Mackenzie College May 19, 2008
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Mackenzie College is a small high school in Fairlie, set amongst the stunning scenery of the Mackenzie country. The principal, Mark is new to the school this year and has some challenges facing him as any new principal does. Mark has a good knowledge of the IT side of things, because that was part of his portfolio as a Deputy Principal. It does make it easier when the Principal really understands what you are talking about!
I had a good chat with Mark and the senior leadership team (again, great!) and identified some areas of need. They have their own Moodle site going, but there has been little up take in it so far. Mark is pushing it this year and is keen that it is used in conjunction with the new Cantatech moodle. This is great to hear, because they can work together without it being an extra burden for teachers. Mark is especially keen on the collaboration plans we have for Cantatech schools and thinks it will work well with the new Moodle site. There is certainly plenty of room to create collaborative areas and this is a key goal for the cluster. This will work well with video conference meetings.
One thing that REALLY impressed me was Mark stopping during our discussion and asking what I wanted from them. This threw me for a bit, because it was unexpected, but very refreshing to have a principal ask this sort of question. “Buy in” is the most important thing for me – if the leadership of the schools doesn’t support where we are going then I have no chance of making headway with staff.
Darfield High School May 17, 2008
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Today’s visit was to Darfield High School, my base school, so I know it reasonably well. It is the biggest school in Cantatech with around 750 students, from year 7-13. The principal, Allison has been extremely supportive, but she was away today so I got to talk to the senior management team. This was great, because so far I have only really dealt with Principals and it is very important that all the leadership are on board and familiar with the project.
I outlined where Cantatech was going and our main goals for the next two years, which they responded to well. There was quite a lot of enthusiasm for what we want to achieve and some interesting ideas too.
After this I met with the five teachers who are going to be a part of the Canatech elearning team. I took them through the Cantatech Moodle site and outlined the plan for this. All were keen to be a part of the team and were enthusiastic about the opportunity to learn more. The only question came over the availability of computers in the school, which seems to be a bit of tension for some teachers. If teachers can’t get their students into computer rooms, then it will be difficult to get buy in from the staff. Something for the future…
The last group I met was the year 7 and 8 leaders. I wanted to look at how we could get junior students using video conferencing to enhance their learning. At the moment most Canatech schools only use their VC for the seniors, but there are wonderful opportunities to enhance junior programmes through VC. One keen teacher wanted to link up with Te Papa (for Kiwiana) and Denver Museum (North American Indians). I will be investigating…
Amuri Area School May 15, 2008
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Today I visited Amuri Area School, which is about an hour and a half north west of Christchurch. I spent the day their discussing the needs of the school with the principal, Neil, talking to the distance learning site supervisor, getting a couple of keen teachers ready to join the elearning team, and finally meeting the whole staff after school.
It was an extremely worthwhile day and I came out of it with some real insights into what the school needs.
Unfortunately Amuri only has two students in the distance learning programme, because the courses available simply didn’t meet the needs of the students. This meant that some students are doing corrspondence rather than one of our courses. As I have mentioned before, this is one of the issues we need to solve.
Neil is especially keen on the idea of collaboration. Amuri is a small school, so any linking of sole charge TICs, curriculum areas and opportunities for NCEA moderation can only benefit. They have a gifted and talented programme running and would like the chance to take part in cluster wide opportunities in this area. I’m sure this is something other area schools will be interested in as well. It is just a matter of finding where the expertise is within the cluster and harnessing in.
Oxford Area School May 12, 2008
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Today was the first school visit for the term and we started with Oxford Area School in North Canterbury. Oxford is a school of 500 or so students and caters for year 1 – 13. Like many of the Area Schools it is a beautiful setting with a lovely, quiet environment.
The Principal, Bob, is one of the lead princials in the cluster and is extremely enthusiastic about the whole project. There is no doubt that Bob’s enthusiasm is reflected in his staff, many of whom are very keen to get on board with the whole elearning thing. I potentially had up to eight or so teachers who would like to become part of the elearning team across the cluster. The aim is to have one or two from each school, so we are going to have to cut down numbers for the training, but there is nothing to stop many of these teachers training themselves with a little help. I was really impressed with the willingness amongst many of the staff in this school – it seems a great place to work.
I also met with the site supervisor / eteacher at the school who is one of the old hands in Cantatech. Trevor has been doing the distance learning thing since Canatech’s inception in the nineties. He had some great insights on what needs to be done to move Cantatech forward. One issue we have is that while our financial will sustain Cantatech distance learning at its current level, it won’t grow it. This means that some schools will not have the needs of their students met. We really need to find some way of broadening the amount of courses available to students.
Certainly a great way to start my ‘tour’ of the schools for this term.
Meet and Greet March 2, 2008
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One of the most important aspects of this job early on is building relationships, especially with the leadership of each school. Early on this term I spent two weeks travelling around the schools meeting principals and sometimes staff. In these meetings I outlined where we wanted to take Cantatech and built discussion around that.
All the Principals were very accommodating and showed a good deal of enthusiasm for the project. It was interesting to hear the variety of knowledge on this project. Some were very up with things while others had little beyond a basic idea.
By the end of this sojourn I was well and truly over my ten minute blurb to the staff, which had become rather repetitive for me. Guess I better get used to this when I get to the major presentation next term.
The various schools with links are listed below:
Cheviot Area School
Orientation Day February 9, 2008
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Our Orientation day was already organised by Jude and was held at Mt Hutt College. This was a great day and good chance to meet all the VC teachers for the first time. I gave a wee spiel at the beginning which was rather strange considering I only had the beginnings of a sense for the way everything worked.
On the way I had a good chat to Peter the Physics VC teacher at Darfield. We had an interesting chat about the cluster and VC teaching. Peter is keen to develop online tools to help with his VC teaching. In the past he has used Mindspring, but found students didn’t really use it. This year he is using a Wiki and looking to get students participating by putting up some Physics demonstrations related to things they are interested in (like the guitar for instance). I love this sort of use of web 2 tools. Many teachers use the internet or their OLE (Online learning Environment) as merely a repository of resources. This is fine as a beginning, but it is getting the students working with these tools that is the key. I think that Primary School teachers are well ahead of the Secondary counterparts in terms of web 2 tools.
Anyway back to the Orientation Day. While I enjoyed the day looking back now I can’t help but feel I missed out on an opportunity to connect with students and teacher because…well I didn’t really know what I was doing yet!
