Why strive to provide Ultra Fast Broadband in NZ Schools? While I totally agree with the following points made at the meeting:

While all schools understand their own community best, often there is nobody in the school that understands ICT infrastructures and how they relate to the successful implementation of learning in the school. Consequently, this job is left to the IT Technician or some classroom teacher with an interest or some ‘spare’ time. This often results in schools spending large amounts of $$$ to the vendor with the flashiest solution rather than the one that is best fit for both the school and the staff who will need to use it. Talking to schools, they are continually pelted with sales promotions for IWB’s, Software solutions, LMs’s, E-Portfolio solution, Phone solutions, wireless access etc etc etc ….and now its all the companies trying to sign schools up to fibre as fast as possible before the overall fibre Tender is announced in October.

I believe the most important aspect of the meeting last week was the Ministry basically asking for a mandate from schools to look at tendering for the ongoing cost of Fibre access to the school PLUS the data used. While this would come out of our bulk grants, the pricing they would be able to get for 2300+ schools would have to be better than we can get individually!! Our meeting unanimously ‘passed’ for this to happen so if we are willing to do this then perhaps the climate is right to put back into place some Educational IT specialists with geographic ‘regions of responsibility’ who are not advisors but individuals employed by the Ministry (maybe from ‘tagged staffing’) with the responsibility for liaising between the schools and vendors and who have the responsibility of ‘ticking off’ major IT purchases for ALL schools in the area. This would allow them to organise regional tenders for all the items that schools are presently trying to buy ….and due to ‘economy  of scale’ the deals the schools would get would be a major financial win.

If you are a Hard Materials teacher and have some great ways to use ICT in our subject you are more than welcome to become a contributor on Teach Tech, or if you know a Hard Materials teacher who is using ICT as a teaching and learning tool please let me know.

mark@tek.net.nz

I have set myself two ‘ICT’ related goals to achieve before I head back to work next week.  The first is to create a blogging site for Mt. Maunganui College, the second is to create a wiki for Technology Teachers to submit relief work so that none of us have to come up with relief lessons on the morning when we feel the worst.

Both these things are reasonably straightforward to setup but they require a reasonable investment of my own time, not only installing the systems but also generating awareness and then supporting users (all without financial reward).

The second goal is the easier of the two.  Go to Teach Tech and you will find a basic mediawiki install where teachers can share content.  Contacting those likely to contribute will be done through the BOP GTTA (Graphics and Technology Teachers Association).  After that it is just a case of waiting for the emails to come flooding in, I hope.

The first goal is a little harder as it has been requested from senior management after seeing what happens in other schools with blogging.  Having set up a blog server at Katikati College I am aware that only a couple of keen teachers have really used it so far although it is growing in popularity.  The thing I am most scared of is that I put this thing in place and then have to tell the whole staff that they have to use it, or I am only given half an hour in staff meeting to sell it.  In short I will have to do it well to avoid a backlash.

I have decided to go with WordPress mu again but this time using the Buddypress plugins.  This makes WPMU look and feel like Facebook or Bebo which enables users to add friends, create groups, post their status etc.  The idea is to get users to use the platform to generate content without it feeling like work and once they are used to the interface then the transition to blogging will be smoother.  One of my problems is that in my head the target audience are the most cynical teachers (you know the ones I mean), if I can sell it to them then I should get everyone else.  I am probably being too hard on myself, I will be happy if a handful of people use it, blogging isn’t for everyone but we shall see if it sticks.

We went back after visiting here in 2006 and to be honest we stole their great idea of school owned laptops. It is nice to see the contrast between the Australia and NZ education systems and Lynne, the principal at APHS certainly gave us the grand tour, in fact we went back on the Tuesday to have a look at their new literacy programme as this is something we will be looking at Implementing in 2008 but more on that in the next post. We even got to show off the wiimote boards which was to be the only time in Australia that anyone was interested. I guess that when all your students have laptops the need for teacher directed learning is somewhat lessened.

Ironic that nearly all schools block these sites.  Someone said to me last week that there is no evidence that technology (ICT) improves learning.  It wasn’t until later that I thought that there is probably no evidence that school improves learning.

The point of school is to provide a safe learning environment.  If we are really so afraid we could set up “walled garden” social networks, but generally most young people in NZ have a profile with bebo and don’t want to change, so why not let them use it to collaborate at school?

Sometimes you just gotta throw things against the wall to see if they stick.

has been around since November last year and is a very convenient file sharing web 2.0 app.  No signup or e-mail address is needed, just create a URL and drop your file with password protection if you wish, it couldn’t be more simple.  The creators of drop.io feel that your privacy is paramount and do not snoop at your files, your files automatically become RSS feeds and they give you a number of ways to upload files including a wordpress plugin.  I find the wordpress plugin particularly interesting as a way for students to hand work in.  In case you are wondering .io is an Indian Ocean domain.

Uploaded with Skitch!

Also interested in this Camera setup for subjects like graphics. You can vaguely see the picture on the board behind but I can see the use in Science for experiments and other subjects. With the price of cameras coming down so much it is a real opportunity for bang for your buck.

Blogged with Flock

I read the article and followed the link to the site and at first glance it looks fairly promising. As I started to dig a little deeper I discovered that it was started in 2006 by a self proclaimed serial entrepreneur and alarm bells start ringing.

The site was started in 2006 by Graham Glass who has never taught in a school and does not seem to have partnered with anyone who has. He claims that his site will remain free but I don’t see why he would sustain something that is not making him any money, unless he is using it as a means to market something else. Call me paranoid but I would not invest my time into putting content on this site and from the quick look I had most of the lessons are private, so not much collaboration going on.

Maybe it’s just me and the fact that I don’t like the idea of this ‘businessman’ providing ‘free education’. I know that it is another resource but I can’t help wondering about the motivation. I would like to stand corrected on this one and would love the feedback.

technorati tags:blogging, blogs, warlick, education