Notes of the New Zealand Post Primary Teachers' Association / Te Wehengarua (PPTA) ICT Committee meeting, held at Epsom Girls Grammar School (am) and Orewa College (pm) on May 28, 2012.
Contact the ICT Advisory Committee
Next meeting is on Monday 17th September 2012.
Topics discussed:
Epsom Girls’ Grammar School presentation - ICT integration
Star Database
Scholarship
Submission on the 21st Century Learning Environments and Digital Literacy
Copyright breaches by schools
Law Commission Report on New Media
Teachers Council Social Media Group
All of Government Services
TELA updates and repairs
BYOD at Orewa
General Business
Digital literacy course
Vote of thanks
Items for the next meeting
Notes from the ICT Advisory Committee meeting held at Epsom Girls Grammar School (am) and Orewa College (pm) on Monday 28th May 2012
Epsom Girls’ presentation
Claire spoke to a presentation about the process her school (Epsom Girls’ Grammar School) has gone through in developing and integrating ICT into their everyday work as part of their move towards the construction of a 21st century pedagogy. She went on to speak about the school policy around BYOD. They are currently in transition, illustrated by the statistic that 50% of year nine students bring devices but only 20% of year 13. It has been a collaborative experience and teachers have been supported through the change. They anticipate moving more deliberately towards full BYOD next year.
E‐learning, ICT PD and BYOD at Epsom Girls Grammar School
This following link connects to the PLD that the school has used. 
http://www.vln.school.nz/groups/profile/49720/epsom-girls-grammar-school-ict-pd
Star Database
The ministry responded to the committee’s concerns about the need to manually enter information into the STAR database by basically disagreeing that there was a problem. PPTA will follow up when the marks are entered later this year.
Scholarship
Judie reported on discussions about the scholarship list. The decision for 2013 will be to continue with the generic Technology Standards but students may submit a performance portfolio. NZQA seem reluctant to follow the pattern of visual arts with five subjects under that heading. PPTA had suggested to NZQA that they should do an analysis of the different technology areas and what areas the portfolios are in. The decision will be looked at again in 2014 if students do exceedingly well in DT this year.
The committee noted that while there is no clarity around this issue, students will not choose DT, they will go to other subjects. Judie pointed out that until we can show students are performing brilliantly in DT at level 3, there won't be a scholarship. The catch is that this can’t easily be done while the best students are avoiding the subject.
Is the assessment reporting mechanism appropriate for what students do in computing?
The head of Orion Health has recently criticised the ministry for its failure to support the development of digital technologies when there is such a demand in the workforce for people trained in those areas.
IT should become the fourth science in schools: Orion Health boss
Submission on the 21st Century Learning Environments and Digital Literacy
The submission focused on the concerns raised by the committee over a number of years: problems of flexible spaces, health and safety, equity, the digital divide, workload, costs for schools, wireless access etc. Judie felt that the new schools are being very creative about the flexible spaces - except for one - and that the acoustic qualities are very good. Classrooms have been getting smaller though. A bigger issue is how the majority of extant schools are going to convert existing rooms to flexible spaces.
Submission on the 21st Century Learning Environments and Digital Literacy
No one has heard of any breaches of the new law so far but schools remain concerned about this issue
Law Commission Report on New Media
PPTA submitted on this and got some good media coverage. The outcomes seem quite positive with a proposal to establish a statutory body to deal with complaints and the creation of a new offence of malicious impersonation. The committee was not enthused about suggestions that schools should have legal powers to search students' data. It was noted that students are usually happy to share data, if you ask, without the need for this response.
Teachers Council Social Media Group
At their initial meeting, they discussed teacher ethics and social media.
All of Government Services
Recommended that schools use this service. It provides a good range of services.
Noted that such services would get more and more expensive for schools and that the concept should be expanded to include ISPs.
TELA updates and repairs
Discussion about the new base model laptop. Comment that experience to date with the repair services has been positive. Suggestion that schools ensure they keep their paperwork up to date.
The meeting adjourned at 12 to travel to Orewa.
BYOD at Orewa
Sue described the process the school went through in establishing wireless at their own cost and by so doing feeling committed to doing something exceptional with it. Like Epsom, they were disappointed with the inadequate access provided by computer labs and COWs, thus the decision to move to BYOD. The challenge for the school now is to find the pedagogy that most effectively advances their new approach to learning.
Mark Quigley spoke to the group about Orewa’s learning experience after the decision was made that all students should have a tablet. The programme started this year with teacher volunteers agreeing to become “iPad teachers” for year 9 students.
The issues discussed included:
- One way of looking at the process of embedding technology in classroom practice is as four phases: substitution, augmentation, modification and redefinition.
- The technology is expensive (ie TV screens instead of data projectors) but there are cost -savings on photocopying and by not replacing computers.
- Teachers have TELA laptops and iPads - but they may have to choose one or the other next year. The school pays for half the iPad and at the end of the year the teacher owns the iPad.
- There is no printing of documents.
- They used 2.7 terrabytes of data last month.
- It is difficult for teachers to change practice until all students have devices.
- There are issues of authenticity of student work. Te Kura has been dealing with the same issues for a number of years; in the end it has to be on trust. Teachers need to know their students so they can assess if the work is consistent.
- The main apps they have used are free ones except for iauthor pages, keynote and garage band.
- There have been a couple of breakages but no problems with theft.
- They are very strict about students not deviating into games etc in class. A breach of this rule can lead to a loss of wireless privileges.
- They have tried to encourage responsible use of internet and now have a filter and can track what students do on line. Facebook is used as a tool by sports and cultural groups.
- There is no evidence of any harm to learning, in fact truancy for year 9 has reduced. There is some suggestion that boys are more engaged - especially in subjects like English.
- Every unit of work has to involve some pen and paper work.
- Digital literacy and data and file management are the two big challenges. Files can be too big to stream across networks.
This was followed by classroom visits.
General Business
New licensing deal with Microsoft: Has some new features for students in Office. There is no longer any need to license all machines.
Browsers: There was a quick survey of the browsers people use. Chrome was popular but most people use a range.
Digital literacy course
Claire indicted that she was looking for other interested parties who wanted to help develop a digital citizen course. Details are here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cuKhvh0zLVxAEYvOYhz1xA2g3Tkmp-IEWPyDudYvkTs/edit?pli=1
Vote of thanks
The meeting expressed their appreciation to Sue and Claire for hosting the group. Everyone found it very interesting and thought-provoking.
Items for the next meeting
1 The role of the committee
2 Update on the N4L
3 Discussion re MYOB insights from the visit
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