You learn, iLearn, we all learn!

Halfway through Term 1 already, where does the time go? This was going to be a long term, and there's still a long way ahead, but it's been so busy and exciting that it's just flown by!

Setting up a department in a new school is always a challenge. Try doing it in a school you've been in for 6 months. You are "existing staff" so everyone expects that you know everything, but you've never done half the things before, and the rest you're used to doing a different way. The solution? Listen carefully and ask LOTS of questions. Don't worry about looking daft for not knowing the answer, it's far preferable to looking dumb when you do it all wrong! There are lots of people who can help you, SMT, fellow Faculty Leaders, and the people in your department who've seen it happen before. just because they aren't in charge, doesn't mean they don't have a good idea about what/how/when things need doing!

In addition to setting things up a for a new year, I've got  4 new members of staff and two new courses to support. The newbies are great. Energetic, enthusiastic and bubbling with new ideas. My goal is to keep them like that as they settle in and not crush them under the workload of a PRT (Provisionally Registered Teacher).The new courses are even more exciting, and I'm teaching them both. Level Three Science using the new Earth and Space Standards. A great, contextualized course using scientific skills of information management and data processing to develop understanding in new areas. The facts that it does this by studying exoplanets, volcanoes, oceans and the atmosphere is almost irrelevant. It could study anything and still meet the same goals. But these topics are exciting, engage the students, and we don't study them enough in the "pure" separate sciences!
The biggy for the year is the start of the new iLearn program. A group of Y9 and a group of Y10 students who have been identified as struggling in mainstream classes, but not really Learning Support students. Lets try doing something different and see what happens. A class set of iPads should allow teachers to be a bit different. So I have a dozen Y9 students, with a variety of needs, and a teacher aide to help with the technology. The first lesson was great. Reviewing stuff they'd already done in their "normal" science class, they used a comic book app to make a poster about Lab Safety. If I'd given these kids a piece of paper and a pencil, I'd be lucky to get either of them back at the end of the period. But today I got 6 posters of students acting out various safety issues in the lab, with captions explaining what was happening, how to do it better and what the hazard was. A stunning success for students who generally struggle with completing tasks. Two weeks in and they are able to remember their username (their NSN, so quite a big number) and password, and are getting into the routines we are establishing to enable them to get straight onto learning as soon as they arrive in class. No more issues with missing books or dry pens. Enter, sit, start. Moodle and Google Docs are the main tools we've used so far, as these can be accessed from any device with internet connection, not just an iPad. So they can continue learning after school. Hopefully. Eventually. The only thing I'm not quite sure about is who's learning the most!

It's a long road ahead with these courses, but I hope that they both allow students success where they haven't had much before, and give them options and open up pathways where before they felt blocked and restricted. We don't know where our students will be in 10 years time. All I want to do is give them the tools to deal with whatever life throws at them. It's a small start, but a positive and exciting one.

Three Conferences in Three Weeks

It seems to have been conference season in Auckland lately, especially for those interested in collaborative learning. First up was the KnowledgeNET Conference at Takapuna Grammar School on Auckland's North Shore.  This was amn exciting start, as it was my first conference where I was going to present a breakout session.  I drew on my experiences setting up the Moodle system at Waitakere College and guided people through the steps, advantages and hurdles involved in establishing interoperability, with the aim of empowering them to take advantage of this powerful tool.  I was pleased to have people approach me afterwards and say that they now realised where they had been having problems, that they were relieved that it was worth persevering with, or that they had been weighing up the pros and cons of managing their LMS in-house versus an interoperable system.
With my spot over, I was able to focus on what other people were sharing.  Particularly interesting were the ways in which the Primary and Intermediate students were recording learning journeys and student voice through the KnowledgeNET system, ePortfolios and other online tools.  These students were mature, self-motivated, and setting personal learning goals which they were able to review and assess themselves on.  They are light years ahead of anything I have seen or head of happening in Secondary schools.  Those of us in Secondary education need to seriously step up a couple of gears before these students arrive expecting to continue these fantastic learning journeys, and instead slow to a crawl.

The conference I was most looking forward to was a total geek-fest, with Google in town for the first ever Google Apps for Education Summit in New Zealand, hosted at Albany Senior High School.  I have been a Google tools user since the days of needing an invite to Gmail, but have never really taken advantage of the rest of the app suite.  I was aware of the potential and capabilities, but had never really had the opportunity or motivation to put these into practice.  After a day of being surrounded by the capabilities and potential of the apps, particularly the sharing,collaboration and revision history of documents, I realised a couple of things.  Firstly, these were the tools we should be using as we implement an immersed, blended elearning environment at Lynfield College next year.   Using Google Apps would get around many of the problems we face with using shared iPads, namely that work created by students would be held in the cloud rather than on the device itself.  This will allow them to access their work from any device, whether the iPad, library PC or a home device.  anywhere, anytime access to their learning.  Secondly, if I was going to encourage this use of tools we already have but under-utilise, I need to up-skill significantly and quickly.  So I have made a resolution to abstain from the use of MS Office as much as possible for the remainder of the term, and instead focus on using Google Apps.  This will both increase my familiarity and comfort with the tools, and also drag some of those in my Faculty along with me as they will have to access their accounts to see the documents I'm sending them!

The last, and biggest, conference was uLearn at the SkyCity Convention Centre and associated venues in Auckland's CBD.  Over 1500 educators, plus industry representatives hawking their wares, gathered to Collaborate, Innovate and Educate.  Overriding messages from the three days of the the conference were stories and having a go.  Everyone has a story to tell, and letting them share it helps build successful learning relationships.  How did your students get to be in the room with you?  What do they already know? How can you build on and use that? Having a go was a strong message.  If you wait until you are good at something, you'll never start.  You've always got to start somewhere, and once you've tried it you can work on improving.  But everything has to be done for the first time by someone, be a pioneer and try it.  And if you are a Leader, support those people who want to try something new.  Give them anything they need in terms of time and materials, but the most important thing they can have is your support to help them think through and implement their ideas.
The great thing about the uLearn conference was the way people communicated.  With 1500 people at the conference, it was estimated that 70,000 people had seen the #uLearn12 hashtag appear in their Twitter stream.  It was fantastic to be able to sit in a breakout, sharing the key points being shared, and picking up the same from other breakouts in other parts of Auckland.  I may have gone a little bit critical, with over 200 tweets in four days, but as I picked up 40 new followers I must have been saying something people thought worth listening to.  I just have to make sure I keep it up!

So, after 6 days of meeting with other educators, sharing great ideas and practice, what are my key takeaway ideas?

1. Primary and Intermediate schools started "doing" elearning at the same time as Secondary.  However, with more contact time between students and teachers they have made a lot more progress and gone way past the tools they are using, and now look for how they can improve learning outcomes  using their digital toolboxes.  Secondary needs to catch up to be able to keep developing these students when they arrive at our doors.
2. Google Apps are a far more powerful collaborative tool for our students to use, and I need to get better using them so I can support my teachers.
3. Where possible, since we have Google Apps, we should use this suite of tools for elearning as students already have accounts and the school is able to manage their use.  When students start using alternative blogging sites, portfolios etc then managing the learning environment gets harder.  This is fine if these services have significant advantages, but if they are compatible then using the Google service simplifies management.
4. As we start using more online tools and services, we need to make it easier for students to navigate and access between these them.  This requires a Single Sign On system to ensure that accessing the tools is never a barrier to learning, as we all know how much time can be lost when a student has forgotten the password to this particular system which is different to all the others.
5. Have a go.  If you have an idea on how something could be done differently/better/new, get support from your HoD/Faculty Leader/SMT and go for it.  Nothing ventured nothing gained.  Don't wait until you think it'll be perfect, it'll never happen.

Well, that was a restful break, and I have a few new things to think about going into Term 4.  Let's make a difference out there.

The shortest long term ever.

Wow.  Has the term finished already?  This was meant to be a long term, with 11 hard weeks of teaching, learning, exams, marking and report writing.  And it has been long and hard, but it has also flown by.  It seems like only a couple of weeks ago that I left Waitakere College.  But it also seems like a lifetime ago.
This term has been so busy, with all the usual term three activities and events, but with the added complexity of learning a new school.  The troubles of working out exactly who does what.  Being the new face in school means all the staff recognise you from when you were introduced on day one, but having 100 odd new colleagues to meet, learn about, and match names and faces to (I'm getting there, but a long way to go yet!). What are the rules, boundaries, systems and procedures.  As in any new job, it's the little things that trip you up.  The things that you assume are done the same way that you are used to, but then you find out that they needed to be done differently.  Fortunately, thanks to my faculty and Senior Management Team, I've managed to avoid most of those pitfalls.

I have never really appreciated the school Staff Manual as much as I have this term.  When I joined Waitakere College I didn't even know what questions to ask, so I learned things by trial and error (more error at first!) but by the time I left I knew both the questions and the answers, and so was able to help out newer staff with almost any question they had.  Now I'm a newbie again.  This time, however, I know what I want to find out, and so am able to look it up in the Staff Manual.  Before it was a case of "I don't know what I don't know", but now it is "I know what I don't know, and so I know what questions to ask so that I do know".

If you are ever going to be promoted to running a department in a new school, starting in Term Three is a good time.  Yes, you have the heartbreak of abandoning your classes mid-year, just when you'd got them all how you wanted and  working how they needed.  And in your new school you'll take over classes who are feeling unloved and abandoned by their former teacher, whatever the reason for them changing was.  But you can deal with that.  The advantage is that you are taking over a department that it, by and large, set up and running.  The plans for the year are in place, courses are running, students are enrolled and class sizes have been dealt with.  There is actually very little management to do!  This gives you a great opportunity to focus on settling into the school, working out what you need to find out, and set a good basis for yourself with your teaching.  For me, moving from all the jobs I did at Waitakere College to just the one job title at Lynfield College meant I was able to focus more on the learning opportunities I provided for my students than I have for a couple of years!  Being able to establish a reputation with the students as firm, fair, interested in them and willing to listen to their issues around learning is the starting point to leading a group of teachers.  After all, the students are our customers, and the customer is always (well, mostly!) right!

Now, leading into Term Four, the Faculty Leader role is amping up.  Yearbook, Faculty Report, Prizegiving, Budget and the Timetable are all issues that are rearing their heads.  New challenges and new experiences. That's why I took this job.  Bring it on and let's make a difference out there.

New Challenges!

After 18 months of developing the Moodle system for Waitakere College, and finally starting to make some headway on the technical side of things, I got an offer I couldn't really pass up...

I'm now the Science Faculty Leader at Lynfield College.  More focused job description (only 1 title to worry about instead of 3!) but still a bigger job and definitely a step in the direction I want to go.

Lynfield has been very welcoming, and I feel I've settled in well.  No earthshaking changes (yet) but just working on a few little things that seem to have slipped away from the centre of focus, like Learning Intentions and Success Criteria.  The school has a very different feel to Waitak, but a very positive atmosphere.  Success builds success, and Lynfield has certainly had success with a high number of Scholarships in the Sciences last year.  The challenge here is to look at that often overlooked group "the lower middle" who want to learn and can do well, but don't get the glory and therefore miss out on the attention they need to be the best they can be.

Things to think about, systems to observe, changes to plan.

Time to make a difference out there!

SMS-LMS Interop working?

Every time you think you've got something sorted, you find another hurdle!  Musac finally sorted out why the system wasn't sending data to Watchdog, and then Watchdog wasn't able to understand the new data it was receiving  !  They finally got that sorted and finally we had data flow again.  As soon as that happened I was able to launch ParentPortal, so now caregivers are able to log into a web based service with their own unique username and password, and see all their child's school data.  Assessment Data, Attendance, Timetables, Reports. All available whenever they want to look at it.  And with scheduled updates, this data is updated each night.  Of course, the Windows Terminal Server keeps resetting my session and so deactivating the scheduled upload, but that is the next hurdle!
At the start of term 3 there were quite a few staff changes (including myself, more in my next post!) and these didn't seem to be coming through to Moodle.  Eventually, Musac managed to track down the problem.  The new teachers codes had been entered into the database as lowercase instead of uppercase!  What a pedantic system!!!  :-(  After weeks of effort, the problem was identified and fixed in a few hours, once the right people got around to looking at it.  Why they can't do it when I first ask...
So the SMS-LMS system can now handle a change in teacher during the year, can send parents daily updates of their child's school data, and is working better and better as a functional LMS.  I presented on this at the Emerging Leaders in Education Ignite Evening at the end of Term 3 and will also do so at the KnowledgeNet Conference in September.

Now the challenge is more on developing the pedagogy and culture of e-Learning at Waitakere College.  but that's not my job anymore...

MUSAC .v. MOODLE

So, 8 weeks into term and still having issues with the SMS/LMS Interoperability.  Thank goodness I did an early provisioning and got some semblence of course structure, with the majority of courses set up.  Because in week 2 MUSAC sent an update for the March 1st return which messed up the enroling into courses feature.  So any change to a students timetable since then has not gone through to Moodle, and so many courses are missing students.

Lots of teachers having to manually add their missing students, and getting quite annoyed about it.  I've got an update from MUSAC today, and along with a few database corrections, I'm hoping we're all good.  Fingers crossed this actually works!

Rob's Blog

First time I've tried Blogging. Come back later and see how it's going...

Merry Christmas!!! :-)

Rob