ULearn+Conference+2010

February 2010 i was very fortunate to attend the ULearn Confernece for the second time in Rotorua. I certainly found that the second time round i was more prepared in what i wanted to see, where buildings were. The group from East and West Gore that made up our Cluster were a fantastic bunch. I had many laughs with them and it made the trip so much worth while. I attended some fantastic courses and listened to some great speakers. I have attached my notes i typed up for our staff. With this being my 3rd visit to Learning at schools, I was really keen to find out more to support the development that had been going on in our school around the NZC and ICT. KEYNOTES I heard two of the three key note speakers. Kevin Middleton’s presentation certainly opened my eyes in relation to the amount of disengagement that is happening throughout the country as a whole. In our environment we are somewhat sheltered from it but it is slowly creeping in. Our challenge is how we can deal with our own children who are behind or below. What programmes can we put in place to engage them? How can we turn the failures in the Reading, Writing and Maths into successes? We are hoping through developing a curriculum that takes into account the interests of the learners, is meeting their needs and has parents engaged, will make a difference. It would also be nice to see that the work being carried out in South Auckland with the younger adolescents/teenagers working with older students be put in place elsewhere in NZ and once again maybe us modifying it in our own schools. Alan November’s presentation certainly showed us that technology is moving on and they nearly had it right, except for the glitches in setting up the connection. His message did have a good warning in relation to where we are down loading information from and who is it and what stance does it have. An excellent skill to have. He also talked about how kids work longer harder if the end result is not for their own work. Making a contribution, helping friends empowers students to come up with methods to teach others. Now how can we use that philosophy in our own schools to empower everyone’s learning.
 * Emma**
 * Neil ** Learning at School 2010

BREAKOUTS In choosing the 6 break outs I selected a theme to run through them (3 breakouts involved Solo Taxonomy) and they were also linked to 2 other ones being, Mark Treadwell’s Implementing the NZC and Fay Le Cren’s School Wide Assessment. The final one being The nine best e-learning tools in 10mins or less. In 2009 I first came across Solo Taxonomy in our ICT cluster where we were introduced to it and give an overview of how it worked. Going into these breakouts I felt that I wasn’t starting from scratch but the work Pam Hook and Julie Mills have been undertaking certainly gave me a greater appreciation on how Solo can be applied in all aspects of the NZC and the complexity to it. I have since seen it being implemented in another school. Solo is a tool that I could see working in our school once we have unpacked the learning areas within the school. I could also see it being developed within the key competencies and values. I also now have a pool of teachers from our cluster and a nearby cluster that are keen on Solo and we can work together on this. I had seen Mark Tredwell as a guest speaker at another conference and was keen to follow up and see where he was at with implementing the curriculum. The work he done and the school plan that they had come up with was enviable in the fact that they had completed the task. The concepts and contexts, the specific curriculum skills certainly helped me to be more decisive in my thinking and how I would like to see it in my school. Mark’s CD on What Ever Next is an excellent resource and guide to help develop curriculum delivery. Leading school wide assessment with Fay LeCren was yet another excellent session and having another cluster member there too was excellent as well because we were able to discuss and relate to her ideas on a more practical basis. We can also work together on this. Fay’s work is being used in the development of our curriculum plans. The nine best e-learning tools in 10mins or less was more for the classroom teacher than a principal but it did give me an insight into what can be done and is happening in other classrooms in NZ. In my 3 years attending Learning@School s I have found it to be invaluable in my own PD and helping me to clarify and challenge my thinking as well as being really useful in developing our school.