Enough Already with Luddite Schools

Hey, call me a poacher, but I have recently read two good blog postings. This one is by Christopher Dawson, see previous posts. His post lays out the vision we should have for our students regarding their adoption of technology for learning. It also therefore poses a challenge for our teachers to enable this sort of adoption to occur - not an easy task, which will take some time, but we have to start somewhere.

go to http://education.zdnet.com/?p=1931&tag=nl.e623 or click the title of this post to be linked to the words of Chris Dawson.

classroom 2.0

I subscribe to the ZDNET education updates which is a blog maintained by a fellow educator (in the US) called Christopher Dawson. His most recent post was regarding social networking and other web 2.0 tools (go to http://education.zdnet.com/?p=1928&tag=nl.e623 or click on the title to view Chris' post). The tool he was referring to was Ning, but this was NOT what got my attention. What did get my attention was the example he gave of schools using web 2.0 tools. He was blogging about how a group (cluster) of state schools in New York city are using social networking sites and cell phones to support their students' learning. His post has an excert from that article but you can go to this link, Village Voice to view the complete article. What was interesting about the article was how the schools were collecting data on how the use of the technology was improving outcomes for their students. The US may be transfixed with testing and collecting data on student performance, while we in NZ believe that education is so much more than that just test scores. However, in this case it is showing us teachers in NZ that technology can make a difference, and that the difference (value added) can be measured. The article also makes reference to a website called classroom 2.0. This is a space dedicated to those interested in Web 2.0 and collaborative or transformative technologies. Isn't this what we are about in our eLearning clusters, whether they are ICT PD, EHSAS or simply VC.

Our NZ curriculum provides us with the opportunity to transform education in New Zealand. We have the technology, we have the tools, we now need to transform.

This week I have been mostly doing.........

This week I have spent time at Tauhara College in Taupo (two days) and Forest View High School in Tokoroa (two days).

I had the opportunity to give a presentation on the Volcanics Cluster and Virtual Learning Network to the Board of Trustees of Tauhara College. They are a newly appointed board, so it was thought it would be a good idea to give them a bit of background on Volcanics and introduce them to the VLN and how Volcanics operates in, and through the VLN. I also had the opportunity to assist some teachers at the College with putting resources up on to their LMS (UltraNet). There was also some good discussion around the educational value of an intranet (LMS) and the pedagogical benefits of tools like hot potatoes, especially when using a discovery learning model of teaching. Again it was shown that it is not the technology that is important, but how it supports the pedagogy. I think we concluded that Hot Potatoes would be fine for certain learning activities, such as building a learning scaffold, moving from the simple to the complex by introducing more and more complex questions, on the basis of achieving success at the easier levels, but would definitely not be an appropriate tool in a true discovery learning situation, other than to test understanding of what had already been discovered or learnt. I also managed to fit in two video conference classes.

Having not been to FVHS for some time, there was a lot of catching up to do. The ICT department is involved with the new Digital Technology Guidelines (DTG) with Heather Williamson and Bruce Dowdle attending a two day conference in Auckland in November. Three other schools from our cluster will also be represented at the conference, namely Reporoa College, Ruapehu College and Putaruru College. All of these schools are trial schools for the new DTG's. Heather will also be in Wellington during November working with NZQA on the TIM domain and how unit standards within this domain can be assessed on the basis of achieved, merit and excellence. This will be interesting as I am wondering what this means for unit standards in other subjects.

Managed to get some PD done, on basic emailing and file organisation with one teacher, who originally came to have PD on using powerpoint. We ended up talking about renaming files, creating and renaming folders and attaching documents to emails. What did I learn? That I need to, again, carry out a needs analysis survey in our cluster schools.

There was discussion around how wikis, blogs and google docs can be affective learning tools, and in what learning situations they would be appropriate. This obviously took us into the realm of when these tools would NOT be the correct learning tool to use, which is part of the whole ideaof making sure you use the correct tool for the job. There was also concern expressed as to whether these tools are simply just the latest fad which will eventually be replaced by the next latest fad. The answer to this comment is "NO". Wikis, blogs, etc are not a fad. Over 100 million users cannot be that wrong, but yes, they will be replaced by something else, and most likely within the next year or so given the rate of change in the technology environment. However, collaboration, contact and connectedness using the internet is here to stay, as is personalising your virtual space and hopefully personalising learning. However, what this virtual environment will look like in five years time is anyone's guess. There was also more work done around the use of online learning environments and the tentative beginnings of setting up a meeting between teachers involved with GATE programmes within our cluster. The opportunity for our gifted and talented students to collaborate, co-operate and perhaps compete across schools in the cluster, using the technology we have, has definitely got potential. Thanks to Kris for putting this idea forward. There are other GATE groups collaborating in other clusters who we can also contact which could widen the net and the experience for our GATE students.
Work was also done on looking at how EHSAS is going at the school and the definite need to clarify and focus direction for the cluster in 2009 onwards. The word used by Ian (DP) was coherence, which in one word explains what our strategies need to achieve. ICT is still on the agenda though, as is VC. The big question is how do we ensure that VC is a positive and successful experience for our students, and how do we ensure that ICT becomes systemic and is used in a pedagogically effective way?

Have a good week-end.

Nga Kiwai Kete - The eLearning Toolbox

Mau tena kiwai o te kete,
maku tenei

You at that handle and I
at this handle of the basket

The website "Nga Kiwai Kete" is an eLearning website set up specifically for Maori and Pasifika students and teachers, but has resources which will benefit us all. It is a great website, with links to Introducing eLearning, planning eLearning, designing eLearning and teaching and supporting eLearning.

The website can be accessed by clicking on the title to this post, or by copying and pasting this url address: http://www.nkk.org.nz/home.php.

Time For Reflection and Review

This is a website for reflection and review for ICT PD clusters, but the reality is that the nature of the ICT PD contract has changed, so that there are now many similarities between an ICT PD cluster of schools, and an EHSAS cluster of schools. We are both looking at teacher collaboration and we are both looking at pedagogies which improve student engagement and achievement.

The link is below, or can be accessed by simply clicking on the title of this post.

http://centre4.core-ed.net/spaces/space.php?space_key=15273

From Learning Management Systems (LMS) to Managed Learning Environments (MLE)

I thought I would share some of the correspondence that has been flying around regarding LMS's and interoperability. The fact is that, the solution is much bigger than just interoperability. Paul Seiler at the MoE is working on the LMS/SMS interoperability issue, but also on what such a beast would look like if it was able to talk to all systems, and whether a national or regional solution is possible. Here are some comments from a few of my colleagues as we begin to realise the scale of the task and what it means.

Phil Buchanan comments: "I really think that the big picture, a complete MLE single sign-on portal - much bigger than 'which LMS' or 'hosting solution' (or even SMS-LMS interop) should we use - is crucial for NZ education. Note Paul's message/advertisement in the next Gazette"

The interop and parental portal, which he has fostered, is a really strategic direction - to foster inclusion of the community in schools (delivered to their home) and also learning conversations at home - and the next step that he will fund/facilitate is very important for us all to understand.

Trevor Storr Comments: "I think the real challenge is not getting the technology to work, but is enabling leaders, schools and teachers to embrace collaboration. In a world context, NZ is tiny - some small cities have a larger population than the whole of NZ and operate one MLE for the whole city. Our challenge is to ensure that NZ schools benefit from the economies of scale that a large MLE can bring while still acknowledging the local flavours and foibles that 'Tomorrows Schools' encourages. An example of why this is important can be seen in the context of content authoring for an MLE using eg eXe. Do we expect all teachers to become experts in content authoring so that resources and classes can be put online, or do we think that a better solution is to enable national collaboration in content authoring so that the 'teacher experts' can share their wisdom and skill with others to reuse and refactor?"

The debate needs input from senior leaders at schools because this technology will influence the future learning environment for our students.

Professional Communities of Practice

During our EHSAS workshop on 17 October, Brian Annan talked about the importance of a community of practice. He defined a cluster as a form of learning network......a connected group of reformers working together, non-hierarchically to solve common problems. He then asked the question "why are we involved in learning networks?". His response to this question is that we are moving from self managing schools to connected schools. We are self managing administratively, but we need to be connected pedagogically. Why? Basically, because learning together is better than learning alone to solve complex problems. New Zealand Schools (which obviously includes our schools) have a complex underachievement problem to solve; or to put it another way, improving student achievement is a complex problem.

This brings us to the idea of our cluster schools, and the teachers in these schools, being a community of practice (COP). One of the leading authorities on communities of practice is Etienne Wenger (see his website at http://www.ewenger.com). He notes that communities of practice are well established in business, but that schools are only now latching on to them. I would recommend that you visit his website. I had the opportunity in term 2 to attend a workshop on COPS given by Etienne Wenger, and it was well worth it. I am only now coming to appreciate the need to establish such a cop within our cluster. The ePrincipals, nationally, have established a cop which influences our thinking, our theories and how we operate individually, and as a group.

Jean Annan in her research noted the following characteristics associated with the organisation of a community of practice:

• It is Loosely structured and largely self managing
• Structures are typically flat, collaborative and professional
• Leadership is assigned by the members
• Tasks are distributed among members
• Membership is voluntary
• Relationships exist at a formal and informal level.

Which elements above are evident in the Volcanics Cluster? Obviously, a greater review of Etienne Wenger's work would be advised, before answering this question.