Motivation

The college has invested heavily in infrastructure and hardware. The challenge was to ensure the students were able to benefit immediately and substantially from the newly acquired resources. We therefore had a blank canvas, and although many of our teachers had made a start with Web 2, we were determined to maximise the benefits of the technology across the Middle School section.  Our strategy was to develop a learning community through the use of a NING space capable of facilitating the delivery of a range of relevant and straightforward Web 2 learning and teaching approaches.

Intended goals /outcomes

• To equip Mid Sch teachers with a generic set of web 2 teaching tools and facilities/resources.
• To lay the foundation for the implementation of pedagogies promoting critical thinking/inquiry based learning
• To promote an online learning community across the middle school.

Description of the Activity

Students would access ‘Look to Learn’ activities via blogs/discussion forums or in the classroom with a whiteboard.  Teachers would engage in action research to analyse the effects of the approach and share their professional learning with colleagues in an informal face to face ‘show and tell’ forum.  ‘Pageflakes’ is intended to be used as a stand-alone resource to be trialled with students in Geography, History and English.  Again the sharing of best practice in various contexts and the refinement of materials through consultation with others in the learning community is seen as the most effective approach in ensuring that the technologies are imbedded.

Use of Online / Web 2 resources & tools

The main Web 2 tools used so far are:

• WordPress & embedded media
• Pageflakes Feeds
• Look to Learn Site
• Look to Learn Links
• Ning Site

Anecdotes from Design/Implementation: Look to Learn, Teacher quotes:

“It will help me to think more intentionally about the questions I have been framing in my current process (collaboration on EduKate). It will give me other options to improve and enhance my current teaching tools.”

“ I think the sample prompts are excellent! I have used some of them before like the bubble maps, but there are heaps of other ideas which I think will give a lot more variety in how I present critical thinking in my lessons. There are some excellent tools and resources to use also.”

“It is handy to know that this can be run with students writing their answers on a worksheet, in their books, on a blog post or another electronic submission format. I could definitely make use of a wide range of resources to show the whole class, and then have them respond in their books for a once-a-week Bible class reflection. It will also be a fantastic attention-capturing device.”

Final Reflection

Teachers are time poor and the use of technology that actually meaningfully ‘mechanises’ learning and teaching around rich resources that are widely available and easily accessible is possibly the most exciting outcome of the project to date.  Our role, as educational leaders, is primarily to build purposeful and meaningful learning communities, promoting a culture of success through commitment to continuous improvement through the building of relationships and sharing of learning, ideas, thoughts and feelings.  The technology and approaches we have explored to date have helped to promote these elements.

The project is just getting started and time will tell what the medium and long term effects  will be.  We certainly have managed to inspire a team approach and enthusiastic response from our target team. The staff Ning will continue to orientate our teachers to the technology prior to a full roll out of our student Ning in 2010.

Click on the following link to have a look at our recently launched Staff Ning

http://bccmsstaff.ning.com/forum