Learning+At+Schools+Conference+2010


 * Tanya McLean ** :

My attendance at the 2010 Learning at School Conference in Rotorua has given me tools to use within my class and school to enhance ICT learning. I left feeling enthused and excited about what was available on the internet to be used within classes. I enjoyed all of my workshops, they were practical and useful which is exactly what I wanted from my conference experience. I attended a session on blogging and have now set up my own class blog. **[]**. On this my students are now able to share their work within class with their family and friends anywhere in the world and giving them the opportunity to comment on the work posted. This gives my students authenticity for producing work that is to be shared and they are able to reflect on comments posted. Our school recently purchased Mimio's for our 5 classrooms, these, together with the tools learnt at conference our students can now share and experience a whole new ICT world.


 * Wes Gentle ** :

I found Stuart Middleton’s talk on student engagement the most valuable. The fact that we have so much dis-engagement in English speaking countries is quite revealing. He challenged my thinking and also provided some possible solutions. We struggle to understand the need to have national standards, as these will not address the problems associated with our bottom 20% The South Auckland initiatives spoke clearly about what we should be doing with this group of young people. Much damage was done when apprenticeships were removed from the system. The idea of providing a bridge through this is what I believe vital to give a number of our young people a sense of purpose and direction. Much more meaningful contexts will motivate them to stay in the system. The challenge for us is how we apply some of the lessons learnt to our own situations. We have many children that will always struggle with literacy and we must adapt our teaching to their learning styles. We know the education system must change and reposition itself. Alan Novembers presentation was difficult to follow. His ideas on how technology could be used was useful especially checking the validity of information. A way of finding out who owned the website and how balanced the information was likely to be. A number of practical examples were given but they were not particularly easy to follow as this was done through a video conference and this was not ideal. We were not able to hear the third speaker as we were travelling home. I found this extremely disappointing and the organizers need to think how disadvantaged South Island Travelers were. · I found the cloud Computing breakout rather commercial in its content and unless we looked into the systems I could not see too much that could be used in my school. · The Broadband and Next Generation Network breakout quite interesting. The use of fibre sounds like it will be great and beneficial to schools. Making contact again with Douglas Haare I found useful. · Voice recognition devices could well become part of our I.C.T. I was introduced to a number of programmes that could be implemented and used in our literacy programme. · My Localized Curriculum breakout stated that this would be hands on session. Well it wasn’t!! · Scientists in schools provided me with some good ideas. The case study with Rats in the Valley showed how we could use local resources to develop children’s science. This could be applied to our school although many of the resources were Auckland Hamilton based. We don’t have the same access to scientists here. · The LMS gateway smacked a little of commercialism too. It re minded me of how much I need to do. Mark Treadwell is a very good presenter and his work is well received. · Finally the “ What teachers need” was practical but unfortunately we had to leave early The use of a green screen to present children’s work was valuable. I also did a little sound engineering which might be useful at some stage. Overall some big picture stuff along with some practical ideas. Plenty of work to be done.