Our High School, Wellington College, has been using a model of student involvement in ICT. This has grown out of the School’s principle of actively engaging senior students in all areas of leadership.
The Tech Crew program, started in 2006, was based on a model that our sister school, Wellington Girls College, had initiated. A handful of tech savvy students were assigned to a group of teachers to assist and train them in the use of various software, hardware, web and any other teacher related ICT’s. This proved successful in that the students, as trainers, started to feel ownership of their school’s infrastructure as well as developing the skills to mentor. Teachers were very comfortable learning from students in the know.
This year the Tech Crew program has evolved into something more substantial. Our College has just completed a 3 year Ministry of Education funded ICT Professional Development cluster. Over the three years most staff have become more ICT literate, however we desperately need to be utilising the constantly evolving web-enabled tools which have fantastic potential to help improve teacher pedagogy and student learning.
This year the Tech Crew are working closely with me to help develop and enable these tools for learning in the College. The Tech Crew consists of 14 students most of which are seniors though some juniors are involved to ensure the program is sustained. These students have a wide range of skills which are targeted towards the various projects. Some examples are:
Moodle Learning Management System – Our school does not yet have an official site. One of our Tech Crew members has hosted our development site on his server (based overseas). He handles the technical side while I manage the administration. Our Moodle site (rightclicklearning.co.nz) has managed to enrol over 400 students (1/4 of school) in courses in the first month. This success will see the school introduce an official school site for 2010.
Library Help Desk – One of our Tech Crew has organised the equipping of a help desk in our centrally located and well utilised Library. They manage it at lunchtimes and also assist with the management of Library computers. As further web-based tools are introduced into the school, the Tech Crew will be called on to assist further. This help desk gives visibility and easier access to students and staff for help if needed.
Online Booking System – One of our very talented Tech Crew members has been tasked by me to write a program for teachers to book computer and other College facilities over the web. It is nearly complete and will be launched in just over a week.
Online Help Desk – Three of the Tech Crew are developing a Moodle Course which will act as an online request and technical training site for teaching staff. This site will serve dual purposes. It will encourage teachers who have not used Moodle to experience its usefulness from a ‘student’ perspective. It will also be a central point for help requests. Teachers will be able to request “Rapid Help” from the Tech Crew via a google form – our aim is for all help requests to be answered within 24hrs. Tech Crew will respond to the requests which they feel equipped to deal with. The Google form also feeds into a spreadsheet which enables us to later analyse how the system is being used.
There will also be blocks which provide information and support for each of the different software/hardware/other issues that teachers encounter. We are starting with MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Laptop issues, Outlook, and Room Equipment. However, this will be expanded into web based tools such as Google Docs, Gmail, Google Calendar, Mahara etc as they are rolled out.
MyPortfolio (Mahara ePortfolios) – Two of the Tech Crew are working alongside me to become familiar with this web tool. I am using it with two of my classes (Year 9 History and Y12 Web Design) in very different ways. I am attempting to model to other staff the possibilities. About midyear the tool will be promoted and we will have the Tech Crew expertise to support it.
Google Apps Education Edition – In about a months time the College will be rolling this out school wide. It will be a big change for staff and students alike. In preparation for this I and the Tech Crew have been using these Apps for communication and collaboration. We have a Tech Crew Google Calendar for planning. All communication is via Gmail and in particular we have a number of shared Google Docs. Two of the Tech Crew will also be administering the Apps site with me along with designing the site theme etc.
Digiweb Video Project – One of our Tech Crew members has been tasked with exploring how we can digitalize and share with the students/teachers all College owned video. This is a large project which he is undertaking but a very important one as, like many institutions, we need to find better ways to manage these valuable resources.
So as you can see, by involving these tech savvy students in assisting staff and our College wide shift to web applications we are able to achieve:
Technical and Application support for staff and students
Support for me by having a willing and capable team supporting the various projects
Tech Crew students gaining valuable leadership experience and being extended in their own ICT skills
I hope this post proves useful to you. I will be writing more about the above projects from time to time.
Well its been a long time since I have posted – 7 weeks. Co-incidentally this seems to be the same length of time as our summer school holidays. Unfortunately I have not been slumbering in the sun as some have. I have been hard at work writing 3 Moodle courses and preparing for my new role as eLearning Director at Wellington College, a New Zealand state boys high school.
The last week has been absolutely hectic for me. For the last 2 years the school has been using a Microsoft intranet or Content Management System called Sharepoint. Unfortunately this business targeted system, which is really aimed at getting mainly Microsoft documents online, has not met the creative needs of our dedicated teaching staff. Over the holidays I have developed an independent Moodle site for teachers wanting more. It was offered as one of a range of online options (along with wikis and blogs etc) to a group of teachers working in our Collaboration Webs project. In the space of the last few days interest has grown to the point where we now have 18 teachers wanting to develop courses with more knocking on the door. In just 3 days over 100 students have enrolled in courses and I expect up to 400 within the next 2 weeks. This has far exceeded my expectations.
Feedback from teachers, once shown the potential of Moodle, has been one of “this is exactly what I am after”. One commented that “this will totally change my teaching”. The way I pitched it to teachers was that they could have their own course site with full control over how they wanted to use it. Our other SharePoint system frustrated more than encouraged experimentation and discovery. I emphasised three aspects of the course:
The first was the way they could organise their content and hyperlinks etc.
The second was the huge range of choices in interactivity.
Thirdly, I emphasised that they could monitor student activity
It is interesting that they could do none of these three things with the Microsoft SharePoint system that the College still uses.
Lastly one of the things that I am very conscious of is workload, particularly at this time of year. I have suggested to teachers to just start with one of their classes and upload a few documents that they already use. Once students are enrolled then they can add more content and start using the interactive tools. Keeping things simple and quick at the early stages is important. Of course once a teacher starts using Moodle and discovers its full potential for both teaching and learning then they won’t look back. Without realising it their ICT skills will grow exponentially (sorry I had to sneak in a Maths term there).
Anyway, that is all from me for now. To all the Kiwi (New Zealand) teachers, all the best for the start of the year. And greetings from “Down Under” to all those from overseas who are delving into the exciting and rapidly evolving world of eLearning.
Hey I just discovered this cool timeline tool which I intend to use next year with my History classes. It is called Dipity and allows the user to create timelines over any period and to post events with multimedia embedded. There is even a function which allows for the presenting of timelines in a “flipbook” format.
This was clearly made as a free social software tool for people to share their travels with each other. I could just imagine getting students either individually or in groups to present a historical topic to the class or via their blog etc. Of course it can be embedded. Here is a sample one that I found on the History of Technology:
Well my year long elearning fellowship has finally come to an end and I will be back into regular teaching alongside my role as eLearning Director at Wellington College starting next year.
This year has seen me test and research a model of learning which I had used previously with a Year 11 History class. The research explored how student interactivity can be enhanced through the use of a blended learning approach and sought to discover how students could become more engaged in their learning when offered an environment that encouraged interaction and collaboration.
I used a Moodle LMS where students prepared for upcoming classes by engaging with online readings, quizzes, forum discussions and a variety of other resources and activities. They would then come to class and participate in activities including discussion around the content that had been covered. I found that the students were interacting with the content, me and each other with a deeper understanding than they might have previously. One of the most significant findings was that engagement equalised, that is to say that lower ability students became more engaged in discussion now that they felt more confident in their knowledge of course content. I finish my report with a discussion about how I believe that emerging technologies will impact on the future of blended learning and high schools in general.
My completed research report is available for download in PDF format here (2.14MB). It will be made available on the efellows site shortly.
I have also discussed my research project and year in general in an edtalks video which can be viewed below (approximately 7 mins):
Canterbury University (New Zealand) has just announced that they will be ditching Blackboard for Moodle and have started the shift process for full adoption by the start of 2010.
Canterbury University implemented a steering group which recommended Moodle be trialled against their current Blackboard CMS. The steering group’s final decision based process had these criteria:
Usability (by teachers and students)
Operational (reliability, external support, features and flexibility)
Strategic (future proofing, adaptation, stability of provider)
Cost (transition and long term)
Risk
Their executive summary report had Moodle coming out ahead of Blackboard in most of the above criteria (equal in other criteria but never behind Blackboard) and was strongly supported by amongst staff (70% outright preference for Moodle).
A link to Canterbury University’s LMS Review Process and be accessed here and a full public report (PDF) can be accessed here.
This is a follow-up to my previous post a month ago on Collaboration Webs and Mobile Tools. What has brought it about is the November issue of Interface magazine article titled “Would you look good with a mini?” (well worth a read). The article discusses the emerging trend of Mini Laptops and how they have become more appealing with the particular attractions being size and price.
It is hard to believe that only 13 months (October 16, 2007) ago the very first viable mini, the Asus Eee PC, entered the market. Interface now mentions 6 standard models in addition to the recently released Dell Inspiron Mini 9 (image shown) which I purchased recently. I first started looking at the minis about 4 months ago as an option but was reluctant to touch them because of the key board size and screen size – but I changed my mind once the keyboards came in at 90% standard and the screen could handle 1024px width (600px height) to prevent the nightmare of side-scrolling. Another feature I like is that it runs on Windows XP which, love it or hate it, is the standard for most schools including mine.
This is a truly fast evolving resource and I predict that Mini Laptops will become the standard wireless access tool for students NZ High Schools within 2-3 years.
PS. I am not an apologist for Dell but I do love my Inspiron Mini 9…
“Teacher Invaders” is a new flash based Quiz game from the makers of the popular “Fling the Teacher” game and is based on the very first video arcade game of the 1970′s called “Space Invaders”.
Teacher Invaders creation software is free and easy to use. all you need to do is enter in some questions and hit the generate game button. You can download the software which is still under development from Content Generator.
Try Teacher Invaders below with a simple countries quiz:
This video explains Moodle as a set of course building blocks – illustrated with Lego.
It was made last month by Tomaz Lasic who is also the author of videos in one of my previous posts showing how Moodle changed his High School in Perth, Western Australia.
[Note: This video is high quality and you will need to go to full screen mode to view fully]
It has become increasingly relevant for those who are involved in educating others to give quick and simple instruction using screen capture software.
I have just been playing around with free software called Jing which is free software produced by TechSmith which is the same company that sells very popular tutorial software such as Camtasia and SnagIt.
What I like about Jing is that it is simple to both record and publish screen captures. All output is in flash file format and can be either saved to your computer or uploaded to Screencast.com once you have set up a free account. The uploaded videos can produce embed code or link code depending on your preferences.
I have included an example of both below for a simple instruction video of how to upload a file to Moodle:
Well I have just about recovered from the U-Learn 08 Conference held in Christchurch last week. It is the largest eLearning conference for teachers in the country. The conference more than anything confirmed my belief that we are headed rapidly towards a combination of Collaboration Webs and Mobile tools which will take over our teaching. This year’s Horizon Report confirms that these will be adopted within 1-3 years.
For this reason I will be helping to implement a project at my school to facilitate a shift to the use of Mobile Tools and Connected Learning in the classroom. Currently teachers need to jostle over the limited computer room resources, similar to most schools as we know. We will be dedicating one classroom of laptops to allow 5-6 teachers from a range of subjects and Year levels to have online access on demand. The teachers will become a collaborative team with ongoing professional development in the use of online tools to implement student centred learning. The focus of this project is on developing the staff so that they can become team leaders the following year when we purchase a number of sets of cheap mini laptops such as the Classmate PC (as shown above).
Already there is strong interest in participation in the project. I see it as just one project among many where rapid growth can occur by exploring and modelling what is possible.
Clearly the expectation is that Mobile Phones will become the web tool of choice for most teenagers and possibly adults too. However, until the more web-capable iPhone & T-Mobile become more affordable then we see the use of the mini PC as an affordable choice to help prepare our staff and students for what lies ahead.
Here is a link to my presentation to Department Heads which was use to promote discussion of our “Collaboration Webs Project”:
"Schools should explore not only how ICT can supplement traditional ways of teaching but also how it can open up new and different ways of learning" -The NZ Curriculum (p36)
The Tech Crew program, started in 2006, was based on a model that our sister school, Wellington Girls College, had initiated. A handful of tech savvy students were assigned to a group of teachers to assist and train them in the use of various software, hardware, web and any other teacher related ICT’s. This proved successful in that the students, as trainers, started to feel ownership of their school’s infrastructure as well as developing the skills to mentor. Teachers were very comfortable learning from students in the know.
