Professional Activities List 2009

Activities List.
The following is a list of other school activities that I have been involved in or attended during the first half of 2009:

PIC Photographic Imaging College Staff Meetings
Hawthorn Secondary College - VET Multimedia Staff Meetings
Removal Of Staff Room, before renovations
S.R.C. End Of Term BBQ
Annual Photographic Camp to the Otways
Student counseling
VET Report writing
Excursions to NGV
PIC Sound and Image Night
Alfred Brash Sound House Moderation Meetings

The following is a list of activities I have had co-ordinated:

Conducted formalized interviews of applicants to the college
Liaison with S.R.C and planning and production of events.
Assisted in planning and production of off campus workshops.
Helped, plan, prepare and run the annual camp.
Updates and contributions to the college Blog
Updates and contributions to the college Myspace
Updates and contributions to the college website.
Updates and contributions to the college Facebook.
Plan, prepare and ran folio excursions to National Gallery Of Victoria, CCP, Brunswick Street Gallery.
Planned, ran, and kept minutes for the PIC Staff meetings.
Kept minutes for the Hawthorn Secondary VET Multimedia Staff Meetings.
Production of college promotion, publicity, exhibition, of the Sound and Image Night
Updated and maintained information and records on College Database

HSC's Digital Take Off

VITTA Slide To Open

I was recently asked to attend the VITTA's (Victorian Information Technology Teachers Association) to sit in a product council for one of the peices of technology that we use at the HSC. Unfortunately, I signed a Non Disclosure Agreement so I can't talk about the product too much but I can talk about the conference! Most of the booths at the conference I was familiar with. Studywiz and Smarthboard, both had stands. I didn't really see anything of interest for HSC. Now, this doesn't disappoint me, just makes me realize more that the technologies in place are excellent, and the skills of all the stand using the technology needs to be updated and maintained regularly. In saying this I think Hawthorn has made significant leaps and bounds to implement PD strategies, ie The Introduction of more Interactive Whiteboards and the focused introductions to Studywiz.

A primary school in a growing suburb on the outskirts of a major Australian capital city decided to install interactive whiteboards in all teaching rooms. Within several months all teachers were using the technology. In fact, so rapid was the surge in teachers acceptance that the term 'digital take-off' was coined. - "Leading a digital school." Mal Lee and Michael Gaffney

I think HSC is in a bit of a 'digital take-off.' Most staff members I have approached have been trying to or using the technologies we have implemented into the school. To reiterate the point, with the Ultranet coming to Victorian schools in 2010, directed eCurriculum PD in the new year is a must.

Guzzle It 2 - 2009

I was recently involved in organizing a small annual exhibition of photography at The Workshop Bar, Melbourne. The show is organized by students and staff and precedes the major end of year exhibition. It gives the students who are more passionate and involved to present work and be presented alongside their mentors. The show ran for two weeks and there were many positive responses.

Sept 7th - Quality Indicators Workshop.

Background and context
QI is a compliance issue. It must be done.
Assist RTO's to collect and use data.
1st July and Learner Engagement and Employer Satisfaction Quality Indicators based on 2009 Activity. REGISTERING BODY REPORT.

Continuous Improvement
Why do we need continuous Improvement?
It is important because it keeps the course relevant and current. Feedback from clients helps answer the questions are we doing the job properly. To comply with the AQTF standards.
Ongoing cyclical process for improvement.
Making small improvements in processes based on evidence. Focusses on on outcomes rather than processes.

Continuous improvement cycle.
Planning Continuous Improvement > Selecting Learners to Survey > Using the Learner Questionnaire > Administering the Survey > Analyzing Data > Improving Training > Review Results >

Everyone should know what it's about and how it informs out continuous improvement.

Data
The types of data collected are:
Surveys - QI, Clients and Staff.
Enrollments and Completion
Employment outcomes
Complaints
Finances

Everyone should be involved in these processes.

Surveys and SMART Software
Learner Questionnaire - The first page is mandated.
The second page is demographic data that does not need to be collected.

Employer Questionnaire

ACER Smart Resources
http://www.acer.edu.au/aqtf/improvement.html
Email ACER for relevant password.

The ACER online system has the capacity to create online links for students and employees to complete surveys.

Analyzing the QI
What key questions should be 'asked" of the data?

Who should be involved in the analysis of the report? All staff.
How often will the analysis be done. Once a year at least for 222
What results or issues are you expecting to find from the analysis? Where learners are dissatisfied with their learning.
What are the key training questions we want to answer ffrom the analysis of this data? What areas specifically need to be improved.

Reading the data.
How do our learners and employers rate our training?
How well do we rate compared with our 'like' competitors?
Are there any scale that rate poorly?
Are these results what we expected?
What other data can inform the issues raised by the surveys?
What can we do to improve out service based upon the survey results?
How could this analysis inform our long term strategic planning?


Improvement Strategy

PIC Planning Issues and Choices
Using the the ACER software we can email or provide a link to students to complete survey.
We would need to have at least two groups. 1st Year and 2nd Year.
We can also have a employer surveys.
This would be best used for testing the process because the data is not compulsory yet.
This data only needs to be collected once a year.
The data needs to be collected this year and used by the 1st July 2010 as a compulsory activity implemented by the AQTF.
Currently we have a X amount of hand written surveys by students.
Not all students have completed but we have more then majority so this data will be fine.
This will need to manually entered into the SMART software and a report produced and sent off to AQTF.
VET Multimedia will also be surveyed for this year. Different groups should be used.

PIC PD - June 15 - Vibrance

A little mystery was explained for me today. Ian Lobb from Free Gamma explained the Vibrance slider from Raw Processor and CS4 clearly.

Vibrance is meant to move up things that are saturated without affecting things that already are saturated.

Something that was also interesting;

Smart objects allow you to turn to filters into adjustment layers and you can build masks into them.

Also the idea of using 2 Exclusion layer styles, merge them, then find edges to create a Sharpness mask, was also very interesting. I think all of these things can be passed onto the students.

Your pictures need IMPACT.

was quite amusing.

Monday June 1st 2009

Today I joined the Principal and the Vice Principal to discuss the new website at the school with web designer Jin Wang.

Jin showed us a mock representation of what the web site would look like. Sleek, simple and very user friendly is how I would describe what I saw. The major problem that schools have is keeping an up to date, and professional looking website. The website Jin is creating will be a content management system which will allow us to update the website easily and simply. I am looking forward to the final product as it will be a positive addition to the college.

I have received information about the network audit we are going to have at the college to identify and advance. The company performing the audit is EspireIt.

"Hi,

With regards to the audit to be performed at the college we will be able to start these works from Friday the 12th June. Reason for starting on the Friday is so that we can also have your current TSSP present to answer any questions and provided any details which may be required. We will then be able to continue the audit on the Monday / Tuesday of the following week.

To prepare for this audit can you please gather all the current details and documentation you have which will be required such as IP address, usernames and passwords for Servers, firewalls and any other relevant hardware software on site. This information will need to be gather or stored somewhere..

As discussed if you don’t have any documentation or network maps we are able to design these for you but they will be at extra cost.

Best regards,

Managing Director"

I am attended a PD on Thursday - S228-2009 eLearning Planning - Intel® Teach Leadership Forums.

"The forums will focus on how to promote, model and support technology in learning and the elements for successful eLearning planning. Participants will examine leadership behaviours, best practices and the latest resources. There will also be opportunities for hands-on learning about Web 2.0 technologies, including social networking, wikis and blogs."

In Photography college news, I will unfortunately miss the 2009 Second Year exhibition opening as I will be away for the Queens Birthday long weekend. I will have to catch the show when I get back.

Twitter in Education

View more OpenOffice presentations from hopkinsdavid.

I've been thinking about this idea for a while. It's still an idea. The school could have a twitter account though. Maybe for notifying daily events? Must must on this.

Blogs

The Librarians at the school have asked me to develop some professional development around blogs for them. I'm going to make some notes, and start here with them.

Why we blog.

From the WA Department of Education and Training.

"Blogs provide a communication space that teachers can utilise with students whenever there is a curriculum need to develop writing, share ideas and reflect on work being undertaken in the classroom."

From the site Designing e-learning.

"Blogs can be easily maintained and updated through a standard web browser without the need for additional technologies. They are often free of charge to establish'.

What Wiki has to say about blogs.

"A blog (a contraction of the term weblog) is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketches (sketchblog), videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting). Micro-blogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts.

As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs."

How we blog.

There are numerous amounts sites that allow you to blog on the internet. Most of them are free.

• http://www.thoughts.com/
• http://edublogs.org/
• http://www.typepad.com/
• http://www.xanga.com/
• http://www.livejournal.com/
• http://www.blog-city.com/

My choice of blogging site is www.blogger.com/

About the layout of a blog How To Blog: A Beginner's Blog Publishing Guide

Posts are actually arranged in reverse chronological order, which means that when you visit a blog on the web, the latest story will appear at the top of the website, and the earlier ones will descend in order beneath it, by how recently they were published to the web.

Posts have a subject or header - just as a newspaper article, or email does

They then have a subject or body - the main part of the post, again just like an email

They most usually have comments - a way that readers can respond to what's been said. This is an important part of blogging, which is much more conversational than print media. As soon as you write something, your readers have a chance to respond to it

They quite often have a time and date stamp - so that readers know how recent the post is. Commonly people aren't so interested in reading out of date posts. Blogging is very much an "of the moment" phenomenon, and while you might create "evergreen" content, it's likely that at least some of your posts will be time sensitive.

Have you read any blogs from Librarians?

Why don't you check out Librarian in Black or the The Shifted Librarian or maybe the Librarian.net.

Tuesday 26 May

The new 24/7 digital recording box came in last week. The technicians began to set it up and discovered it was only showing up 5 of it's 6 hard drives. I liased with the company this morning explaing that I wasn't comfortable opening up a "brand new" box, however she explained that I should and it may have just been from the shipping. Along with the Tech we opened it up, jiggled the right wires and it has seem to have worked.

The photography students needed to raise a little more money for their middle of the year exhibition so they held a sale of prints. I donated a few prints which sold. I didn't really get to stick around as I was upstairs fixing the box. I'm finding I'm being pulled in a few directions at the moment and it's hard to stay in one spot and focus.

I've orgaznied with the new web designer or talk and discuss the ins and outs of the hosting situation of the school website. He will hopefully be in on Monday to show the Principal, Vice Principal and myself. The idea is that a few people with permissions will be able to update the site via a content management system design. I'm really looking forward to it, my only concern is that sometimes CMS look "clunky" or "un-user friendly," so when I see the designs, or mock, hopefully this is not an issue I will have to talk to the designer about!

I am continuing to update the Staff Bulletin with ecurriculum news. The latest batch of links were from Boroondara Ultra Wiki. A place to find out about Ultranet as well as promote some of the great use of ICT in schools in the Boroondara Local Government Area.

All these, a dozen emails,Photographic Studio Class, and VET Multimedia till 8pm. Whataday!!!:D

Intro to Social Media in Education

Found this interesting slideshow presentation on the Design 4 Learning blog. The author of the blog and presentation, Dean Groom is the Head of Educational Development Design at the Learning and Teaching Centre at Macquarie University, Sydney.

Intro to Social Media In Education

View more presentations from pmhs.

Term 2 - First Day Back

First day back and I have been doing lots of things!

Answered and replied to numerous emails about Studywiz. Did have some immediate feedback from parents that it has worked for. I have documented this feedback and printed a hard copy to my performance and development folder. I have just made a standard email proforma that I fill in with the individuals information that seems to be working well.

Studywiz Parent Details

To access your parent account on Hawthorn Secondary Studywiz type this address into your browser:

http://studywiz.hawthornsc.vic.edu.au/

Then choose the option Enter as Parent. Your loging details are:

Username: XXXXXX

Password: XXXXXX

Made contact with the Education Consultant at Electroboard who organize and sell interactive whiteboard training and products.I received a response back straight away.

Hi Marcus,

So good to hear from you. I was beginning to think XXXXXX had maybe forgotten about me.

As it is very early in the term my schedule is pretty free. Let me know what day would be good for you and your staff and we’ll go from there.

From what XXXXXX has told me I assume I’ll be running a beginners session?

Looking forward to hearing back from you.

Cheers J.

Principal has asked me to complete documentation for Studywiz. I have started Teachers and Parents, and hope to have them all including Students finished by next week.

Also spoke to the Librarians about upgrading the ClickView system to their latest model. This is the description from the Clickview website:

Whether you forget to schedule a recording, hear about a great show that you missed, or see a relevant news and current affairs story at home, with ClickView 24-7, you never have to worry about missing a quality show.

By recording up to 6 channels of broadcasts for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, ClickView 24-7 gives you a constant supply of digital television. A required show is simply extracted from ClickView 24-7 and made available on the ClickView Library Server.

With one 500GB hard disk drive per digital television channel, ClickView 24-7 features 3 Terabytes of storage capacity (equivalent to 640 DVDs). ClickView 24-7 gives you access to over 1000 hours of television recordings.

WANTED: Proof reader for this blog.

Pupils to Study Twitter and Blogs

I found an interesting article from the guardian.co.uk called "Pupils to study Twitter and blogs in primary schools shake-up."

Children will no longer have to study the Victorians or the second world war under proposals to overhaul the primary school curriculum, the Guardian has learned.

However, the draft plans will require children to master Twitter and Wikipedia and give teachers far more freedom to decide what youngsters should be concentrating on in classes.

I think the idea is great, because all these Web 2.0 technologies like twitter, wikipedia, facebook and blogs are being used by industry in many feilds. Nearly all, of my friends, work, on a computer, and this includes the outdoors and physical labout tradesmen, who use their computers, iphones, and PDA's to quote, and promote their businesses. I don't think students and teachers get enough time, in computer labs, to experience ecurriculum and this will be at the detremeant to the Australian education system and eventually the Australiain workforce.I do however applaud all schools, principals, and management that are given it the best shot they can. The next few years are going to be really interesting. However, I don't think the content of bristish system, ie the Victorians or World War II necessarily needs to be purged.

Tuesday, 31 March, 2009

So far, I have met with IT department every Friday for the whole of the year. They discuss their concerns and issues with the network. I am trying to understand their hardware issues. Most of them make sense, but I can't help to think that some of the "faults" or "issues" with the network could be fixed if some harder decisions were made. I guess that's easier to say, because I don't know much about IT infrastructure, and to be honest I don't really want to! The Prinicapal has asked to me to organize an external audit, and now that I know a little about the way things work, I am going to organize this.

I understand nearly all of their concerns with staff, as the staff do not often think hard about the solution before calling to IT for support. However IT can be somewhat short if the answer is obvious. Managing expectations of Staff and IT support has been a role, that's probably not written into the job description.

I have been dealing with many emails from parents and their access to the Parent Portal and Studywiz. The Parent Portal contains the online student reporting system. The system is outsourced to someone and we have no control over it at school. Parents are getting this confused with Studywiz itself. The parent access to Studywiz merely shows them what their son/daughter is doing on Studywiz. I have distrubted Parents of new students and year 7 passwords for Studywiz.

Some issues lie within Studywiz. I find the current way it's setup really awkwards and clunky. Next year, I'd like it if we could start the whole thing over again. That's the only way I can think to make it work better overall.

Student ILP's are being workjed on electronically and being saved to the Students Studywiz ELocker. This seems to be working well.

I guess I'm writing this because we are nearing the end of term. I feel like I have done the best, with the limited knowledge that was passed on to me, and working between to different learning environments, however at the end of Term 1, I do feel very tired and strected. I do feel that the students of PIC may have missed out on the more one on one consultation I am usually able to deliver, and uniqueness and individualised learning that PIC has to offer.

I am looking forward to Term 2 and exploring more e curriculum ideas.

Monday 2nd - Thursday 4th March

Tried to fix computer that would not burn.

Fixed Cara and Helen's computer to enable them access to the HSC network. Network setttings were off.

Drafter letter to staff about student Studywiz passwords. Distributed letters.

Monday 2nd, March 2009

PIC meeting.

Sent of emails looking for new data projectors.

Spoke to Steven about some VET issues.

Got computer off Anthony and David, to update for them so students can use Pro Tools.

Spoke to Rhonda about E potential and fixed her Studywiz account.

Emailed Lynton about E potential about deligation of principal rights.

Rang Dean about Donna not having access to E Potential. Emailed him and he is going to chase up.

Had lunch.

Ipods and Physical Education.

Help fellow staff member complete e potential survey. She has asked for me to research how iPods can be used with Physical Education.

Staff photos.

Afternoon meeting with Dean

Had a great afternoon meeting with Dean to organise our PD's this week.Kathy dropped in as well, and we explored this gem of a website.

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

I create this image using the data from this blog.

Week 3, Blogging Blues.

I've just realised how hard it is to blog. I did plan to make brief entries to the where-abouts and happenings of my days, but as you can see I haven't kept up with that. So, taking the pressure of myself, these post will probably be shorter and more intermittent.

Last Friday I attended a small conference discussing issues relating to the VET Multimedia subject I teach. I think it was pitched a little below where I am, but I did take away a list of web resources that I want to explore.

I had my first VET Multimedia classes last week at HSC and ABSH. All went well.

This week I must prepare for a PD that I'm am delivering about Studywiz. I am also preparing documents for staff about how to use the intranet.

Things at PIC are going ok, students start this week.

The next few weeks will be trying as I will need to manage my time between the two schools.

Last week.

Had a meeting with the IT support.

repared classes for PIC.

Prepared classes for VET Multimedia.

Outcomes of Meeting

I need to book Studywiz PD for myself and other staff

I have booked Dean into talk to all staff about the E potential survey and how to use it properly.

Dean pointed me towards the e planning rubix and I have downloaded it.

I have sent an email to the TSSP about the SIPS road map.

Hi TSSP,

As I mentioned in my last email, I am looking at completing the sips road map documents. It seems we do have to do them again for 2009.

I been notified that the sips inventory due to be revised before the end of February?

Can please advise me of your timeline of completion so we can begin and complete the Sips road map.

It will also be great to have you input into sips road map.

I've spoken to Bob about the college website and he has told me you will look at it on Friday.

I will endeavor to drop in on Friday. Cheers.

Dean - Ultranet Coach - Meeting 2pm

I am meeting up with Dean today and have a few things to discuss.

• Setting up e potential surveys for 2009.
• Analysing the 2008 epotential surveys.
• Using or organizing professional development for Interactive Whiteboards.
• Understanding the school infrastructute roadmap and strategic plan 2008 - 2011 and the Schook ICT Inventory.
• Understanding the National Secondary School Computer Fund.
Understanding the role of Techincal Support to Schools Program.
• Are there any issues I am not addressing and should look at?
• Are there any influential books, documents, or online articles of importance I should acquire and read?
• Any updates on the Ultranet.

1st Day Of the 1st Term 2009

Booked a colleague and myself into the Victorian Information Technology Teachers Association Inc.'s Don't leave it to chance... VET Interactive Digital Media and Cert III Essentials

Spoke to the Principal and Vice Principal about getting a desk within the high school

Attended the first staff meeting of 2009 for PIC

Meet with Andrew, a technician, in relation to Studywiz.

Started reading about the School ICT Infrastructure Roadmap and Strategic Plan.

Checked website and alerted IT that it is down.

Tuesday January 27th 2009

ICTEV ICT in Education Victoria Membership Paid - www.ictev.vic.edu.au/

VITTA The Victorian Information Technology Teachers Association - www.vitta.org.au/ Membership Paid

Students logins 2009 - Documentation neets to be kept on staff intranet.

Passwords and logins need to be disseminated to students.

Teachers will need to be advised on how to notify IT to reset passwords for students.

Staff need to notify all computer issues to Minh a.s.a.p

Have emailed Stephen about all issues relating to VET and are organizing a meeting for next week.