Professional reflections on education in NZ - Dancing on the shifting carpet
Here are the presentations used in today’s workshops. Please feel free to give me feedback or comments in the comments box below this blog posting. Hope you find it interesting digging a bit deeper into some of these things – let me know how you go with this and add me to your skype contacts :-)
Finally i have worked out how to enable my students to be more active participants in our Adobe classroom without having to promote them with permissions that will allow them to ‘accidentally’ muck around with layouts & settings etc.
The secret is to assign individuals enhanced rights to only certain areas within the Adobe classroom – these can be turned on or off at any time – but need to be applied each time you come to class. Now they can write on the whiteboards, notes and upload files etc
NZ schools are warmly welcomed to participate with their students in this ‘ANZAC’ connection with the the people of the Himalayas and celebrating the work of Sir Edmund Hillary's Himalayan Trust during their 50 Year Anniversary.
Visit their website to join or contact Maggie.
Come and visit the Himalayas with us as we travel to 25 schools, teach juggling and theatre skills and learn about life in the highest mountains in the world. Ask us questions and watch our site for updates on the adventure.
Our group are a performing troupe, 2 Aussies and 2 Kiwis, performing for 25 schools in the Himalayas in April and May this year. We have been invited to provide performances in physical theatre and comedy as part of the 50 year celebrations of Sir Edmund Hillary's Himalayan Trust. While we tour we will also be finding out a lot about Hillary's legacy, the history of the country and a range of other lessons. We will be posting quizzes, hosting a forum and providing lesson plans and teaching resources free to use. We are keen to enable as many NZ schools to participate.
Things are ready to roll with the VLN Primary online classes for 2011. We are starting with confirmed classes this school term of Te Reo, Japanese, French, German & Astronomy. In the wings, to be confirmed and starting from next term will be Spanish, more Japanese & Te Reo classes, Gaelic & Electronics.
It is great to be continuing with a small but solid base of schools who collaborated last year and to welcome a growing number of schools to the VLN Primary community. I have been running Taster Classes the last couple of days (and on request for anyone interested in learning more). We have had quite a number of students from schools as diverse as Thorndon in the heart of Wellington city, to Kaingaroa a school in a lovely and remote Chatham Islands fishing settlement and smalls schools in the hill country of Eastern Taranaki.
Taster classes are designed to familiarise students with the online learning environment and iron out any technical problems schools may encounter when they connect, before they come into our scheduled classes. Students learn about the technology and they also learn how to communicate & interact with others in a way that is quite different from face to face classrooms. These classes allow schools to get an inside look into how online classrooms work before they decide to make a commitment to participate.
One of the students said ‘This is so cool, I can’t wait to start my class!’ Though i responded with a reality hit back to say, ‘Yes i hope you feel like this every week till you complete your class.’ I don’t want students and schools to be instantly hit by the WOW – novelty factor but understand this is an ongoing commitment to learning. Even so, i was also thinking ‘Me too!’ Looking forward to teaching my class on Friday!
“Re-locatable classrooms may be put onto sports grounds to house more than 10,000 pupils whose schools are closed”
I continue to be disappointed by the lack of vision our Ministry of Education has in responding to the needs of Christchurch school children – both immediate and long term.
What is this huge preoccupation with bricks & mortar as the necessary foundation of schooling for our children? Why should we be relocating buildings to create overcrowded schools when learning centres can be (and are being) set up within the community? Why should you be encouraging teachers from around the country to offer relief assistance when eteachers around the country are willing and able to take on more students into their classes and provide new classes?
As the Christchurch Council bravely starts to espouse a vision of a very different city rising from the rubble how is a vision being developed for education? Where is the creativity in changing ideas and approaches to meet the learning needs of our students?
Quakeboarding: Photo by Alicia Krueger
The VLN Community is well positioned with the networks, people and expertise to help make a difference now and into the future for so many of these affected students but this requires some higher level thinking on behalf of the MoE and strategic planning and support.
Here is the VLN Community response:
“The VLN Community is working now to increase capacity in all our existing online classes as well as exploring how new classes and online learning support can be put in place to take more of our displaced students. There are a number of teachers who have indicated their willingness to support these students with keeping up with their learning, some who are even willing to do this in their own time. With some increased staffing from the MoE there is quite a pool of experienced eteachers that can come online and offer learning opportunities for these kids. The VLN Community can give professional support for teachers who want to connect with their students online by assisting them with accessing and using online tools available to them through the MoE.”
Check out Rainforest Connection. An opportunity for your students to connect to experts in the rainforest of Belize. This is only available until the 25th February. Get onto it now if you are interested!
I’ve been using Tiny Urls for quite awhile to simplify & share strange web addresses that i create. But today i started using http://tiny.cc in the first instance because it allowed me to customise the url with a meaningful name instead of a bunch of random numbers. Then when i logged into tiny.cc i found that i was able to keep track of the urls i had made – search for them, add notes, edit them and even get some simple stats feedback.
More than anything this will be really valuable for me to keep track of the urls i have created over time as my cyber-pathways get more and more congested and complex. Very handy dandy!
The first VLN Community meeting of the year today, and i was able to join the VC through EVO.
EVO is free to use, just register download the client app. put the IP number of the VC unit or bridge you want to connect to and you’re away! (The default is mute so don’t forget to unmute…)
This has been very convenient for me to access VC meetings without having to travel and find a VC room to accommodate me. The quality has been fine with the low bandwidth I have at the moment (.66 down, .47 up) but i don’t transmit video and use audio only. I have explored using Polycom PVX software or CMA server (hosted by AsNet) to join the VC bridge but i just can’t seem to get the network settings to work from home. They work OK from a SchoolZone school but defeats the whole purpose about being able to access the VC Bridge from anywhere. I am looking forward to the launch of Adobe V8 later this year which is said to have the capability of linking with H323 (this is the protocol used by NZEdVCNetwork). This will enable more of our schools to access some of learning opportunities that are currently only offered through the VC Network without the need for buying expensive VC equipment. (Though bandwidth will still be an issue for some of our schools – roll on RBI!!)
It was a little disappointing this publication wasn’t launched at Ulearn earlier in the month. Though it will be released soon so go to Core-Ed to register your interest. This book is a collection of personal perspectives from a variety of people and aligns with the implementation of the national strategy for ICT in Education. I have contributed a chapter in the section Digital content & Community about “The Virtual Learning Network – Increasing Access for Learners.”
Although VC is not the only way to connect learners online. In some ways i think VC can be a pedagogically unsound way to run classes as it is so easy to replicate the f2f transmission model of learning. Other options for online learning that schools can be looking at are the use of Adobe Connect for real time classes which has more functionality for the interactions of students and the further development and use of Web 2.0 tools and LMS classroom environments with a focus on putting the student at the centre of learning.
ULearn is a great place for making connections and in a round about way through those connections I have made contact with Pascale.
Merci beaucoup Pascale for profiling learning languages online!
Pascale shares examples of our TaraNet Y9/10 French class and the VLN Primary languages programme.
http://www.french.ac.nz/blog/French+via+Video+Conferencing+/
This is a great website for supporting NZ French teachers.
The world IS full of interesting things. Just need the time to check it all out!
This would be very handy for our students to quickly and easily record themselves and share their work. Can see great potential for learning languages online.
As part of the VLN Primary initiative i am working on, i run ‘Taster Classes’ to showcase to schools who want to know more about our project. I also run this class with students who are enrolled with us before they begin their language classes to prepare them for learning online. We cover such things as learning to use our online learning tools – the Adobe Connect classroom, our audio connection, and Moodle site. We also learn about effective ways of communicating with each other online and talk about the benefits of learning languages also.
I had a great session with the students from Auroa School today to prepare them to join their Spanish & German classes. If you are interested in you and your students attending a Taster Class, and interested in joining the VLN Primary initiative contact me :-)
Hawera High School had their first VC class today. Here two students chat with their Physics teacher from Te Kura. We are using Polycom PVX software and a logitech camera and the quality is pretty good. We do also have a polycom microphone and speaker set but this has been causing feedback with the speakers on the camera so still need to work out how to resolve this. You shouldn’t need to have expensive equipment to be able to hook into online classes. The challenge to come will be for teachers who are used to the functionality of zooming in on whiteboards, using document cameras or sharing their laptop through VC – desktop VC doesn’t provide the same ability because of the limitations of the camera. Surely then the answer looking forward to having access to high speed connections will be using webcams in Adobe Connect to provide a more interactive learning experience for both student and teacher.
Half or our students think that learning online is just as good as face to face. While the other nearly half think that it is better than Correspondence. A big tick for the VLN :-)
Interesting to note too that one of the biggest challenges our students face with their online learning is the quality of their school internet connection – roll on UFB (ultra fast broadband)!
I have spent the day at conference today to share the message of the Virtual Learning Network (VLN) Primary/Intermediate initiative. Unfortunately when it came time to give my elevator speech my technology failed and i couldn’t get my presentation to run – aaagghhh! Anyway below is the presentation. Schools who are interested in finding out more and participating in this initiative should contact me. We are really keen to involve new schools who are wanting to collaborate with other schools to extend learning opportunities for their students through online learning. We have room for new enrolments next term in our German & our Te Reo classes, possibly a new Spanish class starting up also. Keen also to hear from any teachers, language teachers even more so, who want to learn to be online teachers and offer a class to other schools.
“If you only had one day to document the world….What story would you tell?”
One Day on Earth - Original Trailer from One Day On Earth on Vimeo.
“Across the planet, documentary filmmakers, students, and inspired citizens will record the human experience over a 24-hour period. By participating in this historic event, you will help capture the diversity of life and culture on this planet. Together we will create a document that is a gift to the world.”
Today Kelvin Squire, Stratford Primary School; Chris Sharpe, Gen-I Taranaki; and myself presented to the New Plymouth Principals Group. We shared the success of our Gen-I Engineer for Schools Project, now half way through it’s fourth year of operation. The seeds of the idea for this project came originally from the DigiOps Community Technician Project. Whatever happened to this i wonder… Schools interested in joining our Taranaki initiative or wanting assistance in setting up something similar in their own areas should contact me.
Two interesting websites for fonts. The first one probably more useful than the second enables you upload an image of text and then goes through a process of matching to known fonts. Really useful to find a font, that you have seen online, want to use it & don’t know what it is. Just take a screenshot of a piece of text, upload it to What the Font, and go through a matching process.
This website is more fun than practical, allows you to create a personal font that is based on your handwriting script. Download a template of the alphabet and numbers, fill it in by hand, scan and upload back to the site. Not sure how you access and then install your new personalised font. Haven’t got that far – but a very cool idea.
Create a font from your own handwriting. Download a template, complete by hand (alphabet & numbers), scan and upload back to the Pilot Handwriting site.
