Check against the specs

I found one of my documents today from one of the development meetings that was held last term, I have been checking to see that I have done everything on it

Online Senior Option Selection 08
ReasonTo reduce work load for staff both ancillary and teaching. Bonuses: Can be done at last minute

Considerations
Design: ease of use, allows for multi level, reminds/controls of subject prerequisites, shows present subjects.

Security:
insuring student can only select there own selection, importing into Kamar

Method:
when, how, via English classes/ option choice afternoon, via the internet?

Procedures:
Who has selection rights, student select? Teacher control., Parent input. When will changes take place? Before or after entry into Kamar

Stages:
T2 wk 9? Hand out option books
T3 wk 2-4 Teachers inform/promote their class/level(Maths, Eng) selections
T3 wk 4 Form teachers advise (From teacher)
T3 wk 5 Students make selection online
T3 wk 5 English/maths teachers make selections online?
T3 wk 6 Data imported into Kamar, Option lines, class list.
T3 wk 7 Printout to subject heads? Comments
T3 wk 8-9 Kamar updated
T3 wk 10 HODs sort teachers requirements?

---

I also found a timeline, though I look at it and I wonder when I would have had the time. Though i wonder when I started developing this?
I think back to one of the first meetings that I had with the SLT incharge and the questions and work that was done back then
it looks to be around the 13 June from a previous blog post. That means I have developed this in around a month?
Now looking at the calendar below I am doing well. This was a calendar that was developed before my input.

Timeline for senior option selection

Date Task
T2 w3 Preliminary planning
T2 w4 Discussion with other stake holders
T2 w5 Main issues identified, initial design, procedures
T2 w7 Mock up of data entry, draft procedures
T2 w8 Demo to main stake holders
T2 w9 Trail run, data importing, reports
T3 w1 Trail run 2 with selected students
T3 w3 First run with whole class

Subject Choice system up to version 0.2a

Today was all about getting the fuctionality of the system up and going and the requirement of the various year levels working properly, below are just some of the features that i had been working on, some took me more time to implement as I had to learn how to use them using phpmyadmin just to get the syntax right.

i also started looking at getting the uptodate unit and achievement standards in, however the files are rather large, I am looking at approx 42 meg of text and these have a problem, they also include all the expired unit and achievement standards

I am working on having a release date this week due to the timeframes that are involved.

Also you may asking why am I versioning this app, the reason is I don't want to break it all, just a small component, that means if I do do some major damage like I did earlier in the build, I deleted a whole section and saved it, notepad only undoes once, not multiple times.

Overview of the system

login-form.php logging in

login-exec.php check the database to see if the user exists, and checks against the md5 password

member-index.php the main form that the student uses to fill in all the required fields

member-confirm.php a page that displays the information so the student can check the details, if there is anything wrong they hit the back button

member-finished.php does all the entries into the database

Version 0.1c

• If they are year 13 then they have to have 13stu
• If they are year 12 they have to have 12eng
• If they are year 11 they have to have 11mat 11eng 1gym/fin/hea
• Can a year 13 take year 12 subjects, yes this has been included, all years can take the previous years class, apart from year 11 who cannot take year 10.
• AJAX working to display information about subjects. This just needs a clean up, as there is an issue with formatting not coming through, will have to implement HTML tags to clean up.
  
• School and version created in a table, and reads into footer.php which is included on all pages at the bottom of the page.

Version 0.1d

• Included a way to make changes to subjects you have already selected, using a function in mySQl that is MySQL INSERT … ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE syntax http://www.bitbybit.dk/carsten/blog/?p=113
• If you have filled in the form already , it will display what you chose last time
• Added in reserve options, in case you don’t get the options that you chose. These have been implemented as reserve1 and reserve2
• You don't have to fill in all options, there is no error checking on that yet. Is this a requirement
  

Version 0.2a

• added in returning to school, this will be shown as Yes, No, Not Sure, but when it goes into the database it is a number, 1, 2, 3. What you selected when you filled in the form originally will be shown when you enter in again.

Still to do,

make more of it using session ids rather than $_POST information through?
Tidy up Curriculum Guide - implement fck editor
Career goal? does this need to be added
Cleaning up the interface, css and maybe boxes around certain items this is the fieldset and legend html tags this allows you to put the information into boxes, I have still to figure out how many of these to create and where to put them, but it seems simple enough, 1 box around the 6 subjects, and another around the two reserve input fields, also are you planning on returning next year, for the selection. As well as another one around the details of the subject. Might use pencil in firefox, an addon to do some design work. on how it might look.

Final outputs - KAMAR and who hasn't filled it in.

• http://en.allexperts.com/q/PHP4-3507/CSV-File-2.htm ideas on how to put a file out to a csv file.
  
• for the KAMAR export use "SELECT concat( '2009T_', id ) AS id, sub1, sub2, sub3, sub4, sub5, sub6, res1, res2 FROM subject_new"; though I am probably going to have to put a year
  Done Completed - Version 0.2
  
• Note this needs to be fixed, add identifier in so we can use it for multiple years, maybe in the custom table
  
• Have used the same code but modified to see is filled = 0, this is to see if teh students have not filled in the form
  Done Version 0.2b

Subject Choice system

I spent the majority of today populating the tables required for the students subject choice system, inputting all the subjects, entry requirements, content, assessments and costs. this takes quite a while, it is having to be copied and pasted out of a word document into phpmyadmin. One of the issues with this is that all the assessment information is in a table, which I need to convert to text with a space separating the information instead of a tab. But it has got me thinking, maybe the next iteration of the subject choice system is to see how many standards are used and getting the staff to input just the standard number and the rest of the information comes up. Which means our curriculum guide would be up to date always. Just need a scheme to have the data to be imported correctly.

Which leads me to some of the issues I have had today, the number of options in the curriculum guide does not match up with what I have been given. There are two year 12 SCI classes, in which there should be one SCI and SCU. And does the hospitality course have a Nil cost or is it $35?

I have managed to get all the students subject information in correctly after a good couple of hours, some issues have been, how many subjects does a year 10 student do, 9 or 10? Which you export information out of KAMAR in CSV format there is a space between the comma and the subject, example , 12PRO, the space is counted as a character in my mysql table so I get the result of , 12PR, which of course is wrong.

And making all the students date of births md5 encrypted, hasn't been a easy job, considering the date of '12/12/1990' should be inputted as md5('12/12/1990') which I have had to use wordpad to do the adding of md5(' ') which has been fun as there is a student with a date of birth in 1987 which I missed and caused chaos to my importing. 2 hours to get the data scheme right with the right spaces. will have to work out a better way as this will be required to be entered by someone else next year, or do I make a macro in excel to do this? As well as encoding the md5 checksum?

But, it has been solved, and added, though I do not think I will be changing the details on these tables for a while now. Just maybe adding the odd new student in one by one might be safer.

And we now have working login system with session ID's. This has been worked through by the use of someone elses script, which after a bit of reading and some working through has revealed itself to be quite useful. http://phpsense.com/php/php-login-script.html

Though it did require me to work through how to decrypt a md5, the password on the account that is created is passme

I now have integrated the work that I have done already on the other pages to select the options, and insert the options into a transfer table.

To be done next is:

• To get the Ajax components working, so when you select the 5 letter code of the subject it comes up with what the subject is and the entry requirements. I am using this tutorial http://www.w3schools.com/PHP/php_ajax_database.asp to try and word out what I need to do though I keep ending up with an error
  
• A way to make changes to the subjects that you have already selected.
  
• School and versioning information included in a table to make changes specific to each school that it is installed.?
  
• Are you returning to school, career goal?
• What qualifications are you going for insert into the subjects table? NCEA level 1, 2, 3 see this for example http://otumoetaicollege.co.nz/subjectchoiceresources.html
• Next iteration, max number of students to take a subject. As this system could be used to handle suspended timetable days in which First in, First Serve needs to be shown.
  
• Who hasn't completed filling out the form? select firstname, surname, year, form from subjects where completed = 0, 1 means they have completed it.
  
• A way to display all the curriculum guide information through one page? curriculum.php?subjectcode=XXxxx
  
• The exported csv done to meet the KAMAR requirements.
  
• Do I record IP address that it was filled in on. date and time?
• Reserve subjects, in case things just don't fit in right as we are not going with option lines.
  

Next iteration of the system

• Input of standards, unit and achievement standards, gain the information from the NZQA database and import it into the system. I have the file already in my email, just need to find the schema so I can remove all the old and unused unit and achievement standards
• HOD being able to change their subject details online, maybe using the YUI editor so they can do bullet points and the like.
  I looked at using the Yahoo editor and decided against it, I have instead looked at the FCK editor and decided I can integrate it easier into the current system and will do what i require it to do. The developers code to get it in is located here. http://docs.fckeditor.net/FCKeditor_2.x/Developers_Guide/Integration/PHP
• Max number of students to take a subject, this allows it to be used in a different way as describe above.
• a way to make the importation of the SMS data into the system easier. 4 hours to modify, empty, insert, check, test, import the csv, export to sql, find and replace in wordpad because notepad sucks at this, is just crazy.

I have found it good just to hide away and work on this today, though I know I need more time to get it done, as well as the need to get the portal site looking good as well.

Just some information, I am using portable apps to run the development site on a usb stick, for those interested I am running http://portableapps.com/apps/development/xampp it seems to be doing the job, you just have to remove the ticks beside the SVC in the console program. I have been running it on my eeepc and connecting to it through the wireless network at work, it just means I can take it and use it anywhere I need to, just a pity i can't run it on my mac.

This blog has had a number of changes to it along way in the last couple of days to accommodate my notes and ideas for the next version, I know I should properly use a wiki, but you use what you have at the time.

growing a computer game

how do you grow a computer game and put values in it.

http://valuesatplay.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/grow-a-game_overview.pdf

game cards are available here
http://valuesatplay.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/gagcardsexpanded.pdf

for more details about this project and instructions on how to use the game cards
http://valuesatplay.org/?page_id=9

Professional Development

what did i get out of todays professional development?

• I got, how to use Alice to teach basic principles of computer programming.
• where i need to heading in computer science.
• resoures through the use of sceniarios to teach basic principles through story telling.
• a development environment that is not complex, though it has yet to be finished off, with alice 3.0 intergrating the sims charcters.
• the conversations in the breaks, these are the ones which you wis you could take a tape recorder to, to play back afterwards,
• the last lecture is a must thst I have to watch and listen to, available on youtube.
• contacts with my old lecturers so I can align courses that are helpful to them.
• the ability to show off what the students have been doing with scratch.
• a way of aligning sustainability with the new curriculum, this needs to have some more thought and be developed some more before it can be presented back to the department/school.
• a sense that some things haven't changed much in the eight years that I left tertiary study.

oh and the data plans came out today for the iphone, $80 a month, it is an extra $40 than I am paying now, can I afford it, I think not. Maybe I just get a iPod touch instead.

Network Use Agreement

It has been three years since I went to the netsafe ict administrators level 1 course and next term will be the first we have a network use agreement that all students and their parents have to sign. It has bene a long road with blocks appearing as people dont want to handle 1800+ forms that have to be check and filed away. This gives the school a little more backup when dealing with electronic data and students that have been naughty. It has been a fight between education and policy. But my fight has been you need policy to be able to educate else it doesn't mean anything. The next thing that I am aiming to do is to get a staff network use agreement up and going, the reason behind this is that it is to protect the school as it then can be a dismissable offence. Great eh, though even if you are in employment elsewhere you would probably have had to sign something. It is part of the workplace now.
having the students sign this now allows us to get the student email accounts fully running, though I can see we may have more problems with data caps as a result.

Alice

On Tuesday I have been invited to attend a workshop on a 3d programming language called alice. It should be interesting as it uses Java as it main driver. www.alice.org . I will give more details later on including what was covered throughout the day. Oh well, it is the holidays

Alice is an object oriented programming language and development environment designed to teach novices to program by using 3D animated objects. Although it was designed for a target audience of 8th grade (13 year-old) girls, it is now being used successfully to attract both male and female students to computer science at higher education levels as well.

The language was developed by Randy Pausch, then at the University of Virginia and now at Carnegie Mellon.

It is named Alice after Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland—Through the Looking Glass".

There is development on a programming module here that I am interested in using with my junior classes

http://www.scribd.com/doc/29714/Programming-Module

Programming Module - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: Programming Module

NACCQ IT Careers Forum

Career planning for it students - career services

piloting an electronic template in career planning

careers sersevices - overview of what is career services

government agency

www.careers.govt.nz

interactive tools, salary ranges, training requirements, interviews, cv and cover letteer templates

background to the project, the conversations and research that took place taht started of the development of the project.

benefits of developing a career plan

give you an advantage of recognizing and anticipating change in job market
your in control of career - self management
tracks personal progression
provides examples to employers that you are someone with potential
clear focuses on progression through training
The plan consists of a series of templates, will identify career progression

Presentation, quiz, shortage areas, key attributes for IT Professionals, employability in the 21st century workplace, workbook, templates and resources
workshop, presented to three small groups, went through templates with the groups, completed by email correspondence

Students come out with complete career plan,
they can use this for, CVs, cover letter, interview skills/material
Plan is a living document that can be updated as career progresses
It is a pilot, there are improvements that can be done as we work through this.

NZCS Forum

Technology Achievement Standards

What was done 10 years ago does not work now, we have moved on since word processors, spreadsheet and databases. 

We are using Technology Achievement Standards and the current unit standards because there is nothing else to use. We are there to teach the students using current assessment processes, We want these processes changed.

Three new ventures, 

NZC New Zealand Curriculum

Achievement Standards Review, MOE

Computing unit standards set by NZQA.

Existing standards may be modified or replaced with new ones.

Hybrid courses could use a range of AS from different Learning Areas.

Given the ICT sector and PPTA and undertaking to convene an expert panel drawn form all interest groups. Mandated to be with the new curriculum in 2010

NZCS

reject the comment that was in the report was wrong.

there is a problem, it needs to be fixed. People throughout the country are in agreement. 

The AS are not in place, no development, no body looking after. Needs to be brought into alignment.

Max

Not against Tech AS, they have a purpose and have a place. There is a place for these standards, good for getting students to get a real world project, planning, arranging a project. There is a place not for them. They do teach skills, working a project through, planning a project, valuable and specific, maybe MUSAC could use these skills to develop there own software. NZQA and NCEA is still to be used. We can crate courses that captivate and engage our students, mixing these standards with others.

MIchael

Teachers who are struggling, we all teach differently, 20 year timeframe that is still going, we are in a industry that keeps changing. ICT/Computing/ Digital Technology, keeps increasing. We are lost, we do not have the clout, ability, organisation to help us. 

If Secondary teachers do not do there job in ICT, tertiary will not get students, business will not get ICT capable students. Has to be teacher led.

we have to look to the future, how can we make it work. someone's to work on own behalf.
these things are done ever so slowly, we cannot afford to do this, as our industry is forever changing. Lets use the gifts of the Computer Society, the PPTA

DTG starts at year 11, needs to be started earlier.

Australia Guy, lost in the curriculum, key learning areas come under seven brackets, how do you put technology into ICT, or ICT into technology. No national support in ICT here in New Zealand.

ICT cluster, most of the teachers are uneducated in what they are teaching. Teachers haven’t got the skills to be able to teach what is required. There is a level that is not being addressed. Typing backgrounds or other backgrounds, not specific ICT teachers. Howard, skill shortage in ICT skills in New Zealand and this is in teaching. Teacher capability is not there. Teaching does not have the drawcard power, money, time. People coming in from a creative background, digital media, english graduates with media and film. theatre studies. How does this help us? It is in the minority as the youngsters are concerned. Moris Alford form Linton High school uses the CISCO academy, he finds that code cutting, students not interested.

Young people is changing, end user experience.

If the government is prepared to acknowledge that there is a gap, tertiary is able to help.

Approved subjects, losing students because of the approved subjects.

Moris article, would students be happy if they had to write briefs, they are happier doing an industry exam rather than briefs, planning, gnatt charts. 

Who isn’t happy with what we have done? Who like the Achievement Standards, Internal ones being used. How many are passing moderation. Computing teachers being creative in interpreting standards.

no UE approved from computer skills, but will not be able to enter uni.

students don’t understand programming, programs are how computers work, the basics will help you with understanding, problem solving, developing projects, life skill? What a program is, what a variable is.

a sense of hope that something is being done to address this issue.

how do I change the outcome of a game, this is a problem when we cannot have any assessment in it. Students are hooked into computing but they don’t want to just do word processing.

Howard, we have problem with teacher capability, we don’t have people that are like ourseleves available to offer high level computer coming in or being offered ways to upskill.

Are we dumbing down the subject? Where is computer science going?

DTG

Assessment has been a major project that has come out as part of this work.
What is currently being taught is being looked at and developed, The DTG is looking at 

Information management, school certificate typing in Drag. the place of IM will be considered along withe the other AS under the AS review.

Why start at year 11, it is too late.

Year 1 to 9 is dealt with by the NZC, it is up to the school to develop.

What is a guideline, it is a support document that supports the new Curriculum

it recognizes that other subjects need to use technology, embracing technology in other subjects.

The computing stuff at the moment is laughable.

Has 2780 changed? asked MoE, this has not changed much in the years it has been out.

Draft Unit Standards are excellent, they are being held over until the other review process goes through

What are ghost credits? disadvantage when using NACCQ courses or CISCO courses, don’t appear on their record of learning.

the language needs addressing in the achievement standards.

NZQA has been told that they can release the new computing unit standards, MoE has told them that. NZQA probably need to finish their process yet.

IT Careers Forum

This is what I am going to on Friday, should be a good day.

The IT industry have noted concerns regarding the skills shortage, historical negative images relating to IT careers, and the fragmented linkages between high school, tertiary and industry IT sectors. This forum will bring together IT educators at secondary and tertiary levels, with government policy makers and IT industry employers as recipients of the graduates from the education sector.

The website address for information about the conference is at: http://naccq08.unitec.ac.nz/

This event will provide an excellent professional development opportunity the sector as we endeavour to create a seamless pathway for IT study and vocational outcomes in New Zealand.

The conference will update us on the progress of government-backed initiatives designed to assist our sector; such as the MIT/Career Services IT career planning pilot which has great potential for the conference’s national audience of IT educators and for other disciplines.

We are hoping for a good turnout from the IT industry, tertiary providers, and especially secondary schools to enable productive and open dialogue to take place, and to address the educational and other challenges facing the IT industry. Importantly the conference will offer insights into how we can better prepare graduates for the broad and interesting range of career options available.

NACCQ Conference 2008 is the 21st annual conference and is the premier computing education conference in New Zealand which spans all disciplines of computing and information technology education. While focusing on tertiary education it also provides links from secondary education and also into the computing industry. This year the conference is adopting as a special theme a one day “IT Careers Forum” at which industry leaders and secondary school teachers will interact with the tertiary sector to address the issues facing the IT industry in the current environment.

Poll widget

I am having problems with the poll widget in blogspot.com, I was to use this as a way to record the students votes on who they wanted to go through to the final, however this seems to have been a bust as when they submit there cote is comes up "cannot be processed" which is a pain in the butt, there isn't anything in the known issues of blogspot, but it is being mentioned in the google groups forums that a number of people are having the same problem.

Time

It's after 6pm and I am still at work.
I am trying to get through assessments and other stuff before the end of the week. After starting so well on the online subject selection i have found that I have hit a snag. I needed some hosting and a domain. This came out of a meeting last friday about this system. They want it available anywhere, and 24/7. So students can have a conversation with their parents about the subjects they have selected and where they think that will take them in their possible career.

Well. with that has also been another couple of websites that i am having to launch really quickly. One is a voting system that we want the students to have their say on who was the best at talent quest. I have even thrown some graphics together to make it look interesting. Plus it is a play on some words. I kind of wish they had said something sooner, then we would have some branding on the event. Thank god for blogspot. As this done what I need it to do. Polls that close at certain times, Multiple Polls in fact. the ability to put pictures, video and text on. And make it real good.
the person asked me how long it would take. I said 10 minutes, ok, it took 8 minutes to have it all done, minus a few spelling errors, and the graphic. But a working model was on her desk by lunchtime.

As well as an environmental action group want a website showing what they are doing on environmental issues at here at the school. For this I want them to work on it, and am waiting on the Acceptable Use Policy to be written up and put through the final discussion before I let the students loose with this system. I plan on using our google apps for this one using the sites area.

Will wait for an email to come back before developing the environment site further.

Also it is difficult having two gmail accounts, three blogs and a google apps account to maintain the student system, you get lost on what account you are working at, until you wnat to post something and it shoots back errors. Oh well

The computer lab as a crutch

Once in a while I find a blog that is interesting reading, it talks about computer labs at schools and how they are being used.

I ran into a thought provoking blog post the other day. Mike Sansone is a blog coach – a consultant who makes a living helping people blog better – wrote a post called “Are Computer Labs a Crutch?” In it he says that “the computer lab shouldn't be the first (or only) stop in teaching computer and Internet skills.” He’s right about that I think. He lays out a structure for an Internet workshop that sounds pretty good to me. Of course the schedule calls for a class session that is 75 to 100 minutes long and that isn’t happening very often. Perhaps in a school with a long block schedule. The plan is good though.
One of the things he suggests that I used to good effect is to start with a demo. In computer applications classes or programming classes the first thing I tried to do was to demonstrate what I wanted students to learn. I found this to be surprisingly useful in applications classes. Often students had no idea what an operation was supposed to look like. While some students figure it out from the book a lot of students really need to see it live in action before they can picture it for themselves. Personally that is true for me. Show me what you are going to teach me. Then teach me. Then let me try it for myself and then let’s review. That to me is a great way to teach and learn in a computer lab.
But honestly the title of his post made me think about other ways that computer labs in schools are used improperly. The problem I see too often is computers, usually in labs, being used as little more than babysitters. I don’t mean by “computer teacher” who generally take full advantage of the teaching resources the lab provides. No I mean “other” teachers who sometimes take advantage of a computer lab and student’s willingness to go to the lab. The student gets out of class and the teacher gets rid of a distraction. And of course to administration it looks like the students are leaving for educational purposes. I guess in theory they really are. The plan to do research. Or perhaps work on a paper. Sounds good in theory and sometimes it actually works that way. Not sure it is a way to bet though.
There are a couple of problems on the lab side if it though. If the lab is empty there is no, or at least insufficient, supervision. Perhaps is the lab is a monitored study hall, or a library, or a dedicated research/work area this is not a problem. Expecting a computer teacher on a prep period to supervise students isn’t really fair though. And if the lab is in use, for a regular class, it really gets to be a problem. I don’t know any other classroom that teachers feel free to send students to without prior arrangement. Can you see students showing up at a social studies class saying “our teacher sent us here to read your copies of Newsweek” or showing up to gym class saying “we’re just going to play basketball while you run you regular gym class.” But it happens in some computer labs.
Clearly a teacher can say “no you go back to your regular class” but the room has been disrupted. So often if there is room a teacher will let them stay. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it becomes disruptive. Either way it tests a teachers classroom management skills. But really this is trivial.
The real problem is that far too many students still do not know how to use the computer resources they have. So they waste a lot of time. People sit back and think “oh good they are getting a lot of computer time” without realizing that much of this time is wasted. This also contributes to the idea that computers are not helping. No tool that is not well used can really be of real help. We need to teach students how to really use the tools we hand them. And we really need to get over the practice of using computer labs as a dumping ground for distracting students.

Cooking for 60

What of the things that I have to do as manager is prepare the feed for the aftermatch function. i made a decision to not get junk food from the chip shop, either Chinese or chips. We prepare the home game food on the Saturday morning.
What i m preparing is pasta and mince. This started off being spirals and mince, the second home game was roast potatoes and mince with sour cream, and today was lasagna, but not the once that I normally make a it would require 3 kilos of cheese, and 12 litres of milk.
It does take a lot of time to get done, by the time you plan, get the food from the supermarket and cook it it takes around 5-6 hours for something that is gone in 10 minutes. But the boys think it is the best, though I should start looking at some pacifika foods. I think they want corned beef.

But saturday is a good day in general, it is more stressful that a day at school. I think it is the compeition that you hve been preparing the team for. They know the plays, they know the game, but it is up to them on how they play it on the day.

Training during the week was hard and fast. A number of boys have considered dropping out if we did not make the final 8 in the championship round. Pity for them that this week they won and now in the champ round. They are going to have to up the intensity at training this week to be able to perform their best as they go against the other teams in the pool.

What to make next home game for the aftermatch, I had someone suggest nachos. though I somehow don't think so.

Recent government iniatives

* What are (if there are any) the current government initiatives and/or plans for IT in high schools

The Current initiatives do not just go for Secondary schools, they are from Early Childhood right through.
There are ICTPD Clusters
The intended outcomes of the programme are:
Implementation of the New Zealand Curriculum / Te Marautanga o Aotearoa through the use of e-learning;
Increased capability of teachers and principals to improve students' learning and achievement through e-learning;
Strengthened professional learning communities and increased collaboration within and across schools;
Increased e-learning leadership and ICT strategic planning capability of principals and teachers;
Increased understanding of the educational contribution of e-learning by teachers, principals, students and school communities.
http://www.minedu.govt.nz/index.cfm?layout=document&documentid=7383&indexid=6919&indexparentid=1024


This research report is submitted to the Ministry of Education as part of an ongoing evaluation of the Information and Communication Technologies Professional Development Cluster Programme (ICT PD), a teacher professional development initiative announced in the strategy documents Interactive Education: An Information and Communication Technologies Strategy for Schools (Ministry of Education, 1998) and Digital Horizons: Learning Through ICT: A Strategy for Schools (Ministry of Education, 2001, Revised 2003). This report on the 2004-2006 cohort of ICT PD cluster teachers supplements, and makes comparisons with, the evaluations of the first four ICT PD Cluster Programmes submitted to the Ministry in 2002, 2004, 2005 and 2006. Read more

TELA Laptops, this is a scheme to get laptops for teachers and data show projectors into classrooms
The purpose of this evaluation was to investigate the impacts of the Laptops for Teachers Scheme: TELA (referred to from here as the TELA scheme) on teachers’ work.
TELA: Laptops for Teachers Evaluation Final Report Years 7 & 8
TELA: Laptops for Teachers Evaluation Final Report Years 9-13

ICT Resourcing in schools, this is something new that has been announced from the minister as part of the budget.

Used effectively ICT has the potential to bring about improvements in educational outcomes for all 21st century learners. To achieve this, however, it is vital that ICT becomes better integrated with teaching and learning. This report outlines the proposals for the development of a framework for the resourcing of ICT across the schooling sector and to inform policy advice to the Minister.

Read more here.

Digistore
Online Learning Objects - Digistore is the New Zealand gateway to a collection of quality digital content (digital resources and learning objects) being developed through The Le@rning Federation (TLF) initiative.
In Digistore, you can register your interest in accessing this content, search the digital warehouse (repository) containing thousands of items of digital content and get ideas on how you might incorporate this curriculum content into your existing classroom programme.
http://www.tki.org.nz/r/digistore/

Microsoft Licensing in Schools
The latest Microsoft software products are available, at no cost, to all state and state-integrated schools.
http://www.dsv.co.nz/moe/moe_info.html

Enabling the 21st Century Learner,
The e-Learning Action Plan for Schools 2006-2010 outlines the key outcomes and actions for e-learning in the New Zealand school sector for 2006-2010. It describes the goals for e-learning in schools and the projects, tools, and resources that are being developed to adddress those outcomes.
e-Learning Action Plan

Network Standards and Broadband uptakes
This project is about bringing school networks up to an acceptable quality and providing a standard for networks to adhere to.
http://www.minedu.govt.nz/index.cfm?layout=document&documentid=9680&indexid=9320&indexparentid=1024

There are a number of websites dedicated to ICT in schools, two of these are the Ministry of Education click here and tki.org.nz click here

* What is iLearn and how does it fit in the over-arching IT solution - are you able to point me to any documentation you may have?
iLearn would seem to me to be a Learning Management System(LMS) or a Content Management System(CMS). There are a number of providers out there who are trying to get into schools. Ultranet, knowledgeNET, moodle, Joomla.
There are some questions and some answers about looking at a CMS or LMS available through tki,
It is called Managed Online Learning Environments and provides information on selecting a Learning Management System, a 2 Phase look at identifying needs, analysing priorities, as well as looking at how Student Management System can integrate into the LMS.
http://www.tki.org.nz/r/ict/online_learning_environment/index_e.php

These are just some of what is going on out there. It is big stuff but the government still needs to get a curriculum or an outline of where ICT should be going, ie Achievement Standards for Computer Science.

The NZ Computer Society today released a highly anticipated report reviewing the NCEA ICT-related Achievement Standards in Secondary Schools. This report raises extremely serious concerns regarding the state of secondary school computing education. You can download the full report here and the associated press release here.

Thinking about your questions

1) How to get staff more enthusiastic about using IT in their teaching

2) How do they identify the required hardware/software

3) Putting together an IT plan for the future that can be presented to the board

IN brief
1. Many ways including ICT committee members(each department has a member on the committee to raise ideas and generate discussion around how ICT could be used in their department, what the department needs are), ICT PD sessions (developing skills, we look at inspiration(mind mapping/brainstorm software), managing your email, clickview(video on demand) e-asTTle training, what you have on tape, how can you get it off the tape and onto your computer(video editing) getting staff to show how they are using ICT in their classrooms), conferences (Ulearn www.ulearn.org.nz and Learning@School 08 Conference http://www.learningatschool.org.nz/. And the Board paying for the lease on the teachers laptop.

2. ICT committee members plus IT Manger works continually with every HOD to discuss needs and opportunities. Also integrating a bottom up approach, getting the teachers to think about what they require (Interactive White Board is an example) rather than a top down approach, “you must use a… “. Example, Teachers and students have pushed the need for student email, so the management listened and have implemented a trial at the moment with a number of classes, to see how the network, internet data usage, will be affected.

3. In our ICT plan to develop a 5 year plan, term 3? This is looked at every year with the changing IT landscape

Reflection to date

Reports -
yet another mid year reports has come around and it has been nice not to worry about another class of reports. with the change of the number of periods it has reduced the number of classes that we teach. Though I still need to look at the time that I put aside to do the reports, i need to start them earlier rather than waiting to the last minute. I have manged to use very few copied comments this year, preferring to type my own comments on each student. especially in the senior subject classes. it has been difficult with some when you seem to use the same start phrase with each student. i need to learn to be able to start off differently.

IT Support - issues and successes(printers, ssl, option choice)
i have had to in the last couple of days deal with the hp helpdesk, it is interesting that they are in india and when you say where your work is you can hear the gasp with fear as they have never heard of that place, especially because it is in maori. after the hour of script and them asking for you to b e right beside the printer, the printer was three blocks away from where i was on the phone, they managed to get there heads around that I had a p3005 printer but it had a p3004 formater board in it. someone had replaced a part in it with the wrong part number. the main fault was that we needed duplex printing which had been removed as the p3004 formater board did not support this function.
we are currently trying to get ssl working properly with the exchange software we have at school, the reason for this is that we want to start using mobile devices to connect to the email system when the senior leadership are not at their laptops, so they don't miss those important emails. plus it will help me with my little wee ipaq.
creating an online app os starting to become interesting, i have seven people that I have to work through, all wanting different features and all want an understanding of how it will work. this will be my first big job in a number of years, as normally i deal with one or two people as my client. my biggest fear is of the feature creep as more and more people want to remove the choice of subjects for the students by stating what English and maths class they will be in.

Manager - difficulty with losing, rules being changed
I have been the manager of the schools 1st xv rugby team, which has been an up and down experience. you have a up when the team wins and feel the pain when the team loses, because you know how much effort they have put into the game. the last game probably hit me the hardest. the touch judge came on to the field with his flag out and we had a penalty changed from our to theirs, as well as having a try disallowed. a number of the players and myself had been to associate refs training where this question was raised, if the game was a sancitaned game and the refs were appointed then they can come on, if not they can only signal out. so far noone has been able to answer if they were appointed.

School- three programming languages all at once.
I am teaching visual basic with the year 12s, visual c# with the year 13 and php/mySQL with the year 13s. i am starting to get confused with variables and syntax which is causing me some issues, i am starting to print out the solution so i can solve the students issues and problems.

open source to make more of an impact in high schools?

Linux in education: Open Source provides a better solution for schools
By JT Smith on May 17, 2002 (8:00:00 AM)

- by Matt Butcher - Linux has been making inroads into K-12 education for years, but Microsoft's move to require an audit of 300 school districts nationwide has brought Open Source into the educational limelight. As schools analyze alternatives to hefty licensing fees, LUGs and Linux-in-education organizations are pointing out that Open Source solutions are better suited to the educational environment, and are only a fraction of the cost.
"We're seeing the stand alone desktop PC as a colossal failure in schools." says Paul Nelson, Technology Director for the Riverdale School District in Portland, Oregon. "After several years of installing PCs in classrooms, it is evident that schools do not have the staffing to support them and keep them running. Often infected with viruses and subjected to student abuse, these systems can quickly turn into a useless but expensive pile of junk in the back of the classroom." A traditional desktop PC environment often costs more than $1,000 per system -- and that's a price that Nelson and others say is too high.

A better model for schools, says Nelson, is the thin client. With diskless workstations running K12LTSP, an educational variant on the Linux Terminal Server Project, workstations can be locked down, making them tamper-resistent and immune from computer virii and malicious code. Without the requirement of a high speed processor and a hard drive, K12LTSP systems run well even on older hardware, and systems obtained through computer recycling programs like STRUT prove to be ideal low-cost but functional clients. The average cost of new hardware required for a client workstation running K12LTSP, says Nelson, is $200 -- a fifth of the cost of the traditional setup.

Kirk Rheinlander, principle consultant for KPJ2 and a veteran in Linux integration in schools, noted other areas where Open Source software plays a significant role in educational institutions. "It is all well and good to provide stuff for classrooms, but managing the school is a big issue as well." He pointed out Schoolmation, Schooltool, and K12Admin -- all tools for school and student administration. In fact, the SEUL educational application index has over 400 applications listed, covering everything from library software to budget tools to schedule planners.

Both Nelson and Rheinlander noted that the foremost concerns that schools express when contemplating migration to Linux are installation and support. And both gentlemen point to Linux User Groups (LUGs) as the primary source of the tech skills that meet those needs. Members of the Portland LUG provide what Nelson calls "24x7 support, without a Visa card" via listserv. Members of the Northern Colorado LUG volunteered countless hours along with Rheinlander to install an Open Source solution into an area charter school. Even the entry of Red Hat into the arena is indicative of the "grass roots" nature of the movement. "It's interesting to note," says Nelson, "that Red Hat's involvement in K12 comes from the interest of their own employees wanting to give back to the community."

Another concern voiced by schools considering Linux is the user interface. Many situations demand a simplified user interface with only a few applications to choose from, keeping the students focused on the task at hand, and reducing the learning curve for teachers. There are efforts underway to produce a simplified desktop as part of the K12Linux project, and Nelson expressed his optimism over the improvements in Linux desktop environments as a whole.
Open Source software is providing the tools that schools need, made to fit. In an environment where general purpose operating systems are failing, Open Source methodologies makes it possible for existing and stable applications to be tailored to the needs of the educational community -- and that software won't require costly audits or even annual license fees.

developing school software

I am in the process of going through and developing a project document for our school. We want to move the subject options from students wandering around to teachers and getting forms signed to a more electronic form. This has been asked for, for a number of years now, but now with a change of management and knowledge it is being implemented.

I have been in the process of talking to a number of stakeholders about what they think the system should do and getting information about the current system from the information that we already have, to what we can export from the SMS and what we need to import to the SMS.

Talking to the stakeholders they can see a number of benefits of the new system, however, timeframe and availability have not been discussed. If we are to get all senior students to enter their subject choices, howe is this going to be carried out Do we take a compulsory class and do it with them, who will support the students in logging in, how are the students going to login to the system. Or do we make workstations available around the school so students can go to the page, enter their information and select their subjects, think web koisk.

I am looking at using my favourites, php and mySQL. Just doing some basic database development today I think I can get it down to two tables.

One is subjects, where all the subjects are listed containing details of codes, name, restricted entry, content, assessments.

The other one is the student, details, password, current subjects, proposed next years subjects, comments.

This has provided me with a blueprint on what information I can pull out of our SMS, which is all subjects, plus a hell of a lot of errors, there are students doing languages, year 9 courses, Gateway, and all students have form class. It has required some replace development in excel which will possibly need to be moved to being a macro so if i leave someone else can do it.

I don't want it to be complicated,

After a meeting today with a manger, he has said that he is to be involved, which is good, though he keeps asking why we can't develop this in Microsoft Access. I basically told him that noone using access anymore, they are more likely to use php and mySQL. He then went forward to talk about using Filemaker Pro, which now has a web interface. It would be nice to use, however there will be a learning curve which is required to do this. My comment back was why don't we use asp.net, microsoft SQL server installed on a Microsoft Server 2008 running sharepoint. Sorry I had to use something from the meetup last night.

One of the problems that I didn't see coming was that they want to change the way that the information is collected, yes they are doing it online, but in the past they have selected option lines for certain subjects to go into. Now they want the students to select the subjects that they want and then they will let our SMS shuffle it into a timetable that we can use next year. if there are too many clashes they will go back to those students.

I am starting to use a backup of the information kept in my google documents. it seems to be running ok. Though I am starting to wonder if I keep a copy of my .csv or .sql file in there as well as this would be a useful way of managing work from home and home to work as development backups.

Once a student selects a subject there needs to be a check on whether they have taken a subject before or have the required NCEA credits to take the subject. If I was to include this information in the database I feel that I would get lost and have a large problem. To get around this I propose to have boxes come up with the required information that they have to click "yes" or "no", yes means they can move on, no means that the subject will be removed from the selection.

Other problems are the main streamed students that have to take a required course through there provider, do we tag these students? or do they select and have an subject removed at a later stage.

Also required in the project is if they are coming back to school or not, if not what is happening. Possible Career needs also to be entered, this was on the old paper form, it might do well to be included on this.

Access, do we make it available to deans, SLT, other personal so they can see what students are choosing. Other reports would need to be made to help report live what is happening with the classes and selections. If we select a option it gives us who is taking that option.

I think I can do all that is required, though it also need to be able to look professional. If I develop this right there will be opportunity to use css and html.

Do we make this available out on the internet, so parents can get involved in their sons/daughters subject choice?

someelse on the internt is asking if this has been developed before, see http://ask.metafilter.com/83311/Create-a-searchable-online-subject-choice-database

Until next time

ICT in Education

It goes without saying that technology will only grow as an important part of NZ life, and the NZ economy. Hence the standard of our education system in relation to ICT education is vital to us.

Now I missed it at the time, but the NZ Computer Society has had a panel of professionals spend a massive amount of time assessing 18 NCEA ICT-related Technology Achievement Standards, to see which which of them were most suitable in preparing for tertiary study and for end-user computing.

Their 119 page report is here. And for those who want the summary, the press release is here. They key paragraph:

NZCS Chief Executive Paul Matthews today said he was horrified to discover that not a single Technology Achievement Standard proposed for access to ICT and Computing met the set criteria. “Secondary School Computing education should be about preparing our young people for further ICT-related study and for computing in general” Matthews said today. “This report has found that New Zealand’s current ICT-related Technology Standards are failing terribly on both counts”.

The NZCS is the professional education and standards body in the ICT sector. So when they say 0 out of 18 NCEA standards meet the grade, you have a problem. TUANZ have also expressed their concern and their frustration at the lack of progress.

NZCS makes a number of recommendations:

1. Creates appropriate achievement standards to address the assessment vacuum that exists in the area of Computer Science at the secondary school level.
   
2. Recognizes that Computer Science is NOT a “technology”. Computer Science is about computation (numeracy), logic, and the study of algorithms and problem solving within a computational paradigm. It needs a syllabus which defines a coherent body of knowledge, relevant practices, and associated achievement standards.
3. Removes computing from the grasp of the technology curriculum and align it with subject areas that are more relevant to the various disciplines. For Computer Science, Mathematics is the logical choice. End-user computing fits best with the subject areas that use the tools.
4. Establishes a rationale for defining achievement level criteria. For example, in achievement standards which require production of a product, the sole criterion for achieving should be that the product works according to specification (bar minor deficiencies) - i.e. is fit for purpose. Merit criteria should require that the product works (as for achieved) and has desirable qualities (such as well-documented, efficient, easy to use, robust, maintainable, extendable, …) and excellence requires the previous criteria plus planning and other deliverables which relate to the particular practice (not necessarily Technology) that is being assessed.
5. Creates externally assessed Achievement standards which assess a common body of knowledge under exam conditions similar to those available in the Mathematics curriculum.
6. Re-moderates the technology achievement standards with a view to aligning the cognitive levels to the NQF level definitions.
7. Surveys technology, computing, and potential computing teachers to gain insight on their perceptions of the value, relevance, and effectiveness of the existing technology achievement standards with respect to their effect on teaching workload and morale, and student attitudes towards computing as a future career.
8. Surveys year 10 - 13 students (and their parents) across the country to determine what motivates them into choosing (or not choosing) computing as an area of study at tertiary level.

The next Minister of Education should be looking at these as a priority. Our skills shortage will only get worse if we don’t even made the grade with our own students.

Copied from http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2008/06/ict_education.html

more issues with e-asTTle

this is an interesting time learning e-asTTle and managing the 1800+ students that are to be placed on it. Once we get over the hurdles of getting all the students on it, ended up having to split the .ast files into each year and import them that way. The next problem is that the groups have not been automatically created, especially for year 9 and year 10 learning classes. 
Also we are having some issues downloading all the student account details, works at home, but not at school.

e-asTTle

I have been busy trying to get teachers to go through the teacher training so we can get some teachers and students using it. As we are part of the pilot scheme we need to be able to send some feedback through to the developers.

Due to it being a long weekend and teh number of transiant students we have, I decided to do the import of students on Tuesday night after the new students had been added. 
The file exported fine from our Student Management System, and when I put the file through the validation process on the e-asTTle website, no errors were thrown up. However, when I tried putting the file into there system to create all the login details and passwords it failed. It just hangs. Who would have thought that a 378k file would crash there system.
Its what, only 1800+ students. We are not the largest school in the country and it broke. 
I have been in contact with the helpdesk and they have said this

"I have been looking at your file and there seems to be nothing wrong but when attempting to load it into pre-production to test the upload all things come grinding to a halt.
 
There is a known issue with larger files such as yours that the correct succesful import message does not come up but the students are still imported. The issue here is I cant even check if that is the case so I will have to escalate this to our applications support team to investigate."

So I sit here and wait for this to be sorted out, they have now escalated this problem to the development team who I understand have been trying to split the file into smaller chunks and import it that way, so far this has not worked. i love how they do all the processing live, why not upload the file, have it process at their end and email you the result. Would this not be a better way to handle "large files" and when was 378k called a large file, to me a large file for mySQL or such would be 1-2Meg.

Oh well, will keep you up to date on how this goes

Question

what should I be teaching students. I have a number of old wireless access points and wish to teach the students wireless access security. I have an almost unlimited supply of hardware and a VLK for Operating system software. Should I teach my students about WEP security and ways of protecting themseleves from it, through the use of MAC address and usernames and passwords. I wonder if I should be teaching these forms of security. I am an eee pc also availbe for the students to wonder around theschool and find the location of every WAP in our workplace.

Sounds like fun, it is