Picture Test

Just Checking how Posterous deals with pictures.

Bloggers are interested

One thing that the students at Southwell have done is that they have really stuck with their blogging.

It's not as easy as it looks.

The temptation seems to be to create a post that gives a quick message to others. I can understand this writing can sometimes be boring we often want to show pictures rather than spend a long time creating some of the people need to read. The problem I have with this is originality of ideas, a lot of the pictures that students use are being copied from somewhere else. What this means is that we have only really managed to identify the good ideas of others rather than to provide our own. How we can get around this. One of the things I think is important is that we consider the audience the people who are going to read our blog. They want to hear what we think, what we know, what we have found out and what we can add. 

Euan has been working hard to create a new unique post on as aviation blog where he describes a process that he is going to undertake to try and achieve his pilot's licence.

Dave Winter

Dean eLearning Southwell School

Ph 07 855-2089
Fx 07 855-9023
School Http://www.southwell.school.nz

Programme Director Connected Regional Community

Mob 021 1769425
Web Http://www.connected.org.nz
Blog Http://education-realitycheck.blogspot.com
Twitter: davein2it

Skype: davewin2it

Week Two of our Blogger's Cafe

Well we are in our second week of the Blogger's cafe we have added in some links on the side.

Each of the Bloggers has actually chosen a topic for their blog. 

We have :

Windurfing

Marvel Comics

Aviation 

Video Games

One thing that has come out of the second session is that other people can help us give 

ideas about what we can post.  We started talking about how you can get comics and that then became 

an idea for a post from Casey. I'll be looking out for it because who knows I might have to start reading comics.

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.