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  • F02 – Read Good Fit Books

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3S_RTateCE

  • A02 – Use the Pictures

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAsFgEg5b8A

  • Taillight

    Over the last several months, we’ve seen an increase of ‘Principal-related’ jobs that have stacked on-top of the role that Principals already have to play. For one, I know that for many Principals, Novopay was one stress that has turned them greyer than ever, and continues to cause week in and week out stress as they become glorified pay clerks for their staff. Many Principals have off-loaded this role to their admin team; but many wish to take the responsibility of paying their staff on themselves, and won’t sleep soundly until they know each member has the right pay.

    Add to this the new legislation coming in such as the Health and Safety Act, and the Vunerable Children Act, which boards and Principals now inundated with new policies, new procedures, and paper work to sink HMS Bismark all over again.

    Some Principals are now facing the ongoing struggle to wrangle other local schools and boards together into a community of learning, even though they may or may not want to.

    Of course then there’s the ongoing pressures of financial audits, property regulations and funding, the charter and strategic plans, and that’s all to be done with the knowledge that ERO may or may not be far away depending on your school.

    Then, after leaving schools alone for the best part of a term, along come the senior advisors from the Ministry, who are meant to be a sounding board, a guide, someone who works alongside principals and schools. Do they ask how things are going? Do they ask what is on top? What is impacting the school? No. Do they actually visit the school and see how its going? Talk to principals, staff, children, to find out how the school is operating? No.

    No they are asking two questions.

    What is your data like? What are your target students results?

    Well, quite frankly; that’s like checking the taillights at a serious car accident.

     

    Don’t forget to comment below if you’ve heard similar stories! Share with your friends and colleagues.

  • World Class – Bryan Bruce – Notes

    Tonight we saw the outcome of years of research from journalist and ex-teacher Bryan Bruce on our education system.

    Fairly early on I realised that there would be a fair few good quotes to draw on in the future and decided to jot these down. The further into the documentary we got, the more I began to see the links and the cycle the Bryan was making, and how each factor impacts on each other; and despite seemingly good intentions, these can (and often do) backfire.


    I’m sure that in the weeks to come I will have further thoughts about what has been touched on in this documentary, but for now, I’m just going to post my notes and see what comes of it.

    What are your thoughts?

  • World Class – Bryan Bruce

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv-radio/80115814/bryan-bruce-how-to-fix-our-school-system

    I can’t remember a time when a education documentary was this anticipated.

    I’m not sure what content it will hold, whether it will be one eyed and one sided, or whether it will hold anything worthwhile.

    I also don’t think that it will make much of a difference. Will the powers that be watch it? Will they listen? It will be interesting to see.

    “The young primary school teacher knew he had some explaining to do.

    After all, most of the children in his class weren’t in their seats – heck, half of the 10 and 11-year-olds weren’t even in the classroom – and the school inspector had walked in, taken one look and his jaw had just dropped.

    The teacher, though, had other ideas – after all this was 1976 and looking after a class of 34 pupils at Mount Pleasant School in Christchurch wasn’t just about lining desks up in rows, keeping the kids quiet, eyes front, and then not smiling till Easter for fear the youngsters found you too approachable and took advantage.”

    Tune in on TV3 at 7:30-8:30pm  or  TV3 +1  at 8:30-9:30.

    [su_video url=”http://res.cloudinary.com/alingham/video/upload/v1463995732/1463520189762-Docomaker.mp4″]

  • How should teachers be rewarded?

    Education reformers (or deformers) have begun using the idea of ‘rewarding’ good teachers to whittle out the ‘bad’ teachers by using student data, achievement rates, and other variables that are almost completely removed from the ability of a teacher to effectively teach. The notion of ‘reward’ is hard to argue against. Yes – good teachers should be recognised for their ability.

    But should they.

    I read a quote by Alfie Kohn. It reads like this:

    “So how should we reward teachers? We shouldn’t. They’re not pets. Rather, teachers should be paid well, freed from misguided mandate, treated with respect and provided with support they need to help their students to become increasingly proficient and enthusiastic learners.”

    The quote inspired me so much, that I turned it into an impact graphic. I added some of my own personal thoughts on the right hand side. Please feel free to download and distribute the graphic, tweet it, facebook it, share it on pinterest; whatever you need to do to spread the word.

  • Practising Teacher Criteria and Microsoft OneNote

    As we move further into tighter and tighter regulations around registering as a teacher, the need to keep track of and collate evidence of our ability as teachers to teach becomes more and more important. The Practising Teacher Criteria requires teacher to collect evidence and artefacts and keep track of these to show how we meet each of the 12 criteria.

    Over the last few years I have developed a couple of models with which to do this.
    One involves using Google Sites and Google Drive, which I prefer.

    The other involves Microsoft OneNote.

    If you already use OneNote, you may wish to keep your evidence and artefacts of your teaching to the 12 criteria in a Notebook within OneNote.

    PTC Template

    Thinking ahead, before I built my own notebook, I made a skeleton outline to save as a template.

    In the template, I have made 12 folders, each representing one of the criteria. I have also included an “Administration” folder for bits and bobs associated with the PTC, but not necessarily part of it. Each of the 12 folders have a “Welcome page” that outlines the criteria.

    Once created, you can go ahead and add pages, documents, items into each folder to build your collection of evidence for your PTC. It’s all fairly straight forward.

    Privacy & Security

    One common and important question about these methods is the privacy of students that are being used as examples of evidence etc.
    Both Google Sites and Google Drive have a full range of permissions, from full editing to view only, to completely private (Only Me) modes.
    Microsoft OneNote package operates more like a Word doc, where only those with access to the file will be able to see it. Naturally, you can share this over OneDrive, or by email, but ultimately, the privacy is in your control with who can view the files.

    Download

    So, as I am doing with a lot of my teaching things at the moment, I am making this template freely available for you to use for your own use. It is protected under creative commons, meaning you can’t go on to sell copies of this, but you can feel free to edit it, modify it for your own use, develop it further, and use it.

    [su_button url=”http://res.cloudinary.com/alingham/raw/upload/v1462773574/PTC-TEMPLATE.onepkg” target=”blank” style=”flat” background=”#39aa29″ center=”yes” icon=”icon: cloud-download”]Download .onepkg (30.9 KB)[/su_button]

  • Using Google Classroom

    In 2014 Google released it’s LMS to the world. Aptly called “Google Classroom”, it was little more than a Google Plus type newsfeed for classes. Teachers could sign up student accounts, and set assignments and post announcements.

    Read more: About Google Classroom

    Since it’s release, it continues to be developed. There are now polls, feedback, assignment documents. It even integrates with Google Calendar to keep students on top of the upcoming and due assignments that teachers set.

    Obviously, the target audience for Classroom is for use in High Schools. However, I have also used it rather successfully in upper primary school as well.

    Using Google Classroom in the Classroom

    First, go to http://classroom.google.com. It will then ask you to either sign in using your Google Account (Education), or if you’re already signed in, then you can Create or Join a class. You’ll want to Create one. Click on the plus, and click on Create.

    Of course, you can create as many classes as you need. One for each year level, subject or whatever. As a primary school teacher, I create one class for each year I teach.

    The great thing is, Google Classroom integrates straight with Google Drive, and creates a “class folder” for students work, posts, documents and everything else.

    For my class, each student has a school Google Account. I then put up the unique class code on the whiteboard and ask each student next time they log onto the Chromebooks to join the class.

    Once this is done, it is relatively simple to add assignments, projects, and ideas to the ‘news feed’ for the Classroom.
    For instance, if there is a particular video that I want the students to watch for a lesson, I can create a new post, and share the link. Students will then look at the Google Classroom and see the video link, and in time, watch it. Much like a newsfeed, they can comment and share their thoughts (though mostly comments turn to “wassup au” and the like) as they find themselves in a new social environment and explore communicating with each other in different ways!

    Once you have setup your class, it’s easy to manage assignments. Let’s say an afternoon’s work requires students to research and answer a few questions; you could set up a Google Document that has the questions on it. Each student gets a copy of this, and fills it in as they work through the afternoon, and at the end, they click on “Turn in”. This submits the work to the teacher, who can then provide feedback as necessary. The great thing about it is that it keeps students motivated; much more than just printing off a worksheet of questions and getting them to hand it in on your desk at the end of the day!

    There are a number of settings which are pretty straight forward which will help you set up your Google Classroom to your own preference. Things like whether students can comment or post, who can see what, and the look and feel of the site.

    There’s a heap more going on, and more is being developed each day, but as I always try and encourage – get in there and play around yourself. You learn more by doing anyway!

    Related Links

  • Open Source for Education

    I’ve been a long time advocate for open source software. It’s not just that it is freely available, but that it can be added to, modified, improved, or further developed and passed on for others that makes it appealing. In a sense, it is like education and knowledge; we pass it on to others, adding to it, developing it, and using it for our own uses, however and whenever we need to. In New Zealand, public education is free (though there is obviously a cost for this), and so following an open-source model for school technology is actually not too far removed from a possibility.

     

    Cost

    One factor that often holds schools back is the cost of technology. Usually this is related to devices and hardware, networks and infrastructure. Adding software to this cost is often unavoidable, but one way that schools can avoid paying more is by committing to using only open source software.

    Availability

    Much of today’s software is license based, and while there are various schemes to make things more affordable for schools and education institutes, paying for multiple licenses for different workstations and devices quickly adds up. Open-source software on the other hand is readily available, and is free to distribute throughout the school devices without the need for licenses or subscriptions.

     

    GNU.org even goes so far as to suggest that schools and education institutes have the moral obligation to exclusively use Open Source software. “The deepest reason for using free software in schools is for moral education. We expect schools to teach students basic facts and useful skills, but that is only part of their job. The most fundamental task of schools is to teach good citizenship, including the habit of helping others. In the area of computing, this means teaching people to share software. Schools, starting from nursery school, should tell their students, “If you bring software to school, you must share it with the other students. You must show the source code to the class, in case someone wants to learn. Therefore bringing nonfree software to class is not permitted, unless it is for reverse-engineering work.”

    You can read the entire article here: Why Schools Should Exclusively Use Free Software.

     

    Software

    There are a variety of lists out there of open source software suitable for teaching and learning. I’m not going to go into detail on all of them, but instead, begin to list some that you’re probably already using without knowing or realising it.

    Google Apps for Education

    Many of you will already be using Google Apps for Education. GMail, Google Docs, Google Drive, and Google Classroom are all becoming more and more popular and widespread throughout schools. Google have made this suite free for schools to use, with bumped up space and data for education purposes. Originally, all of these have been developed as open source software. The Google Apps API is still publically available for developers to utilise and build third-party apps on. Add to this the myriad of Apps available for free in the Google Webstore which can be added to user accounts for them to use online with Chromebooks or any Internet browser alike.

    WordPress

    WordPress is becoming more and more widespread as the CMS of choice for websites. Many schools use WordPress as the basis for their website, and with WordPress.com offering free accounts, classes and students are even developing their own blogs and sites as well. WordPress is, of course, open source, and is developed regularly, and added to through the use of plugins and other tools.

    Mozilla Firefox

    Shipped with all TELA laptops these days is the little browser known as Firefox. It’s a lightweight version of Mozilla browser, which is open-source, but Firefox seems to have taken off a lot more than its predecessor.

    Google Chrome Browser

    Much like Google Apps for Education, Chrome is Google as well as open source, and is fast becoming the most preferred browser for users around the world.

    Moodle

    Moodle is the industry standard in LMS (Learning Management System) for schools. It is proudly open-source, and provides users with all the flexibility that comes with that.

    VLC Media Player

    VLC is a well renowned media player, and is open source. The main reason I use VLC over anything else is because it’s just about guaranteed to be able to play every different kind of format there is. Videos with different codecs, DVD’s, audio; you name it, and VLC will play it. There’s nothing worse than opening up a video in front of the class and then it not work because a codec won’t load or the file won’t play. VLC seems to get around that.

    GIMP

    With it’s ridiculous prices, even the Education suite of Photoshop is out of reach for most schools. GIMP is THE open source version of Photoshop, and it does most, if not all, the major functions that you’ll need for editing images and photos in the classroom.

    There are numerous others out there. Wikipedia has an extensive list that you might want to check out. For now though, thats all from me!

    Related Links

  • School Journal Listening Post – GitHub

    School Journal Listening Post for New Zealand Schools

    Over the last couple of years, through teaching Daily 5, I’ve needed to develop a series of listening activities and read-a-loud books for the students to use. Using a copy of School Journal Listening Post was the sensible option, though because this is no longer available, I had to develop our own version for our school.

    Over the year however, I had many calls and requests for copies of this. Being an advocate for Open Source wherever possible, I decided to make this School Journal Listening Post free to download and develop yourself.

    You can visit the project on GitHub.

    [su_button url=”https://github.com/alingham/sjlp” target=”blank” style=”flat” background=”#20d717″ center=”yes” radius=”5″ icon=”icon: cloud-download” desc=”Free Download: 2.1Gb”]Download from GitHub[/su_button]

    Introduction

    This School Journal Listening Post is a PHP developed version which is designed to run a lot more dynamically than earlier versions found around the web. This particular version has been developed from a prior version using the audio files and journal covers assembled by Frank Lewthwaite and Plugged-In in 2009. These files are Copyright to the Crown, not to Plugged-In.co.nz. Plugged-In.co.nz has since been dis-established.

    NB: No copyright material has been taken from Plugged-In.co.nz in this project, though as a developer, I do want to make some recognition into Mr. Lewthwaite’s hard work and dedication to setting up his version for New Zealand Schools.

    The School I work for has a creative common’s policy on all work carried out by teachers it employs. This project was initially developed for use by the school only. However, due to increasing interest in the project, I have made this project open source on GitHub for you to use at your school.

    All Audio files and cover artworks are Copyright © Crown, under the Ministry of Education. More information can be found here: http://literacyonline.tki.org.nz/Literacy-Online/Teacher-needs/Instructional-Series/School-Journal/Audio-files

    PHP developed by Al Ingham. unleashed.alingham.com/

    How to Use

    You will need:

    • Web server – with at least 2.1Gb
    • PHP enabled
    • FTP client
    1. Download the repository to your desktop or desired location. This will be a large download (2.1Gb) given the number of audio files on hand.
    2. Open the .zip file and move contents to desired local location.
    3. Using your FTP client, upload the files from the local location to the desired server location.
    4. Visit your server location to check that it works!

    Please feel free to use this for your school, on your school website, for use by New Zealand School students. If there are any issues with your installation, please do not ask for support. I’m a full time primary school teacher and will not have time to offer the countless support requests that may turn up.

    I will endeavour to update the project as I find fixes to bugs, and as new recordings / journals come along.

    Please feel free to join this project if you would like to continue to develop it and add to it as time goes by.