Virtual Learning Network

Jason Ohler   Key Idea: Literacy - consuming and producing the media forms of the day, whatever they are.

The shift to media literacy as global communication, pictures speak thru languages.

Attitude is the aptitude (how much you love learning is the determinate your intelligence), therefore teachers can be door openers to the way that students learn best.

Stories lodge into the brain, lists don’t

• Don’t let other’s concern stop great ideas. Turn concerns into goals.  Concerns are just negatively stated goals, turn them around.

Karen Melhuish   Key Idea: Sharing our learning, PD, etc What can we do better? What would work for each teacher?

Can I network and share beyond the photocopier?

How do we share our good tips, learning, etc?  Don’t wait until you are good at something to share it.  Be a teacher to all.

To what extent is our PD taking advantage of the technology opportunities that we have been given?

• Project yourself beyond school – de-silo.  Seeing my teaching as a project and project yourself to help others and yourselves. See sharing as an obligation.

Chrissie Butler  Reaching all learners

Why do we reach some learners but not all?

Know your learner – do I know my learners well enough to engage them?

If you design a programme to be inclusive for all the first time instead of adapting to meet individual needs.

Ministry document: ‘Success for all’ website

Khoa-Do Keynote

Focus on what you have, not what you don’t.

Don’t let anyone tell you, you can’t live your dream.

Kevin HoneyCutt Keynote

Be re-windable, record what you do, you don’t have to be great at it.  But be accessible and re-windable. 

If you teach it – let it matter.  How is what you teach relevant to your students? Does it matter to them?

 David Kinane  5 e-learning tools to capture student voice in a classroom

Embrace the chaos of multiple devices

Key questions become:

Does it have a Camera?

Does it have a Microphone?

Does it have Internet?

This showcased a variety of ways to capture student voice.

Annie Agnew

Goal Setting consisting of

• What I value
• What concerns me
• What am I going to do

• Help children to record their story so that they can capture their story and then write it.  Don’t let them lose their thought by using the process.
• Don’t let the lack of resources stop you from creating.

Laetitia de Vries             Newsboard in a junior classroom

This was about empowering 5 year old’s to use video as a way to develop their oral language. Capturing their thoughts and successes in an authentic manner.

Glenn Capelli    Keynote

The creative power of collaboration

AIAI assume I am an idiot, teach it back to me, clarification

Tara Fagan and Tania Coutts          iPad 101

This was a hands-on learning workshop that explored features of an iPad and a great variety of applications designed to capture student’s imaginations and inspire learning in an engaged, purposeful manner. 

Jason Ohler 

Key Idea: Literacy - consuming and producing the media forms of the day, whatever they are.

• Moblie/connected classrooms, opening the doors for students, making everywhere school.
• Turn concerns into goals.
• Art is the next R - turning our stories global
• The shift to media literacy as global communication, pictures speak thru languages.

• Attitude is the aptitude (how much you love learning is the determinate your intelligence), therefore teachers can be door openers to the way that students learn best.
• Stories lodge into the brain, lists don’t

• Don’t let other’s concern stop great ideas. Turn concerns into goals.  Concerns are just negatively stated goals, turn them around. 

Khoa-Do 

A very inspriational speaker, has been able to achieve a lot regardless of many challenges.

• Focus on what you have, not what you don’t.
• Don’t let anyone tell you, you can’t live your dream.

Kevin HoneyCutt 

• Be re-windable, record what you do, you don’t have to be great at it.  But be accessible. 
• If you teach it – let it matter.  How is what you teach relevant to your students? Does it matter to them?
• Show children the reality they could have
• Kick my butt with love, show them expect more
• Relationships, treating the scariest kid like he is the only you trust
• Work with the brains, don't be put off by the package
• Try new things, don't wait until you at good at it.
• Don't amputate their digital limbs.
• If they are busy doing great things with technology they won't have time to do stupid thins.
• Helping kids manage their devices not the devices managing them
• Good teachers plant the seeds of trees that they may not sit in the shade of.

Glen Capelli

• You have to have a philosophy, strategies and tools are fine but they have to work with your philosophy
• Do want you do do well
• Work out what you stand for and what you can't stand
• Make sure your instructions are clear
• Assume everyone is an idiot, make your instructions are very clear
• Kaizen - Little bit by little bit big things grow, chunky down problems
• Be an anablep - a fish with 4 eyes, two of top and two below.  Notice what is on top and under the surface.
• There are talents inside of people they hadn't discovered yet, don't get trapped in your strenghts.
• Collabrative learning.

See more on the U Learn site http://ulearn.core-ed.org/

Here is a summary of breakouts I attended at ULearn 2012:

Collaboratation and Creativity in Year 6-8 Literacy Programme

The literacy programme was based around a shared text (Hunger Games, Boy in the Striped Pyjamas). The programme moved from shared reading to the focus of writing programme with the final outcome as a spin-off novel or book trailer. After each chapter there were comprehension questions to check children's understanding of the text, particularly around the key themes of power and contraol, humanity and identity. For the Hunger Games children used google docs to create a chapter book spin off from Gale's point of view. Thee had to have a good understanding of the original book to ensure consistency between the chapters and authenticity of student voice; they had to keep revisiting the original text to check details. The use of google docs allowed the children access to others work, which they needed to use to ensure the text flowed, and it allowed peers and the teacher to give constant feedback and feed forward using the comment facility.

Tools to Capture Student Voice

A lot of good learning is missed in the classroom as it happens in conversation when children feed off each other. Teachers conference and have a good understanding of what children knw, but there is a disconnect when children have to write their unedrstanding down (e.g. for assessment purposes). Devices to capture student voice make it easier to do this and harness these conversations.

There is a wide variety of devices out there, so the key questions to ask when deciding on the suitability of a device are:

Does it have a camera?

Microphone? 

Internet Connectivity?

There are then a plethora of web 2.0 tools and apps that can be used to harness the voice. A summary of the pros and cons of a variety of these can be found on this presentation: http://dakinane.com/blog/2012/10/15/ulearn-12-breakout-3/.

ePortfolios and eLearners

When introducing ePortfolios you need to consider whether they will complement or replace current reporting structures. Other considerations that need to be considered are time, resources, personnel and parental access. It is also important to consider what an artefact/evidence in the ePortfolio should be like, but this will depend on the purpose of the ePortfolio. It also needs to be considered whether the ePortfolio will be regularly updated and used for reflection or only at certain times.

Microsoft OneNote

A collaborative programme that has vast capabilities. It can be used as a digital portfolio and scrapbook that supports the rest of the Office suite (which can be embedded into OneNote). Mulltiple users can add notes and it records who wrote what. Audio can be recorded straight into OneNote and notes made at certain times are linked to that place on the recording. It automatically references pages from the web or PowerPoints you have used when making notes. Can be accessed through the 'Cloud'.

In Term 2, all Cluster schools ran staff professional development around Creative Commons. This was planned by the Cluster co-cordinators and then ran by lead teachers. The main rationale for this PD was:

Users of blog sites and other social media sites frequently copy and paste content from copyright sources without permission in order to illustrate their posts. Before reusing digital content ourselves we need to check copyright restrictions and acknowledge the creator because:

• We want to be honest and give credit to the work of others.
• Originals may be subject be copyright or come with some special conditions.
• We should lead by example and model good practise to our students.

• Students are critically aware of their own cyber safety and their responsibility as digital citizens.
• Teachers will be developing an understanding of Cyber safety and Digital Citizenship with their students.

Over the last two terms, the co-ordinators have visited each Cluster School to work with individual teachers on their personal areas for development. Lead teachers wil reflect on the impact of these visits in the comments section of this post.

Yellow Hat

• Use of VLN to collect evidence is working well to show a range of learning across different classrooms.
• TeKids sessions have been effective for developing student leadership and capability and bringing their knowledge back to school.
• Two schools have utilised the enabling e-learning framework effectively to develop strategic planning for their schools.
• On-going professional development in schools.
• Use of facebook

Green Hat

• Explore the enabling e-learning website further with teachers.
• Other schools having a look e-learning planning framework.
• Continue to focus on e-learning theory and pedagogy as teachers shift from teacher directed, tecnology driven decisions to trialling and integrating technologies that will aid the delivery and understanding of curriculum content.
• Consider how to share the Cluster work around information literacy and digital citizenship with community.

This session focused on cyber-bullying, with the children having to apply their information literacy skills to develop their knowledge on this area. Children used a range of websites, but are unable to alter searches effectively to speed up the process triangulation. They also worked in pairs or individually, they did'nt choose to work collaboratively to speed up the process. Prehaps next time we could set up a google doc for children to record collaboratively on to promote this. Children were skilled using the web 2.0 and embedding them, they have really become confident in doing this. This is an improvement from the beginning of the year.

It has been effective this year to switch sessions between giving children choice and focusing on one "flashy" skill, so that children have choice but also develop high quality skills. It is really important to have time to scaffold how to use tools effectively.