Taking it global

Taking it global!

I recently attended a session where Suzie Vesper spoke about Taking it global, a social network for social good which was set up by two Canadian teenagers.

By youth for youth.

You can view Suzie’s PowerPoint

Tig Presentation

View more presentations from Suzie Vesper.

Suzie is working with Wellington loop schools to promote using the Taking it global website as way of getting school students to begin working collaboratively with school students in other parts of the world. This link takes you to Suzie’s wikispace on the Taking it global project.


Some of the more useful aspects of Taking it Global are:

• The thematic classrooms and learning recourses available. Thematic classrooms are available on: Tobacco Control, HIV/AIDS, Ayiti: The Cost of Life, The Orange Revolution (human rights) and Grub (Youth perspectives on food choices and food systems but it is not yet working :-( ).
• The games, each thematic classroom has a game aspect.
• A way of finding groups to work with on online collaboratively projects.
  
  

Adult literacy and numeracy in the UK

How e-learning is changing the delivery of adult literacy and numeracy in the UK.

This was a presentation at the Day in the life of a digital resource conference, 19th March 2009.
The presenter Jenny Hunt: an e-learning strategist who has worked for the University for Industry and the BBC.
Jenny specialises in literacy and numeracy for adults, with a focus on e-learning. She has been involved in national programmes developing e-learning training for providers of education. Literacy and numeracy training is provided free for adults (anyone over 16yrs).

Interesting example of eLearning in action!

Jenny demonstrated several of the learning programmes developed in the raising adult literacy and numeracy initiative. Here are some examples of those:

• learndirect courses
• BBC Skillswise
• Raw

What are the advantages in using eLearning?

• It offers a flexible approach to learning, particularly for adults [ anytime, anywhere learning]
• It helps to remove the stigma attached to learning English literacy ] and Maths [ numeracy ] as adults
• It caters for different learning styles and helps those for whom traditional ways of learning didn’t work
• Learning can be tackled in ‘bite sized ‘ pieces
• Peer support is available through community forums
• As well as gaining literacy and numeracy skills, learners are learning ICT skills
  
  
  
  

Cybercitizenship Workshop

Cybercitizenship Workshop


Recently Richard of Netsafe ran a cybercitzenship workshop for the eLead teachers.


Netsafe has been around for about ten years and provides some very useful resources for the education sector. Check out their website.

The netbasics resource is particularly spectacular, meet the Jones family watch some mean computer animations and learn about internet safety as you go. Hint access the "Your Computer Security" and "Protect Stuff " tabs to find the detail.


Under the teaching resources section you will find printable pamphlets, puzzles and a very useful cyber citizenship pathways matrix which will eventually link to lesson plans. The matrix is still in development however we were given a preview of the resources which look to be very useful. The challenge for us is to work out how to implement them in a distance learning environment.


Richard concluded the workshop by providing these prevention strategies:
1. Do the Netbasics- follow the advice! ***** 5 Star rating *****

2. Protect privacy – take care where you provide your contact details; name, address, phone number, email address and phone.

3. Use discretion – only post material on the internet that you would be happy for a future employer to view.

4. Use strong passwords – a combination of words and letters, no nicknames, birthdays or pet names.

5. Education is important – Club Penguin, a Disney site for young children provides four simple rules, these are good rules to follow.

Club Penguin's rules for online safety:

• Never give out personal information, such as your real name, age, location, phone number or school.


• Never share your password with anyone except your parents. Someone else might use your password and pretend to be you, give out your personal information or do something that may get you into trouble.


• Tell your parents if someone says or does something on the Internet that makes you uncomfortable, or if someone asks you for personal information.


• Choose a username that does not reflect your real identity. Avoid names that are in any way suggestive, even if they seem innocent to you.


• Avoid chat rooms that are not monitored by moderators.

ICT Cluster 19/11/2008

The Wellington Central North Island Top of South Cluster group spent the day at Awatapu College in Palmerston North sharing and reflecting on the experience as being part of the ICT cluster programme. The day had a secondary school focus. It was interesting to hear from schools which are at different stages of the three year time period of the ICT cluster programme. Several of the schools nearing the end of their involvement discussed how far they felt that they had progressed. They described how much of the first year was spent planning and getting organised. Check out this link for information on the cluster and the programme for the day.

Presentors

Jes of Wellington College focused on languages and their use of ICT.

• Students’ producing French virtual fieldtrips was found to improve motivation and engagement.
• Students used Audacity to make voice recording and using the multi tracking facility students are able to cut and paste into the recordings and students are able to make comments on each others recording.
• Useful French site
• Also using photostory and Google Earth http://www.panoramas.dk./
  

Allan (Manawatu)
Three schools in this cluster, one using moddle and two who are using knowledgenet.

• A lot of time has been spent on PD sessions for staff and identifying and removing blocks / barriers to using ICT in teaching and learning. Often removing the barriers involved changing the way ICT systems were set up in schools.
• The cluster is now involved in setting up eLearning streams. Students selected for these programmes have good self management skills. One of the spin offs from this has been the increased interaction between teachers from different schools and the sharing of support and resources.
• One to one tutoring of staff was found to work best for teachers.
• Every staff member in the cluster was encouraged to have an eLearning goal.
• Two teacher only days were held each year.
• There has been a focus on getting teachers in subject areas working together across schools.

Welnet Cluster: Queen Margaret and Newlands College

• Sent several teachers to Learning at School conference which provided a significant shift in teacher skills- developing individual is very powerful.
• He asked: How do we measure improvements in student learning which are related to increased use of ICT?
• Queen Margaret migrating to Scholaris LMS (Microsoft Product)
• Next year the Lead Teacher model will continue with both colleges self funding in the new year

Alannah of the Nelson cluster which includes Motueka High School and 14 primary schools. Her blog.

• Profiled the use of Google video and bubble comment.
• referred to Cheryl's Google doc on the key competencies, check it out
• podcasting and how it fits into teaching the key competencies

Waka ICT cluster: - Kim, (New Plymouth Girls)

The school has 20 students working as Tech Angels helping teachers with the use of ICT in the school. They have been involved in several projects which included the creation of a blog for the library which reviews books. Several local primary schools have Tech Wizards who work with the Tech Angels this has improved transitions thru primary, intermediate to secondary. Several times a year the Tech Wizards and Tech Angels get together for events which often involve competitive team events. Check out some of the students work Time4Celebration.

Freybreg High School: Craig shared his learning journey-
first year- all about raising personal confidence,
second year saw the beauty of blogging- personal first to get the hang of it + animations + Delicious (freybergscience) + revisiting blogs, using tags
Begun an edublog this year as well.

Onhigh cluster: Wellington High School and Onslow College

• Bring and brag session are run once term where teachers share how they are using ICT in their classrooms
• Cmaps - concept mapping tool is being used in science. Students develop their own concept maps for science vocabulary. Next year the teacher plans to make this a collaborative activity with students working together.
• Year 11 technology students are using blogs and video blogs to document the technology process - this has improved students ability to write reflectively about their learning experience.
• Silicon coach is being used in PE to analysis movement. This has also improved students ability to comment reflectively on their learning.
• PD is run every Tuesday morning usually in faculty groups.
• Identified the challenge of keeping up with all of the new products and advances.

Looking for inspiration! Check out these teaching and learning resources.

Building Learning Power by Guy Claxton

Guy Claxton Podcast

Ross Todd, Rutgers University PowerPoint He is an info literacy expert.

Zoho Creator useful tool

NZQA Moderation Workshop: PE

NZQA PE moderator best practice workshop.

1. The presenter went over a snapshot of the moderation process.

• Check the coversheet.
• Check the assessors judgement
• Look at the task, even TKI tasks, fill in the gap tasks can only ever be descriptive, not keen on quantitative schedules (which many of the TKI example tasks are). They pointed out that the TKI example tasks have been around for a long time and many need to be rewritten but at the moment no one has funding to do this.
• Look at the assessment schedule, the most common problem is the lack of examples of learner responses. It is a requirement to include these.
  

2. A new web page has been developed for each subject area which provides links to lots of useful information in particular the Clarifications of internally assessed standards document.
PE page link
Health page link

3. The next part of the workshop involved working through the moderation of five PE standards a mixture of level one, two and three. We worked in small groups and moderated three examples of student work and then checked our moderation against that of the school that provided the work and the NZQA moderator’s judgement. It was a useful process but unfortunately none of the standards worked on is provided at TCS. Some tips gather in the process:

• It is good practice to gather exemplars which can be referred to, this helps to maintain consistence over different years.
• Explain needs to be how and why
• It is considered good practice to provide the student with a copy of the NCEA standard.
• When the standard has two bullet points then the assessor can make a holistic judgement within the bullet point but not across more than one bullet point.
• Look for positive and negative examples in student evaluations.
  
  Overall comment
  The new web pages look like they will be useful and the clarification of internally assessed standards documents will provide guidance for assessors.

Introduction

In the last week of the holidays I attended the uLearn conference in Christchurch. I have created this blog as way to share information and resources from the conference.

You will find links to the uLearn website, the uLearn blog and the twitter network on the right hand side of this blog.
The conference this year had three themes
1. Collaborate: Connecting and developing relationships
2. Innovate: Innovation and sustainability
3. Educate: Learning

The highlights of the conference for me were; an inspirational presentation from Tony Ryan who spoke positively about what is to be a teacher and two presentations of a practical nature: Toni Twiss - using cell phones in the classroom and Brad Milne on Physical Education assessment through ICT. You will find a post for each of the sessions I attended which has resources and links attached.

If you would like to any more information about any of the presentations I am happy to chat with you or you could post a comment or question on the blog. Your feedback is welcomed :0)

Physical Education Assessment through ICT

Brad Milne is a teacher from Whangaparaoa College which is a brand new year 7 to 13 school. He spoke about three ways in which the school is using ICT in assessment.

1. ePortfolio in year 9 and 10 Health and PE.
2. An Anatomy quiz using Excel.
3. Using Silicon coach to analyse movement

I was particularly impressed with the discussion about ePortfolios which the school plans to introduce next year. The ePortfolio is seen to have the potential to develop self assessment and self reflection skills. Fitness test results and graphs are planned to be included and students can discussion reasons for change in their performance. Photos and videos of performance can be included again providing opportunities for self reflection.