Blogger's Cafe starts

I went to the Ulearn conference in Christchurch 

How Good is Good enough?

 
“A school or schools operating in isolation is no longer good enough in my mind.”
Why? this is the way things have always been done and it has worked.

The potential understanding of what is out there has changed we often apply this to our understanding of students learning.
At the school level we are now seeing this take place and I am happy to be part of groups that are trying to network develop and connect on behalf of their regions.
In New Zealand I think we are on the right track with regional capacity being developed by the key stakeholders. Regional groups extend pre-existing clusters and therefore connectivity. 
A fantastic example of this is

Manaiakalani an Auckland Community who are achieving multi dimensional improvements for their community.
The result is a ambitious project that is looking to bring 1:1 to a community without huge financial resources and includes wireless internet access to homes supported by Housing New Zealand.

This community is trying to transform itself led it seems by the Tamaki Transformation Programme Board. The complexity of successful change makes it vital that we look beyond ourselves and look to others while understanding that the sharing.

So what are the features of this project that we could look to for our preferred futures????

• Long term vision and community ownership of outcomes
• No constraining of dreams big expansive goals such as bringing connectivity to students in their homes
• Working with multiple agencies and supports
  • Housing New Zealand
  • Work and Income New Zealand
  • External consultancies eg Hapara putting interface layer over google docs that is purpose built for learners and schools.
  • 
  • Folksonomies by this I mean communities of goodwill eg software developers
• Focus on student achievement and well being
• Connected thinking and community

So what do we need to do?
At a regional level we can use presently operating networks such as principals associations and curriculum interest groups and add to them further collaborations with. Think LONG TERM 

• The willing
• Charitable Trusts
• Regional and local councils
• Multiple Govt agencies
• Libraries
• Tertiary institutions
• Community Educational Leaders

I like this video which tells a story about why collaborations are so powerful

 

Kia Kaha Manaiakalani

Reality Check Inventions

The Students have designed some inventions and spoken about the on ustream.
I was impressed by the creativity that went into ideas such as the “ultimate hair brush”,
”The Magniball wall” and the “Super Alpaca feeding station”. The ability to adapt, change and think in different ways shows that young students are able to move from designing to inventing. Well done.

It takes bit of strength to get up in front of the camera. There is a pause for about 30 seconds while one student gets up the courage to show what they invented.

 

Learning to collaborate? – Games can help

Did anything come out of our collaboration using the Xbox game viva piñata yes it did!

A recent Visit From Ewan McIntosh Reminded me of some key factors

• A shared interest or goal makes for a good opportunity to share: blogs and information. It creates that purpose for communication
• Problems often require communication to solve: a puzzle is a good place to start a collaboration
• When you are describing something new and dynamic you can’t rely on others you have a unique experience to describe
• The imaginary world of games reflects the real world, presenting lots of opportunity to think and bring ideas together

Next Term a Syndicate at school has decided to put an Xbox in each class and use them for Creative Writing. I am excited by the  prospect of this an hope that I can be involved in some way. Will blog about this as it takes place.

• There is still a lot of reluctance to recognise the

  potential

  of Games in Learning
• Viva la revolution

Learning to collaborate? – Games can help from Media team on Vimeo.

Connected Schools – Six mths in

We have been working as a professional learning community for six months and we can see impact in the video below.

With the project comes regional goals and as leaders what I see as crucial now is:

• Communication with other schools (newsletter coming)
• Collaboration with others like the University and Polytechnic
• Clear internal roles such as (organiser secondary voice)
• Sharing of successes and failures (learning)
• Strategic planning for sustainability and engagement
• The creation of Reuseable and AAA (anytime ,anywhere, anyhow) material

Great to watch a lot being picked up from our community development day and being used by the students,
EBooks , Voicethread, numeracy interactives. This will make for engaged learners and improved learning outcomes.

Connected Schools Six Months in from Media team on Vimeo.

Hamilton Schools working together to create a professional learning community for themselves and other educators.

Digital Citizenship – a big ask

We have students with connectivity and a number of choices to make.
We can protect them to a certain extent and of course we do by filtering and
education B U T in the end we can only do so much ….

I have spoken to students about this and asked them to collaborate on a document where they are asked

What we think as students about digital citizenship.....
What the school should do about students who download age restricted material is ...
How the School should try to protect students from things on the internet is ...
Should the school lock down computers so that we can't install anything ? Why ? Why Not?
What we should be able to do with our computers is...
What we shouldn’t be able to do with our computers is...
Questions we have around digital citizenship are.

Will post back what this group thinks soon

6 Word Stories

6 Word Stories

Describe / Reflect / Wonder about these pictures in 6 words. Remember to write your name

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