This morning I attended the MLE Roadshow for New Zealand Schools and listened while Paul Seiler and Ian Munro delivered a wealth of information to a large group of what looked like Auckland principals and senior managers. If people kept their attention focussed throughout they should have come away with a very clear picture of what a Managed Learning Environment (MLE) means for their schools and how it connects the Student Management Systems (SMS) and Learning Management Systems (LMS).
They also did a great job of impressing on those present that this world we have all entered has to be led from the top by the principal and senior management. And they had a strong message for schools with no/little/out-dated policies for staff and students using these environments - "Get it organised - NOW". It is just a shame that we are all lumbered with those confusing acronyms. How many people know an LMS from an SMS or an MLE? Well, if you do, they were handing out chocolate fish!
We heard quite a bit about the eportfolio systems being offered by some of the vendors the Ministry of Education has selected as preferred partners. The Google Apps while mentioned, appear to be a sideline to the main event at this stage.
The notes from this are easy to read and available on this link on slideshare.
I left there and headed back to my office to meet with the Google Certified Teachers group on an Elluminate session organised by Cindy Lane. The guest speaker was Kern Kelley and co-incidently he shared with us for an hour the way his district in Maine, USA is using the Google suite of tools and where it places the students as they graduate. While there was no mention of the acronyms we are familar with in NZ, the students from Grade 5 (11 years) and older are using the Google tools (with lots of other Web 2 tools embedded) to manage and support their learning.
When they graduate, Kern's students are gifted a personal web address (studentname.com) to take forward with them into their adult life. On the website, "What's in a Name", one of the FAQs explains, " The intent of having the web address is to help manage your digital identity. Many students have MySpace or Facebook accounts, but these are usually focused on more personal aspects of your life. This account is meant to help you craft your professional side." Into this webspace they can take forward aspects of their ePortfolio from the Google account they used as students at school.
This seemed like a wonderful answer to the questions I was hearing in the morning session about how our MoE was going to handle the storage of student artifacts, data etc for them to be able to access in their life after school. By 18 years of age they could make the decision and choose what they wanted to bring forward into their own website. And I particularly like the way this enables students to 'round out' their digital footprint to include the academic and learning content in the same space as their social networking antics. These students are advantaged when future employers Google them by having other aspects of their life added to their identity.
Kern's blog, the Tech Curve' also has an interesting article for us , 'Why Google', as we continue our discussions about the place of all the acronyms in New Zealand education.
I am embedding the Googlezon video he links to which may scare as many people as it fascinates.
I was sitting behind you and didn't get a chance to say hi! I knew you'd be onto the blog asap... I thought it was a very good presentation and certainly held my attention. The message certainly came through loud and clear how much it must be part of the school vision and driven from the top down. Will be feeding through to the senior management at my school and want to bring them to visit those Bucklands Beach exports soon!
ReplyDeleteHi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteI am on leave this term finishing ( I hope ) my MEd and on a journey towards wellness. I am doing the Uni of Auckland paper e-learning in practice - as you can see from my blog (if you have the time to have a look ) its very focused around the paper.
I am looking into the work of Misha and Koehler They promote a framework called TPACK which could be utilised to as a way of planning integration of e-learning and pedagogy journey. They have developed a curriculum planning framework that encourages teachers to integrate content, pedagogy, technology, but to start with the pedogogy and integrate the technologies that fit. I thought I might have a go at using it to develop our e-learning pd framework for next year or at least utilising it for a review of where we are at. Have you heard of anyone in NZ playing around with this framework? I am very grateful for the work I did with you while I was at Glenbrae - and certainly have utilised the planning logic we used at that time. I enjoy your blog and would be interested if you have any thoughts about the TPACK framework.