Sunday 20 April 2008

eLearning and email, which comes first?

What do we class as eLearning tools, we look at how students interact with the teacher through various packages like moodle, knowledgeNEt, wikis, LMS, and CMS, is it the sharing of information from teacher to student through electronic means.

As you may have figured it out I have been in development of students email at school through the use of google apps. I believe that there is a place that needs to be started at. We have ll these wonderful tools at our disposal but we still need a way to get back to the one on one, or face to face interaction with the student and the teacher. Email is the start of this, if they are not comfortable using email to talk to the teacher then the rest of the tools are going to inhibit there learning as well. Through google tools is google docs, this has a spreadsheet, word processor, presentation application all built in, students can create work online and share it through the publish facility. Is this not what we are after through our other various methods of eLearning, for students to share their work, collaborate on a project. Start small and work up.

Yesterday I went to a presentation on collaborative tools and got shown how an interactive whiteboard could help with that. A large capital investment, google apps is free and all it costs is Internet traffic. The same type of collaboration can exist through other methods. Talked about in that presentation was how they need to be supported in schools, through PD, top down approach, encouragement, resources. I look at what I am doing, this has been a very bottom driven approach, the students have been after this for a while. 

Every year we have year 9 students have that been using email within their previous school and wonder why we don't have it. Teachers question why students don't have email s that is a tool that they have developed and used within their teaching practice at other schools. Has their been a fear about how much email can hurt a school, or is it the practices/policy that need to change. The fear of technology. 

Teachers have had email for the years that I have been there. Now students will get that and hopefully elearning will start to take off.

Saturday 19 April 2008

xna development for xbox 360 dancemat

For some of them at least some of the motivation is to attract more students into their computer science programs. Springbrook High School has a video advertisement that shows students playing one of the games they have created. It is an interesting way to get students to think about taking some real computer science courses.

google apps in schools

just a few notes on developing the student email system through google apps, with the 1826 students added to the system, I have been thinking about how the helpdesk and abuse of the system will be handled. What policy will be needed to help with this. I know that we are getting our acceptable use agreement sorted, but we need something more manageable at this stage. What do the students do with abuse claims, harrassment. These are students here.

From the minister

no longer the three r’s
now the 4 c’s
Competence
Creativity
Character
Citizenship

Wednesday 16 April 2008

Registered Associate Referee Course: Introduction to rugby refeering

Introduction to Rugby Refereeing.

Role of the Referee
  • Whistle, Signals and Verbals
  • Kick Off
  • Scrum
  • Lineout
  • Tackle
  • Ruck
  • Maul
  • Goal Line Area
  • Open Field Play
  • Advantage
Duration 2-2 ½ hours

Parents, Managers and Coaches of Junior Grade Club and School Teams. Senior School Students willing to referee Junior Grade games.

NZRU acknowledges there are insufficient Referees to cater for all grades of the game and in particular Junior Grade Rugby.

Tuesday, 29th April 6:00pm Supporters Lounge Eden Park

Tuesday, 13th May 6:00pm Supporters Lounge Eden Park

Secondary School ‘Best Practice’ Coaching Workshops

Practical workshops focusing on coaching rugby’s core skills.
The emphasis will be on skill drills and mini games.

Secondary School Grade Coaches of any level

Wednesday 14th May 3.40pm – 5.00pm Mt Albert Grammar

Wednesday 21st May 3.40pm – 5.00pm Auckland Grammar

Wednesday 28th May 3.40pm – 5.00pm Sacred Heart College

Wednesday 4th June 3.40pm – 5.00pm Kings College

Monday 9th June 6.00pm – 7.30pm Eden Park

RugbySMART

A 1 hour course concentrating on injury prevention and peak performance in Rugby Union. 

Compulsory for all coaches and assistant coaches from Under 13 level upwards 

5 May 2008 Kings College 

Presentations held at your school. Please see your Rugby Administrator in school for further details.

Coaching for Secondary School and Teenage Rugby

The course covers key aspects such as the Principles of Play, Skill Analysis and Coaching a Skill, and How to Run an Effective Training.

All Secondary School Grade Coaches from 2nd XV teams down (1st XV coaches recommended to take PORC, however are more than welcome to attend this course.)

Monday 9th June 6.00pm - 7.30pm Eden Park

Wednesday 11th June 3.30pm - 4:30pm Mt Albert Grammar School

Wednesday 18th June 3.30pm – 4.30pm Sacred Heart College

Tuesday 15 April 2008

Digitial Technology Guidelines

The digitial technology framework has been renamed.

This is a PD program, to teach under the new curriculum in the computing area.

It will be a journey
3 year, 13 lead school, developing resources, put up on tki around july.
more practicioner support.

Aim at better outcomes for our young people.

Enabling the 21st Century Learner, has been redeveloped for this year

Cognition consulting is looking after the project.

Various IT Careers, is the pathway in the computing at school that leads students into a job. Try and retain students through to a IT Career.

A planning environment which enables teachers to design and deliver programmes of work for Years 11 - 13 that give content, coherence, and relevance.

Where does it sit? Year 9 and 10 option and e-Learning. The DTG (Technology learning Area, Years 11 - 13)

Encourages schools to look closely at ICT course structure within senior classes.
Is modular in approach
Sits alongside digital literacy/e-learning.
Multilevel taeching, personalising learning within individual and group sittings.
Encourages the embedding of the 5 national key competencies



 

What are IT employers looking for in both school leavers and tertiary graduates

Attitude over Aptitude
agiliitygroup

Attitude
an innate ability to learn quickly
employers will compromise on skills but not on attitude
high rate of organisational change
workplace presure
abundance of online resources
skill shortages opens up opportunities to look outside the 'norm'

Factors that are working for your right now
no sign of easing in tight labour market
huge amount of work on attraction and retention of future talent (airnz employing people to use bebo to make airnz attractive and look for jobs
'corporate predation'
technology indifference

Three things you should know
1. Importance of research, no excuses-wealth of online resources, the importance of workplace culture, visions and values(why are these important to companies like telecom, microsoft, vodafone), leverage social networking tools (linkedin.com)
2. All about ME, Team fit is everything(include sports, activies, community work, what motivates you outside your studies), grapping with Gen Y(corporates are still strugging with Gen Y , th difference in values and focus, garmmar, loyal not to the brand but to the individuals), Technology Indifference(what language, not as inportant, breth), Profiling(personality profiling, idea of areas they can work on, improve)?
3. Know what we look for
A willingness to keep learning, learn from mistakes, positive attitude to change, self starter(get ahead of the game), 'wnat' the job rather than 'need' it.

what happeneded to the 3 R's

6 c's
communication in all its forms (Literacy+)
computation(numeracy)
cooperation
computer literacy(for the masses)
creativity
critical thinking

Notes form ICT in Education

Useful secondary subjects to take for secondary students interested in studying computing and information technology at tertiary level.
These have been compiled by researching identified career outcomes of programmes offered by UniTec’s school of computing and information technology on kiwi careers and the recommended subjects
For all roles
English

Maths

any Science Subjects

Technician roles recommended more specifically that students have undertaken the following subjects at secondary level
Maths

Physics

Information Systems Technology Studies

Designer roles, i.e software designer, web designer / master) recommended mire speciifically that students have undertaken the following subjects at secondary level
Computer studies

Art

Graphic Education

Programming roles recommended more specifically that students have undertaken the following subjects at secondary level
Computer studies

Maths with Statistics and/or calculus

Friday 4 April 2008

Game programming class curriculum

Game Programming Class Curriculum
Here is an outline of the Honors Programming II class that I'll be teaching next semester which begins next week. The curriculum that I'll be using for C# was written by Digipen and Microsoft.
Introduction to C#
C# Types & Variables
C# Input & Output
C# Expressions & Operators
C# Functions & Flow Control
C# Classes
C# Arrays
C# Structures
The curriculum that I'll be using for some of the XNA training will come from Bill Reiss and Blue Rose Games.
Introduction to XNA
Getting Started
Getting Started
First Look at the Code (Part 1)
First Look at the Code (Part 2)
2D Sprites
Sprites without Lymon
The More the Merrier
Bust a Move
Follow the Bouncing Ball
Double Trouble (Part 1)
Double Trouble (Part 2)
Improving the Bouncing Ball Class using Properties
Sprite Color
Sprite Scaling
Transparent Sprites
Using Origin with SpriteBatch.Draw (Part 1)
Using Origin with SpriteBatch.Draw (Part 2)
Sound
The Delicate Sound of Thunder
Arrays and Loops
Arrays and Loops
I'll be putting up resources for the following later.
Making a Pong Game
Creating a 2D Shooter Game
Making your own game
Deploying your game to an XBOX and the XBOX Creators Club
Resources:
C# Videos
The Art of Computer Game Design PDF book I'll be using