Jane's blog

My final report is available for download. Please disregard the link in the top right corner of this page. You can download the report by clicking here
This will take you to a page where all the eFellows reports are housed.

Happy reading :)

Well, this is the end of it then... My year is over and now back to the real world. This has definitely been a roller coaster year and the best professional development I have ever undertaken. Firstly I would like to thank the Ministry of Education for making this programme available. It is definitely worthwhile and life changing. I have not only had the time to work on my own professional development but I know I have had a lot of input into other teacher's lives this year as well. It has been great to have the time to craft presentations and to fully develop my thinking.

The reason why this year has been so successful has been the programme devised and delivered by the team at CORE Education . I would like to say a BIG thank you to Vince, Michael and Ann for making this year so exciting, stretching, challenging and rewarding. Without the leadership of CORE this would just be a year's study leave with no direction, but CORE took us every step of the way, showing us how to be teacher researchers and how to get the most out of the year. They molded our fellowship, helped us to connect and collaborate, and made the year "Professional Development on Steroids"!

This has been the most rewarding year of my teaching career and I know I will take all my learning back into my classroom. I will be refreshed and renewed to start teaching again. I wish the new eFellow recruits the best and look forward to reading their blogs and reports.

Onwards and upwards as they say ....

Today was a great day. We have been running a Kids Conference in Dunedin over the last two days. 100 students from all around Otago come to the Otago University College of Education to take part in a two day conference. These students sign up for four different workshops ranging from Google Sketchup, animations, movie making, podcasting, digital photography, microscopic investigations and green screening. It is a fantastic two days with students buzzing with enthusiasm.

But this is the reason why it was so special for me. My students ran a workshop on podcasting. They were the only students to run a workshop in the entire conference. The greatest thing about this is that these students are not the gifted and talented ones, they weren't chosen for their confidence. However, they stepped up and ran the workshop and did an amazing job. This once again shows the value in a podcasting programme. These students had language difficulties ranging from a speech impediment, lack of confidence and lack of volume. This was not an issue though, as they have been practicing using their voice for the last two terms and know how to speak to an audience. These workshops have shown that the skills these students learnt through podcasting are transferred to speaking in front of an audience.

In this image above two of my students are instructing the three teachers who came to their workshop. 

Well three terms have flown past and we are on the homeward straight. It is sad to think that my year is coming to an end. It has been a wonderful, challenging, stretching, growing year and I have changed significantly because of it. Mostly because I have been surrounded with people who are as passionate for teaching and learning and technology as I am. I have been able to engage in debates and have my mind changed and pursue different points of view while spending time with my mentors and the other efellows.  I no longer feel I am in a vacuum. Sometimes when you are passionate about something, your colleagues think you are 'strange' :-). The efellowship allowed me to spend time with other 'strange' people.

I leave for uLearn in two day's time. I will be running a full day seminar and two workshops. I get to present the findings of my research and see what it means to others. I am looking forward to seeing the reactions of my participants to these findings. I hope they have as much potency in my presentation as they did when I uncovered them.

Once uLearn is finished I will be preparing some of my students to run a podcasting workshop at the Dunedin Kids @ Conference. They are nervous and excited about it, a bit like how I feel about uLearn. Then all that will be left to do for the efellowship is to finish writing the final report.

I'll keep you posted ...

Today four of the Efellows had a virtual meeting in Second Life with Michael Winter of CORE.  We have been trying out lots of different online collaboration and meeting software during our fellowship and this is the latest in a long line of trials.  It was remarked how different from an online chat it was since we had physical presence and could look at each other's avatar as we talked about our projects.  Second life has just introduced the use of voice in world so we will be going back in soon to give that a go.

Being an Efellow truly gives you a chance to try out new things!

I am spending a few days at the new Core office (very swish!) with the other Efellows.  We are learning about effective presentation skills and how to interpret our data.  These weeks spending time with the other Efellows and calling on the great knowledge of our Core Mentors is invaluable.  Each time I come up to Christchurch I feel rejuvenated and am ready to get started on the next stage of my research project knowing that I am on the right track.

 This year really is an incredible opportunity.

New post on ICT U Can!  looks into this question.

In this post I am continuing my look into the oral language survey.

Out of a cohort of 36 NZ teachers, 25% would rate their knowledge of how students learning oral language as poor to fair, 50% would rate their knowledge as good and 25% would rate their knowledge as very good.

Teachers were asked if they had attended any professional development in the area of oral language recently (in the last 12 months) 80% of teachers responded they hadn't had any PD in that area. Of the 20% who had PD the sources were:

• Reading Recovery
• ICTPD cluster - questioning and inquiry
• RTLB (resource teachers of learning and behaviour)
• Critical Literacy
• NESB - Jannie Van Hees (Non-English speaking background)
• Head start development
  

When asked where teachers get most of their teaching ideas from the highest response rate (17) was from books, specifically:

• First Steps Oral Language
• NZ English Curriculum Document
• Linking the Language Strands - Jill Eggleton
• Write Ways - Lesley Wing Jan
• Read and Retell - Brian Cambourne and Hazel Brown
• Exploring Language: A Handbook for Teachers [English Online]
• TKI - Resource Link Online - Effective Literacy Practice
• Oxford University Press - SpellWrite
• TKI - Assessment: Exemplars: English
• English Planning Made Easy - Learning Network NZ

14 participants listed websites:

• Te Kete Ipurangi - The Online Learning Centre
• Assessment Resource Banks in English, Mathematics, and Science
• English Online
• Conversation Questions for the ESL/EFL Classroom (I-TESL-J)
• NZ Herald - The Latest New Zealand, World, Business, Sport, Entertainment News 

9 participants listed colleagues as a source of ideas and support

5 participants listed their own experience

4 participants listed other professionals:

• RTLB (resource teachers of learning and behaviour)
• SLT (speech language therapists)
• ICTPD Facilitators (Information and Communication Technology Professional Development)

2 participants listed podcasting and lastly 1 participant each mentioned television and Toast masters.

Are there any gems that you would like to add to this list? Leave them in the comments and share the wealth.

All links are live from *** ICT U Can! blog, head over there if you want to look at the books or websites mentioned here.

 

A few months ago I asked for people to fill out an Oral Language Survey as part of my research in the E-Fellowship programme this year. 36 teachers from throughout New Zealand took part in this survey - A big thank you to all those who took part. I thought I would begin to summarise some of the findings on this blog.

Of the 36 teachers who filled in the survey, 72% teach in the primary sector, 9% in the Intermediate and 3% in High School.

How many hours per week do you spend on the following literacy areas?
* Writing - ranged from 1 hour per week to 8 hours per week with an average of 4 hours
* Reading - ranged from 1hour per week to 7 hours per week with an average of 4.5 hours
* Visual Language - ranged from 20 min per week to 5 hours with an average of 1.5 hours
* Oral Language - ranged from 0 hours per week to 12.5 hours with an average of 3 hours.

In the responses to reading and writing, one person mentioned that they integrate these subjects and in the responses to visual and oral language three people mentioned that they integrated throughout the curriculum. One response to Visual Language read, "Don't know what this is".

I am just reporting back statistics straight from the survey here and would not like to draw too many conclusions as yet. This is only one part of my data gathering to form an overall picture. But I would like to say that it is interesting how differently teachers run their programmes. It seemed that teachers found it easier to calculate the times they spent teaching reading and writing as these two areas of literacy seem to stand alone outside the programme even when integrated. Other things are integrated into these areas. Visual and Oral Language on the other hand are seen as integrated through all other curriculum areas.

This does lead me to wonder whether enough specific focus is put on these two areas. If you think about the skills adults will need in the 21st Century (as far as we can predict anyway) it seems to me that Oral language is maybe one of the most important skill students can take away from our classrooms. A person with well developed oral language skills can communicate their needs and ideas effectively. Also students are interacting more and more with visual images. I believe being able to communicate and interpret visual images will be just as vital as being able to write in the coming years. I am not saying that writing is not important, it is. But it must be underpinned by effective oral language skills. The four strands go hand in hand. My aim is not to push Oral Language to the detriment of all other literacy areas, but to bring it out into the immediate family. As I see it currently, Oral Language is the third cousin in the back row of the wedding photo with his head obscured by the bride's veil.

*** ICT U Can!

I have been podcasting with my class since the end of 2005.  I can not stop telling people about how powerful podcasting is in the classroom.  It provides an authentic context for learning and gives students an authentic audience.  Well, today we had something really exciting happen.  Over on our podcast page from last year,  Room5's podcast we received a comment on one of our book reviews. Now this is nothing new, we get lots of comments on our book reviews but this one was special... It was from the author herself! Check it out! Click on the image for a better view.

Imagine how the producers of this podcast now feel!  They have put together a podcast reviewing a book they enjoyed reading and then received feedback from the person who wrote the book, how powerful is that.  What a great motivator to not only keep reading, but producing scripts (writing) and recording podcasts (oracy).  This is only made possible by the power of using the internet.  I would love to hear of any similar experiences you have had.  Let's celebrate.