Here is what you have on for
this week.
- Read and reflect on Stephen Heppell’s Letter to Queensland.
- Continue with your School ICT Change Plan (Sections 8-10) with your course partner(s) and get feedback from me and other critical friends.
- Spend time talking with your course partner(s) about how you are both going in the course, and share any questions, ideas and thoughts you might have at this stage.
- Participate in our Group Online Discussion.
- Write your tenth E-journal entry.
- Commence preparations for Workshop 3.
- Our Group Discussion:
Our Discussion this week:
In his entry, Heppell writes:
“All around the world teachers and schools are discovering,
researching and sharing the new approaches that make learning more engaging and
extraordinarily effective.”
How will your planned ICT change help to achieve this discovery
and sharing?
Would you consider writing
similar letter to your own school community?
What would you put in such a letter?
Check out Simon Trembath's letter (emailed by Meredith) - He had a
great response from his staff about this letter. He said one staff member pretty much jumped
up and did a fist pump and yell "Let's go!" It was a funny story, but
could you inspire your staff to get on board with something similar?
Feel free to share how you are feeling about finishing your ARPs as well. They have been great reading.
Hopefully the ICT change plan will provide our staff with the opportunity to take more risks with their teaching by including more technology. Through providing PD where teachers discover and learn hopefully this will be transferred back into the classroom.
ReplyDeleteI would consider writing a letter along the lines of Heppell and Simon to provide the community with an overview as to where education is heading. I would like to think that the letter would not contain any new surprises for the community as I think the changes in the world must be reflected in education and preparing students for the future.
For me it links really closely with Eric Sheninger's message about telling our story. Start telling your story or you can be sure someone else will be telling it for you. I think we are starting to do this better at Canterbury PS but we still have parents telling they have no idea about how we are using ICT in the classroom. My learning has been around having to tell these stories and share these messages, over and over and over and consistently.
ReplyDeleteI'm about to do the reading now but I totally agree. We don't blow our own horns enough as a profession. Have you found using social media has been really useful in this area Matt? How else do you get your story out to your school community? I've been trying to actually just build the foundations of ICT at my school. While I have been doing that, I've been moving around the different groups in our school promoting the ground work that we have been doing. I've also set up little surveys and quizzes for the staff to complete with cool prizes as rewards. Even though we are seriously lack tech, our staff have started to show a growth mindset and resilience. I am starting to see a somewhat positive shift, due to the amount of ownership we have been giving our staff.
ReplyDeleteWe went down the route of purchasing an app called tiqbiz and we control our message to parent in this way. The app sends photos, messages and alerts straight to the parents phone. We have started to develop a communication strategy with a high emphasis of staff celebrating students work and the amazing things they are doing in class to start to get our story out there.
DeleteThis is not as direct as sharing in an open letter but we're planning on the cumulative effect of sending consistent messages about 1. student centered activities 2. Deep/rich learning 3. Community I think this helps us to get our message out. Social media is playing a huge role in individual teacher classrooms sharing with their parents but is not making up much of our formal overall whole school communication strategy just yet (it will though).
You sound like you starting to see a bit of a shift Peter. Putting the tools in the hands of your teachers and expecting them to use them in this way is always a great start. Good thinking.
Hi Peter, at Tempy we have to keep our presence asserted and have been focusing on the use of social media to help us since 2013. It has made a huge difference. I publish weekly photos or films but I am using FB because that's where my parents are at. We are using Vivo Rewards which pings parents via SMS text messages, feedback when their child is doing the ordinary good stuff during their school day/week. We have Kinda join us for sporting events so we operate K to 6 during athletics and swimming season. This engages the prospective families, broadens your contact base and fosters transitions in an area not being captured by many schools. We have elderly citizen computer sessions with our younger children - that's been pretty cool....the older ladies are less resistant when they think it's about the kids! Then, a few pictures and brief articles in the paper around some of these events reminds them that we are still here!
DeleteSome great opportunities to share your schools message through a range of different platforms. Our school also has Tiqbiz for communicating with the school community- office staff help parents download it so they are on board. Social media or the newsletter. It could be subtle messages or an open letter like the examples provided. Whatever I think it needs to be written to suit your unique context, not someone else's. For me starting at a new school it would be subtle messages about opportunities for learning. I look forward to building on this throughout the year.
ReplyDeleteNot able to reply to Marty but I totally agree with your post. When meeting and working on our ICT change plan we found that developing staff capacity will be extremely important. Also that we need them to become the learners we want our students to be. Matt I feel the important message you have given to me is the WHY. Why is this important, why do they need to change, why will it improve what they are doing. An open letter and social media will be important drivers moving forward for the community.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad your finding the messages are hitting the mark Tim, if we think about what motivates us as individuals, I think a sense of purpose and an understanding of why is one of those things. My first principal and I still keep in touch and she always talks to me about how your expert staff (not always those that have the most experience) join the dots easily, in much the same way you and the leadership team do, they take messages that get from leadership and make sense of it all. Sometimes we need to be really explicit about what we are expecting and why so all staff understand the messages and are able to join the dots for themselves.
DeleteGreat discussion everyone - and I am enjoying the focus on 'we' and 'our' here....and the WHY before the WHAT.
ReplyDeleteI like reading all this, and it is just helping me to realise the power of a PLN. I enjoyed reading the letter and this it is very powerful message. I like the idea of a letter to our parent/wider community. However I like the idea of sharing the story more. I like the idea of sharing our progress through social media, so that our story is a continuous collection of pieces. We are so lucky because we are starting a new school, so we can establish these from the ground up. Doing this course, and working on our ICT change plan is just the perfect way to set it up. We have a digital lead users group, encouraging teachers to try a range of technologies and report back to the group. It is only after a rigorous trial period is completed, that we report to the rest of the staff. To make sure it is worth while, and will increase students engagement and learning.
ReplyDeleteLike I said, I have enjoyed reading all your stories and will use some of those ideas in some way or another!
We used the kids today to help us start to define our story. Preps to Grade 6 all pitched in about "Tempy's Amazingness". The kids really value so many of the same things we value...and writing letters, sharing the story and not just doing it every four years within review time - but aiming to do it at least once a term is a great goal.
ReplyDeleteHey Matt - I think I have ARP in 24 hours ahead of due date. Hope it's ok? Greg - I am caught up now:)
ReplyDelete