Lead+Teacher+Meeting+14+November+2011


 * Lead Teacher Meeting - Monday 14 November 2011 - Hokowhitu School Library - 9:00-3:30pm**

This meeting was attended by.. Michael, Ben, Alana, Kathy, Ronald, Mel, Melissa, Trevor, Shona, Janice, Raina, Martin (1/2 day) & Nick.


 * 1. Welcome -** thank you to Hokowhitu School for agreeing to host us today - a reminder that lunch is BYO.

- VLN - becoming a space that is more useful - not just something that you 'join' - online meetings and workshops in addition to new ideas. Get staff to join only when Lead Teachers understand it themselves so it is meaningful and useful to them.
 * 2. Looking at proposed 2012 Variation Goals**
 * -** Some wording changes made to this but otherwise much the same as this year;


 * 3. Planning PD/Activities for 2012:**
 * Facilitator employed 0.4 for 2012
 * Bringing the whole cluster together activity- Term One: Whakawhanaungatanga worked well - good for new teachers to the cluster, teachers changing levels, meet your buddy teacher?, have a concrete purpose, have a survey about what staff know/don't know?, end with a group level meeting, ask Nick Rate to give an inspirational speech (very positive comments from the conference!)
 * Lead Teacher Meetings - 6 full Tuesdays (week four term one, week four & eight term two, week four & eight term three, week four term four)
 * Cluster Conference - proposed teacher only day for Friday 1 June (Queen's Birthday Weekend)
 * Student Workshops - four (one per term) and other opportunities for student leadership and sharing what they are learning from each other, different group of students and levels each term, set a context and purpose for each workshop, eg. Digi Awards
 * Intra Cluster Buddy Teachers - Buddy Classes (perhaps compulsory only for those who do not already have buddy classes?) - needs authentic contexts, ie. what is happening in class, forced relationships can create resistance, interest groups, use year level groups to communicate/collaborate with,
 * Year Level Group Workshops - 4 after school workshops instead of a staff meeting (one per term - Tuesday of week seven) - yr 0-2, 3-4, 5-8? - each level group to have an online space to encourage collaboration, Themes: eg. writing, reading, numeracy, animation, photography, movie making, shared topics, quad-blogging [], Online competitive challenge, eg. surveys: maths problems, current events, guess the picture
 * After school workshops on particular skills (Lead Teacher led - different options within the same school)

- Some useful online 'workshops' and collaborations - more and more information available and new ideas - 'user-generated'
 * 4. New Initiatives to help with e-learning in schools:**
 * **[]**
 * [|e-learning planning framework]

- Relatively new tool to use - explore Allanah King's blog about her use of this in her class; - Put them in school newsletters, on the back of 'thank-you' cards, on school windows etc - with links to whatever you want people to view
 * 5. Current new e-learning themes:**
 * **[|QR codes]**


 * 6. Nick Rate's ideas + Q & A time**
 * **QR codes** - NIck says one of the best uses he has seen of these is a school library with some iTouches on a table inside the library. Books have QR codes on the inside front cover and these link to reviews that students have done on the books.
 * **Point England School** - producing something to share with a global audience. They are rolling out issuing Netbooks to their students and they are implementing a community wireless network so they can access Internet etc from home - "equity of access"; - making the transition from sole school use to a seamless transition from school to home. They have done research to back up the leanring benefits of this - inproved reading and writing comprehension, podcasting etc -across ethnicities and genders. The students lease to own the Netbooks for $15 a month over 3 years. When the student owns the device - they look after them better and make more use of them - the students can then continue using them (unlike in some traditional digital classrooms where once they go home or leave, they may not have the access to the devices required) Point England School Website - Literacy cycle interesting
 * **Netbooks vs laptops vs mobile devices** - what is your purpose for using these devices? eg: of doing animation etc - laptops have more space. Research - able readers/fluent - transferring to a digital medium on smaller screens - decreased reading speed (less than 7inches) If you are less able - reading comprehension and fluency decreases. Must be linked to ultra-fast and fibre to have a successful 'virtual cloud'. Shift for teachers and students to the 'clouds' may take some time. Each device has their own 'niche' and use - so getting students and teachers to explore how they use them before purchasing may be of use.
 * **Touch typing skills** - useful skill however is it useful to teach this during 'learning time' or leave this to students' own time and let the creativity be done during class time??
 * **VLN** - Groups - look at the tabs and see which ones are the most popular, successful, most activity = these will be the ones that will (hopefully) have the most benefit. Once you have joined a group, managing how you learn more - change your notifications so that you know when someone has added something new, in addition to individual users you can get notifications from what they post.
 * ====**Free tools vs Pay to use tools** - sometimes better to pay for certain tools rather than using a lot of 'demo' versions of things - do any schools have examples of these that they have used successfullu and that are worth the $$$? ====


 * 7. Tour of Hokowhitu School**


 * 8. Lead Tea****cher ideas and innovations**
 * Youblisher - free tool that allows you to change PDF files into flippable documents that can be embedded into your blog (not sure about wikis, sorry) - check out how I used it on my class blog hereand here.
 * Aviary - in the clouds!
 * Hapara - a dashboard for teachers to keep track of student work (Google Apps for Education - IT people should be able to sort this for your school)


 * 9. Facilitator favourites and visits for Term Four**
 * Garageband - Mac only
 * [|Audacity] - PC and Mac - [|educational ideas for audacity]
 * [|Acid Xpress] for PC (has loops like Garageband)


 * 10. Thank you to Hokowhitu School and Ben for hosting us today.**