Sonia Glowgowski

The principal and one lead teacher were available to attending this session. Shannon school is in the early stages of implementing a revised school curriculum so a discussion around the key competencies was timely. The school is being extremely careful in assessing and implementing the curriculum. The key messages discussed by senior management centred on how to align the school’s present Virtues Programmes with the competencies and how to ensure that this is portrayed in children friendly language. A result of this session is to relook at the school’s student profile pages before the next student reports.

Trevor Bond

One of Shannon school’s lead teachers was unable to attend so a senior management teacher attended this session. The principal, lead teacher and deputy principal decided that the questioning models and rubric would be invaluable for extending the students’ thinking and questioning skills. As a result the school is in the process of arranging professional development sessions for term three staff meetings on questioning. Feedback to staff, immediately following the Trevor Bond session, highlighted the need for teachers to examine their present groupings of children and a number of teachers have already implemented change in this area. The deputy principal immediately instigated a number of questioning techniques and strategies into the senior school.

Learning@Schools09

The Shannon School two lead teachers and principal attended the 2009 Learning at School Conference. The principal concentrated professional development around the implementation of the revised curriculum. One of the major outcomes of this was rethinking on community consultation and the implementation of this for term 3 and 4. Because the school is in the process of initiating new technical contacts, the lead teachers concentrated on discussion with a number of technical and product advisers. The outcome of this is the establishment of ties with a number of companies and the purchase of hardware and software specifically aimed at enhancing the school’s programs. The school is now in the process of establishing a new technical relationship in order to improve the present school ICT infrastructure. The lead teachers have both initiated new programs into their own classes.

Murutai Visit

Tena koutou e te kura o Muritai mo to koutou haka powhiri kia matou
Tenei te mihi atu kia a koe hoki e te rangatira a Anaru, mo to mihimihi powhiri mo te ra, i whakanuia koe te kaupapa, Tena koutou , tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.

Well what an inspiring visit. Thank you very much for your enthusiastic haka powhiri and greeting.
It was interesting to here Muritai Schools journey. They had to find out who they were, and where they stood after losing their principal and their management staff. What a task! I take my hat off to you Andrew!
We were encouraged to hear that your school had to lay down a solid foundation for Inquiry learning to happen across the whole school. Your approach has inspired us to look closely at what steps we will need to take to enable us to find a model that will suit our school whanau and community.

It was a privilege to have Muritai students sit in with us so that we could see what they had learnt in terms of what Inquiry Learning means to them.
In past discussion with our junior lead teacher one of our questions was answered through this visit and that is how do the junior syndicate engage their students in Inquiry Learning. Key word for me was EXPOSURE. Expose students to the language, values, process, skills, practice of and use of ICT a little at a time but often. And yes Inquiry Learning happens at their level and eventually it will happen at senior level where thy will be able use Inquiry learning as a normal process of everyday situations.

CLUSTER FEEDBACK

Our cluster feedback was informative and revealing. I do agree with the discussion that leaders and managers need to be fully supportive and have a personal buy in, and a vision for ICT to grow in their schools. I was encouraged to hear our story being told by others about their struggles that other lead teachers are having with staff resistance and the solutions that were offered to help us work out on how to bring our colleagues on board.
We would like to offer the process that we have so far used to help us kick-start our PD sessions for our school.
1. Conduct a ICT Personal Needs Survey of all staff members-One of the crucial points that came out of the 2008 Ulearn Conference was, be an expert of the tools and programmes you have in front of you right now, use them often and then teach a small group of your students to be experts as well. These students will become part of your school wide Tekky Kids group.
2. Schedule a time for Staff ICT PD that is dedicated to that. -This can be whole Staff, Syndicate, Individual, Classroom Buddy System or any other formula that works for you. This has to be part of your whole school programme staff PD
3. Up skill staff on programmes that are relevant to the classroom and meet the immediate need of the teacher (From Survey), - With success comes confidence this has to be good for the your staff and the kids.
4. Develop a whole school philosophy/long term plan for PD. We are just at the staring point for this to happen.

Thanks you all for your support

Na te Whanau o Te Kura o Hanana

Lady of Lourdes - ICT Cluster Day 19/6/08

What a fantastic day. Thank you to our hosts Jacinta and Jodi for the opportunity to watch Inquiry learning in action. It was great to have the opportunity to interact with your students as they worked. A special thank you to our lovely student guide 'Waikeria.' She representted your school showing courtesy and peacefulness.

Highlights from our perspective for continuing our ICT journey

• Internet Integrity/Safety - We were impressed that the school's practice around internet access for students was linked closely to their school's value system. We intend to "creatively SWIPE" your ideas around this to ensure safe internet access.
• Tuakana/Teina (Buddy system) It was great to observe the senior students reinforcing their own learning by taking their skills and guiding the junior students in their use of Kidspix
• School Webpage - It was refreshing to see alternative ways to communicate with the wider community about student learning, administrative notices and school events calenders etc
• We agreed with their process of borrowing ideas from existing models to create a 'best fit' model that caters for the needs and the special character of the school.
• Students Blogging: Going into today, we have had reservations about our students being able to blog without teacher checkpoints. We were pleased to hear about "Blogmeister" and it's ability to be screened by first requesting teacher approval before going out into the deep dark World Wide Web. Yee Haa!
  

Where to from here?

We intend to feedback to our staff information gained from this day. We will then choose a focal point for further development and invest time in this area.

I.C.T Professional Development for our Staff

We came to a realisation that in order to move forward with ICT in our school, we needed to have regular scheduled times to upskill our staff. Firstly, we developed a survey to find focus areas for all our staff, including our Teacher Aides to ascertain what gaps they had in their own knowledge and confidence in implementing effective ICT in the classrooms. From this survey we have developed a long term professional development plan and are currently meeting once a week with all teachers to continue upskilling and empowering them. Initially we were having constant problems with the 'basics' e.g accessing the Internet, printing to the photocopier etc. Now that all of these problems have been ironed out, we feel that we are in a position to increase our momentum with ICT. We have decided to focus on developing our skills with using existing programmes that we have readily available e.g Powerpoint, ensuring that the programme's potential is maximised for student learning.

Our ICT Inquiry Journey thus far

We are beginning to make in-roads with ICT inquiry. Our next step is to look at other ICT models in order to develop an ICT model that is tailor-made for the students at our school . The current model we have developed is still being reviewed and trialled to check whether it fits across all curriculum areas.

Our current model is as follows:

Area for Development
Needs/Extension/Future Plans

Students/Staff/Gaps and Strengths

• Where are they?
• What knowledge and skills do they bring?
• What are their learning styles?

Research

• Consult the Literature and report back
• Syndicate/School-Discussion and Consultation
• Talk with Experts

Trial

• Prepare a proposed way forward to implement:
• Ensure all teachers are familiar with the intended outcomes

Evauate

• Reporting and Sharing the results of the trial
• Writing up the programme/protocols etc

Implement

• School wide implentation
• Teacher reflection/journals
• Senior management monitor/observe
• Experts monitor/observe

Review

• Takes place after a sustained implentation period