How is e-learning reflected throughout your school curriculum?

Thanks to Fiona Grant, Dee Reid, Toni Twiss and Helen Cooper( senior adviser, e-learning) for their support in drafting a set of questions designed to support schools in giving e-learning effect within their school curriculum.

Some/ all of these questions may be useful in facilitating dialogue with your staff. Click on the doc. to view it in full-screen.

Your feedback (as always) is much appreciated.

Open publication - Free publishing - More newzealand

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?

Supporting the Shift

Part of my role within School Support Services, Waikato, is to assist other advisers to integrate e-learning into classroom activities by supporting them to model the effective selection and the use of ICT to meet students’ needs. This role would have lots of similarities with a person in a school charged with e-learning responsibilities.
I must admit sometimes the barriers in getting everyone ‘on-board’ feel too great and the need for greater support from management at a systems level seems the only way forward.
I see this report Six ways to make Web 2.0 Work, and the education lens applied to it by Derek Wenmoth as a great focus for dialogue with management.

Although no real surprises , school leaders might find that this report provides some useful leverage for reflection and dialogue.

What would you consider are your organisations strengths and weaknesses in terms of the factors identified below? How might these ideas assist us?

Thanks Derek for your fantastic post about this report and for your useful paraphrasing of its contents for education.

From Derek’s blog:
“My paraphrase of this advice for our school leaders is as follows…
1. The transformation to a bottom-up culture needs help from the top. - the evidence shows that the leaders in our schools must lead by example - if they want staff and students to use these tools, then they must be users of them also! Bottom-up initiatives will only scale and become embedded with the support of those who can ensure that the appropriate support systems are in place, and that the systemic barriers (eg firewalls, network access, spam filters etc) are dealt to at a policy and implementation level.
2. The best uses come from users - but they require help to scale. - rather than try to dictate how ICTs should be used in your school, watch for what the early adopters are doing with them select the things that are working well and give them the support to ’scale up’.
3. What’s in the workflow is what gets used. - stop treating Web2.0 tools as an ‘add-on’, or ‘nice-to-try’ part of what is happening in your school - bring them into the mainstream! Start using a wiki to record minutes at a staff meeting and a place to further the discussion after the meeting finishes. Use online video and slideshow tools to encourage the sharing of completed assignments etc.
4. Appeal to the participants’ egos and needs - not just their wallets. We all respond well to receiving recognition for a job well done, or for the innovative things we do etc. Make sure you encourage the innovators and early adoptors, not with empty words, but with encouragement that demonstrates you recognise the value of what they are doing. Encourage them to attend conferences - not just to listen, but to present. Profile them at staff meetings, or parent evenings etc.
5. The right solution comes from the right participants. Be strategic in who you target to become users of ICT solutions. If the group has an authentic reason for using the technology then it has more chance of succeeding (eg blogs for records of learning in junior school, wikis for student collaborative projects further up)!
6. Balance the top-down and self-management of risk.http://blog.core-ed.net/derek/2009/02/6-ways-to-make-web20-work.html Fear is a great deterrant to change and innovation. There is risk associated with the deployment of Web2.0 applications - and the response to that needs to be something that everyone on the staff takes responsibility for. Principals should work with staff to establish reasonable policies, such as prohibiting anonymous posting on blogs for example. Ownership and responsibility for ensuring these policies are adhered to must be a two-way effort. Students and parents must also be included in the loop here, as they will also need to continue with these behaviours at home and out of school hours.