Selling an idea – Akaroa Area School October 23, 2008
Posted by mrsuds in School Visits, eprincipals.add a comment
It’s been a busy week and I’ve got a lot of blog posting to catch up, but that might be a job for next week. Most of this week has been taken up with school visits, with the first at Akaroa Area School on Monday.
I had a discussion with two teachers who had been playing around with Moodle. I’m definitely finding it difficult to get traction with the junior teachers on this one. They seem to think it is more applicable to a secondary setting, but I don’t agree. While it may initially seem text heavy, Moodle has so much flexbility that you could approach course design however you wanted. If you want to make it visual, then it’s easy enough to do that. I think some teachers are struggling with the blank slate that it gives you at the beginning. To me, that is one of Moodle’s biggest strengths. It’s just a matter of thinking about how you will put things together. You can’t just zap things onto the page and expect it to make sense. Anyway, I have decided to investigate how some primary schools are using Moodle. Here are two interesting examples. David Street School and Sunnybrae. I really like the visual take on the David Street site.
I also discussed how things have gone this year with the site supervisor. We discussed the pros and cons of having two video conference lessons during the week as opposed to one. I favour one, and I have already discussed this with teachers. While I see the advantages of more teacher contact with two, there is a real teacher led approach in these lessons which concerns me. It’s important that what we do in our distance programme reflects the direction pedagogy is heading in secondary schools. Slowly, but surely a student centred approach is beginning to take hold. It’s great having this technology to enable students to take whatever course they want, but we can’t let the experience reflect 20th century teaching practise. There is something ironic about technology like this being used with traditional teaching approaches. I’m not sure our teachers are quite ready for this yet though, so I will give them the option for next year. I think a year’s PD with Moodle will enable teachers to start to use VC as just a another tool in their arsenal, rather than the dominant one.
The presentation went well, although I felt a bit flat this time. It certainly sparked off some vibrant discussion amongst the Akaroa staff. The key discussions were on social networking and, interestingly, blogging. One teacher made the point that there were all these ideas going round and round the blogesphere (is that a word?) with no real outcome. I think he has a point in some ways – there is a lot of talk around 21st century learning, but not enough action for me. This discussion has to take place though, and personally, I have found the blogs I read daily as enourmously enriching. I get new ideas, knowledge and feel more connected than ever before. Two other ePrincipals, Conor and Rachel, have their own blogs and I find reading them a very reflective experience. We all have similar challenges, frustrations and breakthroughs. By sharing them I’m sure we all feel a bit less like Lone Rangers riding off into the horizon ready to do battle…who Tonto is I don’t know…maybe Eddie!
Cantatech Principal Meeting October 14, 2008
Posted by mrsuds in Principal Meeting.add a comment
In the second to last week of last term the Cantatech Principals got together for our regular termly meeting. It was held at UC Plus on Montreal Street with some of the principals VCing in. It was also good to have my eMentor there – Chris Parsons from the Southern Regional Health School. Chris is an articulate speaker and always interjects at the right time to just add that little bit extra to discussion. Thanks Chris!
The major points for discussion were a first look at the Needs Analysis for 2009 and the second was the proposed OLE with Aorakinet. The second point I can’t elaborate on too much until things are confirmed, but the Needs Analysis has revealed a healthy number of students wanting to take courses next year. The most interest has been in Level 2 History, Level 3 Geography, Level 3 Classics, Level 3 Graphics, and Level 1 Human Bilogy. These courses have a good chance of going ahead at this early stage. Some interest in Agiculture as well, which is good.
We had some interesting discussion around the teaching of the courses. Cantatech runs differently to all the other eLearning clusters. Each school pays in a certain amount and we find the best teachers no matter where they come from and those schools get the funding to cover staffing. This means we can have two teachers delivering from one school and no one from another. It allows a great deal of flexibility to find teachers, but the downside is that some schools don’t have a delivering teacher. This is a shame as teaching in this environment is great professional development and something that can be shared with all staff.
I personally think we should encourage each school to contribute a teacher as an investment in the professional learning of the staff, but it is great to have the flexibitly to find good teachers – and after all that can only be better for the students.
