Tuesday 21st June 2011

On Tuesday, we met with Mike to discuss where we are currently with our ICT project and where we wanted to go next.  We talked about our finances, purchasing of new equipment, staff survey, mathletics, our wireless system and many other issues.  In the afternoon, we met with a sales rep, from one of our local firms.  We discussed the cost of installing a more robust wireless network and mobile devices.  We had a very productive day. 

supportive staff

Great to hear staff helping each other out with ICT.  I often hear small conversations going on and hear staff giving each other tech tips as well as classroom ideas! Fabulous and worth a mention!

Road trip to Palmerston North

On Tuesday this week, Peter, Mike & myself along with our ICTPD cluster set off to visit two schools in Palmerston North.  We visited Whakarongo School and Riverdale School in the morning.  Both schools have made huge leaps with their ICT use in school and provided us with some inspirational ideas.  We were able to form some clear ideas of where we see our ICT progressions in the future.  In the afternoon we listened to a Principal from a rural school in Palmerston.  They were in the second year of their PD project.  Once again, we learnt a lot from this and took on board plenty of new ideas.

On our return to school, Peter and I met on Wednesday afternoon.  It seemed appropriate to spend some time reflecting upon the progress we had made in school in our project.  We have now arranged a meeting with Mike to consolidate these plans.

A poster seen at Whakarongo school, Palmerston North

School newsletter

Great to see Room 6 using their blog to it's full potential:

Parent's ICT Evening

This year we decided to organise an evening for Parent's to attend so they could deepen their understanding of the ICT that takes place in our school.  We had an 'open classroom' situation and during the evening we ran min-taster sessions about blogging, IWB, Windows live and Super Clubs Plus.  Jan Coleman attended the evening to support this by talking about Super Clubs Plus.  The evening was a great success and we were really delighted with the attendance by parents. 

After school Workshops

Our Week 4 after school workshops went extremely well.  The simple ICT presentation was popular and hopefully we communicated some easily accessible ICT ideas to our guests.  The Open Source presentation was attended by some enthusiastic staff within our own school - it was an informative and enjoyable presentation.  The presentations for this can be found on our cluster wiki-space. 

Wednesday 18th May 2011

Today is our lead teacher meeting for Term 3, at Normandale school.  We begun the day by talking about our collaborative projects between schools. The Juniors link to this project can be found in the links section on this blog.  The senior project is in its beginning stages - watch this space!
The next discussion was about the school visits to Palmerston North. This is scheduled for Week 8 of this term, the photography competition and also the expo scheduled for the coming holidays.
The lead teachers then shared their latest ICT happenings in their school.
Points to note - camera boxes - using lanards for the younger children to hang cameras around their necks.
Using the school network to post notices etc and website, moving towards becoming paper free!

In the afternoon we looked at managing change in schools - through our role as ICT leaders.  Jan led an interesting PD session highlighting important points.

Following this, we discussed as a group e-portfolios.