February 25th, 2010 by admin

Learning @ School has started with a thought provoking and entertaining presentation by Stuart Middleton. He effectively wove a story using metaphors highlighting the current challenge of disengagement of students in New Zealand. He presented some shocking statistics about what is known about disengagement in the education sector. Some of the statistics are:

NZ leaking education pipeline, we are losing kids

• 20% disappeared from education by age 16
• 12/5% Secondary truants each day
• 4000 excluded each year
• 4500 leave primary but fail to enter secondary …

Stuart argues we need to meet this challenge Are we ready? We have to get very much better at what we do, and that means change. If we carry on doing the same it will get worse.
NZ, Australia, Great Britain, Canada, and USA all are facing the same or similar issues in education with disengagement with kids. They also are all going down a similar path with education initiatives. Stuart asks is it our right to do what other countries have done even if they fail??
These countries all have these things in common:

• All of these countries have considerable unease socially and politically with education.
• Disconnect between education and the economy
• Unprecedented levels of disengagement – physical, virtual, unintendedNEET (15-19) Not in Employment Education or Training

Stuart outlines three types of disengagement:

• Physical disengagement – not being at school
• Virtual disengagement – at school but not getting qualifications
• Unintended disengagement – good intentions, right moves, but no success post-secondary

Stuart calls us to meet this challenge. We can make a difference if we are willing to make changes and continue to make changes that make a difference.

What suggestions do you have for meeting this challenge? In my opinion this conference is indicative of the changes that need to be made and the people who are passionate and committed to making these changes. An inspiring start to a great three days of conference.

February 25th, 2010 by admin

Marvin are running a 2010 Microsoft Marvinator competition. Here are the details…

Dear teachers,

Students and teachers are invited to enter the 2010 Microsoft Marvinator competition and be in to win loads of great prizes!

Entries are invited from groups or classes of students who, along with their teacher, develop and submit a MARVIN presentation which meets one of these criteria and responds to the brief (see website – it is gets updated from time to time, so if you don’t see the information there, try again later).

There is also an individual student competition to solve the riddle The competition has three different categories or streams:

• Primary (years 1-6)2.
• Intermediate/Secondary (years 7-10)3.
• Individual students who submit a MARVIN clip to solve the riddle

Regardless of whether your class is submitting an entry to the main competition (the teacher/class competition), individual students are invited to solve the riddle and upload their own clips to the riddle tab, and win a prize for the best clip in this category.

Timeline:
The deadline for submissions is 5pm on 28th May 2010. Winners will be announced by 23rd  June 2010
Draws:
There will be weekly draws for spot prizes  - MP3 players. All you need to do to qualify for a spot prize is to submit your animation (class or individual) to the Marvinator website by 5pm every Friday afternoon. Winners will be announced every Monday on the “Judging and Prizes” tab of the website.

The earlier you get your clips submitted, the better the chance of winning, as the longer you wait, the more people will be submitting!

The prizes to be won are:

• Weekly Spot prizes – MP3 players
• Digital Cameras
• Wireless Microsoft Keyboard and mouse set.
• Binoculars

About MARVIN

MARVIN is a fun, easy to use animation program used to support the objectives of the revised curriculum framework. There are no costs to NZ schools, teachers and students (PC compatible only). MARVIN can be used to present knowledge and outcomes from units of learning, allowing students to cover a range of topics by projecting their ideas into animated characters (avatars) that can verbalise and enact their thoughts. Topics could cover environmental, social or just “hard to talk about” issues. As a teacher you can participate simply by using MARVIN as part of your teaching or have your students create animations to report on class projects.

So………….let your students’ imagination come to life and enter the competition (see details below) and get more information at the MARVIN blog.

Some contacts and web URL’s of importance:
The official competition website

MARVIN blog

Registration process

Technical help (installation, networks issues and other computer specific issues), please contact Nathaniel at nathaniel.peek@nticed.com – NTICED is the company that is supporting this programme.

For all other questions relating to the content, or similar, please don’t hesitate to contact us at marvinator@egl.ac.nz

February 25th, 2010 by admin

Principal Mr Wim Boxen of Ponsonby Intermediate came to the Learning@School conference expecting to learn about the latest developments of managing his school, he also came here hoping he could gain ideas about networking all his students onto a single network so that they could share ideas and help each other through school work and even homework. He would like to give students the opportunity to access this network via there home computers and laptops, to help each other through problems.

He stated that this year was his fourth year attending a Learning@School conference, and he said that last year he was inspired enough to bring home 30 Ipod touches. He said that he thought that giving students Ipods would make it easier for his students to access homework, and assumed that teens in the current world are very technologically aware and that it would make it much easier for them to do such work.

Mr Boxen has discovered some new ideas that in his opinion will help students have a guideline to aim for and something to look forward to, he seemed to take an interest in the new Ipad touch screen computers, he explains that they are a laptop of the future and that using the all new touch screen will encourage students within the classroom and make them aware to the environment that they are seated in and wanted them to get a “feel” for the new ways in which learning in the classroom can be encouraged and how teachers can use different methods of transferring their information onto the students within the classroom, besides why else do you go to school, it’s all to learn and prepare students for the future of the outside world. He wants to give them a real grip on what the real world is like and how to manage it.

Another aspect Mr Boxen assimilated was the fact of his students producing a time capsule, allowing students to reflect on their past opinions and ideas. They then see how they have changed and matured, allowing them to keep an open mind to their future aspirations, in having goals and aspirations students have something to aim for. Example, a student looks into his/her future discovers that they want a successful job, working indoors. The student might decide on an accounting job, therefore the student from a low level will make decisions based on an accounting background. This can affect anything from what subjects you choose to who your friends are. It has a huge impact on future life and how well the person may find themselves in life.

February 25th, 2010 by admin

Today we are trying something new, pushing boundaries and demonstrating the possibilities of ICT. Alan November is recognised as a leader in education technology. His areas of expertise include information and communication technology, planning across the curriculum, staff development, long-range planning, building learning communities and leadership development. He has delivered keynote presentations and workshops in all fifty states of the USA, in every province in Canada, and throughout the UK, Europe and Asia.

Using technology we have access to thought leaders around the world. We can bring them to our place without the expense and time of actually travelling.

So this year we engage with Alan November via Skype.

Here are my notes from Alan’s presentation:

Desperate people make good students!

Alan discussed the key skills for today’s children and these form the structure of this talk:

• Global collaboration
• Deal with overwhelming amounts of information
• To be self directed

The most important question to ask is who owns the learning? Is it the teacher or the students. In many classrooms the teacher works harder that the students. The trick is to turn this around. The philosophical onset of this is that every student is a teacher and every teacher is a student.

Alan demonstrated how you can zoom in on one countries information by using the word “site:tr (the ‘tr’ stands for the country code of the perspective you would like to search for). This is a way to make sure you are gaining information from different points of view as straight google searches really do give you a very western perspective in the results.

This brings about the discussion about teaching students how to be effective and evalutating users of the web. Alan introduced us to a few websites you could use:

www.easywhois.com type in the domain name of a website and it tells you who owns the domain so you can evalutate the information

www.archive.org – this site has the way back machine. Use the search bar to type in your website and it will give you the history of the website from the time it was launched. You can view the different versions of the site and how it has changed over time.

There are a variety of tools that all children should know that tear apart the internet layer by layer.

I have a list of bogus websites that can be used for this, and there are more on Alan’s site:

http://otepoti.wikispaces.com/Using+the+Web

http://novemberlearning.com/

Some sites Alan shared to demonstrate students taking on teaching roles, and demonstrating deep learning:

http://mathtrain.tv - Students design tutorials to help other children learn.

http://www.studentnewsaction.net

http://isenet.ning.com – independent school teachers

http://www.wolframalpha.com/ - Wolfram alpha – investigate this for your math classes

The concept is should we be asking children to do work that teachers used to do? How many jobs can we give to children? Given that we have incredible tools the answer is probably limitless.

Don’t underestimate your kids.

The twitterverse were active during this presentation making comments and sharing links. If you haven’t yet had a look at the back channel discussions that are going on at the conference head to http://twitter.com/ and put #latsconf in the search box.

February 25th, 2010 by admin

As the assistant head of English at Wellington College, Mr James Edgecombe wants his students to excel in English to the best of their abilities. He has been given some great ideas to help them achieve this. This is his second time at the L@S conference, and after the first keynote speaker, he was thoroughly impressed, even more so than he was when he came in 2006.

His expectations included lots of information about learning through technology and different strategies with students, and these have been well and truly met already, with extended ideas about keeping students engaged in their work by giving them incentives, such as i-Pods and mobile phones allowed when their work is finished, rather than giving an amount of time that they must concentrate for, for example thirty minutes. This would help because instead of students having a period in which they do work, but often not finish it, they are given as much or as little time as they need. This would increase productivity, which is exactly what Mr Edgecombe wants. Another idea that Mr Edgecombe liked, was of sorting students into classes according to their mental, rather than biological age.

Mr Edgecombe has also been inspired at the classroom level. Some ideas that have inspired him are letting the task dictate the lesson, which means letting students finish whenever they can, whether it is late or early. The early finishers then get time to get to the bus, or are able to listen to their own music, while the later ones can stay after class to finish. Mr Edgecombe’s thinking has been extended by this idea, which is one of the reasons he has so far enjoyed this L@S conference more than the others. He wants to try the incentive/motivation technique when he gets back to teaching his English class, which is the technique described in this paragraph.

April 12th, 2009 by admin

The first keynote for Learning@School 09 was entertainingly delivered by Andy Hargreaves. He made the statement that to be a leader you must demonstrate the change that is needed. I heard a principal once say that leadership was leading from the front, back, sides and all angles, at the same time.

This is an ICTPD conference and Andy reminded us that research shows that e-learning or ICT has been proven to have no demonstrable affect on teaching, learning or student outcomes. What makes the difference is effective teaching practice coupled with the use of ICT and e-learning. In this vein, I looked to the collaborative efforts of the delegates to share their learning and thinking of this conference (supported by the wealth of ICT at our fingertips)…

During the keynote delegates were ‘twittering’ their responses. Rachel Boyd remarked that the “second way sounds a lot like that tick box culture where we were so worried about coverage”. Sarah Jones suggested that the keynote was reinforcing knowledge age ideas.

Heath Sawyer started an etherpad for delegates to write collaborative notes about the keynote.

Janine Durno blogged her response to this keynote:

“Today I have the pleasure of being a lone ECE girlie at the very large learning@school ICT conference in our sulphar capital, Rotorua, home to Arawa and cultural icons. Andy is the first keynote speaker, he announces pink shirt day and outs members of the audience and prepares us for a very funny speech where in parts he is stuck to the floor! Andy reminds us that no ICT will have the slightest difference in teaching and learning unless you pay attention to pedagogy and its effect, again good teachers using ICT is the most powerful thing, and not good ICT. Collaborative feedback example he gives reminds me how little we put ourselves out there for colleague feedback, but how powerful a thing for growth that would be… So how is this Programme going for you so far, what do you need to achieve your goals, I bet there are many wishes people share and I am looking forward to tuning into them at our Lead Teacher Hui. Andy takes us back to when teachers entered teachers, the 60s and 70s and disorganization, the market influences on education and governments setting criteria for education…wow we are still doing that, Margaret Carr just presented the last (will it be) set of exemplars on ‘Dimensions of Strength’ the exemplars have given us a criteria that reflects Te Whaariki, havn’t we come a long way into our stength based narrative assessment. Andy warns us about the competitive climate in the UK amongst schools and how this pushes aside our efforts to enhance teaching and learning and sharing of this. I was at a kindergarten the other day where conversations with parents on selecting services arose, parents choosing on the basis of reputation, ICT equipment and resourcing and in some cases elitism - if it costs more it must be superior??? Did you know Nokia is named after the town of Nokia, sits by the river of Nokia, named after a large furry rodent, they were a timber company, that went into rubber shoes, then into cables and then into cellphones… interesting model… if you work for Nokia you change your role every 15 months because your loyalty is to Nokia and not your part, how interesting would it be to change your role in your centre and association perhaps like this, and how well we would understand each other and what each role encompasses…”

This was an inspirational start to Learning@School. During the conference we will have many more posts by guest bloggers sharing their experiences, learning and reflections.

April 12th, 2009 by admin

Guest blogger - Greg Carroll

April 12th, 2009 by admin

At the Bloggers’ Cafe we interviewed delegates about their sessions, here is a slice of what is happening at Learning @ School…

Susan Garrud from Matamata Primary school attended “Developing 21st structure to support key competencies and self-directed learning” presented by Kat Braun:

The overlying theme of this session was the importance of being able to be flexible and create your own time structures for the school day. Often there is no time for differentiated learning in some classrooms. We looked at how to organise learning environment to cater for self directed learning.

The thing I will take away from this session is that I would like to talk to my kids about what time of the day they would like to learn different things – when would be a good time to do maths for example. Also I will look at the learning environment a bit more to see whether or not there is a better way. I will ask how the kids like to see their space. This session reinforced my ideas about consulting the kids. It sat really nicely with the Jamie McKenzie session this morning.

Kim Scott from the GRITS cluster in Gore who attended “Transformational teachers” presented by Tony Ryan.

The main message I picked up was being present as a teacher. It is really important to have memories of the past, a vision for the future but essentially to be present. Also I The importance of being comfortable highly creative. Not meaning the arts, could creativity of thought, behaviour patterning . The concept of connectivism was the key concept for me. I like it because it’s not just responding to people but about the relations built up behind it. The ability to be metacognitive.

The thing I am going to take away and use from this session is the TED talks. I use TED talks as an inspiration site for myself. I’m going to take it away and use it with my students. My short term goal is to be invited to the TED conference!

Karen Roulston from Huntly Primary School attended the Learning Caves (exciting online inquiry learning tools) session presented by Brendon Muir and Tiffany Whyte.

This session showed us how to create learning caves where students can go in and access information at home or at school and it allows you to see how much they do and don’t know. They can create the work at home if it is online and then work on it at school the next day. Learning Caves is a part of Spike Schools. I liked the fact that it is student created for each other.

Students being able to set up their own learning and share their learning with their peers in a safe, monitored manner is my take away from this session.

Todd Reid, Susan McDonald, and Laura Geaney, of St Therese School visited the Trades Hall during the breakout session.

There were so many things to see and so little time! You want to have a look and play with things. The teachers need to play with the stuff before they let the kids play. There were lots of interactive technologies, so exciting.

Click view was interesting, where you buy videos for your school specific to a subject. You get about 500 videos for the whole school to use. The videos are all related. You can search by topic so it would be a real time saver.

Panasonic told us about a movie competition for the students and we might have a go at entering that. It was worthwhile spending a session in the tradeshall as we had time to really look around.

Paul Brimblecombe is the Board of Trustees deputy chair from Raumati Beach School

It has been a bit mind boggling. All the sessions have been great. My specific purpose was to get an overview of the ICT elearning process. The Board of Trustees need to be really clear on the direction they set for the school. We want ICT to be a means to an end rather than the end itself. A lot of what I’m seeing around here is reinforcing that. The people who are delivering are all that in the breakouts. Its not just about iCt its about the big picture and where it fits in.

April 12th, 2009 by admin

Now that the conference is over, there is plenty still to engage with. If there were workshops that you missed out on you can find the materials on the Learning@School website. In a few weeks time the videos of the keynotes and spotlight presenters will also be placed on the website. Many people have already started their reflections. I used the Google blog search to find mentions of the conference and below are a few of the links.

What were the highlights for you? What was your ‘aha’ moment? We would love to hear of them in the comments.

Jo provides her reflections on the Learning@School conference.

Fiona ponders learning everywhere.

NZChrissy talks about the power of her personal learning network as she joins the conference virtually from Bangkok.

Wes reflects on Allanah King’s session on creating and managing digital portfolios.

Amanda reflects on effective ICT planning.

Derek releases his 10 trends for another year.

Greg discusses Principals as leaders of learning cultures.

Iain marvels at the collaboration generated by Learning@School.

Andrew discusses the interesting case of virtual versus face-to-face.

Sarah does a good job reviewing Andy Hargreaves keynote.

Staff at Clendon Park School created a blog to specifically outline and summarise their learning and networking at the conference.

Heath talks about his innovation of getting everyone to collaborate on note taking during Andy Hargreave’s keynote.