E - Learning BOP Leaders Meet - 19th June

Over 20 schools from across the Bay were represented by their e-learning leaders at Friday’s e-learning BOP. This network aims to support e-learning leaders so they, in-turn, can better support staff in their schools.

We kick started the day at 9am with two rounds of ‘speed geeking’ (idea stolen from Auckland’s recent unconference, thanks Fiona and Sue)









Sue Brown from Tahatai Coast then joined us via skype. Sue shared her recent experience on-board the North American Apple Bus tour. Her fabulous key-note was titled ‘From the Cave to the Mountain Top’, for 50mins Sue took us under her wing and shared highlights from her trip. A key theme that stuck out for me from Sue’s talk was the importance of not underestimating our students and how we must maximise opportunities for students to show us what they are capable of. Sue also shared how students at Carlsbad High had received international accolade for a film produced by 16 of their students who discovered the horror of the Holocaust. Check out Carlsbad High School Television here: http://www.chstv.com/
Thanks Sue, your exuberance busted out and enveloped the group, even via Skype!



Exploring ‘e-maturity’ models was next on the agenda. See my previous post for more details. We focused on the Digital Schools Self Evaluation Tool and through online questionnaire participation, gained a fair grasp of how this tool might be used back in our schools. The group’s overwhelming response was that the use of a tool like this would be very helpful to individual schools as it would provide evidence of a schools e-learning strengths and weaknesses, giving weight to desired actions.
Data gathered through the use of the Digital Schools Self Evaluation Tool was seen by some as a good foundation from which to gather more personalised information relating to the areas that had been identified as foci for development.
The alignment of focus areas with support initiatives available in New Zealand was seen as vital in adding value to this tool.
Discussions continued around strategies used to raise the e-learning competence of individual teachers, and models of e-learning teacher accreditation used in other countries were explored.

We used our new ‘e-maturity’ knowledge by attempting to gain a snapshot of our region’s strengths and weaknesses. We hoped that this information would help to inform the group of an area for focus. We made use of good old-fashioned ‘stickies’ and invited all e-learning leaders to ‘sticky’ each e-learning area to roughly indicate where they perceived their school was at. The bottom of the bar indicates lots of support was required and the top indicated lots of success in this area. This exercise served its purpose and interestingly enough ‘ICT and the Curriculum ‘came out as one of the areas requiring the most support.





















Tessa Gray rolled up next and as always she delighted the group with her wit and wisdom as we explored ICTPD clusters for 2010. We examined the changes in eligibility and ex-cluster members shared their experiences.
The rest of the day was spent in unconference style. Hot topics that became workshops included:
Learning Management Systems – What, Why and Which?
Web 2.0 – podcasting, blogs and wikis
Open Source vs. Microsoft Office – Would schools be wise to be preparing for open source?
ICTPD – How can we make the grade?


Special thanks to Regan Scarfe and Vicki Coe for their enthusiasm and support in making this day a success.


Further elearning BOP dates for 2009 are:
Friday 28th August
Friday 6th November

Please register your interest by emailing me: rjensen@waikato.ac.nz

To join the e-learning bop listserv, add your email to the 'yahoo group box' located on the right hand banner of this blog.

The E-Learning Pie

E- Learning is formed from a concoction of many factors including infrastructure, pedagogy, curriculum, leadership, vision and professional learning. It seems that certain standards of capability in these areas and striving for their alignment is paramount to the effective whole school integration of ICT.

I worked at an intermediate school last week who had recently formed an e- learning team; their vision was centred on raising the e-learning bar across the school. The team acknowledged that in pockets of the school e-learning was very effective but the variation between what was happening in classrooms was huge.
The use of a tool that would allow the team to ‘helicopter up’ and reflect on their schools e-learning strengths and the areas to develop seemed like a logical place to start.

After exploring many models and frame-works (see below) I decided to use the ‘digital schools self evaluation’ tool.
BECTA
Digital Schools Self Evaluation Tool
Florida STaRChart
ICT Competency Standards for Teachers
Texas Teacher STaR Chart

I favoured the ‘digital schools self evaluation’ as I I felt that this tool was particularly appropriate for primary and intermediate schools. This online tool, currently used in Irish primary schools, comprises of a total of 45 questions focused on the following elements: leadership and vision, ict on the curriculum, ict culture, professional development and resources and infrastructure. Aspects of the questionnaire were modified as we went to suit the NZ context.

The result was 2hours of quality dialogue. After completing the questions we were provided with a graph of our results. This graph provided evidence that highlighted the schools areas of strengths and areas to develop. More valuable than the graph however was the shared understanding that resulted from the quality dialogue that was necessary to complete this process.



Further discussion continued around priorities for action, which were now crystal clear. Avenues for support were also discussed (this is where we diverted from the Irish context and referred to NZ’s own e-learning resources).
Our next meeting will focus on the development on an action plan.

In summary, the use of this tool was certainly worthwhile in generating dialogue that enabled us to look holistically at e-learning in this school and to gauge where we were as a school on a developmental continuum. This data gave us fresh confidence in planning future development and change.

Has your school made use of any models/frameworks to assess their ‘e-learning’ capability?

In the latest advert for ICTPD 2010, I notice the introduction of a self-review component based on both the Becta and Euronet models.

Some countries that use such models have extended their use to include an accreditation process that schools and in some cases teachers can apply for to demonstrate a certain level of e-learning competence.
See examples:
Queensland - SMART Classrooms
BECTA – ICT Mark
Digital Schools Award

What are your thoughts?