oneteachersview

stories from todays news

2012-01-31T17:52:00.000+13:00

iPads highlight need for tech-savvy teachers
School is back for most students this week and many will return to class rooms kitted out with the latest gadgets like iPads.
There are concerns teachers might not be able to keep up with their increasingly tech-savvy students, with the Government rolling out ultra-fast broadband to schools across the country.
Knowing how to work the latest technology is becoming increasingly important as many schools are putting iPads on stationery lists.
Education consultant Dr John Langley says those able to use technology has come along in leaps and bounds over the past two decades.
“When I look at the ability that children and adults have to access information today, it's just vastly superior to anything that occurred 10, 20 years ago,” he says.
But Dr Langley is concerned that some teachers may not have moved as fast as the technology has.
“For the older teachers it's much more of a struggle,” he says. “I think in that case, what we do require for them is quite significant ongoing professional development.”
The Government says the biggest issue for schools is getting connected in the first place. It is aiming to give most of them access to ultra-fast broadband within three years and is confident teachers will be ready.
Prime Minister John Key says it is up to the principal of the school to ensure teachers feel comfortable with what they are using.
“Those who are technologically friendly are assisting their other teachers, and there are always training courses that we can and do send teachers on.”
The Post Primary Teachers' Association (PPTA) says professional development in information technology is woefully inadequate. It wants the Government to provide more so that teachers are not being left to struggle on their own.
3 News - http://www.3news.co.nz/iPads-highlight-need-for-tech-savvy-teachers/tabid/423/articleID/241326/Default.aspx

and

Breakfast on One
This morning on Breakfast - Education: Technology: Costs
http://tvnz.co.nz/breakfast-news/education-technology-costs-video-470...
Waikato University Education Expert Noeline Wright looks at the growing
pressure on parents to provide children with the latest technology to aid
their learning.

Trying to work out what the difference is...

2012-01-26T17:06:00.000+13:00

This came through a post last week, where the author mentioned three different types of teacher.
e-teachers, m-teachers and c-teachers, so what is the difference...

e-teacher
E-teachers are the new generation of teachers who will work in an Internet environment in both regular and virtual classroom situations. They will build new concepts of working in time and space. E-teachers collaborate, build and discover new learning communities and explore resources as they interact with information, materials and ideas with their students and colleagues.

http://cms.steo.govt.nz/NR/rdonlyres/C11315DE-804A-4831-AB75-3D4E77393DD8/0/eteaching.htm

m-teacher
M-teaching- Teaching with the support of mobile, handheld devices.

c-teacher
Doesn't use any devices in there learning at all?

Shut down or Restart

2012-01-19T22:30:00.003+13:00

The Royal Society in Great Britain has just released a ground-breaking new report called Shut Down or Restart: The Way Forward for Computing in UK Schools which clearly demonstrates that the current challenges we face in K-12 computer science education are indeed global challenges..
The work behind this impressive report was carried out by the Computing at School project which did a comprehensive review of computing in UK schools. According to the Royal Society, the key points of the report are as follows:
1. The current delivery of Computing education in many UK schools is highly unsatisfactory. Although existing curricula for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) are broad and allow scope for teachers to inspire pupils and help them develop interests in Computing, many pupils are not inspired by what they are taught and gain nothing beyond basic digital literacy skills such as how to use a word-processor or a database. This is mainly because:
a. the current national curriculum in ICT can be very broadly interpreted and may be reduced to the lowest level where non specialist teachers have to deliver it
b. there is a shortage of teachers who are able to teach beyond basic digital literacy
c. there is a lack of continuing professional development for teachers of Computing
d. features of school infrastructure inhibit effective teaching of Computing
2. There is a need to improve understanding in schools of the nature and scope of Computing. In particular there needs to be recognition that Computer Science is a rigorous academic discipline of great importance to the future careers of many pupils. The status of Computing in schools needs to be recognised and raised by government and senior management in schools.
3. Every child should have the opportunity to learn Computing at school, including exposure to Computer Science as a rigorous academic discipline.

4. There is a need for qualifications in aspects of Computing that are accessible at school level but are not currently taught. There is also a need for existing inappropriate assessment methods to be updated.
5. There is a need for augmentation and coordination of current Enhancement and Enrichment activities to support the study of Computing.
6. Uptake of Computing A-level is hindered by lack of demand from higher education institutions.
The text of this report is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike and you can download the entire report from:
http://royalsociety.org/education/policy/computing-in-schools/report/
It is well worth reading.

computer science and obama

2012-01-08T21:56:00.002+13:00

I found this youtube video the other day, this looks like it could be a good one to use with the students, to get them to give an explanation why Obama is right, as well as giving an explanation on what other methods could be used.

Also I came across this site http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/courses/teachers_corner/4483.html

In this there are some team problems to be solved using computer science,

They are meant to be done by pairs of students during a class period. I tell my students to try to finish by the end of the period; if they can't, they may complete the assignment for homework and turn it in at the beginning of the next class. Each pair of students (or trio, if you have an odd number of students) turns in one solution, although it may contain one or more pages written by each team member. Each problem is worth 15 points and each student on the team gets the same score unless there is evidence that one student did all or most of the work. An overarching goal of all the problems is to give students experience in working with at least one other person to solve a substantial problem (that is, "substantial" for them at that point in the course). The "larger" nature of the problems lends itself to team solution. In some cases, the problem sheet suggests a way that the two students can divide the work.

Here is a list of the problems.

Averaging Numbers: Write an algorithm for averaging a list of numbers. Focus first on the problem of knowing when the user is finished entering the numbers.

Objective: To make students think about this standard algorithm before they develop a program for it in subsequent classes or labs

Prerequisite knowledge: How to input and output numbers; For and While loops
Putting Numbers in Ascending Order: Draw a flowchart for the problem of arranging three numbers in ascending order. Then trace the flowchart using a given set of test data.

Objective: To have students develop the if-then-else logic required to solve this standard problem before they write the code for it in subsequent classes or labs

Prerequisite knowledge: How to draw a flowchart with input/output and decision symbols
String Searches: Apply a "brute-force" method to determine if a given string is contained in another string. Then apply the Boyer-Moore algorithm to the same task and note the reduction in the number of steps.

Objective: To have students apply a search algorithm that is not part of their regular classwork

Prerequisite knowledge: How to use a pointer to move through a string; comparing characters
Swapless, Pushless Sorting: Develop an algorithm to sort a list of integers into descending order without swapping any values or pushing values up or down.

Objective: To have students create a sort algorithm that is more efficient than the ones they have learned to code (e.g., Shuttle-Interchange, Bubble)

Prerequisite knowledge: At least one sorting algorithm, so as to understand the idea of comparing numbers in a list and swapping those that are out of order
Dealing Cards: Develop several algorithms for dealing a deck of cards and storing them in the computer's memory.

Objective: To have students develop multiple approaches to a problem that underlies numerous card games, including poker and solitaire

Prerequisite knowledge: How to store data in one- and two-dimensional arrays; random number generation; if-then logic
File Compression: Apply the LZ algorithm to recreate a file from its condensed version and to condense a given file as much as possible.

Objective: To apply a compression/decompression algorithm to "unzip" and "zip" files

Prerequisite knowledge: Understanding of the concept of file compression and the LZ algorithm
Seven Segment Display: Apply the techniques of Boolean algebra to design circuitry to run a seven-segment display for one digit (as used for calculators, cell phones, etc.).

Objective: To apply Boolean algebra techniques to a "real-world" problem that students are familiar with

What if Babbage?

2011-12-27T13:32:00.001+13:00

http://www.i-programmer.info/babbages-bag/304-what-if-babbage.html

From slashdot article

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/12/26/1921200/what-if-babbage-had-succeeded

cypher

2011-12-22T00:33:00.004+13:00

Looking at getting students caught with level 2 computer science, one of the things that we have to look at is cyphers, looking at what movies have cyphers in then. One is Allendorf Cipher

I hope this video will still exist when I goto teach this unit www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqI3SwDYbj8

Yet another is the playfor? Cypher

The elephant in the room

2011-12-19T22:43:00.001+13:00

This is going to be a post that will evolve over time, I came across this blog post this evening which has got me thinking about the difficulties of teachers evolving in schools with technology. http://blog.core-ed.org/derek/2011/11/elephant-in-the-roo.html - by Derek

Consider the following notes so I can get my thoughts in order, they are direct quotes from the link above.

The avoiders – "I'll make time for the ICT PD once I've done everything I need to for NCEA implementation…"
The excuse makers – "My laptop has never functioned properly, so I can't really do that.."
The apologists – "I just don't seem to be able to make it work, it must be my glasses or something…"
The debaters – "We really need to be sure we're using the technology for the right reasons, not simply because it's there…"
The pessimists – "Technology is leading us down a road to destruction, there are so many problems lurking online…"

Consider now the case in a school, where, after consultation with the staff and parents, the decision is made to establish an online environment where resources and learning support can be made available for students to access in their own time. The school and its community agree that this is a positive thing to do in supporting students to become self-managing learners, and provides parents with the ability to take a more active interest in the work their offspring are engaged in. The action is included in the school's strategic plan and signed off by the BOT, with the expectation that every staff member will make a contribution to the online resource pool in order to make the online offerings complete. How do we then regard the teacher who, at the end of the year, hasn't made any move to contributing, and defends his/her position with excuses/apology/debate etc.? No student has died. No student has been put at risk (apparently). But the fact remains that an expectation, agreed by the BOT and school management hasn't been met.

This is the elephant in the room. We don't want to offend sensitivities. We make excuses for the teacher(s) involved – they are overworked, they are too old (or too young), they have had a rough year, etc. Other staff attempt to 'fill the gap'. Resentments loom large and rifts begin to occur among staff. Expectations are revised, and in the subsequent year's strategic plan putting materials online for students becomes an 'option' for staff. The refusers win, and the learners lose.
Having heard of and witnessed such concerns for some time now, I have come to the following conclusions:

It's time for leaders to lead. They must be prepared to take responsibility for following through on the strategic goals set by the school. These are not to be treated as a 'wish list', but as a plan containing specific actions and expectations backed up by evindence-based decision making.
Every teacher should be be provided with opportunities for professional development that is relevant to their needs, and assists them in fulfilling the requirements of the job they do. Without it, such requirements become un-enforceable.
Schools need to have a robust process for involving all staff and their communities in developing a vision and strategic plan, particularly where new initiatives are contemplated. Such decisions need to be reached on the basis of informed, future-focused thinking that is focused primarily on preparing students for their future.
Teachers in schools need to be held to account for the contribution they are expected to make to the agreed strategic direction of the school. there ought to be clear links between the intentions of the school's strategic plan, and the objectives included in a teacher's performance review at the beginning of each cycle.

Such instances in schools may be rare – but where they do occur, it is the impact on students that I am concerned about – and of schools who remain continually unable to achieve the goals they set for themselves in terms of meeting their students needs. How much longer can this be tolerated?

Southland accent

2011-12-17T23:46:00.002+13:00

The good Lord blessed me with a thick Southland accent, including the famous Southland 'R' - misrepresented by Jim Mora in this mercifully brief documentary, which makes the spurious claim that the Southland 'R' pulls chicks.

Another feature of Southland speech is our single, multi-purpose vowel, which is best pronounced with a closed mouth and also sounds like 'R'. Combine these two potent features of Southland dialect - the R and the R vowel - and you're living in a powder keg and giving off sparrrrrrrrrrrks.

Pencilchat outcomes

2011-12-14T00:34:00.006+13:00

No, we don't have an Acceptable Use policy for pencils. I refuse to do this, because I don't have a policy for slates, for compasses (for more dangerous, in my opinion) or for chalk. If you want it to be an issue of compliance, I'll comply - but only through paperwork. I don't believe in it.
Pencil predators are real, but most abuse happens in-person via close social relationships. I suggest an open dialogue with parents about monitoring pen pal letters.
Pencils aren't making kids narcissistic. They're in junior high which means they are naturally self-centered. The good news is that pencils provide a platform for self-awareness.
I see your concern about Pencil Citizenship and it's being addressed, but I'd like to push back a little and suggest that ethics and social justice might be a better approach. And not just with pencils, but with life.
Banning pocket paper devices (i.e. tablets) is a really bad idea. Yes, they pass notes, but they're also learning to use these tools well. Let's allow students to learn how to use these tools for learning.
Please quit banning Bullying is a real issue, but the most common method is still verbal and the most common site is still the cafeteria. Are we going to ban food next?
Students aren't addicted to paper. Really, they're not. They're addicted to social interaction in the same way they are addicted to water and to oxygen.
I see your concern with violent games, but I played Hang Man and I'm not violent. It's really not as big a deal as you think.
Teachers are motivated to use pencils. The real issue is self-efficacy. Many of them want to use the tools, but they're scared. Slate-based testing is a major component to this. There is a fear that learning can't transfer from one medium to the next.
The real issue is pedagogy. The power in the pencil is the nuance, the paradox, the gray area. It's in the idea of portability and permanence. It's about empowering each student to learn in a personalized way. It's a chance to erase and thereby move away from summative and toward formative assessment.

Link to original post

ideas for 2012 for DTG

2011-12-08T23:02:00.001+13:00

Bp tech challenge with club describing tech practice
Nzta tech level 2 ideas needed plus junior 4 lesson tech
Mk you think challenge
Binary challenge
Steve's insurance program
To come up with templates to help student and teachers with tech knowledge and practice and nature. Using a variety of different ideas
Ar drone and Getting student to learn to operate and challenge
Use vc unit to have real challenges with other students
Take mk you think to cs4hs and get teachers stumped over rules, when the rules havent been defined.
Challenge between schools, vs and over a number of days/afternoons throughout the year challenge students to think outside the square and be able to explain why/how technology has influcended there decisions
CCES competition to look at thinking skills rather than person that can do it.

Cup stacking competition - this is actually a sport and available in New Zealand - http://www.speedstacks.co.nz
What is sport stacking?
Sport Stacking with Speed Stacks is an exciting individual and team sport where participants of all ages and abilities stack and unstack 12 specially designed cups (Speed Stacks) in specific patterns with amazing precision and dexterity. Competitors stack on a StackMat®, either individually against the StackMat clock or head-to-head in relay teams.
Active and healthy, sport stacking improves ambidexterity, concentration and hand-eye coordination. A university study has shown that sport stacking increases bilateral proficiency; equal performance on both sides of the body, which helps develop awareness, focus, creativity and rhythm.

This is more about think and problem solving than doing
Byod debate, as part of the christchurch debating programme and record these for byod vln to show student voice
Newspapers from the press, contact them for numbers to help with no tech challenge. To take back bp tech challenge from science and win because we are technology. 10 challenges with points up for grabs between the schools, needs a trophy to make the point with principals.
Needs to be formalized and come with with a structure to show for students to come up with an answer. Want to move away from spegittei and marshmallows.
Shared course that we can develop.
Friday challenge days. Me to see if he can find the blog on the companies Friday afternoon challenge, ie graphic design,logo,game character, web site creation based upon existing work and imitating.
Main development is around thinking, key competencies!!!!

perfect computer lab

2011-12-05T17:51:00.001+13:00

Having traditional computer labs and not allowing kids to bring their own devices is not preparing them for college or life.

The Perfect Educational Computer Lab http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alfredth/archive/2011/11/30/the-perfect-educational-computer-lab.aspx

missing Get Lost!

2011-12-04T20:08:00.001+13:00

I am missing Get Lost! this year, a project that captured my imagination and use of Technology to solve puzzles, challenge students and all in all have a good time. However, with moving schools comes different challenges.

The school I am at has two activity days. I decided that I wanted to do something different as what I have done in the past is not available to me currently. There is no CBD, there are a massive amount of fences that surround it. There are other opportunities, but the two day period is prohibitive on creating something exciting.

So Get Cranked was born. Two days of Mountain Biking with a group of four students using the car as a way of getting from venue to venue, some hundreds of kilometres apart.

Day two's venue had to be changed due to information received last week.
An Alert was posted on the DOC website as well as the vorb.org.nz that Poulter River track was closed
Poulter Valley Track is closed
The track is closed between the Poulter Bridge (Mt White Rd) and Pete Stream due to recent flooding completely destroying the track in numerous sections. The washed-out sections cannot be safely crossed.

So a trip to Hamner Springs is on the cards instead, going and having some fun on the Mountain Bike Tracks, yes it does have some Key Competency links with the New Zealand Curriculum, but not the same as Get Lost!

In the last couple of weeks since working out what I was going to do I have thought about some other projects, more related to Community.
There is a community garden that is at the old Edmonds Factory site which had a large amount of liquefaction destroy its ponds and gardens, grabbing a car load of students and a trailer would have been a wonderful project to help assist one of the cities assets to come back to life.

Another was the idea of an outdoor classroom, in the middle of RE:start, for students to go around and document the development of the CBD as well as some of the emptiness around the town. Though we are not quite there yet with our technology it would have been possible to find some laptops and cameras and give it a go to develop a site to show those outside of the city what we have. Maybe this could be a field trip next year?

subject option choice

2011-11-23T22:44:00.001+13:00

all first round of test data has now been imported and is checked,
-issues are tutor class being 4 characters, has now been changed to 5
-subjects are at levels not years for the system to work, year12 is level 2

just need to work on option lines locking down, as well as entering in curriculum data, including fckeditor
as the fckeditor does not exist any longer and I don't want to put on old software, I have installed the ckeditor http://ckeditor.com

I have had a meeting with the client and they have requested a number of changes
1. Move the last years subject selections down, I am also thinking of adding in the options that they choose term 3 (completed 28/11/11)
2. If the student doesnt need to change options they need to confirm that they have accessed and confirmed there course.Working on this, it is not passing throw from index to confirm, message Data not entered showing up. - This has been fix and is now working fine, main reason way that I had changed the variable name from attending to returning earlier on without changing it throughout the program. (completed 4/12/11)
3. If they are leaving school, this needs to be sorted, drop down list with a " please choose from the options below message"(completed 28/11/11)
4. add into the sql statement that they have added in the destination, table attending. needs to be done on the first screen? if they are leaving then second screen should have thank you, you have been registerd as leaving school and going onto... - this has been completed, all data is now submitted into tables 4/12/11

Fix in hod editor-option line codes disappear- input type was set to number, needed to be changed to text as now optionline runs by like %optionline% to find options listed abcdef fixed 5/12/11

How to change?

2011-11-20T16:46:00.001+13:00

One thing I want to work out is how to develop change.

Computer science 101 via Stanford uni online

2011-11-20T16:44:00.001+13:00

Came across this one today

CS101 teaches the essential ideas of Computer Science for a zero-prior-experience audience. Computers can appear very complicated, but in reality, computers work within just a few, simple patterns. CS101 demystifies and brings those patterns to life, which is useful for anyone using computers today.

In CS101, students play and experiment with short bits of "computer code" to bring to life to the power and limitations of computers. Everything works within the browser, so there is no extra software to download or install. CS101 also provides a general background on computers today: what is a computer, what is hardware, what is software, what is the internet. No previous experience is required other than the ability to use a web browser.

Course is available at http://www.cs101-class.org/
Wondering if it may be something to get my year 13 students involved with, though I need a bit more a guideline on what is to be taught each week, so I can prepare my lessons and check the content to suit

Subject option choice .10

2011-11-15T17:46:00.002+13:00

I have been asked to make some changes to the program to allow it to be used as part of an re-enrollment package for the beginning of the year. Once students get there ncea results they will have the opportunity to jump online and make changes to there subjects based on the information they have. This then gets imported into the SMS and a timetable is created. All good in theory, but how will it work in practical. I am going over my code looking for how I developed the system and am surprised to see that I have already coded some of this in, and left it either commented out or being used in the junior sections.

I have fixed up the messages code and included in a table that will be able to be edited by others, something I wrote in comments ages ago and had yet to do. Now I am trying to figure out how to include a extra drop down box and how this will affect the I am planning on leaving school, there are now 32 options afterwards on where they are looking at going. This could be added to the main table and if there is a leaver they will have a number added to a field that will be pulled out in a report. select * from table where leaver = 2 order by asc.

This needs to Include blank timetables or no passing of information through to the export and that filled==2

If a student is leaving school? Does a student need to have their timetable reported back into the system? yes, if they are leaving school and are not coming back, they may come back later on.

One thing that makes this one different is that I have to include option lines, the thing about that is trying to figure out a way to do option lines being the beast that they are. I thought about doing different database row entries for each line, but this becomes unmanageable. One way around this could be to use the LIKE statement to look for the option line in the option field, this would mean changing the field from INT to VARCHAR(6) as there is the possibility of six option lines.

Has every students selected subject lines == no, some students don't have subjects, so these would have to have dummy/empty lines attached.
what does does it go live? NZQA release there results - 17 or 20 Jan

Those not returning could possibility get a different confirm screen, this would allow then to select from a combo box on where they ate planning to go and would be simpler to program. Students would still need to have the filled==2, and it would be unlikely that they would relogin and change there selections

Innovative learning network to lift student achievement

2011-10-30T22:13:00.001+13:00

Innovative learning network to lift student achievement

This was announced today, I don't know where but I would have thought that #ulearn11 would have been a great idea to inform teachers of the potential benefits of such a network as they will be the ones using it.
More information will be made available next year for a 2013 launch. But I have an issue with the example, london learning grid, this seems to be an example of offering one service for schools, though what happens to the other systems that we have in place, we use google apps instead of live@efu, use moodle instead of ultranet, have our identity service with gcsn instead of watchdog. Is this still going to be a possibility?

Media release below:

Education Minister Anne Tolley has announced that a dedicated nationwide online network for New Zealand schools will be developed, to ensure that teaching and learning is at the forefront of global educational developments and makes the most of new technology.

The safe, secure system, called the Network for Learning, is estimated to cost between $300 -$400 million over the next 10 years, and will provide high-quality educational content and resources to schools and students, to help lift achievement for young New Zealanders wherever they are across the country.

The Network for Learning, which will be available from 2013, will also simplify and substantially reduce costs for schools accessing ICT content and services, including the cost of internet connections.

“This is hugely exciting for education in New Zealand,” says Mrs Tolley.

“The scale and complexity of the Network for Learning is enormous – with potentially over 2500 schools and more than 800,000 users this will be the biggest network of its kind in the country.

“The Network for Learning will ensure that schools get the most from their ultra-fast broadband connection, and will provide them with affordable access to the latest ICT teaching and learning developments.

“Location will no longer be a barrier for accessing courses. For the very first time every rural and urban school will be able to connect with each other to collaborate and share resources and best practice. For example, a student at a small rural school could take part in a specialist teaching class via state of the art video-conferencing with a large city school.

“Importantly, the Network for Learning will provide a safe and reliable environment, and will also allow schools to share information with parents.

“The benefits for students, families and teachers will be tremendous and we will work closely with the education sector to make sure it delivers the lift in achievement levels that our young people deserve and that parents want for their children.”

The Ministry of Education is working on the next steps for procuring the technical network, and determining how the Network for Learning will be governed and managed.

The Network is expected to be progressively available to schools from 2013. An update on progress will be provided in early 2012.

Questions and Answers

What is the Network for Learning?

Cabinet has approved a business case for a Network for Learning, a dedicated online network for schools, which will run over the ultra-fast broadband infrastructure currently being rolled out across New Zealand. The Network for Learning, available progressively from 2013, will provide schools with affordable, safe ultra-fast internet access as well as a range of online content and centrally-procured services.

Over the next five years, 97 per cent of schools will receive ultra-fast broadband connections enabling speeds of 100 Mbps plus. The remaining 3 per cent of schools, which are in the most remote locations, will receive a high speed wireless or satellite connection.

Why is the Government doing this?

The roll-out of ultra-fast broadband will lead to increasing demand for online education-related content and services among schools.

The Government wants to ensure that schools make the most of ultra-fast broadband and the educational benefits that go with it, while lowering the costs for schools. Through centralised procurement and management of online services, a Network for Learning will considerably reduce ICT complexity and cost for schools.

How much will this cost?

The estimated cost is between $300 -$400 million over the next 10 years. The exact cost will be confirmed following the procurement process.

What cost benefits will there be for schools?

There will be significant savings for schools. The backing of government and the combined purchasing power of schools will enable the Ministry to procure ultra-fast broadband internet access and other services much more cost-effectively than individual schools could obtain on their own.

The Network for Learning will represent much greater value for schools than they can obtain via the existing arrangements and should therefore make access to online content and services much more affordable for all schools.

What services will be available?

This will be determined in consultation with schools and during negotiations with providers. The intention is to have a range of current and new services that allow flexibility and choice for schools.

What funding will be available to schools?

In Budget 2011, the operations grant for schools was increased, with $4.8 million targeted at ICT in recognition of the growing demand for online education content and services. Schools will receive this increase from the beginning of the 2012 school year.

What support and training will schools receive to use the Network?

The Ministry invests $11.2 million each year in ICT professional development for teachers. Further help, including technical support, will be provided on an ongoing basis to schools to assist them in getting the most out of the Network.

When and how will the Network be procured?

A robust procurement process to obtain a provider for the Network and providers of associated services will be undertaken in due course.

Over the coming months, the Ministry will talk with a wide range of agencies and key sector groups to ensure the viewpoints of all potential users and suppliers are taken into account when planning for the procurement, build and launch of the Network. An update on progress will be provided to schools by early 2012.

How will the Network be governed and managed?

The Ministry is investigating governance and management arrangements. The Government has instructed the Ministry that schools’ views should be strongly represented.

Are there other education networks of this type in use overseas?

Yes, for example the London Grid for Learning.

One of my favorite quotes

2011-10-23T19:12:00.001+13:00

Don't plan what you're going to teach - that's about you - plan what they are going to learn. It is their education after all.

our bookmarks

2011-10-23T15:28:00.000+13:00

Should we look at using delicious, as with all good things sometimes they are taken over by other companies and changed.

ASHS has a social bookmarking solution, based on Pligg^[4]. This allows everyone in the school to save, share and find bookmarks that are use to them and their learning. Pligg supports tagging, RSS feeds, recent bookmarks etc. (Built by students for students.)

micro blogging

2011-10-23T15:10:00.002+13:00

an idea that I have had for a while and that has been implemented within a school is the use of micro blogging, am looking at its first major use to display information relating to athletics, students have iTouch and running a local wifi will allow students to gain information needed? Plus am looking at the educational benefits of students being able to micro blog about the work they are doing for there projects, rather than keeping seperate journals.

Looking at what had been done at ASHS and there use of status net, I went about implementing it on one of the machines at school with the XAMPP stack.
Who would have realised that it would end up like this..

ASHS has a microblogging site, powered by the libre^[4] application StatusNet and linked into their identity provider, so anyone with an ASHS username and password can use it without having to set up an account. Microblogging is useful for impact projects when teachers and project managers need to be able to see what all team members are working on, even when they are in different parts of the school or even the city. Microblogging is also a useful tool for students and teachers to share questions, answers, ideas and resources when learning. (Built by students for students.)
from: http://wikieducator.org/Albany_Senior_High_School/e-learning

Start
downloading the software from status.net, great its a .tar.qz and i don't have a extractor on the remote desktop computer.
Download it at home, run it through the mac, and extract it, zip it and place it on google docs to download it at school.
Downloaded and placed into ourmicroblog folder,
Go to install it, create teh database and user in mysql to allow teh program to work.
run the installer, installer works but only to a certain point,
rerun the installer, goes through to the setup page,
input the information needed, great, lok liek I have it working,
wrong, admin account doesn't login... wonders what is going wrong.
try again. drop all tables in the statausnet database, and reinstall, same errors,
jump into php.ini and remove all errors for being displayed, try again, looks better.
Drops the database tables again and tries, still coming up with issues relating to PEAR?
end up having to do changes to PEAR as it has been updated since I installed XAMPP earlier this term
http://status.net/wiki/InstallationWindows
starts following the instruction, running php -q go-pear.php fails, tells me I am using to newer mysql, has to run go-pear.phar
has PEAR installed and running,
tries installation again, runs smootly, creates admin user,
is now able to login and access status net,
right now to change the theme, 1.0.1 has no admin - design features in it,
requires user to create the theme and modify in config.php
will have to leave this for later, now midnight.

End

Ministry of Health releases FAQ: wifi signals not harmful

2011-10-21T12:04:00.002+13:00

The National Radiation Laboratory, a specialist unit of the Ministry of health has released on their website that WiFi is not harmful.
To read the entire FAQ fact sheet click here.

This is probably going to be needed as we move towards wifi developments within our school, parents concerned over cell towers and the mis information that is put out in the media. A FAQ would be of use.

Database Class - Professional Development

2011-10-06T21:59:00.001+13:00

Stanford University is offering a free Database course from October 10 2011 to December 12 2011.
This is an online course,
http://www.db-class.org/course/auth/welcome

What is the course about?

A bold experiment in distributed education, "Introduction to Databases" is being offered free and online to students worldwide, October 10 - December 12, 2011. Students have access to lecture videos, are given assignments and exams, receive regular feedback on progress, and participate in a discussion forum. Those who successfully complete the course will receive a statement of accomplishment. Taught by Professor Jennifer Widom, the curriculum draws from Stanford's popular Introduction to Databases course. A high speed internet connection is recommended as the course content is based on videos and online exercises.

Why Learn About Databases?

Databases are incredibly prevalent -- they underlie technology used by most people every day if not every hour. Databases reside behind a huge fraction of websites; they're a crucial component of telecommunications systems, banking systems, video games, and just about any other software system or electronic device that maintains some amount of persistent information. In addition to persistence, database systems provide a number of other properties that make them exceptionally useful and convenient: reliability, efficiency, scalability, concurrency control, data abstractions, and high-level query languages. Databases are so ubiquitous and important that computer science graduates frequently cite their database class as the one most useful to them in their industry or graduate-school careers.

Course Description

This course covers database design and the use of database management systems for applications. It includes extensive coverage of the relational model, relational algebra, and SQL. It also covers XML data including DTDs and XML Schema for validation, and the query and transformation languages XPath, XQuery, and XSLT. The course includes database design in UML, and relational design principles based on dependencies and normal forms. Many additional key database topics from the design and application-building perspective are also covered: indexes, views, transactions, authorization, integrity constraints, triggers, on-line analytical processing (OLAP), and emerging "NoSQL" systems.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What background do I need?The course does not assume prior knowledge of any specific topics, however a solid computer science foundation -- a reasonable amount of programming, as well as knowledge of basic computer science theory -- will make the material more accessible.
2. Is a textbook required? Detailed lecture notes are provided. Having a textbook in addition to the notes is not necessary, but you might want to purchase one for reference, to reinforce the core material, and as a source of additional exercises. Suggested textbooks and readings are listed as part of the materials you'll see after you register.
3. Will students receive a Stanford certificate or grade for completing the course?No. You will receive a statement of accomplishment from the instructor, which will include information on how well you did and how your performance compared to other online students. Only students admitted to Stanford and enrolled in the regular course can receive credit or a grade, so this is not a Stanford certificate.
4. Can online students ask questions and/or contact the professors?A discussion forum is included as part of the course website. Questions not answered by other students will be answered by the teaching staff; top-ranked questions will be discussed by the instructor in a weekly video.

Thoughts around SQL software

I originally looked at mySQL as a possible tool for lrearning, however I was informed from one of my past lecturers that SQLite maybe a better answer, as they can then have it on a flash drive to be able to carry on and do work at home...
Though they will need a GUI to be able to use it in some ways..
Install SQLite:

Download SQLite: First visit this page to download SQLite. The Windows precompiled binaries are located near the bottom of the page.
Unpack SQLite:In my case the latest version of SQLite was 3.6.14 so the downloaded file was named sqlite-3_6_14.zip. Right click this file and choose to uncompress in the same directory. This will produce a sqlite3.exe file.
Install SQLite:Now double click on the sqlite.exe file to install SQLite.
Test SQLite:To test SQLite open up a command prompt window and type “sqlite3″. To get some help with SQLite type “.help” and to close sqlite3 type “.quit” .

Create a Test SQLite Database:

Create SQLite Test Database:Issue the below command to create a test SQLite database.
```
sqlite3 sqlite.db
```
Remember to exit out of the sqlite3 command prompt type the below.
```
.quit
```

Create a SQLite Table: Issue the below command to create a table in the test database.

sqlite3 sqlite.db "create table tb1 (tb1key INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,data TEXT,num double,timeEnter DATE);"

Add Data Into Test Database: Now issue each of the three commands below to insert data into the test database table we created.

sqlite3 sqlite.db "insert into tb1 (data,num) values ('Test data',9);"
sqlite3 sqlite.db "insert into tb1 (data,num) values ('More test data',8);"
sqlite3 sqlite.db "insert into tb1 (data,num) values ('Third set of data',7);"

View Test SQLite Data:Now list all of the rows in the test table located in the test sqlite database.
```
sqlite3 sqlite.db "select * from tb1";
```

Install SQLite GUI for Windows:

Download SQLite GUI SQTView:Visit download.com to download the latest version of SQTView located here.
Install SQTView:The downloaded file will be named inSQTV.exe. Double click this file to install SQTView.
Test SQTView:Once installed locate the application in the Start Menu under Program Files in the APSoft folder. Now locate the testdb.db file you created with the sqlite3 CLI commands. Open this file to verify everything is functioning properly. You will not be able to edit the database with SQTView. This application is only for viewing SQLite2 and SQLite3 database files.

The above will allow you to create a sqlite3 database and view the database with the SQTView GUI for Windows.

Binary Number Game

2011-10-05T10:56:00.003+13:00

I woke up this morning thinking about what to do with my year 13 class since they have finsihed tehre work for the year. I was going to do some office application stuff, but then thought of a comment one of the students made, this was around teh fact that the juniors are doing harder work that than the year 13 students at present. The year 11 stduents now have papers to do on Computer Science., Lucky that a tweet came through this morning with a binary number game mentioned in it.
So a lesson plan was born,
Work through simple binary
00001 = 0
00010 = 1
10101 = 21
01010 = 10
01100 = 12
10111 = 23
11111 = 31
00101 = 5
00000 = 0
10010 = 18

01000 = h
00101 = e
01100 = l
01100 = l

01111 = o

Then get the students to create a message for someone else.

Then to the challenge, what can you get up to in the binary number game... http://forums.cisco.com/CertCom/game/binary_game_page.htm

My score is currently 20500, one of the students reached 26000

Inspired from

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alfredth/archive/2008/09/11/binary-number-game.aspx

Computer science

2011-10-01T21:01:00.001+13:00

Looking at level 2 computer science...

http://sites.google.com/site/dtcsinformation/home

Goals for my new school

2011-09-24T21:51:00.001+12:00

Realized that using this on an eportfolio app I was unable to show progressions in my goals, so this is my first post around this area.

My aim for the school is to:

1.To get a new Learning Management System set up
2.To develop some Professional Learning Groups inside the school
3.To establish a Portfolio system for staff and students to use
4.To get IT embedded in the classrooms we teach in
5.To lift Staff ICT Capabilities
6.To get student owned devices into the school and being used effectively
7.To offer extra curricular activities in Digital Technologies
8.To create a supportive space for teachers to develop
9.To embed these into any ICT plan for the school.

Number 1 is on the way, this was part established by the previous person. Theming and hopefully latest SMS-LMS Interoperability will be worked through in time for beginning Term 4.
Number 3 Now to get it happening with in classes, also to csv import all years 9 to 12 students
Number 2 I think will start as soon as number 1 training and work happens.
Number 5 looking at using short video clips to help staff increase there capabilities.
Number 6 BYOD, more needs to be looked at on www.vln.school.nz to see what others are doing.
Number 7 Could include VEX Robotics, first unit ordered.
Number 8 I think back to the events that have happened this year, in February there was a space created at South Learning Hub to help teachers develop there moodle skills and move resources online. This could be done in a classroom after school with staff coming in and plugging into a network switch or wireless node. This would help teachers develop there online profile and be able to gain support from each other. This would help support Number 1 and Number 2, as well as Number 5.
Number 9 happens Monday when I present to both Boards around SNUP and where I see our school heading if we don't put the time and money in that we should be putting in to make sure that we ate supporting our teachers and students.

As well as becoming a school that embeds elearning into its practice, next years Catholic Education Convention is all about elearning and supporting elearning within schools.

ICT for Teaching and ICT for Learning: They are not the same (article)

2011-09-23T21:15:00.000+12:00

Its has been an interesting week, with the nzcs articles coming out and the discussion that has lead from them, especially around algorithms and computer science. Through to a Computing in New Zealand Schools article;

ICT for Teaching and ICT for Learning: They are not the same, Robert Douglas, Howick College, Manukau, Auckland. I include an extract from the article below which looks at the conclusions that the author has come up with.

Conclusions

Schools need to be very clear in their thinking and communication regarding ICT for teaching and ICT for learning. Their communication to the students’ parents and the wider community must be very clear on the form of ICT that is envisaged. A New Zealand Herald article (Binning, 2011) suggests that in fact Orewa College is wanting its Year 9 students to be provisioned with IT for Learning yet the nature of the device is required is more ‘personal’ in nature, suggesting a move toward ICT for Learning. It is conceded that it may not be easy but every effort should be made by schools to ensure their communication clearly identifies the intended use the ICT in question.

I contend that schools need to decide very carefully what capabilities they desire in student-centric devices and publish these widely among the student and parent communities. This set of capabilities must be relatively simple and easy to achieve on a wide range of cheap devices. Ability to access wireless networks would be a fundamental to reduce costs to the student and enable functionality in the school. Such things as the ability to display 3G video and take text- or voice-based notes would be appropriate whilst ‘must be able to display PowerPoint presentations’ may well not be. Once communicated, students and their parents can make their own choices around the device and the school will have a baseline capability to work with.

The school may also suggest a suite of applications that the students are to have loaded on their device. Obviously this would imply that the students own a device that runs a specified operating system however with the rise in Android and Windows-based devices, as well as the iPhone, there exists a strong potential for a range of applications in appropriate formats to be made available to the students. This may well increase the anticipated capability in the classroom and provide some crossover to ICT for teaching. Careful selection of cheaper or free applications would limit the cost.

If schools require or wish to empower ICT for learning they will need to have a suitably robust infrastructure to do so. This will mean robust, high capacity wireless access that is carefully managed to avoid abuse by students. ICT for teaching will also be further enabled by such infrastructure.

Schools must be very clear about when ICT for teaching is appropriate and how to provision this in the school. This suggests that schools need to consider the nature of the computational devices they own and how these may be empowered for use in the classroom to support the teachers in their teaching.

ICT for teaching and ICT for learning are not mutually exclusive. Rather, each enhances the other and creates a strong learning environment for students when they can perform tasks as directed by teachers, then take the learning with them out of school and continue working with the task at times and locations that suit them.

Widely communicated and enforced protocols on the use of ICT for learning are a must.

I suggest that schools will not cease to own computational devices but rather will start to purchase specifically targeted devices to facilitate teaching whilst preserving teacher sanity. Teachers should be able to use school owned and managed devices with confidence that they are provisioned for the task intended.

Final Comments

The recent controversy regarding Orewa College’s requirement for students to have an iPad or other computational device (Binning, 2011) and the media publicity it gained showed how important it is for schools to consider carefully what they wish to achieve and to communicate this clearly to parents.

Schools that attempt to provide a crossover device that is both learning and teaching centric run the risk of achieving neither. In class use will be problematic with equipment failures from flat batteries to software corruption to physical failures. Student use may be hampered by the way the device is prescribed by the school and locked down to facilitate easier management.

Finally, it should be noted that ICT for learning and ICT for teaching are device neutral in that it is not the device that is important, rather, it is the use to which the device is to be put that categorises the ICT. Schools need to be very aware of how they wish to use ICT and to provision and resource the ICT accordingly. Great pains must be taken to ensure that parents understand what the school is endeavouring to achieve

Digital technologies news

2011-09-23T20:07:00.000+12:00

Over the last week there have been a couple of artices written by the New Zealand Computer Society about Digital Technologies, mainly around the Computer Science and Programming stand.

ICT in Schools, whats happening. The article looks at the changes that Digitial Technologies offers students, rather than just computing, how these changes came about. What Computer Science and Programming has to offer our students and a challenge for teachers.

Another nzcs article has been written Developing developers instead of creating users. This one looks at the changes that the new standards are now offering our students and what is being done to support teachers.

Interesting that one of the areas of the NZACDITT group this week has been around the game Paper,-Scissors-Rock and the algorithm that could be used to play such a game.

One thing that is being talked about, and I would be interested in is what model are Unlimited School using for there tech practice, since they don't have a technically minded person modelling. It has been commented on in the nzcs newletters.

Busy week

2011-09-18T20:33:00.001+12:00

One thing I have found currently is how quickly my days at work are going. Under site sharing I start school at 7:45am and finish teaching at 12:50pm.
Currently I am busy theming our schools moodle instance. This required me to get one of my Dell boxes up and running with vmware esx sever, do I can take snapshots, and also run 3 instances of windows xp machines, moodle and mahara as one.
Development box as my second and the third will be a ubuntu server to all students to do some Linux work.

But back to my tine, reports are due on Monday, snup narrative is due Monday and the acceptable use policy is due on Monday
Monday is also a day I have a meeting with a managing director.
Friday was busy with the gcsn cluster meeting at the other end of the city.
Tuesday is a core breakfast looking at mobile learning and the cloud. With a then meeting of ictpd cluster discussing devices.

I have finished section one of the year 13 unit of work around networking.

tablets in the classroom

2011-09-10T18:24:00.002+12:00

this is a post that is going to develop over time as I start to link in all the things I have been thinking about.

1. Orewa College and the iPad
This school invited parents to a meeting where they talked about the need for year 9 students to bring a device next year as part of a stationary requirement. From the information provided, the best device currently on the market is the iPad due to its portability, battery life and function.

2. Kaitao Intermediate School (The 'wow factor' appeal device, sorry tablet)
Kaitao Intermediate School in Rotorua they've also announced a programme to provide tablets to every student at minimal cost to parents.
Parents are being asked to fund $10 a month for a device that possibly wont last a year

Finding out what the school is looking at surprised me,

They are looking at UM00007 from China. They are Android 2.2 10.1 inch.

And with the cleverness of google...

http://www.everbuying.com/product57826.html - Not where they are purchasing it from, only found for specifications

That lists the main features and specifications of the device.

The device is 802.11 b/g compliant, but does not incorporate the 802.11n frequency for 5Ghz networks.

The device using Android 2.2 OS, which is now at least a year out of date.

I look at the possibly of parents paying $10 a month for a device that will possibly only last maybe less than a year. Best investment?

Is the possibly of the 'wow factor' appeal of these types of devices in schools are going to cause students to be turned off computing as the device won't meet expectations.

3. Rangitoto College is busy building a wifi network to cater for students to Bring Your Own Device http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/high-school-builds-wi-fi-network-for-3200-students

4. Burnside High school have currently made a wifi network available for year 13 students to connect there own devices to the network at school.

The wait is over...

2011-09-09T07:25:00.001+12:00

Seems like this weekend we get moodle 2.1.1 update.
Hope to get the mobile interface working
And the changes to quiz
Plus getting moodle 1.9 backups restored easily

Subject Selection completed

2011-09-01T22:43:00.002+12:00

Amazingly we have completed the subject selection in a week, I was a bit worried, as last night we had 202 completed out of 469, with 348 completing subject selections by the 1pm deadline today.

This is the first year they have tried something like this at the school. normally it has been completed on paper and the issues related to it, with students crossing out and changing there selections and missing bits. This has been a easy to use system. Though one hiccup I would say is data. The data set that I grabbed for this was straight out of our Student Management System, something which needs some work on verification. Students birthdays not being correct, email address being wrong, all manner of things not correct.
If your school is looking at doing online options choice check your data first.
The other issue was the boys not being prepared, this starts with form teachers, they need to talk to the students about the selections that they are making, we are doing this tomorrow, making sure that students have completed the selections, this is being carried out on paper, and for some this will be a shock, as if the student does not turn up, the paper gets handed over to the house tutor for chase up. Yet another way of catching some of these students.

We needed to have more time, possibly a couple of more days
We needed to have students use form time to get the information in
Parents needed to be notified that it was only years 10, 11, and 12 that were doing this and not year 9
Year 9 will be done by paper this year, next week, though it may be suggested that hey do it online as well.
Curriculum guide needs to line up with subject selection codes, these need to be listed beside the subject.
Possible SAML hook in for username and passwords?

Computational Thinking

2011-08-29T23:27:00.000+12:00

Advances in computing have expanded our capacity to solve problems at a scale never before imagined, using strategies that have not been available to us before. Students will need to learn and practice new skills—computational thinking (CT) skills—to take full advantage of these revolutionary changes brought about by rapid changes in technology. ISTE and the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) are collaborating on a project to prepare young learners to become computational thinkers who understand how today's digital tools can help solve tomorrow's problems. CT is vital to all students as we work to raise the level of achievement, prepare students for global competitiveness, and blend academics with real life.

Download the Computational Thinking Teacher Resources now. CSTA and ISTE intend for the CT Teacher Resources to reflect our commitment to the universal idea that CT can work across all disciplines and with all school-age children. The CT Teacher Resources are an introductory package of prototype materials which include:

•   An operational definition of CT for K-12 Education
•   A CT vocabulary and progression chart
•   Nine CT Learning Experiences
•   CT classroom scenarios

The Computational Thinking Leadership Toolkit is now available for download. This companion piece to the Computational Thinking Teacher Resources, includes:

* Making the Case for CT
* Resources for Creating Systemic Change
* Implementing Strategies Guide

Copied from http://www.iste.org/learn/computational-thinking.aspx

Radio station part 2

2011-08-29T19:25:00.005+12:00

Thanks to one of my former students, he put me in contact with @thecheesefm
aha. Best to stick with high bitrate mp3.. Rivendell is a free automation system for Linux http://www.rivendellaudio.org/ ...
... I use for windows Stationplaylist.com it costs but haven't had any issues with it.
... And make sure your APRA and PPNZ licenses are up to date ;-)
http://www.apra.co.nz/
http://www.ppnz.co.nz/

Do I need to get the ppnz license if I already have apra
yes.. One is for the composers the other is for artists. Plus you'll need to pay for two licences should you stream on net

there's minimal website info.. Try http://www.low-power-fm-radio.spacejunk.co.nz/ also sign up for http://au.groups.yahoo.com/group/LPFM_Radio/ ...

School radio

2011-08-27T17:00:00.002+12:00

The school has all the gear to run a radio station, and has for a number of years. However, due to things that have happened over the past year it hasn't been running. I found out that the computer running part of it was donated a number of years ago and is pretty much dead. I have managed to get another one up and running.

We have all the nz on air cd's and are looking at converting them to digital.
Windows media player or iTunes? To create play lists or is there possibly something else?

Is there an open source radio station agent?

But it also gives me something to do with my students, creating material for the station.

microblogging within school

2011-08-22T20:10:00.000+12:00

I see that ASHS students have been busy upgrading there statusnet server,

W00t! Students have finished upgrade of our #statusnet server. Let the microblogging resume! Gwibber integration test tonight.

could this be something that i could get my students into?

http://status.net/

As this can be downloaded and installed on our our servers, there is a development version available for us to try out.

Getting Started: status.net/wiki
To get started with StatusNet, from installation to basic configuration, this is the key resource.

Subject Selection

2011-08-21T15:48:00.001+12:00

We have been doing online subject choice selections for three years now, using an inhouse designed subject selection web application.

The idea around this was to get rid of the time it took to do the data entry as well as getting better data from the students and also to remove the half day of students running around getting sign off from teachers in charge. Also we wanted the ability for parents to have some input into what there child was choosing.

Luckily our SMS provider helped us out in the early stages of developed on how to do the import from a CSV file into KAMAR, this solved the major issue of data entry and we can now close off the web application and in 10 minutes have all the subject numbers given to the principal to start making his decisions about classes.

The process

Students are given the curriculum guides, to take home and have the conversations with their parents.

Form teachers also have chats with the students in their class about what they are looking at taking next year.

They then can access the subject selection website at home, school, on smartphone and choose what subjects they wish to take the following year. They can do this as many times as they want to, the web application is designed to show what they selected the last time. It also states that there choices are not final, and that subject requirements, course sizes and other factors may exist that they course may not run. the students are given a choice of some reserve subjects in case some subjects do not run.

This is done over three weeks.

Students that don't choose there selections are followed up by the whanau house leaders, or the Senior Leadership Team.

On the close off day, the data is imported into empty lines in the Student Management System,

The students are then given a time to talk to a mentor about what they have selected, and whether the selections they have made match up with there possible career, that they have previously had with the careers adviser. If there are any issue, they are changed in the Student Management System straight away by the mentor.

This has reduced the beginning of the year changes quite significantly, where we are running full timetables with no more changes after two weeks of school starting.

We chose to do the year 10, 11, 12 students first as a trial of the system, it worked so well, that when the junior subject choices were to happen we did online subject selection for year 9 as well. out of the 1200 students, only 100 students did not complete their selection, this statistic was better than when we were doing the paper based system.

We also had conversations in the school about pathways for students, we started to move away from year levels courses say 11ENG, 12ENG, 13ENG to a more level based course ENG1, ENG2, ENG3, this enabled some of the stigma around students repeating or doing a level below to be removed. The web application was designed to take this into account, where a year 13 student could do level 1, level 2 or level 3 courses, and a year 12 student could do level 2, or level 1 courses. Allowance was made to students that were operating at a level above, some year 12 students were allowed to take level 3 courses, these changes were made during the mentor meeting.

The web application also locked certain courses in for students, A year 11 student had to take, English, Maths, PE/Health/Financial Literacy and had three other options available for students.

The year 12 student had to take English

The year 13 student has to have Independent Learning(aka Study)

The web application also had in it a section on a student leaving school, or possibly not coming back so help and guidance was able to be offered.

Why post about this: there are a number of schools which are looking at doing subject selection online, they have trailed it with one class? they are still doing it by paper, which must cause errors somewhere through the process. This is how showing how we have done it, and now as I move schools how the development of this system is carrying on to my new school.

subject option choice .9a

2011-08-19T21:39:00.000+12:00

changes have now been implemented to take into account the students login name instead of studentID number,

Changes have been made to code for the new server and website database that it is now hosted on

Why am I waiting?

2011-08-17T21:00:00.000+12:00

Sorry this is a gripe post,
I have been waiting since the release of moodle 2.1 on the 1st July 2011,

Since then 2.1.1 has been released late July
on the 3 August 2011 moodleinschools.org.nz had there update, and since then I have been waiting for our hosted supplier to update to the new version.
I look at the new version and it has a number of things that we need as a school to get up and running:
-Mobile device integration
-Updated Quizes
-Being able to restore courses from 1.9 to 2.1
-Moodle 2.1 comes with a built-in web service designed for mobile applications (required to run the official Moodle app)
-Enable mobile web services documentation for details
-Improved Support for Mobile Themes and Browser Detection

How long should I wait for our supplier to update before I get angry...

Auckland Museum: AQUA Trail

2011-08-17T20:46:00.000+12:00

I visited Auckland Museum a couple of weeks ago and got to try out there new AQUA Trail.
This has been something that has been in the process and been through a number of ideas an iterations through reference groups and new media departments for a long time.
I wrote about Auckland Museum Secrets revealed - the mysteries behind the museum in 2008. Since then technology has improved, the museum has wifi installed and we got to play for once. I had been to a number of LATE nights at the museum where we got to use the wifi, in the case that I was using it for twitter updates to communicate with others that were at the event as well as the organisers.

But how can you use a technology when it is locked off, You can use it heaps. as i got talking to the new media team and coming up with ideas on opening wifi up on a VLAn and only hooking into one site and being able to access content off it they went away and developed something that I could only dream of. the developed an HTML5 web app which is simple enough to use, has interaction in the form of polls and quizzes, links to content held in various media streams and has some interesting facts for parents to be able to use with groups of students.

More to come...

Looking from the outside in

2011-08-17T20:37:00.001+12:00

One thing that keeps me thinking is, should I be showing this blog at my appraisal meetings? This blog is my thinking. It shows me learning, trying things out and reflecting on what I have learnt. Though it is also about me being able to write down what I am struggling with, who I am struggling with as well. Sometimes it is management of my school, or with a certain company that I am dealing with.

This blog provides me notes on what is going on at certain times of the year.

To share: to share what I have learnt, be it with my subject selection app or some new technology that I have an idea in out to evolve it.

To learn: this is very much an unintended benefit of blogging but the act of writing posts and decideing how I wish to organise my thoughts, but it has also made me think of how I will encourage future students to start to organsise there thinking.

Managing my emotions: Being a teacher in Digital technologies, I find that I am constantly on the go and have a range of emotions that can be picked up from a simple grunt to a happy face when something works. Being able to write about the process of developing an application, or about an incident that happened at work, without using names has been of great benefit, even if the post does not get "published" I have at least been able to get my thoughts in order, and that it is saved somewhere, even if I don't wish to access it again.

To effect change: A couple of times I have had people stumble across my blog that have commented on a piece, once I even got another job out of it. But this is more about how technology has influenced my practice in my career. Education has huge benefits, something which sometimes I forget. I look at our new standards in Digital Technologies - Computer Science papers, these are now the envy of the world, and others are now starting to catch up. I want to start to go through and post some more blog posts around Computer Science and get teachers to see it differently, not just as Programming, but more around the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their application incomputer systems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_science

Telecom Paint Wall

2011-08-17T20:26:00.001+12:00

Telecom Paint Wall, using hand movements, or in my case a iPad, I was able to Paint on the Wall. This is a great thing to start doing when you have some time to spare, or in my case I got many strange looks when I started to interact with the wall. Is it because I am an adult, or was it the fact that people around me couldn't understand how I was able to interact.

I look at what the Kinect SDK kit now has to offer, it is one thing that I plan on using with my lessons with juniors, I want them to interact with the technology, I would love to find the kit that they used to create this fun way to spend 20 minutes while waiting for a flight

It also looks like the wall gets used for other things as well, as a tweet wall...http://envycollection.blogspot.com/2011/06/telecom-tweet-wall-auckland-airport.html

Computer Science at High School

2011-08-16T20:11:00.002+12:00

To give you some idea, here is what is now available for our students in New Zealand

Based upon the Curriculum Guide http://seniorsecondary.tki.org.nz/Technology/Specialist-technology-areas/Programming-and-computer-science-PROG

around the Basic Concepts in Computer Science http://seniorsecondary.tki.org.nz/Technology/Achievement-and-learning-objectives/PRCS-6-1

Demonstrate understanding of basic concepts from computer science
http://www.nzqa.govt.nz/nqfdocs/ncea-resource/achievements/2011/as91074.pdf

Demonstrate understanding of basic concepts from computer science involves: (Achieved)
• describing the key characteristics and roles of algorithms, programs and informal instructions
• describing an algorithm for a task, showing understanding of the kinds of steps that can be in an algorithm, and determining the cost of an algorithm for a problem of a particular size
• describing the role and characteristics of programming languages, including the different roles and characteristics of high level languages and low level (or machine) languages, and the function of a compiler
• describing the role of a user interface and factors that contribute to its usability.

Demonstrate in-depth understanding of basic concepts from computer science involves: (Merit)
• explaining how algorithms are distinct from related concepts such as programs and informal instructions
• showing understanding of the way steps in an algorithm for a task can be combined in sequential, conditional, and iterative structures and determining the cost of an iterative algorithm for a problem of size n
• explaining how the characteristics of programming languages, including the different characteristics of high level and low level (or machine) languages, are important for their roles
• explaining the need for programs to translate between high and low level languages
• explaining how different factors of a user interface contribute to its usability.

Demonstrate comprehensive understanding of basic computer science concepts from computer science involves: (Excellence)
• comparing and contrasting the concepts of algorithms, programs, and informal instructions
• determining and comparing the costs of two different iterative algorithms for the same problem of size n
• comparing and contrasting high level and low level (or machine) languages, and explaining different ways in which programs in a high level programming language are translated into a machine language
• discussing how different factors of a user interface contribute to its usability by comparing and contrasting related interfaces.

The basic concepts from computer science are: the concept of an algorithm; the concept of a programming language; and the concept of a user interface and its usability.

An algorithm is a precise unambiguous specification of how to accomplish some computational task in a finite number of well-defined steps. An algorithm is distinct from a computer program. An algorithm has a cost (the number of steps it will perform) for a task. Different algorithms for the same task may have different costs.

Development of Environment

2011-08-10T21:33:00.001+12:00

Since joining with the school, I have busy implementing a number of half finished projects that need to be up and running.

First was Moodle 2, this was up and running from the hosted supplier in May, however the issue was the SMS system doing a sync of teachers, students ad classes. This was first completed on the 8 June, and has not been run since, today was the next successful update.
It seems the issue was around java, since java failed on the system the upload did not take place. It has taken two days working with the supplier to get this working. The next issue is that when the upload takes place, the moodle sync requires user intervention currently, after a month of running this will be automated.
One issue I am having is with the auth/SAML module, as the module we are using is out of date with the one that is now available.

Next was Google Apps, we use the Google SAML module to manage this between Moodle and Google Apps, since we have been getting Single Sign On working, we have had to disable the module till some work happens

SSO, we have SSO up and running, this required up to enter each students SMSid into a field in Active Directory. We have had a number of false starts with this, but now it seems like it is up and running.

myportfolio is our eportfolio system, this has been up and running on an internal authentication system based on the hosted site, we have just gone through and linked it into our SSO, however, it requires that I go through and link up each student with there network username. There is only one issue that I see with this currently and it is around what the students called themselves when they signed up, I have a number of students that I am trying to work out who they are so I can get them access.

I am looking at other SSO server, luckly we have just had a site called www.iam.school.nz created to help us. I am thinking what other things we use, or have potential to use,

Once thing that is not helping me, is the data that is being brought out through the SMS - LMS interoperability, as the SMS is not provising all staff users, one thing is that the principal needs access and is not include, also we need to think about the teacher aides that work with students, they nee access to the moodle courses that there students are in.

Once thing I looked at today was the SMS providers blog, I decided to post a few comments around some the issues:

Is our SMS doing any work around how it handles IAM/IDE requirements that school are now looking for as we move towards Single Single On.
Is our SMS doing anything around being able to handle Single Sign On requests on it Library webOPAC?
How is our SMS taking a more leading role as SMS schema v3 is being developed?

It will be interesting to see how they are going to respond to these questions.

change of school

2011-08-02T21:17:00.002+12:00

Seven weeks ago, I left one workplace to start work at another. It has been a difficult shift. From head of department at a decile 3 school, with 1800 students, to a teacher in charge role at a decile 9 school with 800 students.
I have been thrust into a school of change, and little leadership in the development of change. They seem to think that I can implement the changes required within a short amount of time and a full teaching load.
The staff at the school are looking forward to the changes that have been in the making for 4 years, however, them seems little thought in the way that they will impact the teaching and learning.

So far:
Google apps implementation has been setup by watchdog, provisioning has been setup from moodle to create and manage users
moodle2 has been setup and implemented by dataview, through a rather difficult and issue prone MUSAC websync
myportfolio has been setup and developed by the previous teacher
Single Sign On, this is being developed by the new providers of the idp service here in the city. It is taking longer than I thought.

All of these things are great and we spent 5 years developing, implementing and accessing these at the previous school, however, I am having to get these things done in 5 weeks, through rather difficult conditions.

I am also going through a number of other issues at the school through the development of ICT infrastructure, my classroom looks like something from 3 years ago, with a mixture of 14", 17" CRT screens and at least I have a slightly up to date computers in the room, though they look rough and have PS2 mice connected, which seems to have an issue of be unrecognized by the OS, which mean you have to unplug then, plug them back in and restart the machine, which impedes learning for the student and develops issues within the class.

The classroom, although an interesting design has its own issues, I need to remove a computer from the back of the class which students seem to like sitting at which does not allow to see the board or projector.

The projector is something out of the ark, I have been told that it is probably one of the first ones that was put into the school. Although the remote for it is still in the class, it does not seem to want to work with it, which means climbing onto a desk and turning it one and off by hand.

I keep getting told how great things are now that we have webmail, as well as remote access to the system, something I have been used to for as long as I have been teaching. Considering I now believer that teachers own devices should be allowed to access email systems so they can keep in contact with what is going on.

There is also the development of ICT within the school, I keep getting called into meetings that I am unprepared for around the development of a strategic plan.

21st Century Learning Facilities?

Sadly most of our teaching and learning spaces are 19th century spaces. Needs have changed. We need classrooms with improved technological capabilities, and multi-functional capabilities to enhance leaning by including facilities such as a video conferencing suite. The BOT needs to be proactive in working with the BOP to ensure a major upgrading of facilities which will meet 21st century teaching and learning requirements.

IT needs both now and in 2-3 years

Decile 9 Orewa College has recently hit the headlines “since telling parents the ipad 2 will be a compulsory stationery item for all year nine pupils next year.” While the move is welcomed by IT specialists, critics say “the device is not an affordable option for all parents.” The ipad sells for between $799 to $1148.

“Principals Association president, Patrick Walsh, said it would probably only be 4-5 years before ipads became compulsory but the question remained as to who was going to pay. In lower decile schools the Government needs to intervene and pay, or provide a subsidy if we want to keep pace with the world economy.” He went on to say, “There’s no point the Government rolling out the ultrafast broadband if they’re not going to help provide resources in schools to use it.”

We are a decile 9 school. Would our parents be willing to purchase this technology?

While I do not think that we are ready to make a laptop compulsory, I do believe it is a future consideration. In the meantime I am keen to explore ways to increase student engagement in learning using something they all have great ownership of, their cell phone! This has the potential to take this technology from their pockets and put it on the desk thereby solving a current classroom management issue – undercover cell phone use in class!

We are now connected to ultrafast fibre and while our IT contract over recent years has helped upskill our teaching staff, our infra-structure (both computer and facilities) is not 21st century and we battle to find significant funding to keep pace with modern technology.

Within the next 2-3 years we want students to be engaged in their learning through the opportunities we are currently putting in place. Most importantly we want to be developing and assisting students to access course material at home and continue the learning from class through resources and activities. We want to see students developing their lifelong learning portfolios, their eportfolios and we are putting in action Google Apps – online office and productivity suite to help students communicate online with their teachers and their peers. All of these are available easily for the students through Single Sign On, which allows them to access all of these through one username and password managed by the school network.

Currently we are beginning to see the development of on-line resources in the Learning Management System with the introduction of Moodle this year, both in collaborating in teacher resources and professional development, but much more is needed.

We are also in the process of upgrading the school network to cater for the changes of learners needs, with the School Network Upgrade Project (SNUP), this will allow us to make use of the Ultrafast Fibre connection to the school, as we upgrade the internal workings within the school. Also with the upgrade of the school servers this allows us to develop our internal storage capacity and allow access to services from the outside. However, there are some more developments that need to be made, establishing a backup server to allow us to continue if one server fails, as well as adding a SAN (Storage Area Network) which allows us to build our storage capacity as we move to meet the requirements of Learning and Assessment through developing all of our subjects through digital literacy.

Next steps for us include:-

- Video conferencing facility
- Library computer suite upgrade
- Multi-purpose (or multi-disciplinary) computer suites
- Ability for students to bring own devices to connect to the school network through wifi access, (improved access for boarders to the Managed Learning Environment)
- Investigation of Interactive Whiteboards to assist teachers in developing materials to assist in student learning.

-----
am I enjoying it, I think I was at my last school for way to long and was lucky with what was available for me and my students, something that I think will take a long time to become available at my current workplace.

Hacking Versus Programming

2011-08-02T20:04:00.000+12:00

I found this an interesting blog post, something which I want to use with my students,
This is a blog post from http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alfredth/archive/2011/07/27/hacking-vs-programming.aspx

I have many students that ask me to show them how to hack, normally of which the answer is no, or we go through the hacker high school unit of work, which normally gives them a sense of satisfaction. But I had never thought about hacking as ruthless programming.

What is the difference between Hacking and programming? One opinion I have heard expressed is that a hacker can put a lot of code together in a hurry but if a change is needed the code has to be completely rewritten. A programmer may take a little longer but if changes are needed they are more quickly and easily installed without the need for a complete rewrite. One source I heard attributed an observation like this to Maggie Johnson of Google. It rings true to me though. Hacking is usually described as “quick and dirty.” You though a bunch of code together and make it up as you go along. Some hackers are quite brilliant and can do amazing things in incredibly short periods of time. And then they move to the next thing. Or perhaps they stay with the same thing because no one else can understand it well enough to fix it, modify it or improve it. Job security? Perhaps but not a good thing for the people who use, or importantly pay for, the software.

I do a little hacking – that is to say toss something together in a short period of time without a lot of planning – from time to time. I’m not a genius though and typically this ends poorly. The performance is poor, the maintainability is poor, and no one else wants to use it. This may make be biased against this way of doing things I guess. I prefer to program – to think things out, to plan, to proceed in an organized fashion. I saw the difference made clear to me my first year of teaching (a long time ago). I was working on a little game programming of my own and decided to show it to some of my students. As I explained how I had set things up around a number of constants that is hoped would make the program more easily expandable one of the students turned to another and said “Look at that. He’s just starting and already he is planning for additions.” That is one of the real keys, in my opinion, to real programming.

I was a major in Systems Analysis in college. This was during a time when computer science majors were rare and software engineering majors rarer still. But one of the things my professors drilled into our heads was that programs had to be maintainable and extensible. We were taught from day one that programs are not finished but, in a sense, abandoned. More likely at some point you declare victory and more on. But others will maintain these programs and expand them and adapt them. Making their lives easier is a good thing. Think of the Golden Rule – program was you would want the programmers whose code you are modifying to have programmed. I think that is how it is written.

The hackers get a lot of attention these days. These are the basketball players who make the slam dunk that makes it to the highlight reel. But basketball games are won by teams of players executing on the basics – the solid play well executed, the dribble, the layup, the pass that gets the ball to the star. In the long run we need more real programmers to make solid, dependable programs that don’t have be be rewritten from scratch when a change is needed.

subject option choice .9a

2011-07-18T23:00:00.000+12:00

complete rewrite of tables within the databases is having to happen. Now that I have changed schools and the new school wishes to try this out.

So far the changes are going to be around holding the student data.
SMS ID is having to grow
students are not provided there SMS ID here, instead we will use there network login, so have added an extra field
Form Class is somewhat different as well, here it is a four letter character
though this is going to have some impact on chasing students at the end, or is it, how did the rewrite for the previous school go on for area, more around the fact that it is based on being a senior student, and checking against a flagged item, when submitted.

Junior Technology

2011-07-14T20:08:00.000+12:00

I have been meeting a number of teachers lately that have been looking at junior technology with the lower year levels, years 9-10. Gone are the days where they could just do ict skills, now we are looking at technology achievement objectivies.

These are outlined in the New Zealand Curriculum 2007. However there are a number of teacher that do not know about the curriculum resources that have been made available on techlink.org.nz

http://techlink.org.nz/curriculum-support/pdfs/technology-curriculum-support-oct-10.pdf

as well as Strategies for Engaging students http://techlink.org.nz/curriculum-support/strategies/index.htm

I think there may need to be some PD carried out to help assist the community

eduMOOC online learning today

2011-06-27T19:25:00.002+12:00

I am looking at this PD as an opportunity to further my knowledge and understanding around this topic.

https://sites.google.com/site/edumooc/home

usability notes

2011-06-12T21:21:00.000+12:00

I realise this a site for cs for girls, but for my notes there seems to be some good ideas around usability design http://gailcarmichael.com/mini-course/course-content/Pages/notes-3.html

Some real good images of bad designs, as well as what makes good design elements

teamwork

2011-06-12T21:07:00.000+12:00

great post in csta voice volume 4 issue 1 Volume 4 issue 1 page 3 and 4
When allowed authority to control their own group experience, students gain important experience in negotiation, delegation, and conflict management.

Junior Technology Ideas

2011-06-12T21:02:00.001+12:00

Since starting at a new school, I thought I would start to reconsider the junior Technology Curriculum, one thing that I need to do is to re look at level 4 and 5 of the technology curriculum, I look forward to a meeting this wednesday around how my new school covers these areas.

I have a number of ideas that I have been looking at through the csta voice publications,
one so far is the look at Digital Privacy, through Cybercivics http://web2.clarkson.edu/projects/cybercivics/privacy/

Also something to look at is eVoting http://web2.clarkson.edu/projects/cybercivics/evoting/

For more information on this pilot see http://web2.clarkson.edu/projects/cybercivics/
CyberCivics was developed as a Computer Science outreach program, designed to introduce diverse groups of talented high school students to hands-on activities that reflect the myriad ways in which computing technologies directly impact their everyday lives. The materials provided here were developed for the pilot offering during the Spring 2007 semester and one follow-on offering in Fall 2008.

Both of these would look at the Nature of technology?

programming concepts in scratch

2011-05-29T16:03:00.000+12:00

This is an interesting post, It explains simple programming concepts and how to do them in scratch http://compscigail.blogspot.com/2011/05/programming-concepts-in-scratch.html

This looks like it will have to be a blog to follow, as some of the concepts that she is looking at is what we are trying to ourselves

Tasks

2011-04-26T20:02:00.000+12:00

With leaving I have to do a handover,

1. googleApps creating, deleting users
2. myportfolio creating users, managing users? deleting users, as with a discussion today we cannot really delete users, but remove them from the organisation
3. UDI what has to go in to meet the UDI requirements of SSO <- csv file to go offsite to our network support services at present to get added into our Active Directory.
4. wordpress, hmmm, not too sure how this one is going to continue.
5. e-asTTle what needs to be done to get this up and running everytime we do a batch.
6. csv to pdf form.

e-asTTle fixes

2011-04-26T19:40:00.002+12:00

In order to allow the import you must first make the student in the import file match exactly with the existing record for the student. The error tells us how the First and Last names were specified on the record in e-asTTle:
1. Find the student in the Student section of the AST file. Alter the first_name or last_name fields to be in line with the other record.
2. Import the file (a warning message is generated stating that the student already exists in a different School, this can be ignored).
3. In e-asTTle, search for the student through the Manage Existing Students screen and click ‘Change’ to bring up the Change Student screen. Here you can manually update the student to match the details originally specified in the .ast file.

Candy Bar Challenge

2011-04-26T15:48:00.002+12:00

Candy Bar Activity

Divide the students into groups of 2 or 3. Give each group a candy bar.
Explain that their task is to determine how many "breaks" it will take to break the candy bar into 12 equal pieces. One break of one piece of the candy bar will result in that one piece being divided into two pieces. Demonstrate a "break" by breaking the bar into two pieces. Then stack the two pieces together and break or cut the two pieces into four.
At this point, have each student write in their journal the number of breaks they think it will take to break the bar into 12 equal pieces. This should be done without talking to their partner or group members.
Working together with their partner or group, have the students discuss and then write their plan for solving the problem. They may revise their guess at this point.
Once this is done, the students should implement the plan by opening the candy and breaking the candy and counting the number of breaks it takes to get 12 equal pieces.

Discussion of solutions

Choose a group to present their plan to the class.
How do the steps they used match what they wrote in their journal?

Introduction to the steps in the problem-solving process

How do the steps they used relate to the “formal” steps of the problem solving process?
Understand the problem – read or listen to the problem statement.
Make a plan to solve the problem – use pictures, charts, graphs, systematic lists, objects, or act out the solution to help you devise a plan to solve the problem

In Computer Science we call this plan an algorithm.

Carry out the plan – once the plan is conceived and understood, follow the plan. If you have planned well, this is the easy part.
Review and reflect on how the problem was solved – Once the problem is solved, reflect on the plan that was used.
Extend breaking the candy into N pieces
Post chart of # pieces/# of breaks, including N and have students give you the # of breaks needed for each number of pieces.

Reflections on the candy bar problem: Ask the students to reflect on the candy bar problem. Why is this problem an important problem to solve for: a carpenter, a chef, a teacher?

Resources:
Polya, G. How to Solve It. 2nd. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. candy bar problem suggested by Dr. Manuel Blum, Carnegie Mellon University.

Idea for a project

2011-04-25T20:45:00.003+12:00

What did you do in school today? is a research project that was carried out in Canada throughout 17 districts. I was presented with some of the ideas through this study at the PPTA professional conference held in Wellington.
The ideas that were outlined got me thinking and I jumped on the net during the presentation hoping to find more.

The link to the report that was produced is here, http://www.cea-ace.ca/programs-initiatives/wdydist

What did you do in school today? captures, assesses, and mobilizes ideas for enhancing the learning experiences of students in classrooms and schools through a multidimensional framework of student engagement.

However, I think it is a great idea on a different front. How many times is this question asked at home, what information is given to parents on what there child did during the day.

We have a daily reporting system at school in which the students who are placed on it by the deans carry it around and we as teachers have to write a comment and sign it. Normally this is done at the end of the period just as the student is about to exit the class, and we as teachers just want to get ready for the next lesson. So is it really doing what it is meant to do.

The rules I have for the students that are placed on daily are: it must be handed to me at the beginning of lesson, if not I will not fill it in and sign it. I need to know which of the three boxes at the top that this is for.
The three categories that we look at are:

Attendance
Behaviour/Attitude
Homework

So where does this come in, do students reflect on what they do in class each day? Do they reflect on there learning? On their sports practice? On there technological knowledge and practice? How well they did there science experiments? Could there be a system incorporated into their learning that is simple enough to gather data. Does it have to be a blog or could it be a short 140 character message. The ideas that come out of this are just simple, rate 6 questions on a scale from 1 - 5. Random questions could be used each day, and recorded against.
Students have mobile devices and a simple page that students goto and fill in would be all that is required, in the inital term no username and password would be used. No identification of students, all I am after is just straight implementation on an iDevice.

I looked last year at students developing a system to hold there literacy logs, in which students read a book and then filled in the questions related to the assessment based on what they read through the book. This has been a difficult project each year as the stakeholders and specifications have grown out of control. Also with the changes in technology now, other sites that we have invested time and money into have taken control of this.

Leaving

2011-04-25T16:32:00.000+12:00

After none years at my current school, I am leaving. This has been a decision that has been a long time coming. I have felt since going on refreshment leave that I have been at the school too long. I don't want this school to be the only one I work at. There has been a number of factors that have come along, my brother leaving Auckland to move to Australia, the other is that I miss the South Island, if you look at my bedroom wall I wake up to over 40 photos all of South Island scenery.

I have six more weeks at my current school and them move Queens Birthday weekend, I must say it is going to be hard over the next couple of weeks, I don't think I have realised how much crap is at school. It will be an interesting last week bringing all of it home.

The part I am not looking forward to most is the farewell speach. I am going to have to have a plan on how I am going to present it, no projector or other computer gear this time, just me talking... Though there is something I have just found on a family website and I think it ressinates with me

especially for these reasons:
1) their humour, wit and love of story telling.
2) their honesty, values, concern for the decent and honourable in life, and in particular standing up for those less fortunate

it started with a tweet #2

2011-03-17T21:56:00.002+13:00

The reply to my previous blog post on it started with a tweet

I agree that personal mobile devices are the way of the future, be they tablets, smart phones or what ever the future brings us. The Ipad is a classic example of how a new technology can change the way people use technology. Personal devices allow us to blur the lines between work & play. We know how powerful it is to put a laptop in the hands of every teacher in the country. As professionals we take our laptops home at the end of the day, we’re reading and accessing information informing ourselves and developing our Knowledge base.

Its my opinion that too many schools concentrate on the hardware and keeping the price as low as possible when considering any kind of student programme. Thinking, that simply putting these devices in their students hands will dramatically improve their engagement levels etc.. and while this can be true… it is only 1 (and probably the smallest part of the puzzle). First and foremost, there needs to be teaching practice which supports use of the technology to achieve real and measureable results. One of my colleagues, Graham P, who I work with has the following to say about 1:1 programmes (or would apply to 2:1 as well). I’ve cut and paste this from one of his papers:

ICT skills acquisition:

With the introduction of such an initiative the ICT knowledge and skills of the students and staff involved increases immensely – but needs to be supported. Whilst the students will adapt quickly to their new learning catalyst, the staff learning curve is typically a little slower.

Important in any introduction of such an initiative is to provide for the staff professional development. Not only do professional development programmes attend to the technical skills needed to cope with new ways of teaching and learning, but also they support the important paradigm shift necessary if the programmes are going to be effective.

The ICT capabilities of all involved will increase significantly – again, providing a competitive advantage for those involved.

Much of the pedagogical impact of such a programme is lost if the portable programme does not enable the teaching and learning process to change –if we continue to do what we have always done – just with new tools…. We will still get what we have always got!

I think your idea of 2:1 is good, but why limit it to this??? If your network will support it, why not 1:1? Is the answer Money?? Well, there are 3 funding possibilities:

1 student pays – consumer finance, purchase outright

2 school pays – using funding it would have put toward infrastructure anyway, or grant applications.

3 combination of student/school funding - self-explanatory

A lot of schools I talk to think that it is unreasonable to ask their parents to pay for a laptop, so, yes, they should be able to bring one from home, but it needs to meet the basic system requirements needed to perform the tasks demanded. A standardised operating environment in any large network is the ideal, but I appreciate schools cannot “demand” or “force” students into anything. At the same time, how many kids already have playstations, ipods, expensive bikes and other costly toys of one kind or another – sure – not everyone could afford an ipad – but most parents would seriously consider it if they thought it would dramatically improve their kids ability to succeed academically and into the future.. All the better if they can finance or split the cost with the school. Why not have all 3 funding options operating – use the best method on a case by case basis?...

Instead of asking – whats the price – the question needs to be – how do we enable equality & sustainability… so.. how can we support the teachers to adapt their teaching practice to use the technology effectively. How will we assess the results of this new teaching practice? What happens if someone cannot afford to participate? What if their device breaks? How will the school support those students who don’t have an internet connection at home, how can learning continue in the face of these problems. Too often, the lowest price option, is low because there is all care, but no responsibility, no support, no resources because there is no regard for the bigger picture which is not just the sale of a smart phone, but the support of a young persons education, their preparation for a future in a digital world.

Anyway.. I could go on for hours… this is very much a passion for me. I Account Manage a few schools doing 1:1 programmes, they are doing really well, and I want to share their success with other schools, I want to help schools go 1:1 and help them avoid the painful lessons that have already been learned at other sites. I really believe that personal devices in students hands is the way to go. I only need to look as far as myself. I know that having my laptop/iphone in my hands 12+ hours a day means im reading more, im collaborating, im working and playing simultaneously (look at what im doing right now) – it doesn’t stop when I leave the office. This is all adding to my knowledge base. I am 100% sure that every student should also have the same opportunity to learn anywhere, anytime..

I know there are lots of other considerations, and we have a duty of care to protect our youth from the dangers that lurk out beyond the firewall, but it can be done, its really not that hard to do.. it just takes a commitment to change for the best.

Anyway, that’s my 10cents worth… what do you think : ) And please don’t think im trying to “sell” you anything = I really am very passionate about it – I feel like I have such good insight into how well it can work, but im not entirely sure I know how to best spread the message?? I’d love your feedback .

2011-03-14T22:32:00.000+13:00

From a group post

My argument is definitely not for teaching staff to understand technology any less and think that it is very important for staff to have a good understanding of ICT, my point is though that even with a good amount of knowlege in ICT there may still be extra things that can be picked up from ICT staff. Effectivly I am just arguing for continuing learning and using all the resources avalible to the school to do the best job that they can.

It's the ongoing learning that makes the difference. We claim that for our students, we need to claim it for ourselves.

I like this comment, as I think it has a lot to say.

It started with a tweet

2011-03-14T22:29:00.002+13:00

Tweet: What are the key challenges facing schools when it comes to estalablishing a 1 to 1 student laptop programme... your thoughts??

Answer: key challenge is the experiences that other schools have had in the area, negative information has been passed on, no +'s

and

another is the thinking that they will get 5-8 years out of a netbook the same as a desktop machine

thanks. Are the negatives you've heard about related to lack of evidence of benefits?

From then one it has now ended up being an email conversation
the negatives are due to the what the principals in the area have discussed the machines wouldn't last, they broke, the wouldn't run what was required. Mind you I think it comes down to what the school brought and experienced. I look at what is available now to what was available last year or the year before.

Lack of academic results? or Poor tools, poor hardware & support, or lack of good prof dev? Interested
I think it does come down to, some people saw the 1:1 computing as "the Answer" they didn't think of the training, investment in infrastructure, it was the big thing of the day. And then what they saw happening in the classroom, students just use them to write up documents, they wouldn't have seen the collaboration of what goes on, as schools didn't think of what is available with google apps now and collaborative google docs. they would have seen then in the classroom charging and not being used, or locked away.

Schools want to see use of there investment, and getting 5-8 years out of a desktop and 18 months out of a netbook are two different things. just because its a computer they think they will last that long. Who is there to repair them, schools do not have the lucky technician that we have, they have a teacher or a tech for 2 hours a week. Who them looks after the students having access and modifying the laptop to them break it and it becomes a door stop until it is fixed.

I also think schools are looking toward the mobile phone as the end device, but i am more looking at the 2:1 devices for students, the netbook/tablet and the phone/android/iphone. We are looking at our network and explaining it to salespeople, they look at me strangely when I say 2:1, all they hear at other places is 1:1.

What do you think around that idea?

and who's thinking is this? Student/Parent or school? I really appreciate your feedback : )
This is the principal who is telling me most of this, we approached the board for a 30 user netbook programme, and got told basically the above.

Our associate principal is looking at what we are proposing with the wireless network, and he has the statement at the moment, "build it and they will come" - I know, bad movie reference, but when we roll out our wireless network the student will bring the devices with them, they have laptops at home already, and if not they have mobile phones, itouches, android phones, the more devices that we can look at attaching to the network, they better as they understand. Do we want to limit the students to a one stop shop of device. or see what they bring and develop.

Ok, I realise this has been written late at night and its ben a long day, but I hope you get the idea of what I am trying to put across from the tweets.

Sometimes tweets are not enough, they start off with an idea and develop from there.

SSO all working

2011-03-12T11:52:00.000+13:00

The single sign on is all operational and working, now worries with this,

Our only issue is now is myportflio.school.nz
number of students able to be uploaded is limited to 200 at a time
all old students on the system have to be manually changed over to SAML
you cannot update any students details through a csv upload at this time
When you import and select the wrong authentication method, you cannot fix it by reuploading
you cannot set you whole institution to SAML in one hit.

I am finding more negatives than positives at the moment with this administration

Thoughts on the three areas

2011-03-06T14:20:00.001+13:00

Our School has joined the new Positive Behaviour for Learning in New Zealand initiative. These are the three areas that we are focussing on.

Be Respectful
Be Responsible
Be a Learner

Single Sign On update

2011-03-02T19:15:00.000+13:00

Hopefully we will have all of our services running on the watchdog iDP.

One thing we are finding though is that the iDP is very picky about what site the that login information is sent from.
we have out http://schoolname.knowledge.net.nz which is how most of the connections are made, but today I don't know where I managed to get this was http://www.schoolname.knowledge.net.nz, I didn't pick it at first, it was an email to the developers that pickup up the www. in front.

So things to note is come up with is a list of websites that you will be connecting with,

ie.
http://schoolname.knowledge.net.nz -knowledgeNET connection
http://mail.student.schoolname.school.nz - googleApps connection
and http://myportfolio.schoolname.school.nz - myportfolio connection

and make sure that you reference these in all you sites and developments from now on. you will need to note that the www. is not needed or supported.

This has been a great development opportunity and is allowing us to try different things within our lessons, rather than the worry of students not knowing passwords or forgetting information that was needed to be able to login successfully.

One of the next steps to look at is branding of these sites and being able to link between them, one suggestion has been to add links into KnowledgeNET for this to happen, this would then create that LMS portal, so students login to one place and use that to access the other services for their learning.

Single Sign On - watchdog iDp

2011-02-27T21:20:00.000+13:00

We have been in a process for the last couple of months, in reality since the knowledgeNET conference. We have been working with watchdog on implementing their Single Sign On service. This has been a busy development for all parties involved. It has required knowledgeNET to finish developing the requirements for SSO, in which they have completed and we are the first successful school to use Single Sign On with them, and it has now reduced some of the issues that we have had with passwords.

In the past we have had to add all of our students manually, well export them from our Student Management System, SMS, and we implemented the websync service just after it was released. This now makes provisioning students a lot easier. Though we still have an issue with the format of our student logins, which require someone to change manually.

Another issue we have found is the issues of the original development and focus of knowledgeNET, which was schoolsonline.co.nz, this is what is represented in the google search for our knowledgeNET system. This is causing a few headaches, but we are slowly working our way around this and updating our school website and login pages to show this change, we wish that there was a reload or a refresh when someone logged in through the schoolsonline page that would then point it straight away to our knowledgeNET site.

The second service that was activated was google apps. This has been a simple change over and is working well.

The third service is mahara, myportfolio.school.nz. This one is taking a little bit longer to get going and implemented. At the moment we have one student who is using the SAML login, which does not work, I am hoping that this week will be when we get all of it working. There is still one more service that we can get activated for our iDp service, however, I am unsure at present what we get...

Also with knowledgeNET we are after some real estate on their navigation bar, this will mean that we can include icons on the bar for students to access these service straight away. this has now been added as a development ticket for future work.

Wether it be, access-it library, wikieducator, or a number of other services. This will be a conversation that we next have at our ICT meeting.

mlearning and 2degrees mobile

2011-02-27T14:04:00.000+13:00

I have been working with 2 degrees for the last 2 years on a number of projects that I play with at school. The first was Get Lost! We managed to 2degrees to sponsor the SIM cards for the 2009 project. As 2degrees was a new network and they were wanting to get out into the market place. Last year, 2010, we also used 2degrees as well. However, it was a interesting experience this time dealing with a store rather than twitter and email. The face to face contact was great, explaining what I wanted to the manager of the store and dealing with him on the issues that we were having with some of the departments within 2degrees, one thing I learnt is that you have to give them a months heads up, as some departments have difficulty talking to each other. hopefully from last years experience this years will go a little more smoothly.

Why do I use 2degrees and their mobile network. Well, telecom and vodafone the cost of the SIM cards is too high, 2degrees have a better rate for the SIM card, plus I have started to see some of their details are a lot better. They are willing to work with me and solve solutions to the problems that I give them. Also, the SIM cards that I use are to meet the health and safety aspects of the field trips or activities that I run. I love seeing students in the outdoors and experiencing the Education Outside the Classroom that is now starting to become missing from schools.
If I need to contact a student or for them to contact me it is a quick phone call or text. It means that I don't have to have a lot of teachers out in the field with each group, I am finding this has better relationship with the key competencies of the New Zealand Curriculum. Students, I am finding enjoy using there cellphones for a personal use, but for an educational use they are not too sure. This is mainly due to the $10 text packages they are on, why do they want to use these valuable text for learning. Provide a SIM car with limited amount of funds on it and they want to use it. For the three day Get Lost! programme I provided $5 on each SIM and no student was without credit at the end of it, and I had received over a 1000 texts on my phone from them, including phone calls and PXT.

The latest is to take my year 13 students to a number of locations this year and give them a day to come up with the website. These are 6 hour based competitions that I am thinking of. Students will be given information before the event, like location and any information that is needed. the first one is to north head, this has a self guided walk, what the students will be required to do is to create virtual self guided walk through the information they find on the site as well as what is available on the doc website.

The second is to look at how a qr-code development at auckland museum would work. Students will be given a section of the museum to go through and develop information that could be accessed on an itouch using qr codes or entering in a code. There will be a limited number of exhibits that they can create content for, as well as having to access the museum database as well for more information. They will need to be fast and have access to a wifi network to access information as well as publish information.

Trying new things

2011-02-18T20:01:00.002+13:00

I have been working with our schools moodle, a couple of us in the department make use of this great educational tool. We have been busy trying new courses and activities. Though, I found today something rather interesting.

I started to do some work to enable an outside organisation to make use of the resources that we have available, a working New Zealand Moodle for Schools version and it being hosted outside the school. This is so they can access the Moodle for Teaching and learning course that was created as part of the moodleinschools.org.nz project, which the New Zealand Moodle for Schools version was created as part of.

The students logged in today and straight away I had questions, why was there a new category in the moodle instance, what did this mean, was it part of a field trip, what's going on?

What shocked me was that the students started there inquiry, who was the extra category for, why was it created, what was going to be the outcome of it.

When I teach, they just sit there, they don't talk, I try to engage and possibly one of two students answer back, the rest just listen. Why don't students do the same type of thing when I teach a new topic? Question, ask... is it because this is what happens in every other subject.

I enjoy the fact that i am trying something different with the year 13 students this year, the guiding questions that are up at the beginning of class and them having to blog the answers has been insightful. One of the biggest issues is i started the class this way 3 weeks ago and I had a new student added to the class today and is lost in what is required and how the students have already developed there own learning space, be a blog and google apps currently, but when mahara is all setup with the saml authentication I will be using it as part of the learning space.

But what of my classroom, I have this great online presence, but the classroom is bland and empty. I need to find a way of getting these great environments into the visual space.

Onto something else,

I have been using the mail merge add-in with our e-asTTle PDF documents and it has been working great. We had an issue today that it wasn't until lunchtime when a brief discussion with the network manager happened. Around period 3 we had everything go to a holt for around 5 minutes, found out that the student server had no space left on it in its c: drive. All the space was used. When I thought about it it was due to the 699 PDF documents that I was printing. The print queue for the printer I was using was on that server. I went back to check the printer and have found that 60 individualised e-asTTle reading tests had not been printed. So I have someone going through the print out and working out which of the tests have not been printed. Will have to get these printed off on monday.

And now another,

I know this may look like a broken post, but it is always one of ideas and developments that is related to me.
I use dreamspark with my students, I need to get them sorted out with accounts through live@edu, though do I, some of the programming students would do quite well gaining access to this software as they are interested and play with different things all the time. While others just need to the software that is available, like microsoft visual basic express and microsoft expression 4 ultimate to play with and develop on.

What I need to do is export this from our SMS who needs accounts and sort out the codes...
I wonder if I can create individual printed books for the students with there name already on it for the programming class through the mail merge program.

I realise that I am doing a lot of things but that is part of being an innovator, Now that we have Single Sign on working for knowledgeNET, google apps and hopefully myportfolio.school.nz I wont have to manage the import of student accounts for much longer, I can pass this over to someone else. However, what I find is the development of these programs a concern. It is one thing to implement them at school, but I also look at the form and function that they offer and what will work for me with the kit that I have.

I need 5 laptops that can be networked up easily to share an internet connection, I am looking at doing a field trip and need a way for the students to use what they have rather quickly. Think of it as a race, students will be given an area and have to develop a website rather quickly to show off what they found and how it has impact on collection.

Jb hi fi have laptops for <$400 and these would be all that is required for the students to use.
I wonder if this could be an idea...

busy much?

2011-02-16T20:07:00.002+13:00

1400 e-asttle tests individually named through mail merge to pdf(possibly some changes tomorrow), SSO data recreated as I screwed up the mlepOrgansiation, all students now in Active Directory(yay I didn't have to do this peronsally) classes set for relief tomorrow, loves moodle as all work is set and students have no way of saying that the reliever did so the work, library system fault emails have been sent to their helpdesk, knowledgeNET questions have been sent on for further information, and now for department annual report to write - Got to go to bed early for waka ama training, get up at 5am...

Thinking for web design

2011-01-30T17:01:00.000+13:00

As social networking becomes more common, I wnt students to think about how these types of things can be used for business. Also to see what impact these things have on business as well, good feedback vs bad feedback.

How can school use things like twitter, facebook and other social media tools. As we start to look down the possible advantages and disadvantages of social networking with school.

What different types of neworking is there?
Does location based social networking have advantages or disadvantages?
How could school use twitter?
Is there something that i am missing?

location based social media

2011-01-29T21:46:00.000+13:00

I am starting to look at how location based social media works, using the app foursquare I am looking at how this can be used with various businesses to look at grabbing people as well as finding out what works and what doesn't.
One of the things I am doing is adding places, like my school, so I can see how it works as well as gaining interest from the students in using it as an attendance tool to see who will be mayor of our school, wonder if I can wind my classes with there iphones and itouches when we have our wireless system up and running. would be interesting to see who will topple the mayor. I like challenges :)

a good day

2011-01-24T22:21:00.000+13:00

It has been a positive week for me, the new digital technology achievement standards have finally be released and some of the resources have been released as well. Be it in draft form at this stage. Though one of the things that I am finding a little bit difficult is how can we give feedback on these resources. The assessment crietia states that the assessment goes for 40 hours, however it is my belief that the teaching and learning needs to be described and that the assessment could be only 8 hours of the 40. That is one of the issues that I have. The other is that I am still no closer to how the external portfolios will work.

graphics to possibly use?

2011-01-22T22:07:00.001+13:00

what would be a good graphic for me to use with my courses this year, I have been thinking about a brand for my classes, something to help me make it interesting for more classes when I am doing powerpoint, moodle courses, internet pages, something that grabs students attention, previously I have had winnie, as well as a bee. Now I want something different and focused more around computing and design. ideas have been a robot, and toy story.

year 13 web

2010-12-26T16:15:00.000+13:00

I am looking at moving the year 13 course to a course that more looks at web 2.0 tools and developments. Students need to look at these things a little bit more to find out where things have come from, most students don't realise where we have come from and are unable to reflect on a sites design and audience to well.

Introduction to Web Design Using Microsoft® Expression® Studio 4: Module 1 History and Future of the Web

So I am looking at a number of modules that have been developed and using the guiding questions in each for the students to reflect on at the end of each lesson.

Introduction to Web Design Using Microsoft® Expression® Studio 4: Module 3 Designing for Communication

Students struggle with designing for communication, yes they can design a webpage, but what does it communicate.

Introduction to Web Design Using Microsoft® Expression® Studio 4: Module 6 The Design Process

The design process, students need to understand where this fits in and what is required in their own work

Introduction to Web Design Using Microsoft® Expression® Studio 4: Module 7 The Production Process

As normal, design and production almost go hand in hand, so these will go together quite well.

Introduction to Web Design Using Microsoft® Expression® Studio 4: Module 8 Web Publishing and Maintenance

The last module is one that students never think about at all until that last moment when they go to hand it in, who will look after it, how will they look after it. Maintenance is now more important than actual design, it is also something that people forget in our organsiation as well whenever I look at our own school website. It is a place to communicate with your target audience.

There is one other course that I am looking at this year, which is financial literacy, it is something that I am having to do...

Achieving your childhood dreams

Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams - 02/05/2009
With equal parts humor and heart, Carnegie Mellon University Professor Randy Pausch delivered a one-of-a-kind lecture that moved an overflow crowd at Carnegie Mellon University - and is now moving audiences around the globe.

something different for next year

2010-12-11T17:55:00.000+13:00

After another year of the three day learning around project 72 - get lost! I have found it pretty hard this year which resetting up and doing the development work again.
Although the students feedback has been positive, I am after another challenge. I think I have the beginnings of a challenge that will be somewhat different and go along the lines of the initial project guidelines.

The design principles

Projects should provide interactive, engaging learning activities which strengthen 'learning to learn' capabilities.
Projects should help students to make authentic, relevant connections between their learning and the world they live in.
Outcomes should conclude with an evaluation, using learner-derived indicators of successful learning and opportunities to celebrate achievements.

The following concepts also guided the design of projects:

opportunities for curriculum coherence by making links within and across learning areas
timetable suspension, allowing for increased scope and choice for learning
students and staff learning collaboratively
opportunities to nurture creativity and innovation
enhancing staff collaboration and collegiality
creating opportunities to connect with the needs and interests of junior students
multi-literacies in a knowledge age and opportunities to consider new approaches to assessment.

(Also the following adapted from Claxton, 2006)

problem solving tasks that encouraged reflective thought and action
actively questioning the learning, including traditional and less familiar types of questions
making links to real life contexts where outcomes and solutions genuinely matter
designing challenging and authentic tasks that provided multiple opportunities for students to learn.

This is an idea I last looked at a couple of years ago and have been thinking about as an extension project, possibly for a holiday programme or for a media/solutions class. Though I think the year 9 and 10 programme would be a good introduction for the students. We can look at the technology curriculum and use the development of the project. .

The more I start looking at teaching as inquiry through the http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz the more I start to wonder why we are using these terms at school when we don't fully understand them, the development that is required to start meeting these outcomes requires reflection.

definition of an unwebsite

2010-11-08T22:42:00.000+13:00

A couple of weeks ago I came across a tweet on twitter that talked about an unwebsite, I have struggled to find a definition of what a unwebsite is...

until now

A gradual movement towards a distributed web presence from a monolithic 'website'...

e-asTTle integration answers

2010-11-07T21:40:00.000+13:00

I have been contact with e-asTTle and our SMS provider, it seems that the SMS - asTTle integration ran ahead of itself. Below is the response...

The very first build of e-asTTle ran ahead of itself andf built a web service integration for SMS data exchange, but based on the one for asTTlev4. My team knew the limiations of this, having only ever got it to work for a few Integris schools. It is not the right pattern to ask SMS vendor to develop to, there was always supposed to be a better method coming (using ESIS). There has never been sufficient development resource to revisit this and put in place the exchange as it should be.

So why have it in the program and listed as a resource in all its documentation.

A new job decription

2010-10-25T19:32:00.002+13:00

I have been thinking about this for a while, a former student gave me an idea today. We have an IT manager, a technician and now a helpdesk operator.
I no longer have time for my networks systems work, though I still want to push something through as I see it is a need within the school.

Web admin/infrastructure manager. With all the changes and developments that I push through each year, let me count so far
intranet development - editor and administrator, wordpress
arts and culture website - administrator, wordpress
portal website - editor and administrator
access it library - content management system
subject option selection - own development mySQL/php
inquiry based learning selection - own development mySQL/php
KnowledgeNET moodle - developer of course and subject sites
google apps infrastructure manager - manages the google apps site at school
moodle - manager of the department moodle installation.
e-asTTle - administrator of the institution site
myportfolio- administrator of the institution site
SMS - administrator of the iPhone/iPad installation

If I keep thinking I think there will be a couple more. Who is responsible for these areas in other schools, is there a specific role in schools for someone like me?

Developments

2010-10-22T19:02:00.000+13:00

We are currently working a number of projects at school to help assist our students in their digital life.
We are looking at a IdP solution to link in our schools active directory, knowledgeNET, Google apps, myportfolio, and access-it. The reason for this is these are the four products that we are starting to use most within our learning.

Developments are working steadily and we have now been approached by our school LMS to be one of the pilot schools to get this going. This for me is great, but for our technician is a struggle as he is starting to find a number of things getting taken away from him, or is he. I see this as a free up of time to develop valuable resources, maybe I should get him programming in php and mySQL so I can leave a number of the projects that I run each year up to him. Option selection and our inquiry based learning are two that I can think of, though I am starting to wonder if we will need these developments anymore with the latest google apps that are being offered now.

I am also aware of what is required to get these things up and going and that it requires multiple parties to be talking to each other, just when one of the cogs drops things do go stale.
I need to get a meeting with our paperCut expert to go through and tidy up our printer costs.

I am also working with the integration of our schools SMS into access-it library which has been an adventure, the latest update was supposed to allow this to be an easier experience, but the developers have now removed the latest update from the site as they work through a number of issues, I don't think we have emailed them this much before. Currently having issues with the xDBC drivers?

Clickview is currently processing all of our videos and making them available for wireless computer use, which is going to take approximately 3 weeks to go through and convert our database of resources.

The other parts of my teaching are currently looking at the literacy requirements of the students, the year 13 web design students are currently developing a resource to assist students in doing there reading logs. One of the things that I liked is the idea of facebook to show the number of books that a student has completed as a way of getting students to compete against each other to get it done, will have to look at the code that will be needed to do this

e-asttle, import issues, we are currently working through an issue with e-asttle. We can not import our students correctly at the moment, this went from being a first level helpdesk inquiry to a vendor issue within 15 minutes. It has been an issue for a month now and still things have not really progressed.

Though on another tack with e-asTTle, I have been in contact with the bridging projects person at the ministry to investigate Single Sign On as an alternative login method than what we have now which is tricky and for the staff involved difficult to manage.

When will the Auckland Museum make there PUBLIC SSID open for people to use, make your website freely available for people to use within the museum as a way for the public to find out more about the exhibits and the collection that is housed.

I will stop there for now, just one thing more 67 does not equal 95.

project

2010-10-14T19:01:00.000+13:00

The registration for the inquiry based learning project has started up once again, with some small issues that I forgot to sort out. Student id number went from 4 digits to 5 digits this year and I managed to forget that this was the case, with a small number completing there selection yesterday it gave me a chance to look at what I had done, and managed to work out that there was the issue, a quick fix on two of the database tables, then removing those students that had already made there selection, luckily only affected two students, though it did affect he ability for 356 students to login.

Numbers, with 200 students having completed their registration of interest 25% of the students so far want to do the Get Lost project, Hopefully these numbers change with the other 504 students still to complete.

Planning is now underway for one aspect of the get lost programme and it has been affected by a kilikiti tournament at the auckland domain on the 1st of december. Also I plan to get a hold of next bikes to grab 10 bikes for an activity in the domain.

Curriculum around Small Basic

2010-10-08T23:51:00.001+13:00

Small Basic is, in my opinion, one of the really cool platforms for introducing programming to younger students. A simple IDE, a simple subset of BASIC, and built in turtle graphics all resonate with me. And a number of teachers around the world seem to agree. One thing we have been lacking though was some real curriculum support. Well that has changed. A set of 21 PowerPoint presentation with imbedded notes for teachers is now available. There are other resources available on the Small Basic page of the Beginning Developer Learning Center as well. If you use this curriculum or anything else associated with Small Basic would you let me know please? Also any feedback about what we can do better or differently. Thanks

Small Basic Curriculum (beta)

Google Code-in

2010-10-08T23:50:00.002+13:00

Participating Open Source Projects

Watch this space for updates on the organizations that will be participating in the contest this year. We announce the organizations on November 5, 2010.

Welcome

Google Code-in, Google's contest to introduce pre-university students to the many kinds of contributions that make open source software development possible, is starting on November 22, 2010. We are inviting students worldwide to produce a variety of open source code, documentation, training materials and user experience research for the organizations participating this year. These tasks include:

Code: Tasks related to writing or refactoring code
Documentation: Tasks related to creating/editing documents
Outreach: Tasks related to community management and outreach/marketing
Quality Assurance: Tasks related to testing and ensuring code is of high quality
Research: Tasks related to studying a problem and recommending solutions
Training: Tasks related to helping others learn more
Translation: Tasks related to localization
User Interface: Tasks related to user experience research or user interface design and interaction

Stay tuned to the Google Open Source Blog and subscribe to the contest announcement list for updates.

cache ideas

2010-10-08T00:06:00.000+13:00

Looking at what we are going to doing at the end of the year, i had a look at geocaching.com, there now seems to be a number of traditional caches at the domain which could be suitable to be used for the programme, though I think we may still place our own out for students to use this year, though i have started to look at the guidelines of hiding a cache, and it is required to be 161m away from another cache...

reflection

2010-09-29T00:35:00.000+13:00

I think sometimes, probably more often than not.

I have a favourite youtube video, it is one that apple made that get staff to think about where they see themselves in their school, what makes it great. It is called, Think ahead.

I like the end part of the video, where it has three statements;
Think big,
Thing bold,
Think ahead.

Do we think big sometimes or do we crush our dreams, ambitions, that teachable moment,
Do we think bold enough, or do we just think regular?
Thinking ahead, with so many unknowns, are we able to think ahead.

We have so many choices, options in our classes, are we able? What is the final goal?

Also, I want to put this out there, is it something that should be explored?

This is just an blue sky idea at the moment,

I want to try something different with the year 9 ict class in term 4

I want to use myportfolio.school.nz with yours and mine year 9 students, just to get them to look at what they have done during school that week.

I want them to blog once a week, I know that you are doing with with your seniors, but i also see that we are going to have to do this next year with our junior ict classes.

The simple questions:
What have you done this week?
What went well?
What didn't go well?
What could you improve?
What are you doing next?

Though i would love too see some of these questions more focussed around justin hinds key competency PowerPoint.

I see atoned 20 minutes of there lesson being used for this, it will also mean I have something to go to Peter with and work around getting more time in year 10 classes if he sees that there is other benefits from the course.

This can be started by the students focussing on there learning in our class, but I can see it opening up to what is working well in the school, I also see it opening up to some interesting experiences around project 72 and getting the students to reflect on there experience.

As i said this is only a blue sky idea at the moment, there is still some thinking to be done.
I am also looking at this as being a way to work out on how to embed practice in the school when we get the net books, imagine period 5 on a wendesday when all year 9 and/or year 10 students jump online to blog about there week at school.

Top 25 Ed Tech trends

2010-09-28T22:20:00.000+13:00

1. Touch Screens
Taking touch screens out of fast food establishments, and making that software affordable for every classroom and new device is long overdue. Touch Screens are here, and if it takes a few more dollars to add the feature—do it. Whether on notebooks, whiteboard, slates, or displays—touch is intuitive.

2. 3D Technology
There are different ways of doing 3D, with glasses, on display screen, one or two projectors. This technology is improving, so that it is now a viable classroom tool. The curriculum for 3D lags, but should catch up as more developers get education serious about this teaching tool.

3. Cloud Environments
Making teacher and student desktops 24/7 Web-available is only part of what a cloud environment can offer. This is not just having a tech product online; it is looking at delivering useful and seamless tech solutions, and at an incredibly low price. Naysayers present the data safety issue, but there are solutions there, too. Looking to the clouds is happening. Discussions are needed to define it better, but it certainly is something district leaders can understand.

4. Cell Phones/Smartphones
You can’t even call them phones anymore. They are handheld computers, with more capability than most computing devices in schools today. Preventing their use at schools isn’t an option. Some schools will provide them, and other schools will figure out how to manage student-owned.

5. Apps
How many apps do you have? Good question to ask students, teachers, and administrators today. Life is getting easier for developers of apps, which until recently used to be too tightly controlled by a few very large companies. The race is on to create more, and on the education side—educators and students will benefit. Apps can easily supply everything from a measurement converter to a student magazine subscription.

6. WiFi and Broadband
There are still many places where a connection to the Internet is better with a string attached to two cans, but it’s getting better. Figuring out how to get the Internet, which is now pretty much part of an education right, has the attention of the big broadband firms, but needs a nudge to get the discussion revved up. Yes, it may require a bit of Washington help for that, too.

7. GUI/UI
GUI (pronounced gooey), or graphical user interface is not new. Many non-geeks use the term today, because that’s what separates software and hardware from those that are great to use, and those that are impossible to use. For kids and teachers it may be under the hood tech, but companies that get the GUI right and make it easy—sell products. Running something out of the box has gotten realistic—and expected.

8. Slates/Tablets/Convertibles
The modern day slate, whether used with a stylus or finger touch has become another way to teach a class from anywhere in the class, and to get students away from desks, too. Convertible devices offering a tablet attached to a laptop present a more traditional way to go. There will soon be more slate devices to choose, and when the pricing gets appropriately low—that will make a difference for districts.

9. Netbooks
These light-running Web machines can’t be considered new anymore, but they continue to be great student computing devices. They’re inexpensive, and their battery life is almost scary-long.

10. Response Systems
Many companies have jumped into the response system market. These little gadgets once were just voting or polling devices, but now there are texting solutions, too. With a little practice, most teachers can gather data—on the fly—during a lesson—and report the findings immediately, redirect teaching, and finally upload it all to grading or an SIS location.

11. Interactive Presentation Solutions
We’re moving away from linking the word interactive with just one piece of hardware. The key today is having a total interactive solution in a classroom. That could be a whiteboard solution, along with teacher stations, a tablet, a projector, a document camera, and teamed up with devices in student hands. Don’t forget audio and media controls, as well as dynamic software for lessons and tying everything together.

12. Paperless Solutions
Most think printing less when thinking paperless. Now, if you’re a printer company, that doesn’t necessarily, keep you off a top trend list. Multifunction is the name of the game. While it’s true that printers still print, multifunction machines can do much more. They are becoming district, school, and teacher management devices. Beyond scanning documents, the “new printers” can create assessments, score them, and input data into student information systems, as well as e-mail the information to parents. Many districts are setting them up to manage district forms.

13. Education Communities
Whether it’s a few teachers creating a personal learning network (PLN), or many teachers joining larger organizations—teaching communities are a must. Education companies know that, and are offering, or thinking of offering these communities as part of purchasing packages. Beyond teacher chats and videos on how to use a particular product, the resources, and lessons/templates make them worthwhile. The best of these are all educator, and the worst can be merely commercials. Avoiding the latter brings educators and districts back for more.

14. Resource Portals Educators
love links (URLs) to resources they can use. While hunting for URLS in a traditional search can benefit the few, who are good detectives, having sites that are dedicated to posting great and useful resources for educators are bookmarked and shared. Go to resource portals pay off.

15. Professional Development
Professional development delivery methods have changed, and more companies are offering it. Whether specific or general, educators expect professional development, and administrators plan how to deliver it. More and more, professional development has moved out from the four walls and to the 24/7 delivery method. Video plays an important part. Schools no longer need to be closed, nor substitute coverage provided, so workshops can happen.

16. Alert/Notification Solutions
Contacting everyone, whether it’s just a simple message about an open house, a need to close school due to weather, or emergencies, such as a lock down situation is a necessity. There is no way a school secretary can do that today. Tying SIS, parent contact information, school/district communication, and doing it in many ways, and in many languages has to happen—immediately. These solutions have become quicker and more robust. If your district is talking security cameras on buildings, they’re also talking alert and notification systems.

17. Online Courses/Virtual Schools
Going online for courses used to be just for credit recovery and distance learning. It still works for getting more kids across the graduation stage, and filling in for lost classes due to budget cuts, but virtual learning is now considered mainstream. There are many reasons, including more individualized attention, great video demonstrations, and interactive lessons, but the bottom line is that for many students, offering learning 24/7, away from the 4 traditional walls—works. The virtual student population is growing.

18. Video Conferencing Solutions
Gone are the days of expensive tools to do video conferencing with other classes, schools, and countries. Almost every computing device is set up to do it today—and to do it easily. Some companies are providing better hardware to do it, too. The difference today, over the “can you hear me now” software and hardware experiences of the past—is it works—and you don’t have to be a computer guru to do it.

19. Social Media
You may not agree that social media tools, such as Facebook and Twitter have a place in schools, but they are becoming a simple connection for educators nationally and internationally. Sharing a lesson, a link, a suggestion, a how to, or just a hang in there on Twitter or Facebook has become part of an educator’s daily routine. As for use in the classroom, that’s still up for debate.

20. Battery Life
We need to thank some incredible tech experimentation for a lot, but more than anything for the boost in battery life. First probably noticeable in netbooks, it is almost unreal to think we’ve gone from batteries that would maybe go an hour to those that are pushing past 10. This is great news for the 6-hour school day, and back-to-back class schedules.

21. Video
Everyone can do video today. Just as everyone learned digital photography and simple editing, video options are becoming necessities. Many educators think of video as an expected component to daily lessons—certainly their students do. There are companies that fill video needs for those lessons, and it has become increasingly easy for teachers and students to add their own.

22. Security, Network Guarding and Management
Making networks secure and keeping students cyber safe can keep district tech leaders up at night. Options for gate keeping a district’s tech investment at a central location, using fewer tech support specialists can do it, and without breaking the bank. Classroom management tools can do the same for labs and classroom environments, where the number of computers to control has increased, and down time is not an option. It has also made it possible to create thin client computing environments that have no lag in computing power. Stringing together many monitors off of one sufficiently set up computer can be budget smart.

23. Assessment and RTI
Assessment and what to do with them continues to be the big education question,. Today, there are many methods and ways competing to most effectively test and prescribe to student needs. There is always the overhanging warning to poorly performing districts and schools as well, which keeps RTI providers on their toes. Some companies have added assessment and response to intervention to their solutions, while other companies provide it as their sole solution. While it’s a district preference and choice, all are Web-based today, because keeping data in a file drawer doesn’t get it shared—and acted upon.

24. District Websites, Blogs, Branding and Media
How a community perceives a district is important. Creating a public presence demands that a district and school have online place. It can’t be stagnant; it must be active. Media and branding are good for businesses, and also for education. Some districts have people who can do these things internally, but there are a number of companies that can help create a very professional look for districts to share with the community. The key is that these sites need to share, but also look professional today. Gone are the days of slap something up—just to get there. Today, the Website represents the district more than ever.

25. eReaders
Some would argue that a netbook would be better than an eReader in class, because it can do more. Well, if you just want something to fill a reading need in class, or in a resource room, an eReading device makes sense. Downloading books is simple and inexpensive, and eReaders are easy to use. Look for more of them in class. It’s always about using the right education tool for the right situation.

Note: Thank you Nano Tech
Small is definitely better. Devices, screen sizes, and gadgets are smaller—taking up less classroom real estate. Teachers, students and administrators are pretty much wearing technology today.

from http://blogs.scholastic.com/royaltreatment/2010/09/top-25-ed-tech-trends.html

Guidelines for Effective Adolescent Literacy Instruction

2010-08-10T10:04:00.000+12:00

Guidelines for Effective Adolescent Literacy Instruction

(GEALI'S)
I am posting them up on my blog as I cannot find any description of information anywhere else about these. They have been made up by a provider - team solutions

1. Instruction provides students with extensive opportunities to engage with a wide range of appropriately challenging written text.

2. Instruction is differentiated to address individual literacy need, interests & experiences.

3. Effective literacy instruction clarifies and shares literacy learning intentions and criteria for success.

4. Instruction provides students with specific feedback about the language aspect(s) of their learning.

5. Instruction supports students to make effective use of how texts are organised (e.g. heading, different paragraph structures).

6. Instruction develops students’ skill to make links to prior knowledge and/or build necessary background knowledge

7. Instruction develops students’ vocabulary and vocabulary-solving skills.

8. Instruction develops students’ skills to employ key comprehension strategies.

9. Instruction develops students’ skills to flexibly use and integrate written, oral, and visual modes.

10. Instruction develops students’ skills in both receptive and productive language use.

11. Instruction develops students’ skills to engage with text beyond a literal/factual level.

m-learning and class

2010-08-05T06:59:00.000+12:00

Sorry, I don't really know what title this would come under, but I came across this today on twitter from someone,

november- classwork should become homework and vice versa with the cellphone being the backpack. now that idea can blow room full of minds! http://twitter.com/nathanmarting/status/20316649851

it has got me thinking and I hopefully will come back to this blog and reflect on the statement a little more

it is from a presenter that works here http://novemberlearning.com/resources/archive-of-articles/digital-learning-farm/

subject option choice .8a

2010-07-27T07:16:00.000+12:00

carried out changes to the database and index page due to the changes of levels instead of years. Some stuff to still do surronding information that will be displayed to the students. Preloading of some students subjects needs to occur, this is the new6 field in the students table.

mlearning

2010-07-11T20:24:00.000+12:00

I went to a conference on Wednesday about mlearning, this was through the university of waikato.

One of the sessions I went to has still got me thinking.

these were some of the questions that were posed to us in groups. some of these I would love to use with teachers in some ICTPD later in this term.

Ahh, the slide that almost got me in some serious trouble, the first brown line in this slide talks about a digital curriculum.

scratch resources

2010-06-28T20:50:00.000+12:00

I am about to embark on something different,

1) Programming concepts and skills supported in scratch(pdf) (doc)
What problem solving, project design skills, fundamental ideas about computers and programming, and specific programming concepts does Scratch support (and for the latter does not support)? This is an excellent summary, highly recommended, you need to download for the examples (code snippets) provided too, which are really good. Also notethis discussion thread on the Scratch forum about this document, especially the comments by kevin karplus and responses by natalie, the document author, to his suggestions

Scratch supports these Specific Programming Concepts:
sequence, iteration (looping), conditional statements, variables, threads (parallel execution), synchronisation, real-time interaction, boolean logic, random numbers, event handling, user interface design

Scratch does not currently support data structures (arrays, etc.), procedures and functions, recursion, inheritance, defining classes of objects, exception handling, parameter passing and return values, text input, file input/output

2) Scratch Programming Projects
Ten excellent projects described in just the right amount of detail, with requirements and extras:

"Chasing/Eating" (Pac Man Type Game)
Red Light/Green Light
Pong
Target Game
Communication Project
Animation of a short story
Virtual Musical Instrument
Virtual Board Game
Basic Space Target Game
Shape Drawing Robot (Polygon Robot)

3) Shark eats fish
Introductory tutorial, clearly explained with screenshots

4) Comparison of different languages (thread in Scratch forum)
This comment by pkimelma presents a well thought out sequence for teaching Scratch using a games theme.

Other comments in this thread compare Scratch with Phrogram (which has 3D graphics), Alice, Starlogo and others.

5) Kevin and Abe Karplus Scratch page looks to have a nice collection of scratch exemplars

resources of ideas for development by students

1) Use the Letter shapes to write your first name on the page. Then introduce some special effects such as making the letters wobble and change their appearance.

2) Point, click and move
Make an object both point and glide towards the mouse position when you click on the stage
Hint: Motion > point towards
Hint: Sensing > mouse down?

3) Make Dan or Anjuli or Cassy or ballerina dance to a beat, using all of their dance shapes. Include a suitable background that changes colours as the lights flash.

4a) Make two animals have a forwards and backwards conversation
Hint: Use broadcast, (ask for help if you don’t know how broadcast works)
4b) Make it an interesting conversation with each animal speaking at least 3 times and making gestures too

5) Make a sprite gradually grow in size and then shrink

6) Make 2 different balls move around on the stage
a) the first ball moves in straight lines but bounces randomly whenever it hits the edge
b) the second moves randomly, gliding from one position to a new random position continually

7a) One sprite chases another sprite around the stage. The first sprite moves in straight line but bounces off the edge randomly. The chasing sprite chases the first sprite but is moving slower.
b) Extension – if the chasing sprite catches the other sprite then it says something sensible and makes a suitable sound

8a) Play all the different drum sounds automatically
Hint: create a variable for the drum number
b) Extension – keep recycling through all the drum sounds automatically

9a) Count down on a timer. A rocket takes off when you reach zero
Hint: Use the number icons in the letters folder
9b) Your rocket has pulsating exhaust and disappears at the top of the screen

10) Add, multiply or subtract two variable numbers
Hint: Just to do addition only you will need 4 variables: firstNum, secondNum, answer (computer calculated) and myAnswer (human calculated)

11) Variable coloured squares
a) Write a script that can draw a square of any size
Hint: Make a variable for the side length
b) Use the variable square script to draw a series of square with variable sides, with a single click
c) Now add variable pen colour and pen shade to the variable square script and use it to draw a variety of different coloured squares, with a single click

12) Draw lines of random thickness in random directions with random colours. The pen must be lifted up and moved for each new line.
Hint: pen group contains set pen color, set pen size, pen up, pen down
Hint: colours range across the spectrum (ROY G BIV) starting with red = 0. There are about 190 colours in total and you need to display them all!

13A) Make a race
a) choose two suitable sprites, they must have at least 2 costumes to simulate motion
b) the sprites move at random speeds, you can’t predict the winner
c) make a finish line, using a new sprite is best
d) suitable background music
e) when the winner crosses the finish line it announces that it won
f) reset scripts to start again

13B) Extension: Make it a multi-lap race, the number of laps can vary
g) make a variable to set and count the laps (use this on just one of the sprites otherwise you will be counting the laps twice)
h) use “x position” with an if tile rather than “if on edge bounce” to manage the turning and lap increase value
i) hide the finish line so that it only appears for the final lap

14A) Play the scales on a piano
a) Check out the sound > play note tile
b) Teacher has supplies a graphic of a keyboard. Import it to your scratch project.
c) Program the computer keyboard so that it plays a series of notes on the piano keyboard
d) As the notes are played alter the keyboard graphic to make it appear they are being pressed and they revert back to blank when the key is released
e) Add some suitable background graphics

14B) Extension
f) As the notes are played a sprite dances to the tune created by the notes, ie. each note triggers a particular movement
g) The names of the notes are spoken by a new sprite as they are played
h) Find a way to play ALL the notes on the keyboard

for more ideas http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/search/label/scratch

Where am I at

2010-06-14T22:06:00.002+12:00

1 reports
2 Application development
3 Course design
4 future

1. reports are now coming to a close, yes those dreaded things that teachers spend a whole lot of time to complete, for students to read in less than 10 seconds, and then the wonderment if they get home for parents to read and see. that's if they get to see the reports. These have bee a struggle for me this year as the changes with the Students Management System and they way school does reports have hit. I was not at school last year around this time, and I will tell you something, it is a shock for them to come up, get proofread, make changes to the ones that are needed, and deal with those staff that start getting angry at you for making there jobs harder because you kept him/her within the comment, ok that one was not me.

2. Application Development
Changes to the option choice selection need to be made by Thursday night, with a new layout and design this year we need to make the changes, though one slight problem... I got given the change document last Friday. I have yet to get my head around the changes and still have not been told what to do with the new subjects, as well as who needs access to it. I will get a large amount of work done tomorrow on it, when I get myself around excel and create the 10-15 course for each departmentt that they can put in. though i now see one giant problem just typing this in, I have year level subjects and school wants to change it to level subjects, maybe I need to create a form that staff can put the information into in google apps that I can then take and put into my system, I don't think that this is gonna work too good right now.

3. course design
oh man are there some changes coming or what, with the introduction of digital technology in the technology curriculum, means that we are having to redo some of our courses. the biggest change will be to the year 11 course, or at our school the Level 1 course. We are looking at three sections of the new standards, Digital Information, Digital media, and Programming and computer science. Though I have no idea what language or media we are going to use yet. but we have also been asked to look at the progression of courses for the future as well.
We have some time coming up in which we can talk about this as a department and make the changes that are needed to support the New Zealand Curriculum 2007.

4 future
can't say anything yet, still in the process of writing.

Ok, Ok, I got runners up in a award for innovative programme, now one of the things that this is about is a course that looks at environmental issues at the school, we have a stream down the back, students are to design an application to record the data that they collect down at the stream, Now I have not had time to get this implemented yet, though term 3 and 4 will look just about right, and it can carry out next year as well. It is a case of getting the students on task and developing there creative thing at the moment.

The book and moodle course that I am using for the programming course and working well, though they slower students are starting to slacken off and the motivated students are getting crazier in there programming, and the exercises are getting harder. I have an issue around some of the students not doing as much as they could do, because I cannot move them, if I move them it affects the year 13 cprogramming class as well due to I am using virtual hard drives to do teh work.

I would love to play around with some more software, especially when it comes to flow charts. I want to get Visual Studio Learning Pack 2.0 as I can see some applications within it useful.

I really want to play with
Visual Programming Flow Chart is a supplementary teaching tool designed to help students understand program control flow. It generates flow charts for functions and saves them in the JPG picture format. This tool is easily activated from the Visual Studio Integrated Development Environment (IDE) by simply right-clicking on a function name and choosing “Generate flow chart…” from the context menu. The resulting flowchart can be customized by changing its colors and other effects. This visual tool provides an intuitive way to explore source code, to examine its control flow, and to identify logic errors.

untitled

2010-05-10T20:16:00.000+12:00

I have been working on a moodle course for the year 12 programming class. It has been couple of years in development, but finally this year I developed a 148 page book full of homework, assessment tasks, interface guidelines, and incorporated some english work.
It has been developed in the school LMS as part of the trail, however it has not been smooth sailing. The issues around the setup and development has lead me to question why I am using such a resource.

The department has there own moodle server running as part of our system, the reason why we did this was that we could not wait for the LMS provider to allow us access, so we installed it and have been using it ever since.

It requires the odd update and installation of users, but we have this down to an art now. However the school one is managed through an interoperability websync, which is causing issues. I am starting to question why we even have this as it just is not working to its best. We always seem to be bug finding and finding configuration issues.

I am getting to the point where I am going to leave the schools LMS.

The latest is surrounding professional development. I sat in a PD session where people where showing off what the system could do, and heard more about what it could not do. And I was thinking the entire time, but it can do this, it can do that. It is the person running it within the school that keeps saying no it can't. They do not even know what it can do.

I would like to take all my work off it and move it to the other installation, but I think I need to carry on doing what I am doing, running the course through the current installation, but I will be backing it up and doing a restore on the department installation.

twitter feeds

2010-05-06T22:55:00.001+12:00

an idea for future twitter feeds for any event
http://visibletweets.com/

busy times

2010-03-20T20:08:00.000+13:00

We have just completed one of the largest exercises at school, e-asTTle testing.
This involves testing all year 9 and 10 students in their reading and numeracy skills. The reading test was done on paper, and required the students to sit a 50 minute test, and then for the multichoice results to be entered into the e-asTTle program. Whereas the Maths department did a purely online test which required access to computer rooms, and the students to login and sit the test. I think I outlined the issues surrounding the online test in a previous post last year.
We never seem to be able to get a successful import from out student management system into e-asTTle. A number of issues surrounding NSI numbers caused this testing to be delayed a week due to an update in our student management system and ENROl sis not want to talk to each other properly, also information that the previous schools put into ENROl was not accurate enough. We have a number of students that seem to change names when they enter secondary school. So all these changes had to be entered.
e-asTTle have an issue surrounding NSI Numbers and ENROl as well. For every 100 students imported, it pops up and error, which normally requires you to remove the students NSI number from the e-asTTle csv file and upload it. Though you cannot export a student from the SMS without a NSI number. Catch 22 situation.

Once we had a successful import it was all on,
Issues surrounding the next set are school related,
Failure of communication from deans on changes to Year 10 classes, all the login papers had been printed and supplied to teachers, this also meant that a number of students in the english tests could not be found by the data entry people which required the test to be reassigned to students and marked by me.
Also meant that some year 10 maths teachers did not have the login codes for students, which meant issues for IT support to be in the room at the start of all tests.
Year 10 Maths test had a written answer question, which required it to be marked before the scores were released to teachers. Marked over 660 questions, which if you take too long or press the wrong key, you have to redo again.
Getting access to computer rooms, we selected two rooms to carry out the test, but already some of these had been booked already so early in the term, which does place some stress on planning and development of lessons.
Technical Issues surrounding internet access, this was resolved after the first day due to the virtualisation project over the holidays.
Assembly for all female students in year 10, which impacted on the test, meant there had to be a catch up later one.
Catch ups, organsied catch ups, but some teachers failed to read emails, or not understand to just send the student, they did not need the login sheet, as we have all the details available to us.
More understanding by the teachers why this is so important,
Training for teachers on how to set there own test and run it.

Catch up

2010-03-11T11:00:00.001+13:00

It has been a while since I have last posted,

I have been busy getting the schools google apps domain up and running this year, with the changeover of student logins to an new schema, though I can see this needing to be changed again next year with possible changes throughout the sector.

The other stuff we have been working on is getting moodle in schools up and going, www.moodleinschools.org.nz this has been a great benefit to the department as this is where we can see things moving to in the future. We already have other departments wanting to jump onto our server to make use of the various features.

myportfolio.school.nz is a new one that we are trying out with the art department as a way to keep an electronic prortfolio. We signed up yesterday and already have the students in and starting to put work up. It has been a bit of a mission to get the usernames and passwords up, as our temporary passwords for students did not meet there criteria.

e-asTTle has also been a thorn in my side this year, with the requirement of NSI numbers to be included, and not having all this going straight away with our SMS and ENROL is has caused it to be put back a couple of weeks. Maths department are doing it online with multichoice questions, though I had to mark 500 students maths papers this morning due to there was a written question still left in the test. English are doing there reading test on paper and getting outside people to enter the results in e-asTTle. It was due to a professional development meeting yesterday morning that we realised that these haven't been entered yet, as they want to present the results next week.

Other things have been going on as well, but that is another post...

Software design project

2009-12-29T20:20:00.002+13:00

I don't know if I have posted this before,

The Task: Scavenger Hunt

Mobile phones with inbuilt global positioning systems (GPS) are becoming more and more widespread. This means that you can use services like Google Maps on your mobile phone to see exactly where you are. It also makes it possible to play scavenger hunt games with your mobile phone. Imagine you could have a game on your mobile phone that gives you quests and clues depending on your position in the real world, and guides you through the scavenger hunt. Imagine that you could create such games yourself with your mobile phone, and send them to your friends.

Your task is to make a proposal how a program for a mobile phone should look like that allows the users to create scavenger hunt games. The user should be able to specify a sequence of quests. Each quest should have a GPS position and a question that the players have to answer. During the game, when a player enters the correct answer, then the position for the next quest is revealed.

In your answer you should:

explain the different functions you think this system should have;
describe the user interface elements of the program that allows you to use these functions;
give arguments for your design.

https://www.se.auckland.ac.nz/designChallenge/2009/

I would like to do this with my year 12 students as a test during the year.

The Buzz Contest

2009-12-28T19:43:00.002+13:00

The buzz contest is not your playstation game, it is a contest in which you have to think about numbers,
This is what I am considering as a competition or test for my year 12 programing class

For the purposes of this, I will be using only Buzz, Wizz and Pop

The Buzz Contest is the mathematical equivalent of a spelling bee. Its 1992 revival at Texas A&M University marked the 10^th anniversary of the last time Texas high school students had played the game at the 1982 Lamar Mathematics Day competition. Since then, this contest has been a popular feature of the Texas A&M University Math Tournament.

The general structure of the game is as follows: The students line up and count off. The first student calls N, where N is an integer between 1 and 20, which is randomly determined, the second student calls N+1, and so on. If a student gets his or her number wrong, he or she is eliminated and the next student in line must say the number the previous student should have said. All of this is done very quickly; a student may be eliminated for "delay of game".

So far, the game as described is too easy. To complicate matters, some numbers are designated as special. When it is a student’s turn to call out a number and that number is special, the student should not say the number, but should instead say some combination of codewords relating to the number. The codewords and their meanings are:

BANG: The number contains a 5 (in its base-10 representation) or is divisible by 5.

BUZZ: The number contains a 7 (in its base-10 representation) or is divisible by 7.

CRASH: The number is prime.

FIBBI: The number is a Fibonacci number. The Fibonacci numbers are constructed as follows:
F₁ = 1, F₂= 1 and F_n+2 = F_n+1 + F_n.. So F₃= 2 , F₄= 3, F₅= 5, etc.

Thus, the first 6 Fibonacci numbers are 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8.

POP: The number is the product of two distinct primes.

SQUAWK: The number is the sum of two squares. For example, 9=3² + 0², and 5 = 2² + 1²

WHIZZ: The number is square-free (is not divisible by a perfect square other than 1).

ZIP: The number is a perfect k th power with k greater than or equal to 2.

These codewords are not all in force at the beginning, but are introduced or removed gradually at the will of the moderator and in any order. For example, suppose Michael, Deena, Christa, Heath and Amy are still in the game. The codewords Fibbi, Bang, Pop and Zip are in force, and it is Deena’s turn on number 29. The sequence would sound something like this…..

Deena: 29

Christa: Bang

Heath: 31

Amy: 32 (This is wrong; Amy is eliminated.)

Michael: Zip

Deena: Pop

Christa: Pop, Fibbi

Heath: Bang (This is wrong; Heath is eliminated.)

Amy: Bang Pop (The next number is 36.)

Please note that a lot of students are likely to fall in the 40’s and 50’s as it is very easy to lose track of what number we’re on. The proctor will not advise the students. It is the responsibility of each student to keep track for themselves even as others are eliminated.

The discussion at this link should help you determine which, if any, of the code words apply to a particular number.

http://www.math.tamu.edu/hscontest/buzz_contest_rules.html

Holiday Reading

2009-12-26T01:30:00.000+13:00

From a csta post http://blog.acm.org/archives/csta/2009/12/holiday_reading.html

Ah, the holiday break. Time to relax, catch up on sleep, and perhaps read a book or two. If you are looking for some interesting reading related to CS education, here are three books that I read over the summer and really enjoyed:
Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, and Computing, by Jane Margolis, Rachel Estrella, Joanna Goode (CSTA Board Member), Jennifer Jellison Holme, and Kimberly Nao. MIT Press, 2008.

Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell. Little, Brown & Co., 2008.

Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion, by Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeen, and Harry Lewis. Addison-Wesley, 2008.

As a CS teacher, if you haven't read Stuck in the Shallow End yet, you really should. It gives a detailed analysis of factors that have led to our shortage of CS students, especially among women and minorities, and describes the project currently underway in L.A. to try and address these factors. All of Malcolm Gladwell's books are interesting and fun to read. This one looks at characteristics that lead to success (and so complements Margolis' book very nicely). Blown to Bits is a great description of the technological changes going on in society and how they impact our lives. Lots of fascinating facts and anecdotes you can impress your students with ;-).

I have read stuck in the shallow end, I brought the book off amazon, however this time I want to read blown to bits, the dollar at the moment is not good, so I have looked at books.google.com for a copy and found one. Blown to bits-books.google.com

2010 course

2009-12-21T22:11:00.004+13:00

since I am not teaching year 13 programming next year, I have brought some of the course forward to year 12.

I am planning on using the csta curriculum, or parts of it to help teach my students.

Download the Curriculum here (2 MB)

I am planning on starting with the problem solving part of the course first. This is due to the fact that I want to scare some of the students with what could be involved in the course, as with any course with computers students think that they will just be on the internet playing games. This is false.

The first problem is how to break a 200g cadbury chocolate bar into 12 equal pieces, using he least breaks possible, this is sounding like it is going to be a christmas problem that I will use my family to solve.

I also have to remember that there are two other things that have to be done during this time, 1 is the wai care visit, and second is the design of the screen of a software development project for the university of auckland. These are starting to sound like friday challenges. A new challenge every friday to spice the course up?

Small Basic

2009-12-15T22:49:00.003+13:00

I have been looking at a number of blogs surrounding programing and they have been talking about a development called small basic, a simple easy to use programming language, which would be great for a year 11 course.

Small Basic is a project that's aimed at bringing "fun" back to programming. By providing a small and easy to learn programming language in a friendly and inviting development environment, Small Basic makes programming a breeze. Ideal for kids and adults alike, Small Basic helps beginners take the first step into the wonderful world of programming.

Microsoft Small Basic pdf getting started

http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/0/6/90616372-C4BF-4628-BC82-BD709635220D/Introducing%20Small%20Basic.pdf

A great blog to look at different things dealing with small basic http://blogs.msdn.com/smallbasic/

also http://blogs.msdn.com/paulcornell/archive/tags/Small+Basic/default.aspx who seems to be posting a new method a day at the moment.

Small basic http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/cc950524.aspx

the national walking trail

2009-12-13T19:27:00.002+13:00

While working on design the year 13 web design course, I planned to do some work with the old walkways New Zealand project that there was in the 1980's. There is information on this in the previous blog posts around april/may/june I think.

There is a national walking trail currently being created in New Zealand at the moment, http://www.teararoa.org.nz/ The Long Pathway.

This will be give me some guidance on how I would like the project to end up. Also I have to remember there is some designs in one of my visual diaries about this idea and design.

Google supporting computer science week

2009-12-09T16:15:00.001+13:00

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/celebrating-computer-science-education.html

Love this section

Integrating computing curriculum across K-12 core subjects
A group of Google engineers and K-12 "teaching fellows" is working on building and testing models of curriculum to encourage innovation. These curriculum models revolve around "computational thinking", a problem-solving technique that draws on the thinking and analysis skills that computer scientists use everyday. Our goal is to integrate computational thinking across subject areas in K-12 by connecting these skills, which are already a part of core curriculum, more explicitly to computer science. We're also taking this a step further by integrating simple programming concepts in appropriate areas of core K-12 curriculum, such as algebra. Our hope is that by making computer science more visible and showing its connection to every subject area, students will experience the full power and utility of technology in areas of interest to them. Integrating CS into other subjects will also have the key added benefit of leveling the playing field, so that many more students will have the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of computing.