eLearning Infusion

Nick ePortfolios ePortfolios, L@S, Learning@School

If you are interested in ePortfolios then the annual Learning@School conference in Rotorua should suit you well.

There are 11 breakouts that have a major focus or have reference to the use of eportfolios:

• Earlybird: ePortfolio’s made easy! Brendon Muir
• Earlybird: Dancing on the Same Page. Chrissie Butler
• Breakout 1: e-Portfolios: A Case Study. Belinda Johnston
• Breakout 3: ePortfolios 101. Nick Rate
• Breakout 3: The Three aspects of an effective School Website that increase 21st Century Pedagogy. Tim Berends
• Breakout 4: ePortfolios – A Showcase of Practice. Nick Rate
• Breakout 4: Powerful Learning Journeys – Using Digital Story Telling within an ePortfolio to show the learning process. Ian Fox & Lenva Shearing
• Breakout 5: Room 17 Voices: Eportfolios and the Online Classroom. Erin Freeman
• Breakout 5: The LMS Gateway to learning and Assessment. Mark Treadwell
• Breakout 5: The Open Source School. Mark Osbourne
• Breakout 6: Laying the Groundwork: producing a realistic and relevant strategy for online learning. Stuart Armistead

Doing a bit of self promotion, I am really excited about the ePortfolios – A Showcase of Practice breakout. I have managed to bring together 5 current practitioners of eportfolios who will be sharing their experiences, beliefs and examples of implementing eportfolios in their schools. They are:

1. Deb Cowan. Director of eLearning & Teacher, Russell St School, Palmerston North.Chrissie Butler
2. Ministry of Research, Science and Technology Teacher Fellow 2010, and former BLENNZ (Blind and Low Vision Education Network NZ) cluster facilitator.
3. Sharron Eagle. Teacher, Rotorua Girls High School Childcare Trust.
4. Belinda Johnston. Facilitator/Director, EastNet ICTPD Cluster, Elm Park School
5. Jamin Lietz. ICT Lead Teacher, Bethlehem College, Tauranga

You guys are awesome! Thanks for agreeing to share your experiences!

The aim was to represent a cross section of schools, tools and beliefs. Unfortunatley, was not able to get a high school represented but am aiming to repeat this breakout or one very similar at ULearn10 so here is a call out to a high school who would be willing to show and tell! All suggestions welcome.

Nick ePortfolios ePortfolios, L@S, Learning@School

Should I be excited or depressed?

I noticed a new incoming link to my blog this week which comes from the Halfdone NZ Blog Stats.

This site is listed there as the 389th most popular blog in NZ. Which equates to the 12th most popular education blog.

I hear you ask, what about widely read blogs such as Derek’s Blog and others? Well to qualify for these stats, amongst other things,  your blog needs to be listed in Alexa or Technorati and you can’t be paid to complete it. Not sure if it is part of Derek’s JD or not…

More info on how these ratings are compiled are here and if you think your blog should be, let the post author know, politely.

Here are your top educational blogs, including three that have not been updated in a while but still must be pretty popular.

133: Leading and Learning

177: Artichoke

190: PPTA

245: Hey Milly!

250: Manaikalani

265: ICT U Can

297: The Educated Kiwi *

312: ICT in Early Education*

325: Toni Twiss Mobilising Education *

341: SLAB

379: Dragonsinger

389: Elearning Infusion

393: Subversive ICT

* = noted as a ‘defunct’ blog

Nick Research blog, education, halfdone, statistics, stats

The last few days at a National Standards Hui have enabled me to string a few thoughts together regarding the implementation of these changes. These thoughts are not really specific to the standards and could be transferred to any conversation regarding implementing something new.

The pyramid diagram helps to illustrate these thoughts. At the bottom of the pyramid are the building blocks of effective teaching and learning. These inlcude but are certainly not limited to:

• effective leadership
• evidenced based practice
• home/school partnerships
• effective professional development
• purposeful learning

The top of the pyramid are the desired outcomes. For example:

• improved student achievement
• empowered and knowledgeable teachers
• motivated/engaged students

We enter into the age old debate of the top down or bottom up approach, but I believe in the case of the National Standards and the haste at which they are to be implemented, that unless the building blocks are in place then the desired outcomes of the Standards, which I have no problem with, will never actually be realised to their full.

A quote yesterday from one of the hui speakers

…a repertoire of pedagogy rather than a recipe or prescription…

sounds great and few would argue we want this for all of our teachers regardless of if we are talking about the Standards or not.

The Standards themselves will not give teachers a repertoire of pedagogy but effective leadership and professional learning will, there is not one without the other… right?

Nick assessment national standards

I was motivated to try and visually represent what I had written in a post in the ePortfolios in NZ Google Group thread. Here’s some of what I said:

“…Your example of scanning learning and now moving towards HTML templates illustrates this. Over time you also want or need to readdress your criteria, purpose and vision, especially if you are in a scenario where other classes are using paper. It is more than likely that your views and thoughts are expanding at the same time as your understanding grows due to an increased awareness of the technology capability, student/teacher capability and allignment to learning, and much more rapidly than for those with paper based portfolios…”

The attempt to visualise this into another eportfolio graph is below. The basic idea being that the more experienced you are in implementing eportfolios the more dynamic they are due to the teacher continually refining and developing the implementation.

Not rocket science really. The second graph below includes a reference to paper based portfolios. There are probably a few people who don’t agree with my view here that there are generally a static document in terms of how they change over time…

The graphs aren’t perfect and the terminology is not quite right. As with most posts in this blog I am just unpacking and reflecting on ideas running around in my head.

It is pretty full at the moment as there are two more graphs brewing. One is to try and show the relationship between the ownership and formative nature of an eportfolio and the other the place of feedback in a portfolio within the bigger picture of learning.

I get a lot of inspiration from Jessica Hagy who’s site thisisindexed.com is full of great visual representations of life and thinking relationally. I would love to be able to create such simple graphs that are yet so informative. Here’s an example:

Nick ePortfolios ePortfolios, graph

Jamin Lietz has initiated a thread in the MLE Google Group entitled ePortfolios in NZ.

He notes the purpose of the group:

It is my desire to establish a network with those who are using ePortfolios this year as a tool to enhance teaching and learning. I hope that together we can share good practice, research findings, our  journey, etc.

I would encourage anyone to dive on in there and participate in the ongoing discussions.

Some notable eportfolio personnel have participated already including Dr Helen Barrett, the global eportfolio guru, and Ian Fox the local NZ portfolio legend.

Thanks Jamin!

Nick ePortfolios ePortfolios, Google Group, Helen Barrett, Ian Fox, New Zealand

Late last year I read with interest a post by Dorothy Burt titled eTools – As Basic as Breathing. This post described the the expectations of what new teachers at Pt England need to know:

But to function effortlessly in the 2010 environment we WILL presume the following:

All our teachers are able to:

• check an email account daily and manage it efficiently
• use a computer or laptop and trouble shoot basic functions ie on/off, connect to printer, connection to internet
• use the internet to search, find information and to communicate
• particpate in online environments eg blogs or forums or Nings or Trademe or Facebook etc
• manage music files in software eg in iTunes
• manage photo files using software
• download photos from a camera
• use a word processing document efficiently
• store and retrieve data from a hard drive eg your computer
• access Google Docs
• edit a short video clip using simple software

Dorothy continues on with of a list of skills teachers would need to learn, with support, as quickly as possible. Included here are such things as using presentation software, administering a blog, using Google Apps… the list continues.

I would encourage you to read this post and apply it to your own situation in your school. What would your non negotiable elearning requirements be?

Soon after reading Dorothy’s post I read this one from Kim Cofino titled Making the Implicit Explicit. Kim (who is soon to begin a new position at Yokohama International School where I coincidentally used to work), describes skills that are often taken for granted but are incredibly important, yet as she mentions often unidentifiable:

knowing to hold your mouse over an icon or a link to see what it does.

understanding that the menus for any program are at the top of the screen, that they are usually very similar, and generally what you find within them (for example: “view” usually means how you see things on the screen and that menu is found in almost every program).

recognizing when something is lit up (or underlined) on a website, you can click on it.

knowing that the cursor changes when held over different parts of the screen and what that means (the little arrow turning into a hand over a weblink for example, or being able to stretch out a picture when it turns into the double-sided arrow).

using tab to move from cell to cell or box to box on forms or websites.

being able to recognize drop-down menus – and that they hold additional features.

understanding that right clicking on things brings up more options.

We don’t need a list of skills for each application, or checklist that ensures we have taught how to change the font in Word or add a transition in Powerpoint. What we need to be doing is to reinforce these elearning operational concepts. In other words, arm teachers and students with a transferable skill set that enables them to better navigate their way online and in applications to solve problems and perform tasks independently. I still have conversations with teachers who want checklist of what skills students should know at the end of a particular school year. I have always been opposed to a prescribed list of skills that end up dictating what is taught to students rather than the learning driving the use of the technology. I remember buying a computing skills checklist back in early 2000, developed by another school in NZ. I came across it just the other day, unused, but such an interesting read!

Jill Hammonds, one of my colleagues at CORE, often discusses the need to do aware with a lot of the how-to workshops that are often prevalent in ICT professional development. These instead are replaced with 2 or 3 sessions that teach the operational concepts/skills required in order for teachers and students to successfully explore, problem solve and teach themselves. It makes sense really and as Kim mentions in her initial list, menus in screens are very similar in all common software packages.

Having an hour long PD session on learning how to use an application or online tool is an overkill. I would be the first to admit that I have done this myself many times. Instead, giving taster sessions to teachers on various etools, showing them what can be possible, combined with the focused teaching of computer operational concepts and skills that are transferable across applications and platforms, is time better spent. Quality time can then be spent on the pedagogy required to integrate these tools effectively into teaching and learning.

For all those little tricky bits and time saving short cuts in applications, nothing beats the the notion of just-in-time learning and ongoing networking of ideas between the staff and in their PLNs.

The follwoing flowchart cartoon, embedded into Kim’s post, reinforces this notion beautifully.

Thanks Dorothy and Kim for both of your respective posts. The combination of the two will initiate many good discussion amongst the principals and facilitators I work with.

Checklist photo courtesy squeaky482 on flickr.

Nick 21st Century Skills, eLearning Dorothy Burt, Kim Cofino, professional development, professional learning, skills

Anyone in NZ investigating eportfolios will know the name Lenva Shearing, DP at Bucklands Beach Intermediate School.

Watch her discussing the eportfolio as a personal space for learning on Edtalks:

More eportfolio Edtalks can be found below:

• Ewan McIntosh
• Nick Rate
• Ian Fox
• Sue Genefaas

Nick ePortfolios Bucklands Beach, EdTalks, ePortfolios, Lenva Shearing

I had a terrible moment last week when I turned on my iMac, an audible clicking and humming that got progressively worse. On top of that, there was no familiar Apple logo, instead a flashing folder icon with a question mark… no hard drive found!

Thankfully, just the week before I had purchased a new 1TB Western Digital network drive, compatible with Time Machine, so I knew I had a full backup.

So the question now was, do I replace the hard drive myself or take it to the shop? Always up for a challenge, I ordered an replacement 500GB drive for NZ$86 and jumped onto YouTube to see if any one had posted a how-to movie. Thankfully they had, there were a couple of excellent video walk throughs for replacing hard drives on a 20″ or 24″ iMac. Apple also provide an instructional DIY pdf. My model is a 20″ Late 2006 iMac, the last before the aluminum models came out.

So feeling pretty confident, the hard drive arrived and I got stuck in, only to discover that once I had the casing off and the LCD ready to come out, that my model iMac was different to both of those in the how-to videos and the Apple instructions.

The major differences are that the hard drive is located in the middle left side rather than the middle top, and that the LCD is connected with 3 cables (2 on the left and 1 at the bottom) rather than just 2.

So a few carefully considered cables detached and screws undone, the hard was replaced in no time at all. A Time Machine restore is happening as I type.

So the lesson to be learned is, back-up your data and back-it up frequently. If you own an Apple and are not using Time Machine, you should be. Hard drives can and do fail at any time.

Lesson number 2 is that DYI hard drive replacement is relatively easy in an iMac. Save yourself some dollars and give it a go.

Nick Hardware hard drive, iMac, replacement

© 2010, J, McKenzie, all rights reserved.

Now we have the 13 I’s for the 21st Century competencies in the latest from Jamie McKenzie in the January edition of FNO.

Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic & Reasoning

“It [the 4Rs] was a user friendly way to focus on the basics. With all the talk now of 21st Century Skills, we need a model that is equally user friendly – just the right number of prime thinking competencies to fit on a handy bookmark or poster to remind all teachers and students about core values. My bookmark offers thirteen competencies, all beginning with the letter “I” – a Baker’s Dozen”

Jamie Mackenzie has published many articles in educational technology. If you do not already subscribe to FNO, maybe you should consider it.

Bookmark and quote © 2010, J. McKenzie 2010, all rights reserved. Schools may make copies of bookmark for use with students at no cost. Any other group must write for permission.

Nick 21st Century Skills 21st century, competencies, FNO, Jamie McKenzie