subject option choice .9a

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

More at https://csforallteachers.org/sites/default/files/legacy/unit_2_day_3.pdf

Idea for a project

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

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