few hiccups with missed communication, changed timetables, & access to emails for students here but i think we are getting on top of it now. One of our students hooks up with her class for the first time, a little bit overwhelmed with the thought of catching up on missed work but buzzing with the new learning environment she has found herself in.

Opunake Kuia Talk Tech - Cellphones

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Originally uploaded by rache65

Having a cuppa with Val & Rona @ Opunake. They were talking about what wonderful things cellphones were. Just to agree with them i showed them how wonderful they are at getting pics straight up onto the internet from anywhere through your phone. As well as being really useful for ringing ahead on school camps to order $300 of fish & chips ;-) One of our eteachers asked about the possibility of txt alerts to our students straight from our lms - thats a great idea but i'm pretty sure Interact doesn't have that capability. I have most of my students numbers & even tho i know they're not supposed to have phones at school i will still contact them that way if i need them in a hurry.
Any ideas about txt alert services through lms or maybe some other site. Something to find out more about...

Sweet Home Opunake

Its always great to get back to Opunake my old school. The place is looking great, colourful & comfortable with new paint work & carpet in all the classrooms - as an Opunake alumni & visitor i think it makes a big difference. Do the students feel that too? I wonder.

Today i met with Rangiroa our eteacher there and Cody who has just enrolled in a Computing VC class. As this was my first school visit this year most of our time was spent dealing with getting equipment up & running and for Cody learning how to use it as well. I also had time to chat with Mark - elearning leader & discussed his role as lead teacher - conversation centred on issues of workload & time management - something all lead teachers have concerns about i know. It was great also to talk to Mark (Principal) one of my mentors.
The VC gear at Opunake is situated inside a locked cupboard. This is good as it means the room can be utilised for other classes when no VCs are scheduled & it stops the students playing with the settings & the teachers pinching bits from it ;-) Though it is a hassle when the gears not working properly and you want to get in behind & work through all the cables & switches.

TaraNet eHui

Many of our TaraNet students, eteachers and vc coordinators met at Waitara High School today to prepare themselves for the year ahead. Students from Waitara, Inglewood and Coastal VCed with Year 12 students Rowan & Jacob from Roxborough Area School to hear from these seasoned elearners about the positive & challenging experiences of VC learning. Our students were pretty shy about asking questions even though we had spent some time earlier discussing through a PMI (Plus, Minus, Interesting) their ideas about what elearning was all about. The Roxborough boys made lively discussion as they spun out the conversation to avoid returning to their classes, this social encounter really helped make our students feel more at ease with the technology & ‘being on TV’. I had originally scheduled for one of our own past students, Douglas (I managed to track him down through his Bebo site), to VC in from the MOE office in Wellington but unfortunately the timing of the Vic University orientation programme clashed.
Two of our students spent some face to face time with their Te Reo teacher Matua Rangiroa and VCed with the rest of their class of CoroNet students from Whangamata, Mercury Bay & Te Aroha. The Level 1 Te Reo class is our largest with 11 students ranging from Year 9 through to Year 12. We also spent time making sure that everyone was using their school zone email, looking at our cluster website and accessing their classes on other websites.
We currently have 59 enrolments through the TaraNet campus – 37 Taranaki students and 22 from other parts of New Zealand. Only 4 Taranaki students have Taranaki teachers. This trend is similar to last year’s and shows a higher degree of collaboration happening with other clusters particularly for us the North Island clusters of Volcanics, CoroNet, Welcom & FarNet. We are also getting more efficient at ‘horse trading’ between clusters (getting students into classes) and classes are starting a lot more promptly at the beginning of the year as by Week 3 almost all of our students had already had their first class & met their teachers.
We have a great group of students all keen and excited to have the opportunity to learn in the different ways that elearning brings. I know that with support of their schools & whanau they will do really well this year.

ePrincipals Hui – Rotorua

An ePrincipals’ Workshop day was held in Rotorua ahead of the annual Learning@Schools conference. Thank you Cam & Eddie for facilitating this day for us - it was a great opportunity to further develop the connections between all of us working within the New Zealand Schools Video Conferencing network. Some old friends and new as more clusters have join the eLearning network - some supported through ICTPD, some with EHSAS, many with interim funding for eLearning Cluster Leadership and some independent but all together for the same reason to collaborate together to improve opportunities and learning outcomes for our students.

There were ePrincipals from all elearning clusters: OtagoNet, FarNet, AorakiNet, Volcanics, Baylink, Cantatech, SILC, WELCom, TaraNet, CentreNet, CoroNet & WestNet; representatives from Paerangi, Westmount School, Southern Regional Health School, the Correspondence School, Kavanagh College, Aotea College & Manawatu College. Also off and on throughout the day were most of the team from the MOE eLearning team as well as Marg from Core-Ed. A group of mentor Principals from elearning schools participated in the workshop day and helped lead small group discussion.

The agenda for the day was around the nuts & bolts things like programmes & processes around the Virtual Learning Network and the enrolment of students; the requirements of leading an elearning cluster such as action plans, objectives, reporting & review including a research component. There was discussion about the role of the ePrincipal, cluster expectations, & leadership development and PD to support that. Although many of us VC together once a month we have never had such a complete turn out of personnel as we have today and our VC meetings tend to focus more on the management side of things than areas of professional learning such as working on developing our own leadership capabilities.

This was a really valuable day for me with lots to move me forward with in developing the TaraNet cluster:

• Finding out what our contract is so we can develop this into an Action Plan 2008
• Developing a PD programme drawing on the experience of other clusters
• Exploring a new lms for TaraNet & our cluster schools – probably Moodle
• Working with our eteachers to use Tandberg content server to record & save lessons, explore LAMs & exe editor for developing sequenced learning activities, Adobe Connect – how can we use this
• Setting up my own VC connection from home so I can access all of my schools and connect with the wider network more readily
• Working further with schools in our region who are looking at beginning with Video Conferencing
• Developing relationships with our local tertiary (WITT) & community education
• Further developing our lead teacher group and getting more support for them from school Principals – they are the ones who will really drive things in their own schools
• Working with the wider community to further improve the broadband network in our region by investigating how we can develop a ‘loop’ that will in the future hook into national networks such as the proposed National Education Network (NEN) – look to Otago as they are developing this themselves now.

Many of these things have been sitting in my ‘must do some work on’ basket for some time but now with a full time position I feel like I can begin to make some headway with them.

Blog Free Zone

Yes it has been a blogfreezone for some time!
The Bard has been busy over the summer - a trip around the South Island & back to the Chathams, a house move, a job change and spending lots of time with my Ricky in real time now instead of skype & msn - yahoo. My laptop has been shut for a very long time. But back to work now & here i am back at the kitchen table office getting ready to begin as full time ePrincipal for the TaraNet elearning cluster.
I'll still be using this blog to write about whats happening in schools but i guess it will have a changing flavour from where i have been before - watch this space.

Teacher Free Zone

This morning at St Joseph's the children from Room 5 worked with the Room 2 children to tutor them in using 2Create a Story. It really was a teacher free zone as the children worked together to explore the features of the software & create their stories. The Room 2 kids will now go on to work independently using the laptops during their writing time. Perhaps a little teacher intervention to make sure their work is saved & as they all save to the same place not to overwrite each others work.
Diane the teachers' aide was so amazed at the engagement of the students particularly the ones she always thinks of as a 'handful'. I think apart from the fact they find the technology so engaging, these kids were really hooked in because they were the ones in the drivers seat in control of their own creativity & learning.

Digital Photography 4 Beginners

I workshopped with St Joseph's teachers after school to look at the basics of using their digital cameras.
We explored the different features and settings on their cameras and worked out how to download pictures to their laptops. We got as far as resizing images and then it was too much for one session. Time to stop & book another workshop for Part 2. To provide a reference for what they had learnt i whipped together a tutorial & notes for them to go back to. I wrote up step by step notes with screen shots but find that making a short video of the procedure is so much easier & less time consuming.
We used the Microsoft Power Toy Image Resizer

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)

E-Learning Options

I had a busy day attending Options meetings with senior students and their families at Waitara this afternoon and then again at Opunake.
Two quite different formats. Waitara was set up like a 'trade fair' with subject areas set up around the hall for people to visit and discuss what was on offer. There was a good turn out and I had lots of interesting conversations with students and their parents who wanted to know more about elearning opportunities.
Opunake was more of a presentation from the front style with time for families to discuss further afterwards. Though you did manage to say things only once instead over and over again to different people, I think I didn't have the depth of conversation and inquiry as earlier.
I had some interesting requests for options that I had to go back and find out about: Drama, Business Studies, Computer Programming and even Religious Education.

I think we are getting to a point in the VC network that schools are beginning to look at the VLN as a supermarket of option choices. They are looking for just the right 'off the shelf' course to enrol in. In some ways it is good that there are so many choices out there (though enrolment restrictions can mean you can't always get in or have to wait to hear if you can enrol). But I also think that schools and clusters need to collaborate in more constructive ways to provide tailored learning for our students. The difficulty in this I guess is coordinating student need, teacher availability & schools resourcing to fulfill this beyond what they are already contributing.

It was good to hear directly from students about what they were interested in and helping them look for pathways to lead them there. It was a good opportunity to promote VC elearning as something quite different from what many parents & some students saw as 'Correspondence'. As a result I am looking at setting up some opportunities for students & parents to observe a VC lesson first hand by hooking into a VC lesson in progress.

(Ceri - eTeacher - Art History)

NIE Quiz Practise

St Joseph's students are practicing for the Newspapers in Education (NIE) Quiz this week. These links are made for them to sharpen up their current events knowledge & see if they have been reading the paper & watching the news on TV :-)

National News

International News

Sports

Entertainment

We will also be looking at and discussing cartoons and finding where in the world our headline news is coming from.

More practice quizzes can be found on the NIE site.

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."

Networking with Delicious

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Originally uploaded by rache65

Rachel did a fantastic job in introducing a group of classroom teachers to social bookmarking with Delicious. Within an hour she had everyone in the room signed up with their own class accounts, bookmarklets on their browsers and all networked together - Wahoo! Getting people started in a practical sense makes all the difference and she really sold us on the power & potential of using social bookmarking. No Digital Holidaymakers in this room.... :-)

ULearn 07 - Standing Room Only

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A tight squeeze @ ULearn this morning for the opening keynote with Ewan McIntosh. You have to be careful where you lean on the wall as you could possibly be leaning on the light switches! ;-)

I liked the way Ewan talked about identity and what is public & private online. Who are we and what are we doing here???? It reminded me of Derek's discussion of Boundary Workers - yep that must be me... Someone doing lots of different things, with lots of different people - just on the boundaries of the mainstream and much of it in an online environment. Definately not a 9 to 5 workday - and often not even feeling like work at all. Must be why i love my Boundary Work so much :-)

Ewan also outlined a framework for Web 2.0 which i found quite interesting as this is where i do a lot of my work & play inside these different spaces.
He defined these spaces as:

• Secret (IM)
• Group (Bebo)
• Publishing (Blogs)
• Performing (Second Life)
• Participation (Time4Online)
• Watching (YouTube)

Rugby World Cup 2007

Loads of our classes are following the Rugby World Cup 2007. Some are doing it as a full topic study. Others are just checking in & following progress. All around the schools their is a brisk trade in Weetbix Players Cards ;-)

Today i had worked with Vicky & Linda @ St Joseph's and developed a basic SmartBoard file for them to use as they followed the Rugby World Cup. The cool thing is you can add to it change it as you work together with the kids (capturing is the great tool here) & then look back at the work you have done from beginning to end. You can download the SMART notebook file here. But for the rest of us who don't have the board here are the cool links that were part of this file:

iGoogle has some great tabs for the World Cup they can be found here. There are tabs that give you live feeds, an updated results tab & a place where you can cheer your team on, as well as a google maps tab. This has led me into further exploration of iGoogle as a homepage - now just need to work out how to put my own stuff there & not just all their content.

You can download the Google Earth file to view all the World Cup teams base camps, training grounds & stadiums.

And see all the latest World Cup Rugby 2007 photos from Flickr.Visit Ruggerland - you do need to log in but its an easy process to register. Lots of games, activities & teacher resources.

Or there's the official rugby cup site which for the younger ones is pretty confusing to navigate round.

Making Movies @ Pitt

Today the kids took all their pictures for their Dinosaur movie. They had previously storyboarded, with a narrated script - so they had to time their narration & work out how many pics they needed for each scene, and the set had been created with painted backdrop & foreground as well as rocks & 'trees' for scenery. They began using the webcam to take the wide angle shots of the whole set. The computer was attached to the smartboard so it could be all operated from the board without bumping the camera & we could preview our shots easily on the big screen.
They did really well to work together as a whole group for most of the day, taking turns on the camera & moving the dinosaur characters (& sometimes the scenery too ;-) without any major scraps.My last day at school here today - i was meant to fly back to NZ today but the sea was to rough to get off the island & back to Chathams for the plane so I've got a couple more days to enjoy the weekend here. I have had a fantastic time here & am really going to miss it. Awesome place, awesome people :-)

Panoramic Pitt

The views are so awesome here, a single photo (or any photo for that matter doesn't give them justice) I have been using Panorama Composer to create these Panorama's. You can export them as either a jpeg, an exe file or a complete webpage with a choice of viewers (i used Flash). Of course using a tripod would have helped line up these pics a lot better than they are. The link below each picture goes to the webpage where you can move around the photo, zooming in or out as you go :-)

Looking across Pitt Island from one coast to the other (Rangatira Island) in the distance.
Click here for Panorama webpage


Waipaua Beach (Hakepa Maunga to the left)
Click here for Panorama webpage


Waihere Beach & Mangere Island
Click here for Panorama Webpage

Home Schooling

All the kids came up to the house for school on Tuesday. The generator was being fixed so no power, no heating & it was freezing at school.

Silent Reading @ the kitchen table

Sorting dinosaurs to cast the characters in their Dinosaur Movie

Shrewsberry biscuit maths

I have been trying to set up the Polycom desktop software on a computer at school so we could join the Kids Conference this week. I had booked us in for a Dance workshop. We got as far as accessing the Virtual Learning Network bridge but found we had no sound! Aaaah - an afternoon of troubleshooting still did not fix it so try again tomorrow.

Animations Fun @ Pitt

The Pitt Island kids created their first animations today. They have gone through a process of storyboarding, then created props & scenery to tell their stories. They are practicing for making their Dinosaur movies next week. Lots of fun :-)



Plantet Earth from rachelj and Vimeo.



Boom!! from rachelj and Vimeo.

Classrooms' Connecting

Last week Room 5 children from St Joseph's school, Stratford had their first conversation with the Pitt Island children with Skype & the WebCam. Both classes are using SmartBoards so they got to see each other on the big screen. The quality of transmission during the skype call was good but it was a hit & miss affair to hook up as we kept getting a 'No Proxies' error. Sometimes Skype will deliver your chat messages ages after sending them & show someone as being offline even when they're not. So the key to classroom success for us is to be flexible with your timetabling, send a chat & finally when it comes through, drop everything else you're doing and dial in right away. Children at St Joseph's had prepared a presentation "Our Place" for me to bring to Pitt.

This week we skyped back from Pitt. Our kids had seen the St Joseph's presentation so had a few questions to ask. They have been working on more questions over the last couple of days and are looking forward to seeing Room 5 pop up again soon on the Skype network for another chat. Next week they will be making their "Our Place" presentation for me to take back to NZ with me & share with Room 5

TaraNet still Trucking On

TaraNet Principals and Lead Teachers met today and were joined by CAM VCing in from Buller High School. We had a bit of a hiccup to start with as we soon found that we were trying to run 7 sites off a 6 lane bridge. Oops sorry about that CAM & sorry too to the school i had to kick off the bridge & out of the meeting.
It was great to see all Principals & their teams at the meeting, continuing to show their support. A positive thing that these rural secondary schools, though we struggle with resourcing, are still working together to extend the opportunities for all our students through VC distance learning. It looks like the cavalry (MOE) may be rallying to support us and other elearning clusters as we grapple with issues around sustainability of our schools' cluster. Will find out more in due course.
Some of the issues are outlined in my report "Video Conferencing in Distance Learning: A New Zealand Schools' Perspective." (This is the report from my slideshow earlier in the week. Quicker to read & easier to follow, i think?)
If you are a Principal in a school which is part of a VC learning community (& there are 15 VC clusters actively running in New Zealand at the moment), and you are new to the whole idea of schools collaborating in this way, we have a number of new Principals in our cluster; then i recommend you read my report and some of the other readings linked here. One of the key success factors for cluster sustainability is leadership, shared vision and commitment from Principals.

VEN Report on ELearning Communities. Report to the MOE commissioned by the Virtual Education Network. Outlines the benefits, lists risk factors, highlights key elements of successful eLearning Communities. Raises issues of governance of the national network, need for MOE support for funding and staffing of eLearning communities.

Learning Communities Online: A support handbook for cluster schools.
Guidelines for schools developing or joining online learning communities. Provides a summary of the changing face of online learning for schools & overview of an elearning environment “The Barrel”. This is a draft document under consultation through the VLN website.

OtagoNet Leading the Way: OtagoNet Project Summary, April 2006. History of the OtagoNet eLearning cluster, outcomes for its stakeholders, funding issues.

8 Random Facts

I've been tagged by Sheryl :-)

First, the Rules:

• Post these rules before you give your facts
• List 8 random facts about yourself
• At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them
• Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged
  
  
  

8 Facts About Me:

1. My favourite whiskey is Jamesons Irish whiskey
2. I got kicked out of school when i was 14 (they let me back again)
3. My first job when i left school was a rousy in a shearing gang
4. I am a 1st generation NZer
5. This Friday i fly out to Pitt Island for a couple of weeks
6. My favourite flowers are daffodils because it means winter is nearly over
7. I coach my two sons' High School A Basketball team. I also coach my daughter's basketball team
8. My ambition is to win Lotto & make a career out of playing with all the cool tools i find on the Internet. (I have to win Lotto for that as noones going to pay me to do that!)
   

I tag:
Artichoke (this is the reason you are first on my list :-)
Allanah
Leigh
Jo
Rachel
Brian
Iain
Tom (ha got you again)

Keeping the Faith

Only in a Catholic School.
Looking for divine intervention, these students thought prayer would help when their laptop went into hibernation & they didn't know if they had saved their work!

When the laptop shut itself down these two little girls looked at each other and said "We need prayer!"
They stayed on their knees until the laptop powered up & I found their work.

I have been known to give the same advice with some technical problems that get thrown my way :-)

Videoconferencing in Distance Learning: A NZ Schools' Perspective

Here is my first offering from the paper i am currently studying. I wouldn't say it's my best work - though neither does it bark like a dog (a kiwism there ;-) But pressed for time with work commitments pulling me in all directions, 3 neglected children & some leave coming up at the end of the week i feel that this presentation has been a bit of a slap-up. I wanted to share it in this public forum, this was one of the motivators that have kept me slogging away this weekend, and also because it's an area that has interested me for some time & that i have been more closely involved with in the last couple of years. To be sure i've got my facts right, and for further perspectives or insights - I would love some peer review so please comment:-)
(A written rendition of this will appear during the week sometime which will take less time to take in than this presentation & be fully referenced)

Telecom Trembling??

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Is Telecom shaking in it's boots today to hear that 83% of schools surveyed by the NZPF are planning to look for another Internet provider in dismayed reaction to Telecom axing the Schools Connection Points scheme?
Somehow i think Telecom may just be laughing up their sleeves that they have managed to capture so many of our schools in the SchoolZone net before taking away their much needed support for ICT in schools. Is it a knee jerk reaction for Principals to say we will just go to another provider?
Think it through - it is not just a connection to the Internet that Telecom SZ provides - its a whole managed Internet package. Think about the transition you went through when you changed to SZ - a new way of doing email, learning to use the MyDesktop, uploading users (rolling over the year groups every year), checking up on user internet use, filtering & blocking sites (unfiltering & unblocking sites), many have added on MyClasses - with whole courses being uploaded & accessed through Telecom SchoolZone. The list goes on: internal proxy servers taken out to be served offsite, school websites hosted on SZ servers, personal files of 1000s of NZ students & teachers stored in SZ Personal files boxes. (Hours and hours of staff training nationally - Phew!!) So just switch providers? What A Mission! For my TaraNet schools there is no other providers - Telecom is the only provider locally we can use for Videoconferencing into the VPN. (If you think TaraNet can do this differently please let me know)
When SZ first appeared around 2002/2003 for many of our schools it was like pennies from heaven - a whole integrated, easy to use tool for managing the wild beast the internet had become in our schools (secondary schools in particular). Of course it was great to have Broadband too - SZ & broadband at that time went hand in hand. I have long been a SZ champion but in the last year have been feeling a bit unsettled about having all our eggs in the Telecom basket. Other providers have stepped up with lower prices & better speeds, SZ has had hiccups with its new filtering system & some recent issues with email.
So where to next for schools - what are the options beyond SZ? What support will be needed to change - a truckload for sure. Your thoughts?

Blog Bling with Bruce

I spent a pleasant morning with Bruce today (here discussing Quality Learning in NZ schools from Policy to Classroom Practise & everything in between). It is always good to talk to Bruce & share his perspectives on education. Visit his blog Leading and Learning and join in the conversations there.
The main focus of today was to help Bruce revamp his blogspot with categories so that he could more easily sort & find his articles (over 550 posts now!). With not a lot of bling in his sidebar we decided to update to the new blogger template a simple way to add page elements to your blog without playing with the html in the template. I love the way the new template tidies up the archives with drop down options on the months (& years) so you don't have archives listed a mile long.
It inspired me to think about tidying up my own blogspot. I looked at it when the new template changes came in awhile ago but was worried about losing all my bling on the side. So i have played with it a bit more and found it won't be a problem in the sidebar I can reinstate all my bling easily but i'm going to lose my signature flickr pics in my header. Hmmm some techie problem solving to do here - maybe another day.
Oooops maybe not - gone & done it now - think i will keep it as it looks so much tidier!

Digital Portfolios EFellows Research

In my Digital Portfolios searching yesterday i found Kerry Hall a 2006 EFellow
Here is the focus of her research:"My research will investigate what happens when learners are given the opportunity to be creative and take ownership of their learning and assessment through the use of e-portfolios. What does their learning look like and how does the use of e-portfolios engage this particular group of learners in deeper and more meaningful ways? With the child in the middle of the heterachy (Atkin, 2004) model how do the teacher, learner and community role change? And to what extent does this paradigm shift impact on the engagement, creativity and motivation of this group of learners?"
Thanks Kerry for sharing your research with you - you can download her full research report here.