Preparing for change

This year I went to a BYOD conference in Auckland, at the end of the conference I was asked what did I think. My response, if there is a position come up at this school, I am going to apply for it. Who knew that before the year that a position would appear in the edgazette. I had to apply. I had two weeks to get my application ready, get my CV up to date. It had been 3 and a half years since I had done any work on it. I had an application to fill in that aligned with my thinking and what I would like to see in Secondary Schools in New Zealand, alignment to the curriculum and getting teachers to challenge themselves. Who knew that a week late I would be challenged already.

Getting the application in and waiting, waiting, then an email to let me know I had been successful, however I had a 5 minute presentation to do when starting my interview, over google hangout.

I was thankful that earlier in the year I had participated in teachmeetnz, an online PLD session where teaches all around the country deliver a 5 minute PLD session on a topic that they are interested in. Having Sonya work through a couple of hangouts before allowed me to have some confidence in using the technology. But what to speak about for 5 minutes. This was another challenge. I am a Digital technologies teacher, who has been passionate about the subject even before teaching. I have a wide number of areas that I could talk about. But one thing that stuck to me was a PLD session I had been to this year and a homily by the priest at our leaving mass for year 13 students. The WHY? This is now starting to become a major part of my development as a teacher and the one question I want to start with for classes in the future. The WHY? From the why will come the who and what? This links with the technology curriculum, the visions, and is something that I have been challenged with a lot this year. WHY.

A couple of days later I received a phone call saying that I had been successful, something that bring a tinge of sadness, but also joy of possibilities. I look forward to working at Hobsonville Point Secondary School in 2015.

Quiz/Testing development

One thing that we have been looking at between the schools is a way to measure a year of learning. In technology we would like to look at ideas around how a year 9 progresses through our course. At the moment the solution is Google docs based, however, we would like a more polished version.

Having something that will allow a student to go through this, and associated extra questions that could be customised would allow for a inquiry to take place.

Ideas,
https://github.com/ElanMan/simple-quiz
http://valokafor.com/build-a-simple-online-quiz-with-php-and-mysql/
https://github.com/kashiif/bb-quiz-app

favourite photo

This is one of my favourite photos at present. This was taken around 6:00am a couple of weeks back when I was at Mt Cook for the night. This photo was part of a timelapse that was being recorded at the time.

building on an existing message

we have a BFM at school, a fitness movement that go out for a run, however PB and students running need a challenge. I was introduced to an idea today that we could leverage on, and one possibly for the community.
The idea is a 3km run around our front field. Something that we can use to build up fitness for the students as well as provide a bit of challenge at the same time. We have our Sport Leadership class that could run this.
There is http://www.parkrun.co.nz/ which is at Hagley park, something which is a challenge to get to in Christchurch. We need something that is simple, will work with the technology that we have and be functional to work week in and week out.
Points are awarded to students that get better, move up the rankings.

Barcode are something that are easy to create, attached to items. We can use the existing ID thats we have for students through the Student Management System and link into those.
Building the back end would be the challenge for the students.

This has database, programming and media written all over it.

an easy way to get the barcodes for the start could be to use the ones from musac:
http://www.musac.co.nz/document-library/doc_download/73-barcode-label-order-form.html

• Barcode labels are synthetic, scratch resistant, very durable and have a permanent adhesive backing
• Clear plastic label covers provide extra protection

With this I also have brought a USB RFID reader, through mindkits.co.nz, we plan to use the card almost every student has one them, the metrocard. Students will need to register their card before they run, but otherwise it provides a pretty handy system.

It maybe that we get a run just to see what they are like...

Two screens one a start, and one a finish on control laptop.

Insert a record when starting, that includes date, time, id number. When finished run and update script that include id number and time.

have a mobile site where students can enter there number to see their time. Needs to be able able to show details like PB.