UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND VICE CHANCELLOR'S TOP MAORI & PACIFIC ISLAND SCHOLARSHIP

Te Kahuwhero Alexander-Tui'inukuafe has been awarded the prestigious Vice Chancellor's Top Maori & Pacific Island Scholarship which will pay for her fees and course costs at the University of Auckland. during her studies. Te Kahuwhero is considering studying a Bachelor of Achitecture. She was an e-student this year, studying Level 3 Statistics and Modelling with Tony Jenkins from East Otago High School, an OtagoNet school. (By the way, I am the proud aunt)!!!

AGRICULTURE SCHOLARSHIP

Rix Wihongi (Year 13) and Jimmy Croft (Year 13), both students in the full-time Agriculture Academy who participated in weekly VCs with Andrew Thompson from Telford Polytechnic have been accepted to attend the Certificate course at Telford in 2009, and better still, they have both received a scholarship worth $5000 to cover their fees. Rix and Jimmy have been e-students for two years now. Their achievements wouldn't have been realised without the support of their Agriculture tutor, Bill Dalton and eteacher Andrew Thompson. It was a very proud moment seeing these boys graduate from NC. Rix had just arrived back from a 10 day, fully paid trip to Italy as a Youth Advocate for indigineous people. A great young ambassador. Jimmy Croft with Northland College Principal, John Tapene

HOSPITALITY ACADEMY STUDENTS

These students have been attending a weekly VC with Sue from Mercury Bay Area School (CoroNet Cluster) as part of their full-time hospitality training with their Chef Robbie Nicholas. These students catered for the graduation dinner, of which two were graduates but are thinking about returning next year.
BACK: Andrea Paul, Chef Robbie, Joseph Renata FRONT: Hine Hohepa, Mina Rurehe, Raewyn Veltmeyer, Fontaine Veltmeyer

Graduation Dinner for Year 13 at Northland College

This week I attended the graduation dinner for the Year 13 students at Northland College. It was a very enjoyable evening, but even more so for me as I was able to enjoy the evening as a whanau member, rather than the organiser. My niece was graduating, along with 25 other Year 13 students who had been involved in elearning this year.

Here are three of the students who undertook their Level 3 Statistics studies with Tony Jenkins from East Otago Boys, part of OtagoNet.
LEFT: Trivia Barrett-Howard, Greer Williams, Te Kahuwhero Alexander-Tui'inukuafe

MORE PHOTOGRAPHS

Update for Term 4

Where has the term gone? I just had my last official VC with my accounting students today. It only seemed like a few months ago that I first met with them.

This term has been really busy with lots of school visits. Where have I been:
DARGAVILLE - 30th October - Week 2 - Met David Bargh and Angela Troath at Dargaville High School. I enjoyed the discussion I had with David, 2 hours and then with Angela about the future of FarNet. They are both really enthusiastic and especially enthusuastic about the TAL Programme. (Tech Angel Leadership Programme). They have suggested that their Head Boy for next year work with the students as a mentor, so very encouraging. David was also very interested to hear about the Web 2.0 tools and how I could work with his staff to integrate some of these wonderful tools into their F2F classrooms.

NORTHLAND COLLEGE - I am probably at NC once a week, mainly because I have been working online with their Year 10 Bilungual Class - 10 Tahi as part of my university study. I have been doing some F2F lessons with them. I also have two accounting students from NC in my online class, so I have been trying to push through the work required for preparation for external exams.

OPONONI AREA SCHOOL - I visited Tiere and her new DP - Natasha Sadler just this week. Whilst they are facing some other challenges at the moment, they are both enthusiastic about the TAL programme and integrating some web 2.0 tools in their F2F classes. Natasha has a wealth of knowledge around Te Reo Maori, having come from NZQA, so I am hoping that we can utilise her expertise and experience amongst our teachers in the Far North.

SOME OF THE THINGS I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON:
Study - I am almost at the end of my journey this semester with the two online papers I have been doing through Canterbury University. I can't say that I am happy it has come to an end because it has been the best PD I have ever done around online learning. I have experienced a huge shift in my pedagogical thinking around elearning as a result, and have some ideas I want to share with some of my colleagues about a different model of delivering elearning. For a start, I no longer support the idea of an hour of VC teaching a week, but rather 4 hours of online learning for students with the use of VC, Skype, Adobe Connect to offer support in the form of a tutorial to students. We need to ensure that our online environment is robust and engaging, interactive and student centred and not just a repository portal for us to dump our work for students to look at if they have missed a class. I am thinking about approaching CAM to discuss how we could utilise some of our very experienced and talented e-educators to support our eteachers in their online environments. - GOSH - I hope that I do pass both these papers after all the work I have done.

Update of FarNet for Term 3

I haven't been very good at keeping up with my blog, but while I was in Christchurch for the ULearn08 Conference in the second week of the school holidays, I got an opportunity during a meeting of the 12 ePrincipals to reflect on some of the things that have been happening in the FarNet Cluster and to reflect on our three goals.

The 3 goals of our FarNet Cluster are:
GOAL ONE: Create a sustainable collaborative elearning environment for FarNet schools around the Virtual Learning Network
GOAL ONE: Create an sustainable online teaching and learning portal through Schoolzone’s MyClasses, MyDesktop, Mymail and MyPortfolio for all nine schools
GOAL ONE: Develop a sustainable group of trained -eteachers within FarNet

BACKGROUND TO FARNET:

Most of the 9 schools are low decile with high % of Maori students with a mixture of area schools. Developing relationships is very very important to me, hence Russell Bishops’s research on his Te Kotahitanga Project in terms of engagement of Maori students is always high in my pedagogical thinking and working with people.

Students: Some things around the students
In looking at ways of sustaining an online learning environment I am introducing a Tech Angel Leadership Programme – Year 8/9 (area schools) – who will be trained in using VC and the preferred LMS – MySuite and Myclasses and Web 2.0 tools. They will be the support for teachers and students at the 9 schools. This is being targeted as a GATE programme.

Two students attended a residential workshop for Level 3 PE with Lynda Pascoe-Walsh who teaches Level 3 PE online from Roxburgh Area School (OtagoNet) at Wanaka as part of their Level 3 PE course. They skied for 4 days, then spent 4 days working through the Gateway Programme on Mt Hutt Ski Field.

11 students from 2 FarNet schools (Kaitaia College and Northland College) attended a residential course at Telford in the first week of the holidays. This is a great experience for them. Six students have applied for a full-time placement in 2009 at Telford.

Sustaining the capacity of eteachers:
I have been speaking with Principals about targeting a teacher from a specialist area which have small numbers and creating a blended learning with strong emphasis of pedagogy in online learning. Eg Level 3 English – 5 in F2F class, 4 hours per week, 2 hrs F2F with those students working independently for 2 hours, teacher delivering the same course online to the cluster on VLN. This is a proposed model to address the need for each school to provide an eteacher.

Training for 2009 – current eteachers will be encouraged to work on their online environment for 2009 and Eddie is coming up to provide them with a set of web 2.0 tools and lots of the software that the ministry has available for us. Important thing is documenting not only what we are doing now, where we are going but our journey up until now. (whakapapa) So one of the tools we will be insisting our teachers to use is to keep a blog on their work, for self-reflection – and providing an opportunity for fellow colleagues to be able to hold up that non-judgemental mirror up through posting comments.

Research keeps telling us that we are “powering down” our students when they come into our schools, so we will be challenging our eteachers to use online resources like audacity and utube, wikis, ipods for podcasting, cellphones for communication and more student centred learning in their classes.

Where have I been:
Sydney – attended "Leading a Digital School" - August - 3 ePrincipals attended the 4 day conference. It was a valuable opportunity to reflect on what we are achieving in New Zealand. I think we are well ahead of most of the Australian schools.

Tony Bates – Lecturer from the University of British Columbia – Canada - delivered a symposium in Wellington which was organised by the Wellington Loop schools. He spoke about the blended learning – 35,000 students in BC doing at least one of their subjects online in schools. Tony spoke about this blend and it was inspiring to hear that their research clearly shows: Results were much the same; Retention on courses much the same; Satisfaction of courses from teacher, student and community was hugely increased.

So this has given me more information to now take back to the Principals and to support my proposal.

Both conferences were very thought provoking and we waved our VLN and elearning flag at both of those conferences.

What have I been working on:
Using my VC unit at home to avoid travelling. My record so far is 6 VCs in one day – as opposed to being able to visit only one school in a day. Something Conor (ePrincipal of Volcanics) shared in one of our Principal Mentor leadership meetings was that it was important that I became the face of FarNet. One of my goals has been to spend more time to become that face of FarNet by making more F2F visits in my schools and using the VC for follow up.

eMentor - Sue Winter

I feel well supported by Sue as our Principal Mentor with our regular meetings which always have a focus on our leadership and we have been able to share lots of our experiences. Sue has also visited me in my cluster and shadowed me for a couple of days. The feedback was excellent.

Study with Canterbury University

I have enrolled in two online courses with Canterbury University, which has challenged my thinking on pedagogy in elearning. Both these two lecturers, Derek Wenmoth and Nicki Dabner through their courses are exceptionally good examples of elearning courses. As part of this study, I have been facilitating the learning between two schools from opposite ends of the country, one decile 4 – 100% European students and one decile 1 – 100% Maori. 30 students – VC supports the learning, but the learning is collaborative and scaffolding on each other’s learning. I really see my role as facilitator of this class and not the teacher.
We had a powhiri online, and it was a little difficult to work out who was the manuhiri (visitors) and who was the turangawaewae (home group), so we had a short mihi delivered from Northland College.

My online class

I teach a Level 1/2 accounting class. I have had students from Invercargill, Dunedin, Stratford and Northland College. My teaching role has changed from an instructional teaching role to more of a tutorial role in Term 3 and I have placed more emphasis on the online learning environment and textbooks and workbooks they have.

My Principals:
I have been trying to meet with each Principal during Term 3 to discuss their schoolwide goals and how I can assist them through support of FarNet, rather than adding another task for them. The results from an online survey has given us some good baseline data to work from.

Other:
I have been working with 2 new VC capable schools – one kura and one Christian school. It was great to be able to call on the expertise of Anton Coltham (ePrincipal of Welcom) to speak with one of the schools who were talking about developing moodle.

Enterprise Northland and E4E

I have been working with Dave Templetom from Enterprise Northland on developing an online course for YES in 2009 as a trial – with Rachel Roberts (ePrincipal of Tarnet) and working with Enterprise Northland in the use of VC for PD and meetings. Dave has a VC set in their Whangarei offices. Meeting last week of term had 15 F2F and 20 remotely.

Have been trying to attend the future choices/option evenings and facilitating online interviews between eteachers/estudents and their parents.

Ka Hikitia Strategy

In terms of the Ka Hikitia Strategy, I am still refining the proposal to present to the Ministry and I have been working with Eddie about the enrolment forms on the VLN for 2009 to reflect things like student ethnicity so we can gather data around student ethnicity. We are looking at how the VLN could have more of a presence of demonstrating the success of our Maori students studying through the VLN – like photos or case studies.

TERM 3 - WEEK 3

4th August - VC with Film Commission - Because I was at Northland College, catching up with some science students, I stayed to attend this digiconversation organised by Rachel Roberts (Taranet) with the NZ Film Commission. Other people there was Deb, the Media Studies adviser based in Auckland. Unfortunately this time is when NC staff have their full staff meeting, but I was able to grab the Faculty Leader English and Media Studies teacher part way through. They were unsure of using the equipment, but I gave them some guidance and then left them to finish the VC off. I had arranged for the adviser to stay online after the meeting to speak with them about moderation and film studies accreditation.

5th August - Tutorial Class for Accounting - Kirsty and Alice attended. Cameron didn't know about it and Marlene is Level 1 mainly. She is going to attend from now on though.

5th August - This was the first VC meeting I had attended all term which I didn't have to dial in through the audio bridge. Was great to be able to see my fellow ecolleagues. I was looking forward to this meeting for a range of reasons, but most of all because I knew that Jan Collier (Coronet) was going to be chairing it and that Sue Winters (Principal Mentor) was going to shadow her.

Reflection: I thought that Jan looked confident and fully in charge and I really like the way she ran the meeting in terms of ensuring that everyone had an opportunity to make one comment on each item and that the person presenting the item was able to wrap up at the end. There was still room for hilarity, as shown by Eddie in his dress ups and time at the end of the meeting for those interested to discuss the Start of the Year Modules. This went on for a further hour.

6th August - Faciliated a VC meeting between Dave Templeton, E4E Coordinator, Maryanne (Core Education) and the enterprise teacher, Clinton (Kaitaia College). Dave had wanted some PD in the use of VC as he wants to deliver Enterprise Studies and YES PD for staff via VC, so he came to my home office and used my equipment. Dave is really interested in either getting a set installed at their Enterprise Northland office in Whangarei or to use the VC at Te Puni Kokiri office in Whangarei.

8th August - Eddie dialled in today via VC to speak with me about a pilot project that the Correspondence School were interested in offering to schools in the FarNet cluster. He had Inka Helwig and Kerry Whelan from TCS with him and they discussed their proposal. They are looking at support alternative education units with their teaching and learning programmes through video conferencing. I also asked them about another need I see in our community and that is with our students who have recently left school, and may have missed out on a few credits required to attend university or just to upskill. They don't want to return to school full-time and do not meet the requirements of being an adult student at a school. These students often work in part-time employment, or often don't want to leave their home town straight away, so they are still keen to be engaged in some form of formal learning. I suggested that the local runanga in their area might be interested in supporting these students by providing them with a place to study at and the correspondence school said they were looking at providing computers for those types of students to work on if they were enrolled with TCS. TCS have dropped the $80 fee per paper for enrolment for students between 16 and 19.

I have sent out invitations to the providers of alternative education in the Far North, including those schools not involved in FarNet. There will be a meeting between those stakeholders, the Runanga o Ngapuhi and TCS next Thursday via VC at 3.00pm.

I am really hoping that this will eventuate into a viable project.

8th August - VC meeting with Gary Walsh, Principal of Roxburgh Area School. I am going to be working with his class as part of my study with Canterbury. We discussed my proposal which I had sent through to him and he is happy about the future learning experiences we are all going to have. The class will start on 25th August, after we get back from the DEANZ Conference.

TERM 3 - WEEK TWO

28th July - VC meeting with physics students from NC - they seem happy and feel supported. They have got used to just dialling into me at my home office now.

The storm we experienced last weekend has started to hit again, and is predicted to worsen during the week. The F2F meeting of the FarNet Principals was organised to be held at Northland College on Wednesday, 30th July, but we have decided it would be irresponsible to suggest them to travel through the storm so it will now be via VC.

29th July - After a few technical glitches, I have finally officially enrolled with Canterbury University. I am really looking forward to the semester, especially with working with Derek Wenmoth and Nicki Dabner. I am considering using my accounting class as the class, although I have some reservations, because of the size of it. I am sure I can find an ecolleague who wouldn't mind loaning me a great bunch of students.
The two papers I have enrolled in are:
EDIC 706 - The Global Classroom - The focus is to use a range of asynchronous and synchronous tools to deliver an online unit.
EDIC 716 - An Online Project - The focus is to set up an online class and teach a cohort of students for an eight-week period on a unit. I am thinking of doing the Treaty of Waitangi and incorporating a Maori focus and applying some of the focuses from the Ka Hikitia Strategy.

I am going to have to do something about this computer I am using though, it is becoming more frustrating by the day.

30th July -What a good decision about changing the meeting to a VC one. Out of the 9 Principals, 8 attended via VC and 7 out of the 9 schools were closed because of the weather. Was a great two hour meeting. Eddie and Grey Tuck (ex Principal of Kuruanui and Principal Mentor) spoke to the Principals about the future of the VLN. Reflection: This meeting really demonstrated the benefits of having VC in our schools. It was also an opportunity to help model good practice for running an online meeting. William Tailby (Principal of Kaitaia) chaired the meeting with Pateriki Toia (Principal of Taipa AS) opening and closing with a lovely karakia. We had a set agenda (which had been agreed upon at the Executive Management meeting the previous week) and I had sent out a powerpoint to the Principals prior to the meeting that helped the meeting flow well. It also provides them with something they can speak with their SLT about to inform them.

I always find it difficult to minute a meeting that I am either chairing or participating in, so I asked one of the Principal's PA to minute it. This was a great opportunity for her to get a clear understanding of FarNet, as she is responsible for the financial accounting for the fundholder school. Beryl commented later on how informative the meeting was and how great the technology was. She said she started typing, then had to turn to shorthand. She sent me the minutes to check as she wasn't familiar with some of the terms referred to, and I have shown her how to post the minutes up on the FarNet site on the VLN.

1st August - Had a full class, apart from my young man from Invercargill. He started mid way through term 2 and I don't think he has been able to catch up. Must speak with Kymm (ePrincipal of SILC). I have got the document camera working and it is a good tool to use. We are now working on level 2 standards, as the majority of the class are Year 12 students. They have a good understanding about the fundamentals of accounting at level 1, so this was the plan. They are happy about this. We are going to have an extra class, more of a tutorial on a Tuesday from now on, and they will be expected to attend at least one of the classes a week.

TERM 3 - WEEK 1

21st July - F2F meeting with the Science students at NC to arrange correspondence and VC classes for the senior students. I had set up a support site for them on MyClasses, so I spent time with them to ensure they were familiar and feeling supported with their online learning.

When I realised that there were only two students at Level 2 and Level 3 doing chemistry and physics, I sent out a distress call to the eLearning Community and was inundated with support, so those students now have a VC teacher as well as being able to do their correspondence.

23rd July - F2F meeting with David Templeton regarding E4E on the VLN in 2009. I am considering teaching a YES class to FarNet schools, so we could have a company with directors based at different schools. Dave is keen to assist in a trial of such, and Rachel Roberts from Taranet is also keen to teach a YES class also. Putting feelers out to my ecolleagues, there is plenty of demand for students being involved. Reflection: I don't want to loose my accounting class though, I enjoy teaching accounting, so might have to consider teaching two classes. The YES should be more a role of facilitator anyway.

24th July - F2F meeting with FarNet Principal - Bruce Devine - Bay of Islands College - Bruce has been away on a sabbatical, so it was a general catch up.

25th July - A DAY I WILL REMEMBER!!! Finally Asnet and Telecom were able to bring their technical minds together and I finally got connectivity with my video conferencing equipment. I was able to teach my accounting class from home (no travelling .........). The first person I dialled was Eddie Reisch, and we talked for an hour and in the afternoon I catch up with Linda Pascoe-Walsh from Roxburgh. I had been feeling a little isolated up until then, but NO LONGER!

HOLIDAYS - WEEK ONE and WEEK TWO

I have decided that the school holidays is an ideal time to work with staff. I hadn't arranged too many PD sessions though, because I was still unsure about my father-in-law. There were two teachers at NC who wanted to work on developing a page on MyClasses and it was excellent working in groups of two, rather than a large group. It meant we could be more personalised with their pages.

I worked with Kelly Yakas who is the Project K or as known now as, STARS Project coordinator. The Year 9 staff Kelly works with at NC had indicated that they wanted to keep informed about the project and MyClasses seemed a great way to provide this information and allow the Peer Mentors to keep reflective journals.

I also worked with the librarian, Claire, who wanted to set up a site for students and staff to access up to date information about the library, what was happening, providing support for students. She has done a great job.

The second week I had an opportunity to catch up with Tiere, Principal of Opononi AS and I helped her with setting up and organising her folders and emails using MyMail.

Spent alot of time catching up on admin work and setting up the FarNet cluster site on the VLN.

TERM 2 - WEEK NINE - LAST WEEK OF TERM

All the following events had to be postponed due to my father-in-law being in hospital:
30th June - FarNet Principals Meeting @ 7.30am
1st July - F2F Meeting with FarNet Principal - David Bargh - Dargaville High School
1st July - VLN Monthly Meeting
2nd July - F2F Meeting with FarNet Principal - Pateriki Toia - Taipa Area School
2nd July - F2F Meeting with FarNet Principal - William Tailby - Kaitaia College
2nd July - F2F Following up meeting with staff at Kaitaia College on MyDesktop and MyClasses

4th July - Arrived at NC in time to teach my Accounting class. Unfortunately neither of the boys attended and Kirsty Davidson (Kavanagh College) had already put in her apologies. Alice and Marlene were at NC though.

TERM 2 - WEEK 8

23rd June - Faciliatated PD with full staff at NC on MyMail - Reflection: exhausting and too many to do this type of PD with. It doesn't allow for catering for those at different levels of computer literacy.

25th June - EPrincipal Leadership Meeting

26th June - F2F meeting with Principal Mentor - Sue Winters - went out for dinner at The Black Olive. Sue is here to 'shadow' me for two days.

27th June - F2F meeting with FarNet Principal - Tiere Maoate - Opononi AS - Reflection: Unfortunately Tiere couldn't join us for lunch at the Copthorne because of issues arising at school. Was a good opportunity for Sue and I to catch up and look at my goals set at the beginning of the term.

27th June - Taught my accounting class from Opononi AS and Sue was the observer. Reflection: The oral discussion we had later that evening in reflecting my practice she had observed in her role as Principal Mentor was very valuable. The weather was so bad that Sue's flight was cancelled and she had to stay overnight, so we had extra time to reflect on the previous two days.

TERM 2 - WEEK 7

16th June - FarNet Management Meeting via VC and audio - 7.30am

18th June - Attended presentation for The Connectors Systems - Wireless Presentation - Whangarei

18th June - F2F Meeting at Tikipunga High School -Re: MyClasses and MyMail (school unhappy with schoolzone, but I feel they are not familiar with its capabilities) - Principal has asked me to come back some time to speak with the SLT.

19th June - Facilitated a F2F PD session with SLT at NC on MyClasses and MyDesktop in preparation for a full staff PD session the following week. These SLT members will act as coaches at the session. Only got through MyDesktop.

19th June - Phone contact with Viv Hall - Re: Training required for Schoolzone schools in FarNet

20th June - Meeting with Acting Principal - Auretta @ BOIC - worked with MyMail - she wasn't accessing it correctly. Just a general catch up about FarNet with Auretta.

20th June - Worked on a FarNet Newsletter - but I mucked it up because I am not familiar with Publisher, normally use PageMaker.

TERM 2 - WEEK 6

9th June - Facilitated VC Digiconversation with Northtec - Paul Sykes spoke with PE class at NC

11th June - VC Digiconversation with Te Papa: Central Plateau - Dr Hamish Campbell

11th June - EPrincipal Leadership Group Meeting via VC with Sue Winter - I connected through the audio bridge, which was quite good because it required me to concentrate more on my listening skills.

13th June - VC Teaching Class - Level 2 Accounting from NC

Publish Post

Taught my Accounting class from NC via VC on 6th June

Daniel (my tech-angel) from NC has helped me set up the svideo so that I can show powerpoints directly through my laptop. Just have to remember how to do it myself.

I enjoyed the lesson, the students are keen although I am a little concerned about the boys, particularly my new student from Invercargill, he is so quiet and maybe there is too much female discussion. Cameron missed the lesson today, so he probably felt a little outnumbered. The girls are still getting used to his rolling rs.

Facilitated a VC meeting between Andy Kirk & Career Advisers on 5th June

After a few 'technical problems' from the MOE office where Andy was borrowing the VC gear, the VC kicked off. Unfortunately he couldn't get the document camera or svideo to work, so we resorted to viewing his laptop through a preset. Not a good view, but was better than nothing. Fortunately, I had suggested to the viewers that they have their computers with them so that they could work through the site at the same time.

I attended the VC from Northland College, and there were about 7 Career Advisers from the NZ elearning clusters onboard. I think they all went away feeling that it was a well worthwhile tool to use as part of their career education work with secondary students. Although MyPortfolio is a complete LMS, we were focusing on the career education aspect.

EPrincipal Leadership Group Meeting with Sue Winter (Principal Mentor) on 5th June

The professional leadership group consisting of myself, Conor Bolton (ePrincipal of Volcanics), Jan Collier (ePrincipal of Coronet), Janet Akhurst (ePrincipal of Taranet) and our Principal Mentor Sue Winters meets monthly via VC.

Sue is focusing on the Levels of Questioning in Reflective Interviews:

The purpose of the first level of questioning was to clarify the details about events, situations, actions and feelings that the interviewee had referred to. This level of questioning often began with “Tell me when… what… if… whether… how…”

The second level of questioning was used to clarify the purposes or reasons and the intended consequences of a certain action which the interviewee had referred to. This level of question often opened with “How… why…who…which…”

The third level of question was used by the interviewer to encourage the interviewee to reflect on the consequences of the action that the interviewee had taken.

Suitable openings for this level of questioning were “so what happened?”; “So what differences were there?”;”So what did this tell you?”

This is a great opportunity for us to share in a "no mask" environment because we feel the group is a safe environment. I am enjoying having the mirror held up for me to reflect on my practice. I am also gaining a great deal from being the "observer". Looking forward to the next session.

NZQA Matters completed on 3rd June

I have been working on the MOUs between FarNet and the other schools. Worked out a good system where I act as the Principal Nominee for each school, send two copies to the PN at each receiving school with a stamped addressed envelope for them to send back to me. This has worked really well, with 100% return. I just need to give them to the PN at our schools to meet NZQA requirements.

I have also shared this information with the other ePrincipals at a VLN meeting, some of them were not aware of what they were and other's were not aware of the importance, so I feel good about sharing my experience to assist them with their leadership development.

VC Teaching Class - Accounting on Friday, 30th May

I am starting to feel more confident with the use of the VC equipment in the online teaching environment. I am still having to travel up to an hour to the closest VC unit. The students seem quite relaxed with me, and we have discussed moving into level 2 standards after they have gained some understanding of accounting at level 1.

Meeting with Andy Kirk on 29th May

Had a meeting using DimDim with Andy Kirk who has been trialling an online environment called MyPortfolio. This was the first time that I had used DimDim to meet. It is very similar to Adobe Connect. My camera wasn't working, but it was good seeing Andy. I really like the MyPortfolio environment and think it would be great for work with senior students tracking their future career pathways. We are going to arrange for a VC introducing MyPortfolio to career advisers.

PD coming up and feedback

Kaitaia College is going well with their use of Myclasses and MyDesktop for their administration purposes. Great to hear about and to view their pages. The model of spending time with a few key players in the school has worked with Kaitaia and they have asked me to come back for another catch up session in a couple of weeks time.

I have been spending quite abit of my time working on administration tasks, which they seem to be growing, but I am feeling good about what I have been accomplishing. I need to work on some student and staff surveys and have decided it is important to carry out these to gather some baseline data. I will then do another survey following some PD sessions with the staff.

I have a PD session organised with the Senior Leadership Team at Northland College in a fortnight, followed by a PD session with the full staff a couple of days later.

There has been quite abit of activity through the list serve, especially surrounding the future of the VLN.

Visit to Northland College - 23rd May 2008

Went back to my old school today, where I have taken leave from or two years. Must admit, was really nice to see all the staff, but it was particularly nice not to have to deal with the day to day problems. Instead, I based myself in the staffroom and was able to make myself available to staff who wanted to discuss MyClasses and FarNet.

Worked with Steve Radich, setting up an online class for his environmental science classes. This will give the Year 10 staff he works with the opportunity of following his programme and feel they are fully informed. Mareea Paitai wanted a follow up from the previous weeks' PD. She is setting up an online class for the CApBL team. She is going to work with Eileen on further developing the Careers Corner class I set up last year. John Tapene had a meeting in the morning, but we caught up in the afternoon to look at what he wants to develop for staff. We looked at a google calendar that the Board is using, which will probably be able to integrate into MyClasses for his staff.

Journey to Te Hapua

Along with Jill Garrett (Schooling Improvement from Ministry) and Leslie Whitehorn (with home-made scones), we headed off from Awanui at 8.00am. Arriving at Te Hapua some 2 hours later, we spent the next few hours with the Year 9 and 10 students and their kaiako Te Aroha Wihapi. We participated in a basketball lesson, run by their one and only Year 10 student. They have 6 Year 9 students and these seven students travel to Kaitaia College each Friday for some face to face lessons. This is complimented with twice-weekly VCs with a Science, English and Maths teacher from Kaitaia College.

The remaining 7 senior students travel by bus to Kaitaia College daily, leaving home at 6.00am and returning around 6.00pm.

I was amazed at how Te Aroha had organised her room, with the VC equipment being an integral piece of equipment. A pleasure to have visited!

They don't often get visitors, but today was an exception because there was an inter-agency meeting in Te Hapua, so everyone was dropping in to say "Kia ora".

Visit to Kaitaia College - 19th May 2008

Travelled up the beautiful east coast through Mangonui , Doubtless Bay, through to Awanui and back down to Kaitaia. A one and a half hour trip. Didn't get a chance to stop at the Kauri Kingdom for a coffee ..... but will do that in the morning before heading to Te Hapua.

Visited the ministry office and spent some time with Jill Garrett, developing a site for TKA which will sit on the FarNet website. The Lead teachers of TKA will manage this site.

William Tailby invited me to work with some of his office staff on developing their school calendar of events. I also had an opportunity to work with Jackie Fowke (Careers Adviser). Jackie is going to set up a site on Kaitaia College's MyClasses for senior careers for the senior students.

Catching up with my old flatmate, from training college days and her family .... gee I love this job!

Visit to Kaitaia College on Friday, 16th March 2008

Staying in Kaitaia the previous night was great, catching up with my old flatmate from my training college days and being able to capture William Tailby (Principal) for a undisturbed meeting first thing.

I had planned for some PD on MyClasses with some staff and ended up working with:
Wayne Harrison, Leslie, Jill Garrett (Ministry), Ngaire King (Team Solutions), Te Aroha Wihape (Te Hapua), Mareea Paitai (Northland College), Mike Bryan and Mike Ryken (Taipa Area School), William Tailby (Principal) and John Paitai (Principal).

I must have done a relatively good job because I have been asked to go back for another session with the office staff on Monday.

Visit to Panguru on Thursday 15th May 2008

The roadway between Panguru and Kaitaia, coming out by Ahipara.

Leaving home at 8:00am, I arrived at the beautiful Te Kura o Panguru school at 11:00am, just in time to listen to the wonderful speeches being given by the tamariki at the top marae above the school. Was a great opportunity to catch up with Marietta Rihari (our Te Reo Maori teacher) and Mina Pomare (Principal). Following the visit, I travelled the back road up to Kaitaia. Had to stop to take a photograph of the one lane road, just to be able to remind people why we need meetings via VC so that we don't have to travel.

Panguru is set in a beautiful valley and it was so enjoyable to be around the students from Panguru.

Before travelling North, we joined a VC with StudyIt from Wellington and the "expert English teacher", Roz from Bay of Islands College. This was a great PD opportunity and no one had to travel.

EPrincipals in Wellington

I joined 12 other ePrincipals in Wellington in the week 14th April - 19th April. The Ministry paid for the PD for the week which was held at PDPC in Wellington. We stayed at the Copthorne, a great place to stay.There we met our Principal Mentors and for the first three days, we were challenged by the facilitators to reflect on our leadership practice and to think about our journey over the next two years.One of the most valuable opportunities was to share experiences and ideas and skills with the other ePrincipals.Looking forward to the next one.
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EPrincipals in Wellington

I joined 12 other ePrincipals in Wellington in the week 14th April - 19th April. The Ministry paid for the PD for the week which was held at PDPC in Wellington. We stayed at the Copthorne, a great place to stay.

There we met our Principal Mentors and for the first three days, we were challenged by the facilitators to reflect on our leadership practice and to think about our journey over the next two years.

One of the most valuable opportunities was to share experiences and ideas and skills with the other ePrincipals.

Looking forward to the next one.