Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Meeting with Nick Rate (CORE) - 17th May 2010


Present: Nick Rate (CORE), Peter Mulcahy (director), Ian Suckling (facilitator), Grant Murray, Bruce Julian, Enid Watson, Rodger Darkens
(Details of minutes will be available when minutes are posted on cluster wiki)

Key Points of the meeting

Peter welcomed Principals and recapped morning session

Milestone Reports

  • 1st one we did a. b. c. & d. For the 2nd Milestone Report a.c & d - could have been done collaboratively - b needs to be done on school basis

Nick then discussed the purpose of the meeting

  • Initially to touch base with Principals
  • A guide to writing Milestone Report
  • Talking about progress to date in schools

Nick’s role

  • This is one of 2 face to face visits - ideally next visit spend time in schools (T3/4) - tie in to submission of final Milestone
  • Milestone gets submitted to Nick on behalf of MOE - who reports back
  • Ian’s contact details added
  • Cluster network meeting - Peter fed back at Lead Teacher meeting - 2nd meeting mid September (essentially for Principals/Directors Lead - Teachers may find suitable/relevant)
  • One of our schools should aim to host a Cluster Network meeting within the 3 years
  • ICTPD online - Nick requires some feedback - some use of site - site is being updated. Found the content is very full and hard to navigate

Finance

Release days need to be examined to ensure teachers are making full use of time allocated

MOE will expect financial obligations to be met - schools required to track payments/commitments. Lead School will be audited.

On-line Modules

PD-Online Modules - Cyber Citizens Cyber Safety http://ictpd-digital-citizenship-and-cybersafety.wikispaces.com/

National Standards

Discussion on where are our schools are at? …..

Lot of discussion how to record anecdotal information - how do we show evidence?

Teachers using samples in National Standards book. Then move into Reading and then Writing

Meeting parental expectation - academic report will need to be revised

Concern about number of students who may be ranked below

Big increase in teacher workload - plain language report

Writing & Reading may be easier across schools

Mathematics may be harder

Management teams have been to courses. Starting to map assessment tools able to use.

Schools in campaign to give pros & cons re standards. Looking to involve Team Liaisons to provide information.

Some schools decided to make some banks of goals & indicators for teachers to use - lead teachers to NS workshops - cascade down to staff.

Has taken away from strategic planning and broad curriculum planning

Consistency & teacher judgement - 2 sessions of moderation within school - the EHASAS cluster activities gave us external moderation of writing samples - showed we have high degree of accuracy & co-relation of teachers to external moderation

Schoolmaster will be releasing a new version in May

Moderation was a collaborative effort within EHSAS - we do have had a turnover of teacher within the cluster

Do we see ICT PD playing a role in National Standards? (e.g. e-portfolios)

e-asTTle may play a role - portfolios require clarification of level and next step learning

Keeping books as record of learning - idea of Learning Journal - show student voice, reflective comments

Need to avoid doubling up of information - multi-media approach to data collected and presented. Web based storage of information - MLE (managed learning environment)

Learning @ Schools

Group gave feedback on attendance & views - positive, helpful, informative, chance to network, see and play with new equipment

Lead Teacher Days

Principals/facilatator attending with LT’s - thoughts feedback:

LT’s would like days to be more practical (recommend use of Interface magazine) - something they could take back to teams.

Improved feelings of confidence from LT’s from attendance - starting to lead meeting with ICT component. LT’s like the opportunity to discuss with colleagues.

Survey was a good idea - revealing a lot of helpful information

LT’s enjoyed strategic planning, have enjoyed time to explore different avenues and support provided. Teachers have worked on long term planning - sharing a syndicate goal - able to embed an ICT component - whole team out for a day

Lead Teachers selected for variety of reasons:

as being pedagogical leaders, had to have interest & wanting to improve IC skill, each team leader discussed strengths and selected via syndicates to give support, asked for expressions of interest from teams

Action Research

How much teachers are into the process? How getting teachers to record actions

Opted for team action research goal - teachers will add their own goals to team goal - have 2 action research goals by the end of T2 - recording on sound, key points transcribed

Twice a term syndicate leaders hold QLC within team - on going discussion - record points on file

Personal booklets - syndicate level goals established - Peter had focus on student achievement - later realised more on teacher achievement so focus has moved there. Reflections will be recorded in Appraisal booklets

Milestones

Links to evidence (Nick will need to be invited to join any wiki that is providing evidence)

Quotes - student/teacher voice

Video

Peter to go through and check school entries for duplication

Self Review Rubric

CORE survey for beginning of the year


Overall an informative and helpful session that helped to clarify some of our questions regarding the 1st Milestone. Appears that we could work more collaboratively on comments a., c. & d. with each school providing comments for b. Evidence.

Feeling that the Cluster is finding a sense of direction but we do realise these are our first steps on an on-going journey.

Looking forward to the QLC's when we come together as syndicates.

Sunnynook Syndicate Day - 14th May 2010


Our 1st Lead Syndicate Day with Ian Suckling (facilitator) - held at Sunnynook School.

Peter came in for brief talk

  • regarding the goals at the beginning of the session and appraisal document - focus on teacher reflection.
  • Discussed student survey - listening to the student voice - possible use of web monkey survey
  • Discussion of what resources we had in our rooms and how would impact upon survey results
  • Equipment - disc images throughout school - syndicate based - what is relevant to students?
  • Sunnynook School Staff survey data - syndicate able to reference & analyse later
Ian then worked with syndicates discussions ranged across various topics:

How are we going to fit our ICT goals into the appraisal document?

What do we want to be appraised?

    • Part of the syndicate goal
    • Teacher progress
    • Teacher reflection

How are we recording what is happening in our ICT journey?

    • Hard copy diary
    • Annotating weekly plans
    • Digital diary using Word/Pages
    • On-line journal

Progress/Planning of our Syndicate Goals

    • Share experiences
    • Share planning ideas
    • Have the goals changed
    • What progress have we made?

What implications do the ICT survey results have on our planning/approach?

    • Training
    • Expectations
    • Confidence

How do we wish to use our release time?

    • Training
    • Class/school visit
    • Research
    • Collegial support
Cluster wiki - how we can make use of as resource?

  • Ensure everyone is signed up and familiar with the wiki content
  • Finding information and leaving posts
  • Area for collaboration

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Arataki Lead Teacher Day - 30th April 2010


Our 2nd Lead Teacher Day - held at Sunnynook School.

Ian welcomed teachers to our 2nd Cluster Lead Teacher meeting. Reflected that time will be available to explore the wiki as common thread on last session feedback

Budget breakdown for school - details on Arataki wiki

Bd

Directors Report and Milestone Reports

· PD Report refer Milest

· LTs Report collaborative goals 1 & 2 (refer to Wiki for details)

· Paragraph for each goal a), b) c), d)

· Draft by May 15 to Peter - e-mail just the paragraphs through to Peter

ICT Strategic Plan (BECTA template)

Template explained - group appeared happy to accept this.

Survey analysis (individual schools - assessed data)

Surv

ICT Strategic Plan (individual schools spent time discussing BECTA document)

Sharing session

Guest Speaker (Term 2 / 3) - Call Back Day

The moment has gone to capture staff on a launch pad to the contract. Look to have an inspirational speaker for 2011. TOD before start of the year.

Guest speaker names to Peter before May 17th (Nick Rate’s visit).

Planning for QLC 15 June 3.15pm - 4.15

· Y1-2 Sunnynook (LT Angela-FHS, Steve-TR, Shelley-SPS)

· Y3-4 Forrest Hill (LT Christine-FHS, Caroline-TR, Vivienne-SPS)

· Y5-6 Target Road (LT Pip-FHS, Colleen-TR, Anna-SPS)

· Y7-8 WIS (LT Bernadette)

Process at QLC is :

1. Welcome

2. Share Goals

3. Wikispace

4. Sharing

Plan dates for 2010

Wiki website - Ian introduced some ideas for afternoon session

Discussion thread

Explore TKI site

Share e-mails

Register on mailing list for literacy-on-line

Accept R Jensen’s invite to join a community

Review (part of Milestone) and Leave

Saturday, April 24, 2010

KidPix



Sunnynook Middle Syndicate ICTPD on KidPix

Friday 23rd April, 2010

Preparing for session - learnt a few things about th
e KidPix tools, also saving a slideshow as a Quicktime
movie so that individual slides do not have to be included in the sli
deshow - comes as self
contained movie.

Before the KidPix session began - explained how to log
onto server


The day was busy - morning spent looking at the tool buttons and giving colleagues the opportunity to explore the features. All agreed that KidPix is a powerful programme, especially liked the templates that are provided.

Discussed how we would use with our students - some apprehension about how we keep ahead in terms of our knowledge........... just let the students go for it and allow them to become the teachers. Encouraged staff to keep working with KP and develop a few steps at a time.

In the afternoon teachers worked through what we covered on their own or with a partner. Vivienne took one group to look at using data projector.

Also looked at how individual slides can be incorporated into a SlideShow and briefly examined transitions & sounds.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Sunnynook Middle Syndicate ICTPD on KidPix

Friday 23rd April, 2010

Our first Middle Syndicate professional development day.
Our syndicate is using KidPix as a tool for illustration and recording of student stories.

Middle Team goals - 5 classes

Children will be able to create a personal short narrative and illustrate their text in the style of a sophisticated picture book. To give personal expression and voice to their narrative.

E-learning - Children will be able to use KidPix to create a visual representation of a personal narrative.

Stories will be published in KidPix using text and graphic tools.

Utilising the record functions available in KidPix to read their narrative aloud and record their text.

Assessment will be through reading and illustration success criteria and rubrics.

Self and peer assessment carried out through reading of text and assessment of accompanying illustration to the text provided.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Created a short video in KidPix on the various functions available also printed out a book of the Slideshow.

Saved as QuickTime movie

Tried to embed video as QuickTime movie but only played last frame. Something for me to learn to do for future posts

Took staff through the KidPix tools using Slideshow & book as guide. We often stopped to play with the tools & gave staff opportunity to try out features.
Discovered new feature which was the template tool.

Covered a lot in the morning session and teachers appeared more comfortable using the tools.
The test will be when they begin using KidPix with their classes ans how they cope with students at different levels.
My advice is to sit back and let the students go for it. We can use some of our Senior students as ICT helpers for teachers who are a bit anxious.

Friday, April 2, 2010

Sunnynook Lead Teacher Day - Wednesday 31st March

Lead Teacher Day - 31st March 2010

Sunnynook Lead Teacher Day - Wednesday 31st March

Present: Peter Mulcahy, Anna Alison, Shelley Eaton, Vivienne Goldsmith, Rodger Darkens

Peter started by outlining his role as Director and cluster goals - also presented information from the survey.

Then group began looking at Lead Teacher job description, school goals, strategic plan & budget.

Have hosted Lead Teacher description and others on Google Documents not sure if this link will work.

The term "lively discussion" comes to mind for the day. Plenty of ideas and strategies floated and gradually we
honed them down to come up with ......
Lead Teacher description
Our syndicate goal
Some strategies for implementing the goals
Budgeting for this

Sunnynook Goals

Goal 3 from MOE contract:

increased capability of teachers and principals to use ICT to facilitate improvements in students’ learning and achievement

Our focus is the effective use of ICT to enhance student learning relating to literacy and reading.

Junior Team goals - 8 classes

Year 1 Children will be able to read known texts with appropriate levels of fluency and phrasing. This will promote greater comprehension of the text.

Year 2 Children will be able to retell main ideas of text to promote greater comprehension of the text. This will promote greater understanding of the material.

E-learning - Utilising GarageBand to facilitate recording and playback of read text and analysis of fluency and phrasing.

Middle Team goals - 5 classes

Children will be able to create a personal short narrative and illustrate their text in the style of a sophisticated picture book. To give personal expression and voice to their narrative.

E-learning - Children will be able to use KidPix to create a visual representation of a personal narrative.

Stories will be published in KidPix using text and graphic tools.

Utilising the record functions available in KidPix to read their narrative aloud and record their text.

Assessment will be through reading and illustration success criteria and rubrics.

Self and peer assessment carried out through reading of text and assessment of accompanying illustration to the text provided.

Senior Team goals - 5 classes

Within a narrative focus students will be engaged to use a range of ICT tools to help understand the deeper features of their writing and their reading material. Evident through the students deeper analyse measured through PROBE

E-learning - using a variety of ICT tools to enhance student literacy

Setting up a Class Wiki

Making A Class Wiki


The student uptake has been good (16 of 30 students have joined).
The next step is to work with students to show how to create their personal wiki pages and edit information.
I intend to utilise students for this and use exemplars of their pages as starting points.
See Helen's wiki page if you are unable to view please contact me for permission to join.
(At the moment we are restricting to members of the school community).

Created a supplementary page on class wiki for out topic on MAGNETS

Created a Glogster account for our topic on spiders but not got round to working on this.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Setting up Class Folders

Accessing & Setting up Class Folders on the Server

Today I worked with group of teachers showing how to connect to the server and create student folders.

To begin click Go ........ then when drop down menu appears select
Connect to Server

The next drop down menu confirms the location of the server 192.168.0.1
Click connect

Remember that we are logging on a student so enter the class name e.g. room5 and password which is the same as the room name

Click connect
We are now connected to the server and need to select our group which is .... Students

Click OK




Now we can select our class folder

Once we have done this we can create student folders by going to
File ....... then click ..... New Folder

An untitled new folder appears which can be renamed with the student name

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Making A Class Wiki

Wiki Wacky Wiki

Well of course we all wanted to create Wikis after our Lead Teacher Day.

Use wikispaces for teachers - it's free and no adverts


This site has a good introduction on Wikis - squidoo.com

I've created or belong to a number of different Wikis

My personal wiki: RodgerDarkens no content as yet (used to join arataki-cluster wiki)
Arataki Cluster: Arataki Cluster this is our cluster meeting place
Sunnynook School - has a number of sub-wikis - one of which is an ICT-Cluster-PD area playground (great place to try out wiki features)
Our Class Wiki: Room 5

It's important to keep track of your details like, wikiname, user name, password as you begin to create a wiki as often names may already be in use and you need to restart the process. Also to keep track of your wikis.

The next step is the creation of a blog area on the wki to enable students to post comments and content.

Have a look here: Room 5 glog

Have fun.

Lead Teacher Day - 10th March 2010

Lead Teacher Day - Tuesday, 10th March 2010

Cluster director (Peter Mulchay) led the day and outlined the Cluster goals, structure & year overview.

First Cluster Goal
Goal 3: Developing Collaboration & Relationships
Second Cluster Goal
Goal 4: Developing Strategic Planning

Set Friday April 30th for 2nd lead teacher day

Also examined the CORE PD online: base survey and amended to fit our needs

Ian Suckling (Cluster Facilitator) introduced himself and examined the role of the Lead Teachers and as a group we went through exemplars of LT job descriptions. Schools would look to develop their own job descriptions. A good site Ian directed us to was: Suzie Vesper's Wiki
that provided a clear outline and description.

Learning & e-learning.
Learning is reflective, relevant, shared, linked to prior learning/experience with sufficient opportunities to learn.
Focus on e-learning and pedagogy and referred to NZ Curriculum:

The afternoon sessions
Learning about Wiki: Mauricio Vas
Teachers logged onto arataki-cluster wiki
Mauricio talked teachers through utilising features of the Wiki and how to post
Teachers experimented with posting & examining links

Learning about vocaraa: Ian
Ian explained details of vocaroo -
Teachers experimented with features

Reflection/feedback
Teachers felt that a lot had been covered. Would have liked more time to explore the features of the various elements covered. As a cluster we covered a lot of ground in a short time - important to now try and embed some of this into our learning strategies.



Friday, February 26, 2010

Reflections on Conference - Keynote Speakers

Reflections on Learning@Schools Conference - February

Keynote Speakers

Dr. Stuart Middleton - School Looks Good But Is It Engaging
Interesting talk regarding the disengagement of student in learning and the education systems. Some frightening statistics regarding disengagement and students not fulfilling learning potentials. Discussion on re-positioning of the education system in a changing world with new purposes and different roles for educators.

Whether school have the power to restructure learning systems to cater for student needs is questionable. We have inherited a system based upon an industrial revolution mode that looked to place young people into employment.
In many respects school systems have not kept pace with changes in technology, migration, employment opportunities, etc.
The educational focus has been on evolving learning methodologies but still operating within an stratified year based structure with students advancing through year levels and expected to meet appropriate age level targets.

As learning institutions or “institutions of change” we may need to examine how learning is structured within our schools to best meet the needs of our students.

Alan November - The Emerging Culture of Teaching and Learning
Very engaging speaker talking about the culture of teaching and learning. Presentation focused on practical examples of how emerging technologies provide educators with an opportunity for continuous professional improvement.

The on-line environment constantly challenges our students and ourselves in respect to content and suitability. Too many students are not sure how to separate fact from fiction on the Internet. The Internet can provide any version of the truth to support almost any belief. How do we know what we resource is appropriate, factual and useful. Alan November illustrated how to find owners of websites - forget the title & content - look who is posting the information!
He shared some on-line tools that assist in data searching, refining searches and presentation of information.

The key message appeared to be the empowering of students to manage their own learning. With such ownership develops the enthusiasm to share knowledge and learners can become teachers. He showed examples of building learning communities.

http://novemberlearning.com/team/alan-november/


Dr. Thomas R Hoerr - Leading from Behind
Confident, relaxed speaker who interacted well with his audience.
Shared specific assumptions and practices for creating learning organization. In “a good school students learn but in a great school, everyone learns!”

3 Things That Keep Me Awake at Night
  • “Have I offended the people I want to offend - If everyone is happy, I’m not doing my job”
  • “Am I making new mistakes - Am I pushing myself as much as I push others”
  • “Am I practicing the balance that I preach?”

Philosophies - Leadership as a Principal
  • Teachers are the key factor in determining the quality of a school.
  • Leaders need to grow.
  • We must be learners - we learn on the fly.

Apply the same principles to adult learning as we do to childrens learning.

Leadership is about relationships - the key to being a good leader is to have good relationships with your staff.

  • Access to information has flattened the hierarchy.
  • Email has removed personal distance and awe.
  • Most of us have less power than we did 10 years ago

Just as reading was made necessary by the printing press and arithmetic by the introduction of money, so computers are changing our learning needs and processes.

Executive & Legislative Leadership
  • What are some of the issues on which you can exert Executive leadership?
  • What are some of the issues when legislative leadership applies
  • “Your decision, my decision, our decision”

Teacher Collegiality
  • Teachers talking together about students
  • Teachers talking together about curriculum
  • Teachers observing each other teach


Learning@School 2010

http://www.core-ed.net/learningatschool

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Digital Storytelling within an e-Portfolio 24/2/2010

Presented by Ian Fox & Lenva Shearing - Bucklands Beach

What can e-Portfolio allow?

  • Allows student's voice to be heard
  • Not just to show outcomes of learning which can be very limiting
  • Way of showing learning journey
  • engage students in their learning
  • how outcome was reached
  • learning journeys
  • learning journal
  • formative assessment
  • reflective statements


Content:

Ian shared some examples of e-portfolios - explained how:

Key Competencies can be built in

The technology DOES NOT have to be complicated (able to use inbuilt computer tool such as camera & microphone) - able to use still photos/video

Can be used for ALL curriculum areas - do we need test - can just look at e-Portfolio

(e.g science learning objectives - features such as controlled variables, process, outcomes)


Lenva demonstrated the Creation of Digital Stories

(Set out is a rather linear but does show tools available - have also added links to sites)

Tools:

Movies

Slideshows

Audio


Online tools

Multimedia

Video

Audio

Screencasting

Slideshows

Writing

Interactive Posters


Creating a Digital Story

Process

  • Write the script
  • Storyboard
  • Collect images - photos, images from internet, jpeg's
  • Record the script - Garageband, audacity, ezispeak, [audiorecorder (google mac app)]
  • Match the images
  • Publish

Lenva has created a Wiki that explains above process:

howtovoicethread - wikispaces - resource to setting up voicethread - explained

Voicethread (voicethread.com sign up for this as educator)

Links:

Helen Barrett - electronicportfolios.org

Helen Barrett

Cool Tools - Wiki set up by Lenva - audio, video, ect tools & resources

cooltoolsforschools -

Ning - Remote Storage of data -place to get stories

ning.com - social networking site - create groups with - class has account - students have account

PEOPLE are NOT invited - purely for class use

has embed code to place in Wikis, etc


Technology used to support learning process

Capture Your Students Attention with Mimio 24/2/2010

Presented by Lindsay Moore - Watermans

An overview of the features of Mimio interactive whiteboard

Demonstrated use of capture mode & associated tools

Mobility of Capture bar - linking to laptop

Interactive nature of Mimio

Use of format tool

Explored Gallery


Content:

Mimio Interactive

Mimio capture


Links:

mimio.com

Join Mimio mailing list

Watermans


Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Building Communities Through Blogging 24/2/2010

Presented by Tania Cootts, Kindie teacher explaining process of setting up a blog for Manaia Kindergarten

Background to process and how Community got on board - initially about the Kindie & events then widened as parents got involved and started to create blogs.

Essential to cover internet safety prior to students (parents) experience blogging - e.g. Hector's World, NetSafe. Use of first name, not revealing personal details, etc.

Captured student's interest - opportunity to tell their stories & share experiences.

  • Share experiences of student's "learning journey"
  • Building connections to the Community
  • Involved in global conversations
  • Interactive conversations
Community got on board and posted blogs, interacted with students. Students widened use of ICT (digital/video camera - use of tools). Kindie engaged with Community/home got to find out more about the Community - became a shared journey.

  • Received a lot of positive feedback & comments about the Kindie blog.
  • Also built professional relationships as "experts" came on board.
  • Wealth of personal development - teachers, students & families.
  • View of Community had changed - widened

Tania's presentation was a recount of the Kindie's journey & experiences over the last 3 years.