ULearn News

Head over to the Netsafe blog to read all about their time at Ulearn …

“A few weeks ago NetSafe attended CORE Education’s annual conference for educators, Ulearn 09, held down in Christchurch.

Our approach this year was a little bit different – we actively sought out people already exploring the boundaries of cybersafety in schools and listened to how they are working to create New Zealand’s digital citizens of the future.”  Read more >>

The preparations for Learning @ School 2010 are in full swing.

The Ministry of Education sponsors this annual Information and Communication Technologies Professional Development (ICTPD) conference at the Energy Events Centre in Rotorua, to be held from 23-26 February 2010. There will be a powhiri and a special reception for all of our conference presenters on 23 February.

Today the call for presenters was made. You can read more at the Learning@School blog. Add the blog to your aggregator and you will be kept up to date with all the news in the lead up to the conference.

Tony Ryan was moved by his time at Ulearn 09 to compose the post “10 laws of u-learning”

“As part of my ULearn contribution, I’m now going to offer to you The Ten Laws Of ULearn-ing (well… from my perspective, anyway). While you’re welcome to adapt these to your own conference / session / talkfest anywhere in the world, I have specifically drawn these up for the magic that is ULearn.”

Head over to his blog to check out what these 10 laws are >>

The ULearn conferences encourage the sharing of presenters’ material and other resources such as related weblinks and professional readings for the benefit of conference delegates. So far there is material from over 100 workshops.

Please use this material for your own educational purposes, and respect the author’s copyright.

You can use the comments function below a presenter’s listing to communicate with them post-conference.

View material from here.

Anita Phillips is the lead ICT teacher from Cobden School. She has never been to Ulearn before but this year she has come to learn about new innovations and to get enthusiastic about teaching and ICT again.

So far she has found the conference fantastic and thought provoking. She attended break out one by Tony Ryan which was about Innovative teachers. The key message that she picked up from this was that we need to have a zest for life and for learning.

So far she has been inspired to return to her school and introduce the kids to the world of technology no matter what age they are. She wants to let the children explore things for themselves and question how things work.

Pene Abbie is the principal at Clarkville school.  She has come to Ulearn many times before and this year she hopes to learn more about ICT in the classroom.Her role at Ulearn is as a  presenter and she is going to be talking about children leading their learning using the CHILL factor.

She enjoyed the Keynote speaker Gary Stager because he talked about ideas that were practical and she thinks that she will be able to implement them in her school.

The first breakout that she attended was called “Got to know when to hold em.’” This was presented by David Anderson. When she gets back to Clarkville school she would like to make sure that all the teachers have the knowledge to help the kids complete ten things in ICT. These things include writing a novel, building a blockbuster, and robotics. She intends to do this by getting lots of professional development for the teachers and it might end up with the children teaching the teachers.

Melanie Anderson is the teacher of the Gifted and Talented students at Glenbervie school. She teaches year 5 and 6 students and attended Breakout 1 (Cultivating Reflective Teaching Practices) presented by Margie Carter. She said that the presentation was targeted at early childhood teaching and the key message she took away from this presentation was to be a reflective practitioner.

The highlight for her was when she was told about a five year old boy who had said that they (teachers) should find out what to teach, by watching the children play. Therefore, when she gets back to her school, she intends to observe and watch the juniors more, to see how they play.

The entire full time teaching staff of 13 from Napier’s Arthur Miller School are at ULearn 09 as their professional development for the year.

Principal Sandy Anderson said a few years ago four teachers from the year 1 to 6 school attended the CORE Education conference and went back extremely enthused and motivated.

ULearn 09 focuses on innovative teaching and learning for the 21st century and has this year attracted about 1750 delegates and featured 400 national and international speakers.

As a decile eight school, Arthur Miller does not have a lot of funding available, so the teaching staff agreed they would “put all their eggs in one professional basket” and attend ULearn 09.

“We thought to do it properly to get the most value out of our professional development dollar, we’d all come,” Sandy said.

Staff have been able to attend a wide variety of breakouts and sessions.

“The breakouts have been inspirational and also affirming – we can see we’re doing okay on our journey.  What’s also been good is the power of the group sharing what we’ve all learned,” she said.

The junior, middle and senior school teams had gone to several workshops together and had already come up with some action plans for implementing what they’d learned.

“Bringing the whole team out of our school context together has been good team building.  For something as important as ICT, you’ve really got to have some senior management here so they can get a picture of where to next.”

It had also been useful to see the digital devices on the market – Sandy had several ideas about what could be added to next year’s technology budget.

“And we’ve had a bit of fun being here.”

Congratulations to the winner of a Lexmark x2650 3-in-1 printer from Smart Computer Systems Ltd – Carol Hapi of Wairoa Primary School.

Day Three ipod nano winner is Elizabeth Faithful of St Clair School.

The HP mini note winner is Linda Lehrke from Sommerville Intermediate.

Essential Resources winner is Kathryn Smith from Welcome Bay School, Tauranga.

Anna Chapman is the lead teacher of ICT at Taitoko school in Levin. She is a year 5-6 teacher and she found the keynote fantastic and very motivational. The speaker, (Gary Stager) talked about 10 things you can do with a laptop and about giving the students more ownership of their learning. This gave her lots of food for thought in regard to some good practical ideas for the classroom. This has helped her to reflect on her own classroom and classroom practice.

When she gets back to school, she would like to try using some hands on technology such as lego robotics instead of using computers all the time.