Year end(ish)

Well, my first full year at Hagley and what a year! Wireless throughout Hagley, Moodle and MyPortfolio up and running and being used in classes, new servers, new email system, many new devices, new printing contract (comes into force in January), new School Management System being used by all, new Finance system etc etc! Not much has gone on then!

A great time for me to be working at Hagley. We've had plenty of teething issues that have caused a certain amount of frustration to users on occasions but that is the nature of ICT . I like to think we have had more than a few successes as well.

Next year, onwards and upwards! I'd love to see more classes involved with the learning@hcc set of services and teachers getting confident enough with those services to offer more and more peer help and sharing of ideas. The potential is huge.

If you are reading this then have a great break over Xmas.

Cheers

Andy

New Moodle login

Some of you may have noticed a new login page for learning@hcc. It's only under construction at the moment but this new way of logging into learning@hcc via the live@edu email system (all college students have live@edu account provided for them) will allow you to access and send emails via the live@edu account from within moodle. Once this feature has been tested properly the login page will indicate that all is ready for you to try this new function

Andy

Ebook moments

Recently I've been spending sometime creating ebooks so that I can reference some of my ICT planning when I am out and about. I rather like the ebook format partially as I find reading from the screen in a virtual book format quite pleasing (I taught myself to read from the screen comfortably some time ago) and also because, in many cases, you can make notes in the ebook as you go along. When I showed this format to Brent I rather opened up a can of worms as he also got rather excited and now wants some help and support in this area!

So, what's new? Creating an ebook is nothing new. However, creating an ebook directly from the iPad is. Enter the 'book creator' app. This app allows you to create an ebook whilst in the iPad and send directly to iBooks. You can use text, photos etc to create the ebook of course but the great thing for me is that pretty much any note taking app on the iPad allows you to store the notes to your photos and then easily import into the book creator app. Thus, I can easily create an ebook of all my notes, plans and thoughts and then keep this running record in iBooks and reference it easily. There are limitations of course, eg the ebook created this way can't currently then have notes appended to it (as other ebooks can have) but I am hopeful that this will come in future releases.

In the classroom you could create ebooks with students very quickly and easily and they could create their own running record of their notes and work that could be read back in iBooks. As a teacher it would be easily possible to create an ebook of all the terms worksheets or notes in your computer and then have them preloaded onto an ebook reader ready for students to reference.

Ask if you need support or want a lesson on how to do this.

Andy

Changes, changes and more changes !

What a busy few months we've had. ICT have released a number of new services for the college including:

• a new Parental Portal (passwords will be going out to parents and caregivers very soon) which students can also use with their Hagley logons. You can get to the portal to check your attendance, NCEA points etc etc via learning@hcc (http://lms.hagley.school.nz:2010/index.php) and clicking on the Parents drop down menu or simply going to the school website at http://www.hagley.school.nz and clicking on the parents tab
• a new booking service for parent's evenings
• a campus wide wireless access service that will gradually be opened up for students to use their own devices to support their learning at Hagley

Changes, upgrades and improvements will continue to happen over the next few months so watch this space !!

Andy

How to get what you want (revisited)

A short post but I've had some extra thoughts on this.

I have realised that some departments have a "we'll never get that sort of money spent on us" approach to ICT. Whilst I am not advocating the "bully ICT into submission" approach (I can assure you that if you are lucky to get this to work once, it won't again!) I would love to hear exciting ideas that were backed up by impacts to learning no matter what the cost. If, for example the impact was across the whole school or a wide range of learners then it may well be a cost that is worth us committing to. Obviously budget constraints come in to play here but let me worry about those and you submit those fantastic ideas!

cheers

Andy

How to get what you want !

Here are two quick clues to increase your chances of getting more ICT access in your areas! Whilst this is primarily aimed at learning and teaching the clues remain in tact for administration and Support staff.

1. Those who have spoken to me at any length with regards educational ICT will know that I am a strong advocate of what I like to call 'functional ICT'. This is where people can describe what they desire for ICT in non-technical terms, describing what impact they would like to achieve with an emphasis on the learner (in the case of teaching staff at any rate). You are likely to see conversations such as "I'd like more of my learners to have access to the Internet immediately when they need it in the classroom, ooh and also any new devices would be best to be small/portable so we can pass them around easily, ooh and also wouldn't it be great if they could display what they have found out to everyone in the class dynamically ........"

2. I also like ideas that push the boundaries no matter how crazy you think the idea is. You never know, it may be possible! If it isn't we may be able to provide a suitable interim solution in the meantime. Thinking of where you would like to be in terms of ICT usage for learning in say 3 years is also helpful here. This means that when we come to look at possible solutions (once we filter out the impossible or crackpot ones !) we can plan forwards for the next few years and add and upgrade as time goes by.

Final thoughts:

Phrases best avoided if at all possible (especially if not backed up by a learning impact)

"I'd like 3 more computers with plenty of memory"

"I'd like another projector please"

"I need learners to have big screens as I find it difficult to read off a small screen"

Hagley's online learning environment

Well, if you are reading this you have accessed this via one of HCC's new learning resources (either our "Learning@HCC" Moodle or our eportfolio pages at MyPortfolio). These new resources form part of Hagley's new learning environment which, coupled with online email and access to online office tools mean many of our students can access much of their learning opportunities and tools 24hrs a day from any location; college, home, Internet cafe, mobile device on the move ....

There is still quite a long way to go of course especially with training users how to use the new tools (both as educators and learners) but we are getting there !

As with many new resources, they will take some getting used to and, of course, in many instances don't so much replace many of our current resources as complement and enhance them. You really need to have a go and try the new things out. There is very little you can break (!) unless you try very hard and are already a user who has sought a higher level of permissions.

In the months to come, ICT Services will be looking (with help from many teachers and support staff) at how our online learning environment would be best packaged and presented. Thus, there will be many subtle changes along the way.

If you would like to make a comment of how to make things look better or more accessible I am all ears!

Andy

Paperless Office

Many of you will have heard me going on about the amount of printing we do here at Hagley. You may also have heard me talking about trying to achieve the 'paperless office'. Is a paperless office achievable ? Well, if I am honest the answer is no BUT a near paperless office is achievable for many of us and for others the possibility is there to reduce the piles of paper.

A few years ago I worked for a government agency in UK and was receiving masses of documents to read. These documents were everything from large project documents (upto 200 pages each), minutes of meetings, agenda of meetings, project calendars etc etc. After a while it seemed ridiculous to me that I always had my laptop with me which I could use to bring all relevant documentation with me. Added to this is the fact that I am a hopeless filer of paper and could never actually find anything. The search facilities on the laptop allowed me to find anything really quickly. In addition, I could comment on the document, take notes etc without ever having to transpose my notes into a digital form.

Thus, I decided to do something about it. Below are a few short points of how I went about it.

1. I taught myself to read from the screen. This didn't come naturally to me. I had to start with a personal rule that if something was sent to me via e.g. email I wouldn't print it if it was 2 pages or less. After a few weeks I increased this to 5 pages and so on.

2. I asked people for soft copies (i.e. via email or access to the document online) and didn't accept the printed copy they may have provided.

3. I only ever gave people soft copies (i.e. not printed) of documents. If they wanted to print it then that was up to them but at least I had done my bit.

4. I brought my laptop to meetings. I had been provided with a laptop so why was my agency also having to pay for unnecessary printing as well?

5. If I wanted to share a document at e.g. at a meeting before sending it out then I used a projector to display to all


Whilst writing this at Hagley I look at my desk and shelves and see I have a few invoices to sign, a few pieces of marketing material and a few post-it notes. I haven't printed any of them. Most are unavoidable currently (e.g. invoices) or received via post (I didn't ask for any of those!)

I still print a few things but the list is now very small. For example, I still find it hard to make notes and play around with figures for budgets without a piece of paper in front of me.

So, give it a try! It really can work.