Future Learning Blog

Recently our school was fortunate enough to be successful in receiving a grant form CORE Education to buy a set of Chromebooks for our students.  Today the boys opened them and booted them up - it only took about 2 minutes from the time that I put the sealed box on the desk until the first boys had logged in and were browsing the web, almost unbelievable!!

I've just finished a slice of holiday reading involving "New technology trends in education: Seven years of forecasts and convergence " by Sergio Martin, Gabriel Diaz, Elio Sancristobal, Rosario Gil, Manuel Castro, Juan Peire and felt like reflecting on this. The group conducted a study on the the technologies most likely to impact education in the near future, by looking at technology metatrends from 2004 to 2014 - the report was based on the technologies highlighted in the NMC Horizon Reports . The main trends highlighted were; Social web  Mobile and ubiquitous devices  Augmented reality  Semantic web  Immersive environments  Learning objects  While most of the trends highlighted receive quite a bit of exposure I was interested in finding out a bit more about the Semantic web - from more reading I see it as a trend well worth watching I also I feel that we should not only focus on the technology but also the organisation of...

This year I have decided to completely digitise senior level NCEA PE - 3 classes completing all internal assessments and home/collaborative work on the drive.  I wrote earlier on my blog how I thought I was going to make it work - but I have discovered a couple of tricks since then that have ironed out some of the issues I was having - you can have a look at the original post here  - but I have made some modifications below. I was beginning to find myself overwhelmed by the amount of work in my folder - I thought I had a pretty bulletproof system for organising the work and placing it into appropriate folders but in the end it was taking me so much time to keep on top of it - after a bit of googling I discovered gClass folders .  This is a script that runs in a google sheet that automatically creates a folder for all of your students - they also have access to the folder, and simply place the work in there for you to mark and comment on.  Have a look at the web...

In NCEA PE 1.2 (shoot hoops) the students have to learn about the short and long term physiological responses to exercise.  In class discussion one morning we were talking about some of the long term changes and we started to talk about sport specific changes in your body.  I mentioned how some big wave surfers train by expanding lung capacity, and do it to an extreme level so they have to have resuscitation gear by the side of the training pool and could easily lead to someone being in a sticky

At the end of last term I surveyed my students to find their feedback on how my plan to digitise NCEA PE was going for them.  Most of it was positive, but some of the boys were getting frustrated when I shared a document with the whole class and someone didn't save a copy (and just hijacked the original) - making the original document that I shared locked - this was the current way I was organising my workflow and I knew there must be a way around it.  This was frustrating for me as

This afternoon I had the opportunity to present in an 'unconference' webinar organised by Tessa Gray from CORE education.  It was a great experience and I really enjoyed the other presenters, as well as the chance to share some of the things we have been trying at GBHS.  An 'unconference' is an informal meeting that aims to collect ideas from across the country and share them in real time with the opportunity for questions and input from everyone involved.  This particular event was concerned with 'inspirational e-learning examples and top tips'! I was really impressed by the other presenters, especially looking into the collaborative work that Gaye Bloomfield had been doing with her senior psychology classes and her amazing website and blogs - you can find more information about how her blog came into existence here  as well as other links to her blogs and learning sites - definitely gives me something to aim towards.

Last week I sat in the school hall on a cold and stormy thursday night, in the middle of the hall, possibly the furthest point from any source of heat you could have found, for 2 and a half hours furiously marking yr 9 tests ready for the junior deadline next week - I saw 3 parents out of 79 potential.  I couldn't help thinking there must be a better way to do this......