Saturday, April 3, 2010

My PLN - They Can't Take that Away from Me!

One of the things that's become apparent over the past term has been the importance of my PLN. Primarily through twitter, although also as a result of my online presence over the past three years, I have established a network that continues to serve me in good steed. I have blown the numbers away from my previous blog. Its not in comparison, and should everything at my current location turn to custard I could re-establish myself quite quickly though my PLN.  One of the issues that occurred in the past was over the ownership of the online work that I was doing with students, whether it was owned by the students and myself or school.  I don't want to get into that particular discussion or thought, as I have very strong opinions on the matter and not all of the information relating to that issue has ever been made available.  However there are a great multitude of blogs and learning sites that are available now, I just despair as an educator how many of them are either rubbish or simply not being maintained.  

One school that I know quite well, has just branded itself as an 'E' learning school and subsequently the entire staff, every classroom and everyone employed by the school have started their own blog.   This was four weeks ago.   Three out of the 15 have any content at all, one's alright and the rest are just rubbish. 

Now I am all for getting staff motivated online, given the right circumstances and drive it can be a powerful, powerful tool, probably the single most important thing that you can do within your classroom.  If I look at the work that I have been involved in online over the last few years my pre-online work, as much as it pleased me at the time dosen't rank in terms of my professional development at all.   It's only since 2008 that I consider that I have been truly up and about to the level that should have.  But surely there is little or no value in every member of staff including all the administration staff running their own sites? Where is the audience going to come for that? I guess I have to reference my previous school in this.  Now that my old site is not being maintained its still the number one site associated with my old school.  I decided previously to maintain the site as an archive.  However there was a school of thought at the time that I should have surrendered the site, the passwords and the material to my old school upon my departure.  I didn't primarily as a result of the situation that developed as I was leaving. 

Friday, April 2, 2010

Term One 2010 is Over.

Term One has drawn to a close and overall its been much more positive than the corresponding time last year. The students in the class are different, I've certainly opted to aim for more collaboration this year, that's been important. The kids have been excited by that more than anything. That's fed excitement with the blog.

Resources have played a point too. When I started I was told that I would have a digital classroom, a data projector and 12 classroom computers. Due to the fact that I have only two power points in the classroom, we had six computers last year and two never worked and no data projector. Maybe I should have kicked up a fuss earlier but its made such a difference. We've had eight computers running consistently this year. Plus the kids overall are a lot better. My school has abandoned streaming for students, which means the best kids are split amongst the five core classrooms. In the past they were all in one (non digital classroom).

Google says we've had 3,200 classroom visitors, and while this is inflated (its not unique visitors) for a start its more than acceptable. Its onwards and upwards from here. We've just started looking at adding material through teachertube and youtube and that should start driving visitors through the site. We've got a lot of momentum, last year I was a bit shy with hyping the site through third parties, I guess deep down I knew it wasn't strong and I was repeating Tamaki Today in a diluted format. Interface Magazine had a feature about Blogs and I decided to nominate myself for it, not because I believe its particularly newsworthy but thought that it would add to the traffic that is going through the site. I guess I am playing the game. Next step I want to start looking at awards that I can nominate myself for with myself and the students online work.