Educating the Dragon

My school is part of the Sitech Champion Schools programme. As part of that programme the staff here have been involved with a professional development model that appears to be working. Hardware and software have been purchased for the school and the company has provided many hours of training and professional development in it’s use in the classroom environment.

Private provision is an interesting situation, company’s vary in there product and support available. I would be interested to know of any strategy or framework which guides this aspect of school provision. As the product and support varies from company to company the experience of both staff and students also varies along with the development of ICT within the school. Is this a good thing, or bad?

Perhaps the diversity of provision is advantageous in Early Childhood and Primary phases but I would surmise that as students’ progress through Secondary and onto Tertiary national parity would be more desirable to ensure an ICT literate workforce.

Sitech Learning Zone

Enabling the 21^st Century Learner: An e-Learning Action Plan for Schools 2006- 2010

For those who signed up to my twitter you’ll know I’ve been thinking about ICTPD. Well here is my full thought….. 

There is a huge difference been ‘training’ and professional development. Even so many years through the ICTPD model in
New Zealand there seems mch confusion about the two terms and they remain in the minds of most as synonymous. But that is not strictly true. Sure there is some overlap, and some need for both aspects but when training (as in the ‘how to’ aspect of ICT) is called professional development it often. In my experience anyway squeezes out the true PD ( as in the ‘considering classroom pedagogy’)  

It is often argued ‘upskilling teachers will mean they will begin to use this technology with their classes’ – this maybe true but will it have the maximum desired outcome? I think not- A class’s use of technology after such training of the teacher will remain ‘low level’ – skills oriented level. Where as the desired outcome should be  a ‘higher level use of ICT for learning’.  

Having said that if the focus is purely professional development – the teacher is more likely to be reliant on the ICT literate students to problem solve the applications.  Which may be fine for classes of older students but with juniors their use of ICT will naturally involve explicit ‘skills’ teaching.  

My thought is that the facilitators of ICTPD clusters must take a serious look at what they are providing. Perhaps it needs to be more balanced. Perhaps the balance that needs to be redressed is on a school by school, teacher by teacher basis? But having said that there still needs to be a professional development element that goes beyond up-skilling and into the heart of classroom practise.  

So I would like to leave it there for now.  

What is the most effective ICT professional development you’ve ever had?  

How do you, in your school, go beyond upskilling/ just in time training?   

What does the ‘changing pedagogy’ really look like in New Zealand schools? Or around the world for that matter?

And is there a natural desire with ICT for professional development or is ICTPD seen a ‘you must!” storm cloud of negativity?

Here are a list of resources I picked up at the IWB Conference, truth be told, my ICT facilitator picked them up in a session and passed them on. 

English

www.primaryresources.co.uk

www.readwritethink.org/student_mat/index.asp

www.tumblebooks.com

www.education.smarttech.com

www.funbrain.com

www.rainforestmaths.com (Click on Writing fun down the bottom right) 

Maths

Woodlands Maths

www.mathszone.co.uk/

www.smartkiddies.com (Aussie money)

www.mathletics.com.au

www.quiz-tree.com (Maths quizzes) 

Science

www.bbc.co.uk/schools/scienceclips/index_flash.shtml

www.topmarks.co.uk/Interactive.aspx

www.durackss.eq.edu.au/ifiles/ifault.htm

www.primaryschool.com.au/

www.howstuffworks.com (watch out for popups)

http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/ 

Others

www.youtube.com

www.teachertube.com

www.video.google.com

www.promeatheanplanet/flipcharts.htm

www.blueletterbible.com

www.enchantedlearning.com

www.thecoloringspot.com 

Well gee, I can’t say I haven’t had an interesting week. Have spent much of the last couple of weeks researching Higher Order Thinking Skills, writing assignment one and putting together my power point presentation for the Digital Deco ICT conference. I finished it on the Tuesday night…… Smiled quietly to my self for 24 hours and then promptly dropped said laptop off the kitchen bench, trust me, they’re not really designed for that.

I then spent all of Thursday panicked that I’d lost my assignment and power point presentation, and that I’d spend all night Thursday redoing it. Fortunately for me a guy called Andy from East Coast Computers came over, took out the hard drive and managed to pull the two documents off. Yippee.

It is only then that the real fun begins. I arrive on the Friday all ready to go, memory stick in hand and the promise of a borrowed laptop.

PRS is a great system…. Classroom response unit. Unfortunately there were a couple of features involved in embedding in Power point that I over looked. There can only be ONE asked question per page NOT the 2 or 3 I had planned, also the Question when it comes up creates a ‘toolbar’ across the top. Couple these two together and you have a rather wonky presentation document with custom animation going off when it shouldn’t. Ahhh!

We were only given an hour so, yep you guessed it, I didn’t get finished. Not only that but we barely got started on applying Higher Order Thinking to a curriculum area. Doh!

Finally I have a deligate say quite openly “I am bored now,” – I mean how should one respond?

Just for the record I, for one, was not bored, Freaked, yes, disappointed, yes, embarrassed, certainly.

Twas a chapter of disasters from start to finish.

Chrissy, on the other hand preformed incredibly well. Her wonderfulworldofwikis presentation was an inspiration to all who attended. She even had someone who created her own wikispace for the presentation she was giving immediately after. Go Chrissy.

Btw I have to mention that she called Vicki the “Wiki Queen”- well in made me smile at the time- probably just one of those ‘had to be there things.