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.