Welcome to Week 3
Below is the overview for the week.
- Continue
with your film – working to finalise it and upload it to Vimeo by Monday 25th May.
- Watch the
Professional Viewing 2 – C21 Pedagogy and Professional Reading – 21st Century
PLNs for School Leaders.
- Begin
planning your Action Research Project (ARP) – completing Stage 1 by drawing on
discussions with your mentor and through your online mentor group discussions,
Download from Bastow 307 and read the Personal ARP guide and template and start
thinking about what ‘the BIG question’ might be for you.
- Participate
in the Group Online Discussion facilitated by your Mentor about C21 Pedagogy.
- Register
for Twitter and follow @dk2_econfidence (this needs to happen by the end of
next week, Week 4).
- Write
your second weekly E-journal entry.
EJournal Reflection - (To complete on your own personal blog)
In the week's E-Journal, reflect on your experience so far creating the video for the Bastow Film Festival: Think about the following:
What skills have you learned when creating the video?
What did you learn about yourself? What did you learn about your school partner?
Have you made mistakes? How do you feel about that? And what have you learn from these mistakes?
How can you apply what you have learned to other situations in the future?
Group Discussion:
Let's use the first few days of the week to talk about these
three questions. Share on our discussion
board (please comment below) about the DNA make up from your own school, you,
your teachers and you students. What is it like in your school?
Make sure you pop back in here a couple of times this week
and add your ideas to the conversation.
Later this week, once you have had a bit a chance to read
the ARP document, I'd like to get some of your initial thoughts and ideas on
some personal leadership focused ideas for your action research project
"big question". It would be
great for everyone to have input into each others ideas too. The more we can share and give each other
feedback the better off we will be when we come to making a decision about what
to focus on.
Also: Keep thinking about what you could ask Eric Sheninger as well. This is a fantastic opportunity to connect with a world leader in this area.
Cheers,
Matt
Hello Matt,
ReplyDeleteWhat a day today! We worked on our film, and now we just wait to vimeo to send us the invite to the group. We have lots of fun making it and are hoping to get it up on our website too!
Question for you this week. I'd like my blog to have cool tabs up the top like yours.. is this easy to do? Can you please direct me as to how to do this?
Thanks :)
Must have been the day for working on the film! We have been working hard on ours too and the staff have been keent o share their ideas of what they see as their vision for the ideal school. I've never used iMovie before (although I spend most weekends watching movies made by my own children on apps like it!!) and I must admit, I have really enjoyed giving it a go. Sooo much easier to use than I thought.
ReplyDeleteOnto the DNA of my school. Red Cliffs Primary School has a student enrolment of around 190 students. We are the biggest primary school in a relatively small town. We have 9 classrooms (about 21 kids in each class), each with an IWB, hovercam, flip camera, and a small set of desktop computers. Grade 5/6 classess have 1:1 netbooks, most of which are kept at school (free for kids to use). Some are taken home for a very scmall charge for the year. P-2 rooms share banks of I-Pads, and 3/4 classes share banks of netbooks. There is also a computer lab which is mainly used by P-4 students. Our school has a high level of families from a low-socioeconomic background, with many parents not finishing secondary education themselves. A lot of the staff are locals themselves (myself included) and quite often see the students on weekends when attending our own leisure activities (kids sport, town markets, local footy/netball, etc). Most of us have taught at the school for 15+ years, other than 2 graduate teachers that are into their third year at our school. I would describe our school as a very friendly place to be where students are accepting of everyone, no matter where they come from or how they perform academically. Staff are open to change, but a lot are nervous of the new challenges that face them in regards to technology as they feel they aren't as tech savvy as the kids! We are all looking forward to learning from this course and I'm hoping that Rod (my Principal) and I can show staff that we need to learn with the kids.
The film provided my nine students with great motivation to try flip cameras and the iPads out - however their efforts didn't squeeze into the time-frame that the 60 seconds permitted. Never-the-less - in absence of a school team of teachers, I felt the students gained great experience from their efforts. We aim to improve. I need to spend time with Movie Maker and have them embed their creations into something more cohesive. I apologise for making my film too long for the competition - at this stage it has been uploaded to Vimeo at 2.00 minutes :(
ReplyDeleteSeems that everyone is working on the film this week. We had 18 students in our film and it was great fun to create. We thought it turned out really well. Hopefully we can get it up on our website too in the next few days.
ReplyDeleteCan't wait to see all your films! This is always an exciting time for us in the Bastow Academy (:) as we get to see your visions for an ideal school....we learn where your thinking is at and where you might want to head and we are always blown away with how creative you are. We set high expectations and have NEVER been let down yet...
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOur video is coming along and is hopefully almost finished- 60 seconds is not very long!
ReplyDeleteI have been teaching at Swan Hill North Primary school for 3 years. I teach ICT 3 days a week and Grade 4/5 2 days a week. I enjoy teaching in a technology rich environment however Iand am always looking for new ways to integrate
Swan Hill North Primary School is a mid sized school in Swan Hill with approximately 220 students. The SFO of the school is .6
About 18 months ago we introduced a 1:1 ipad program for students from Grade 1-4. Next year this program will be 1:1 from Grade 1-6.
The teaching staff at the school range in age although generally the staff would be considered fairly experienced. Their knowledge and enthusiasm towards technology is varied with some keen to experiment while others are less convinced about the benefits of technology. Much of the ICT PD this year has been ‘big picture’ work in order to convince some of the blockers that technology is not fad and it will benefit their students. It is now mandatory that technology be used in each session (2 hour block) in some way.
Although we have quite a few families that struggle financially we only have approximately 5 students out of 200 that do not pay the lease on an iPad. This suggests that families are very supportive of the 1:1 ipad program and make it a priority in their budgeting.
Has anyone had a chance to have a look over there eConfidence data? The report that Meredith sends is a really good starting point for your thinking around what your ARP big question could be. Remember the ARP is about you and your leadership. I'd love to hear you thoughts below.
ReplyDeleteYeah I have had a bit of a look at my report. The 6th area: Business Operations and Systems Management was the lowest I scored. Our school has committed to an ICT planning Day with Technicians which is around SIPS data and having a clear plan around infrastructure - Marty, I think you guys did this last year? This will take place in a couple of weeks which is timely.
DeleteWhen I look at the other Leadership aspects, I think I will probably do my ARP around Strategic Planning or Staff Building Capacity, as these were also a little lower, and something I see a need for (Matt- the latter is probably evident in my E-Journal Reflection).
Haven't thought too much about what my big question will be, but will take a better look at the report and start to get some ideas.
Very useful Joe, we found that we were lacking in cabling etc and spent the grant on improving this. It has made a massive difference
DeleteThe DNA of our school:
ReplyDeleteWe are the largest Primary School in our area with approx 560 students. We run 25 straight classrooms (4 x Preps, 4 x 1's, 4 x 2's, 4 x 3's, 3 x 4's, 3 x 5's and 3 x 6's). We have an SFO of 0.62, with a real mix of students and families in terms of socio-economic backgrounds.
Our Teachers would probably be considered younger, with a number of staff with 2-10 years experience, 5 out of our 7 Year Level Coordinators fit into this experience bracket.
Our Leadership team is a Prinipal, 2 x AP (One 0.8 and myself full time), 4 Leading Teachers (1 Wellbeing, 3 Teaching and Learning). Out of our Teaching and Learning Leading Teachers, 1 is in a classroom and the others do not have a set teaching load.
At our school we have a focus on teamwork and support, year levels are released together at all times so they can plan together. We have a real focus on consistency in Year levels, which as I reflect through this course, I think sometimes limits creativity to a degree. Our Teaching and Learning Coaches run a lot of our Professional Learning.
I think the majority of staff are open to change and quite innovative. Like most schools, we have a small number of teachers that can be resistent to change in practice, but if we can open their eyes to the opportunities and benefits, they are generally receptive.
The viewing raised some important points about the significant change in teaching that must take place in order to properly meet the needs of our students. There needs to be a complete remodelling of the way teaching and learning takes place in school. I can understand why, but it still infuriates when leaders in a school see or read about this and simply add or just ask their staff to focus on a different strategy like differentiation as if it is a revolutionary idea. Of course we should, every teacher should be doing these sorts of things everyday as part of their practise. I feel that they do not realise that all those strategies are part of a much bigger solution to a problem that is over a hundred years old. Just my opinion :) I showed my crew the Sir Ken Robinson clip on "Are schools are killing creativity?". It's a very well know clip that I believe really illustrates what our video for this week was trying to get across about changing the DNA of schools.
ReplyDeleteI love your thinking here Peter, it is really re-imagining the whole system. The idea of teaching in this day and age can be completely re-invented. I think when you get yourself there with the thinking and show others the way it can be really quite liberating.
Delete