Bailie’s bus

Just over a month ago I wrote a post on the ning I am involved in setting up.  I’ve been trying to get back here for the last two weeks to update our progress but crazy things have been happening.  A month ago I could not have begun to imagine just how far we would advance in such a short time.  A month ago I would probably have predicted that by now we would be travelling gently with our trial group and be waiting for this week’s VCAA exams to be over before launching to the wider year 12 cohort and their teachers.  How wrong could I be!  (and apart from a few sick kids it’s all good)…

So the ning was created on 30 April.   Between then and the middle of May I worked on the content and  figured out some of the structural issues.  I added a couple of polls, one from Poll Everywhere and one from Polldaddy.  I started bookmarking study skills related sites to the library’s Delicious account and embedded a feed from delicious of the most recent 10 sites.  Kate and I both added blog posts and Kate uploaded some useful templates.  A few other teachers heard about what we were doing and expressed interest in being part of the project so we invited them to join and look around.  Kate set up her Psychology group and another teacher started a biology group.  We aim to have a group for each individual subject that is taught in year 12.  In a few cases that will be one class and one teacher but being a large school most subjects have multiple classes and teachers.  The students will benefit by having access to other teachers and students in the same subject.

We had our second stint of the AGQTP Building the Capacity of Professional Learning Leaders program (PLLP) on 18 & 19 May.  That time was invaluable because for some of it we were able to work in our evidence group - it is a rare and wonderful thing that the four of us can devote significant time without other forces diverting our attention.  We all agreed that baby-steps and slowly were the way to go [oh, how innocent we were] and together we decided to trial the ning with a group of students - Kate’s year 12 psychology class was the logical choice.  The game plan at that stage was to see if and how the ning helped those students with their mid-year psychology exam and then if it was all going well to roll it out to interested teachers and their students when semester 2 classes commenced in the middle of June.

On 21 May Kate and I presented the ning to her year 12 psychology class.  A link to a Google form (for some baseline data on how the students revised for exams, how confident they were about their upcoming psychology exam and what methods of communication they currently use with teachers, classmates, friends and family) was waiting for them in their internal email inboxes, once the form was completed they would be sent the invitation to join the ning.  The students appeared quite interested and about half of them joined in the following 24 hours.

It was what happened next that really sent the ning viral!

On Monday 25 May at 3.45pm it was announced to staff that the school had its second confirmed case of swine flu and that the DEECD, on the advice of the DHS was closing the school down until at least the end of the week.

Year 12 teachers flew into a panic.  There was only three weeks of unit 3 left, including exam week.  Most had completed their courses but many had SACs (School Assessed Coursework) to complete and all the sciences plus maths and accounting had exams to prepare for.  Getting in contact with students was paramount and it became very difficult to get a line out on the phone.

Immediately Kate wanted to get the rest of her class onto the ning  so we had to let them know how to access their internal email from home (not the easiest thing as many had no idea they even had an internal email address, much less how to access it).  We decided to use their personal email addresses which Kate had previously collected and I got over my discomfort at sending out invitations to hookmeupxx@whatevermail.com and the like.  [Note to self: write a blog post on the ning on the advisability of having an email address that you wouldn't be embarrassed for your grandmother to see!].

Kate conducted her first scheduled psychology chat Tuesday evening (it had been planned the week before) and she was able to relieve some of the panic that was happening.

Now the other teachers already on the ning wanted to get their students on too but the email situation made this difficult.  Other teachers heard about what Kate has been able to do with her class and started demanding  to get involved too, even some for whom email is a novelty!

The PLLP group meet and we decide we have to take this opportunity to open it up to all interested year 12 teachers.  We recognise that in the face of adversity we have been handed a golden opportunity, we’d be crazy to miss it.

I ran two sessions for teachers to show them around the ning, explain what it is and how we want it used.  For some it was their first ever experience with social networking.  I’d already prepared a Google form for teachers to provide data for our research so like Kate’s class I insisted that they complete the form before getting an invite.  The response was huge.  By Friday afternoon 20 teachers were on board and 11 subject groups had been created although we still only had Kate’s 23 students.  That afternoon I sent an invitation to join and an email briefly introducing the ning to every year 12 student.  One of our chemistry teachers then emailed his students (he had been clever enough to collect their addresses on the Monday when we only had one student confirmed with swine flu, just in case) instructions on accessing their internal email from home.  A small trickle of memberships to approve started appearing in my inbox, including a couple from students not in the psychology or chemistry class.

On Monday school returned to normal but the enthusiasm for the ning did not wane.  I spoke to five classes, showing them around and getting them to join and we soon had over 160 members.  Students who for some reason had not received an invitation approached me while others complained that some of their subjects are not yet represented.

The enthusiasm of the students is incredible - they are loving personalising their pages, collecting friends and leaving comments.  But they are also getting involved with subject discussions and helping each other out which is exactly what we hoped for.  Looking at the latest activity it is clear that visiting the ning is a popular activity and it applies equally to a huge range of students from the ultra-studious chemistry and specialist maths types to the less-academically inclined VCAL literacy kids.  One student proclaimed ning “Better than facebook”!  The students (and teachers) are online in class time, study time, and in the evenings.

So here we are.  The PLLP group is continuing to look at study skills resources for students and teachers and embedding them in the ning.  The groups are creating their own momentum with teachers adding content and the students demanding it if they aren’t.  This week I’m going to focus on getting more teachers involved, there are still a number of subjects without groups.  We’ll have to wait till after exam week to actively seek student enrolments but word of mouth has already been working in our favour in that regard.  I think I can cautiously suggest that this project is a success.  There is already considerable demand for a year 11 ning which I’m sure will happen early next term.  Our main challenge is in keeping the content new, fresh and relevant but I’m optimistic that the students will keep the pressure on their teachers to provide.  Some of these teachers are resistant to technology - maybe ning will be the catalyst for them to shift.

*with apologies to Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Last year I was able to attend this event in person and it was great - lots of inspiring stuff to hear and see.  I was disappointed recently to realise that this year’s event was already fully booked before I’d even heard about it however a couple of new features allowed me to get over at least some of that disappointment.

This year 6 of the concurrent sessions were available online through Knowledge Bank Online and Elluminate.  People were asked to register prior but I don’t think that actually mattered, some of the attendees had clearly come via twitter links.  Anyway, I did the right thing and registered in advance and was notified by email when the sessions were coming up.

After a small technical hitch (something to do with getting around my school’s firewall) I was in and listening to Anne Mirtschen’s Flat Classroom Walls presentation.  And not just listening, viewing the same slides and videos that the real life attendees were too.  Later I “went” to Jarrod Robinson’s session on Rethinking Homework using SMS with students.

It was a great experience.  I learnt a lot from both presenters, enjoyed the backchannel chat and was able to participate by “putting my hand up” when some audience input was requested.  I did all this while at school and more or less carrying out my regular duties and it didn’t cost me or my school anything.  The only pity was that they did not broadcast the keynote speakers in this way, other than that it was nearly as good as being there.  And if I hadn’t have been able to tune in live, or if I want to check out the other 4 sessions that were broadcast in this way I can listen and view a recording of the Elluminate session.  I think that would detract from the immediacy of being in the live room but it is a great alternative when other commitments intervene.

Using Elluminate to reach a wider audience was an innovation in itself and truly reflected the spirit of the event - I hope we see more of this so that experiencing inspiring presentations is not limited to those who are physically and financially able to attend.

The other new feature is the Educator’s Guide to Innovation Ning which is

…part of action research by the Innovation and Next Practice division and will be available until December 31 2009.

There is a wealth of information around and about innovation including background on the presenters and video from the event.  There have been a range of discussions going on leading up to the showcase and already several blog posts from people reflecting on the day.  The ning will be a fantastic vehicle to maintain and build on the connections established through the showcase - I hope it doesn’t die at the end of the year but is allowed to continue to connect innovative educators.  Check it out!

I’m part of a group from my school participating in the AGQTP Building the  Capacity of Professional Learning Leaders program (PLLP).  Our project is based around improving the study habits of our year 12 students and we’re focusing on two strategies.  One is to promote the use of John Munro’s Study Skills resources by teachers in their classes and the other is to set up a Ning to be used by students and teachers as a Virtual Learning Community.

My main focus will be the Ning.  The idea came from Adrian Camm’s Physics VLC which I wrote about earlier.  This Ning will differ in that it will only be for students at my school but will eventually (hopefully) cover all subject areas.

It is my first experience of setting up a Ning although I am a member of several others.  The setting up process was very straight forward, with only one or two surprises, although I’m sure there will be more hiccups along the way.  I’ve started by inviting the three other members of the PLLP group.  It’s been gratifying to see how quickly they have found their way around and started posting discussions, uploading avatars and customising their pages.  The first surprise came when I discovered that Anne had invited another colleague to join the Ning and she had accepted…and I had no knowledge of this.  I’ve now changed the settings so that I do have to moderate new members.  One thing we don’t want when this is opened up to students is them inviting friends who are not part of our cohort.  On the upside is the enthusiasm of Kate who has gone from not knowing what an avatar is to regularly checking in to see what’s been updated.  She says she can now understand why the kids love Facebook so much!

One of the discussions I’ve started is whether we should use photos or avatars on the site.  On one hand I think that given it is a closed community, just for our students and teachers, we should use photos to assist us recognising each other around the campus (900+ students on site).  On the other hand I think one of the goals of the ning is for us to promote safe online behaviour by modelling good practice - that would suggest that avatar’s are preferable.  What do you think?

I emailed the Ning team and asked to have the ads removed as we are an educational institution and they responded quickly and positively so that was very pleasing.

I’m still figuring out some of the structural stuff.  I’ve enabled chat but it doesn’t appear to be working from school although from home it does.  How do you add the Welcome page material for example.  Do we need all the sections - events, videos, photos etc.  What profile questions should we use to ensure the users are authentic?  Will we insist on using full proper names not nicknames?  How will we organise students getting invited to join? Etc, etc…

Love to hear your opinion on any of this, watch this space for further developments.

Overload Google with good stuff  Originally uploaded by Will Lion

Will Richardson spoke recently at SLAV Perspectives on Learning V2 about the notion of being “googled well”. This illustration from Will Lion’s photo stream and featuring a quote from Seth Godin sums that up brilliantly!

Wow, what a great day.  I’m just back from the SLAV conference and I’m feeling newly inspired to blog so I thought the least I should do is write something quickly about why today was so much fun, so inspiring, so invigorating!

1.  Connections

I always love SLAV conferences because I get to catch up with people I have worked with in the past or had other professional dealings with and today was no exception (hi again to Raggsy, Marg, Robyn, Judith, Reina, Anne, Rick and Geoff).  Today was even better because I got to meet, face to face, with some of my Twitter network - hello Tania, John, Jenny and Adrian.

Today I took along the netbook I’ve been given to use and was very excited to find a wifi connection available.  I’ve been checking Twitter in the past when others have been at conferences and have been interested to see their take on what’s happening.  Today I could be one of them.  What a hoot!

2.  Inspiration

Network Literacy:  The ability to create, grow and navigate personal learning networks in safe, ethical and effective ways

Will Richardson is an inspiring speaker. His keynote on Network Literacy was fascinating.  He maintains that publishing is the easy part, it’s what occurs afterwards that matters - the connections, the conversations.  That it is important to find a diverse network; that learning within a network is an ongoing process, not an event.

I love the notion of being “Googled well” - not how well you can conduct a search, but what a searcher finds if they Google your name.  What is worse: finding dodgy pictures of you or finding nothing?  Everyone, especially our young people, needs to understand how important it is that a google search of you locates a digital presence you can be proud of (and you’re not afraid of your nanna or a prospective employer seeing).

I love how he makes his ideas so exciting yet so do-able.  I love how it is firmly grounded in the learning, in the pedagogy, not the tools (although he’s got some great tips on using the tools).  His session on blogs and blogging this afternoon is what sent me here, the moment I got home.  He articulated what I realised I had been thinking - that you need to read blogs before writing one, that you need to write for yourself before blogging with students.  It gives me renewed confidence in the value of the Web 2.0 online course I’ve been developing for our teachers, and has confirmed my recommendation for participants to set up a blog for the purpose of learning and reflection.

Adrian Camm & Leonie Dyason’s session on creating a Virtual Learning Community was equally inspiring.  Adrian’s use of a ning to engage, not only his own physics students, but students from around the state is a terrific idea and it is fabulous how he has got the textbook writers to come on board.  He has helped me crystalise a couple of ideas that I have for the Professional Learning Leaders program I am involved in.  Our project is likely to be based around study skills for our VCE students, a ning might be the answer.

3.  Confirmation

I’m not sure if confirmation is the right word here, or whether it should be affirmation.

Anyway, I just want to touch on why the fact that today left me inspired is such a good feeling.  There seemed to be a number of people in the audience who are scared or can’t see how to find the time to learn new things…I’m so glad I’m not one of them.  I am very happy that most tools and sites mentioned I have heard of, if not actually used.  I am very happy to be inspired to continue exploring and sharing what I find.  I’m happy that the online connected world has allowed me to be better at my job, to find new ways of doing things, to be part of a network.  It feels great to understand that all this is not “more work”, it simply is my work (and quite a bit of my leisure too, but that’s another story).

Another confirmation/affirmation: today a former colleague (who I worked with when I was a first year out) asked me if I’d be interested in travelling to Gippsland to present to their SLAV group.  They want to learn more about Web 2.0 tools and some of the practical applications I’ve found.  Of course I said yes, now to figure out the logistics!

Following Tania Sheko’s recent post I was intrigued to find out this blog’s (my?) personality type and which author’s writing it most closely resembles.

Using Typealyzer I’ve discovered that Bailie’s Bus is an ISTP - the mechanics:

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

Interestingly, when I’ve done those Myer-Briggs type tests I’ve come out as (I think) as an ENFJ which is pretty well the opposite.  I certainly don’t see myself as an adventurer or risk-taker.  I do enjoy problem-solving, avoid inter-personal conflicts and look for fun in every situation so perhaps this is the side of me that comes out in the blog.

Next I checked out O’Faust to see whose writing style this blog most resembles.

According to Wikipedia:

His most famous writings are Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass as well as the poems “The Hunting of the Snark” and “Jabberwocky“, all considered to be within the genre of literary nonsense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Carroll

Literary nonsense!!!  Well, it could be worse!

So, these are both a bit of fun and they could easily be used with students.  O’Faust can also analyse any piece of writing by simply pasting it into a text box.  It’d be interesting to see what an English teacher could come up with to use this feature.  Do they ever get students to try and write in the style of an author?  What a great way to judge success if they do!

I’ve started a mini 23 things project for a select group of our teachers.  I’ve been planning something like this for a bigger group but circumstances have encouraged starting earlier with this group.

The teachers are the people who teach core subjects to the two classes who will be using (hopefully leasing) the netbooks in the trial that my school has started.  My principal is concerned that the teachers are able to see uses for the netbooks beyond simple Word, Excel and PowerPoint.  I am going to be running a few sessions on tools such as Voicethread, Audacity, Comic Life soon (has been delayed by more pressing PD needs like first aid) but in the meantime it seemed that introducing them to a few Web 2.0 tools via a 23 Things/SLAV Learning with Web 2.0 style project was a timely thing to do.

Last week I set up my blog and posted the first task - setting up their own blog using GlobalTeacher.  All the teachers were emailed the link with an explanation of what it was about and lots of encouragement to make a start.  You can read about the first tasks here.

This week I wanted to look at Flickr to introduce these teachers to some of the fun and educational things that can  be done with this resource.  I joined last year and while I haven’t uploaded many of my own photos, I have found it to be a fabulous resource both for specific curriculum needs (I started a blog for Art resources when I was having trouble finding pictures of masks for an art teacher), for illustrations for this blog and just for fun.  Lately I’ve mostly used it from home so it was a big surprise last week to discover that our internet provider in its infinite wisdom has blocked it as “music downloads”!  When I queried this with our network manager he said that Flickr had been put in the same category as Youtube (ie putting innocent lives in mortal danger) and therefore could not be unblocked.  I just wanted to scream.

I know that there are unsavoury things that can be found (if you look, and sometimes accidentally) but in that case perhaps we should also ban dictionaries - there are rude words in them!  Isn’t it better to teach our young people to deal with the inappropriate material in a sensible manner, after all, they are just as likely to come across it at home when the net nanny isn’t in place.

To prohibit the use of an enormously valuable resource just because there is a chance that students will find something unpleasant is plain shortsighted and dumb, we might as well ban cars because people have been killed in accidents.

Let’s stick with the business of education and do our job.  Let’s educate our young people and prepare them for all that they might encounter.  Let’s not wrap them in cottonwool and put blinkers on ourselves hoping all this scary stuff will just go away.  It won’t.

Let’s take advantage of a wonderful free resource.

I’ve just set up a new blog to use as a resource and communication tool with teachers at my school as part of my role as College ICT Coach.  It’s going to be private, this is not an advertisement and you won’t find a link to it here.  I want to be able to reassure the more fearful that they won’t be airing their inexperience in too public a forum.

However, I did want to share my first post, so here it is:

Short, sharp and to the point

That’s how I plan to present my regular 30 minute ICT PD sessions.  There will be Brekky Bytes (8-8.30am, come at 7.45 for coffee and toast) and Afternoon (i.c.) Tea (3.30-4pm) rotating between campuses.  In any four week period there should be one morning and one afternoon presentation at each campus.

These sessions will generally cover only one topic, tool or resource.  Hopefully you will walk away with one new skill or an idea that you can immediately find a use for.  Hopefully you will consolidate your learning by passing on this new thing to a colleague who couldn’t attend.  Learn, do, teach - that’s my motto!

So what do you want to know about?  What do you want to learn to do?  How can I help you integrate ICT in your classroom?  Let me know, leave a comment here, email or come and have a chat - I’m listening.

What do you think?

On Thursday I ran my first “Brekky Bytes” PD for staff, the topic was “Learn to love the intranet”.  The invitation went out to all offering a half hour session, with coffee and raisin toast available prior as an incentive.

Eight people attended plus our Teaching & Learning Coach who came to offer moral support and supply/cook the toast.  An interesting array, rather top heavy with the college principal, a campus principal, four leading teachers and two others who I am sure will not mind being described as experienced. 

We went through how to add announcements to the staff home page, how to access and upload documents (including a longer than expected diversion into the difference between the school memory and staff documents) and a look at the intranet calendar and how it can be accessed as a shared calendar in Outlook.

I showed everyone how to set up an alert so that once a day (or week, or instantly) one can be sent an email with the content of new announcements, reducing the need to actually scan the staff home page.  In the process I discovered that while ‘my’ alerts are automatically sent to my edumail address when others in attendance tried the same thing either the default email was not visible or it showed xxx@ourschoolname etc instead of their edumail address.  I spoke later to our network manager and discovered that this address is an internal one and part of the student email system that has been set up for students to communicate with their teachers.  The teachers have been given another email account so that they don’t have to give out their edumail address to students. 

But why wouldn’t a teacher want to give their students their edumail address?  Surely as teachers our business is education and our “business” email address is our edumail one.  If students use this address to send inappropriate material then if they are identifiable as the sender they can be dealt with within the school’s discipline structure.  If inappropriate emails pop up from unknown senders then they can easily be blocked.  Our edumail address should be seen as no more personal than the school’s street address or phone number.  I can see that this issue will need to be resolved, the last thing that technophobe teachers need is added complications when they are barely grappling with checking one email account as it is.

So, as always, things never quite work out just as I imagine.  Just when you think you know how something works, you show someone else and it doesn’t work the same for them.  Some would find that frustrating and a reason not to try new things but for me it just strengthens my resolve to keep on trying, keep on exploring, continue to learn.

Picture courtesy http://flickr.com/photos/penguincakes/2788691971/

One of the first things I have to do this year is to encourage/persuade/demand that all our staff complete the DEECD (Victoria) ePotential survey.  From the ePotential website:

The ePotential ICT Capabilities Resource supports teachers developing their skills to integrate ICT into their classrooms.   This resource enables teachers to see and use the potential of ICT for powerful learning.  
The ePotential survey is available to all Victorian Government schools… teachers [who] have taken the survey … have access to classroom resources corresponding with their level of ICT capability.

The data we get from this is a great tool for planning for ICT for the college so I’m really hoping that we get a better response rate than the 53% from last year.  This year time to complete the survey has been built into our three pupil-free days at the start of term 1 (our complete quota of curriculum days for the year, but that’s another story) so I’m cautiously optimistic!

To assist staff with accessing the survey I’ve created a screencast which shows how to get to the survey and shows a snapshot of what they can get from the ePotential site. 

I’ve also created a very simple Google form so that people can record when they’ve completed the survey. Unfortunately in Google forms you can’t make the “Name” field a required question so (after experiences last year) I’ve sneakily put in the question “What is your staff code” so I don’t have to ask their name twice!  I’m thinking of having a prize draw - everyone who has completed the survey by 3pm Friday gets the chance to win a bottle of bubbly.

What do you think, do you have any other ideas to motivate teachers to complete this survey?