Working on our Elearning Strategic Plan

Had a meeting after school with Mike from Core Education to start formalising our eLearning strategic plan.  As a group of 5 it was hard to keep on track. We  kept throwing ideas from one to another with them usually colliding mid air, and then bouncing off on a tangent. After 2 hours of ideas chaos we did manage to commit something to paper (just). 

We focussed mainly on how we will gather the information we'll need to make an informed decision about the hardware we'll recommend as our preferred device. As an outcome we all have tasks to complete in the next few weeks.  Awesome work Katy, Ant, Sarah and Scott I'm excited about the progress we made today.  I'm also glad of Mike reminding us that we have to be working on clarifying our rationale behind why we are doing this.  It's clear to me, improved engagement always improves outcomes, but we need to ensure that this is a commonly held belief.

Tracking Junior Data

Not related to eLearning, however I've had Jake (our achievement data guru) come to me with a proposal to start measuring our year 9 and 10 achievement against curriculum levels rather than the Not Achieved, Achieved, Merit, Excellence scale. I'm all for it. Currently we've developed a Junior Certificate which requires a grade from 1-6 to be awarded for each of the key competencies. From this we have generated an average score. The average is then being used to predict (based on previous year's results) how the students will achieve at level 1. The students receive feedback on what their score is, and feed forward about what they need to do to improve their average. It's deliberately unrelated to academic achievement in order to prevent students classifying themselves as underachievers and it becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.  However Jake thinks the Junior Certificate needs to be more directly related to achievement than it is currently.  I’m getting him to go to the Head of Department meeting on Monday to ask their opinion on this.  If it looks like too much work for all to undertake we’ll trial it with the departments that are happy to do it, and after reflection next year reassess whether it should be adopted for all departments.  As a first step the teachers are going to be asked to assess which curriculum level they believe the student is at.  We’ll look at this data to see if there is a correlation between that and the average grade from the Junior Certificate and work from there.

The Chromebooks Question

Had a great conversation with Megan from Otaki College (where I taught prior to Waiopehu) yesterday in regard to going to visit them. We're going to see what they're doing with the classes they have using Chromebooks.  Awesome to hear her being so enthusiastic about what she is doing with her year 7/8 class and I'm really looking forward to visiting them during week 4 of term to experience her passion first hand.

 I also spoke to the board at last night to seek approval to spend on a class set of Chromebooks, with the idea of using them with one of current junior classes.  We probably won't insist that year 9's must have a device until the begining of 2016.  Otaki College are also using a finance scheme where the students pay a deposit of $45 and then $4 a week for three years in order for their Chromebooks. I'm going to talk to Mike from Core Education tomorrow to see if we can get a similar scheme going here.  It would also be great if all schools in the town could come to a consensus on which device to go with so we could collaborate for training and PD. I know that the local Principals Association has been talking about it, so fingers crossed that may happen.

Some feedback from yesterday

Just some brief feedback from yesterday.  Despite there being some glazed eyes and blank faces at the meeting after school yesterday,  I have already recieved my first invite to a meeting (party invites would be more welcome), still it's gotta be a postive sign.
Little steps. 
I've also had another staff member come to me to say they think it's great we're going to look at some of the things we breifly touched on during our teacher only day.  Three staff are heading up to the #edchatnz conference next week- and I'm hoping they come back brimming with other ideas and enthusiasm for future focused education, and some things to present to the staff on that day also.  I'm not going as I have a two day hui Monday Tuesday for Building On Success.  I'll be learning to use the observation tool, which is then used to inform coaching teachers towards more culturally responsive personalised pedagogy, I'm really looking forward to it!

Post Staff Meeting Post

Well we ( Katie Peters and I) talked about the following-

• results of the e-learning survey- those who filled it in had us at the emerging level for most of the criteria. I was pleased with this- HOWEVER only 50% had completed the survey which may be statistically significant, but I have a hunch that those who didn't complete the survey may be those who are least e literate.  Yet again the recurring theme comes through in the feedback that if senior management 'are serious' about Digital Technology then there needs to be PD.  Not sure if I totally agree with this, it's my belief that if you really want to, you get on and do it- if what you're using isn't intuitive enough to use without a step by step instruction sheet, is it worth using? 

• Showed the google training website, showed the short video on google calendars, introduced the idea of becoming a google certified teacher.  Question from the floor: Will I get paid more if I do this extra work? I think  the reward comes from being at the front of the pack in this field. 

• Katie expertly demonstrated Doctopus, and Tweetdeck, and her inquiry blog-  Again I'm encouraging teachers to create twitter accounts to help them keep aware of some of the new initiatives in education currently. A few have already, the more the merrier.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
• Next steps. The tech lead team meet with Mike from Core education on Thursday to work on our strategic elearning plan.  Part of this will be using a teacher only day (22nd August) to undertake some differentiated staff PD on some of the things introduced today.  More on that after we meet.......                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

At the Start

Starting this new Blog about our "Journey" (is this the most overused word du jour?) into blended elearning at Waiopehu

Where we're at- fully snuped and industry standard wifi capable.

Have completed the surveys to assess where we are at in terms of preparedness to adopt more elearning strategies into the classroom.

Today at staff meeting we're (that's Katie and me) going to introduce/expose the staff to the google for education courses, docotopus, and the idea of setting up a blog.  Wish me luck!