CBL Blog Request

On Friday I received an email from two boys at WPPS asking if I could come in and talk to them about blogs and help them with a few areas they were having trouble with.
I absolutely loved receiving the email. It is one of the aspects of CBL I really love - kids taking responsibility for the entire process.
So I replied and said I would come in Monday morning to have a chat with them.

I was at school this morning. It was nice being able to go in and see the kids again but really wonderful to see their skills and confidence in using the iPads and how much they were enjoying their CBL initiatives.

We chatted about promoting their blog and I offered some suggestions for them on different media to include. They had already made a video, they had already made a permission form to publish the video and had already had the child's parents fill in the form and return it. (Have I mentioned how much I love CBL?)

We figured out how to upload their video and embed it into their blog. I got them to test it out with another video with me assisting and then got them to pretend I didn't know how to embed video and show me. Which they did.

As my time was limited there I had to leave before the video had finished encoding and uploading but I received an email from them this afternoon telling me their video was online.

What it is like to be 12

While they are still learning how to blog and how to use the Wordpress app and Vimeo, I was so pleased to check it out and see a perfectly embedded video.

They also asked me to share their blog on twitter etc so they could try to get more feedback and comments so they can improve their blog.

So if you have a spare moment, it would be very exciting for them if you could comment. Especially if you are in another country than Australia.

Do you remember what it was like to be 12?

Geocaching - further thoughs

Another element of Geocaching is inside the caches you can have "swag" or items that you can trade inside. There is also another element to caches where you can find or create trackables.

A travel bug is a trackable that has a tag with a code on it that you can enter into Geocaching.com to find out where people are moving it - from cache to cache.

Many travel bugs travel all over the world.

I thought that it would be a fantastic tool to use in the classroom (provided no one steals it) to watch where the class travel bug travels. It could be great to mark its travels on a map and also use it as a writing prompt.

This is a travel bug that I picked up and have now dropped off in another cache. As you can see you can make the travel bug a little character and it can go on an adventure.

Also with each travel bug it can have a goal of what it wants to achieve and when people find it they can post something that you ask for - whether that be photos or stories etc.

(I have blurred the trackable number on this travel bug as when you publish a photo of a bug you have found then you are not meant to include the number. There is geocaching ettiquette!)

Has anyone done anything like this before?

Geocaching in Education

I have recently been introduced to Geocaching and I really enjoy it.
If you don't know what Geocaching is then please watch the video below for a quick 2 minute explanation.

If you don't have the 2 minutes time to watch the video - very briefly is it like a hide and seek treasure game where you find hidden caches (treasures) by using GPS coordinates.

After I had found 2 caches then I started to think of how you could use Geocaching in the school environment.

Geocaching.com has millions of geocaches all over the world. They are posted online and people can search for them to find them.

It is a real world context for using a compass, mapping, directions and distance. Brilliant!

However the drawback I can see is that to complete this task then the class would have to leave the school grounds to find Geocaches in their area. Also Geocaching is meant to be hidden from the general public (muggles) and you can not be spotted finding a Geocache in case someone ruins that cache.

So then traipsing 25+ kids around a suburb is not only stressful but not very secret. :)

Not to be deterred though I kept pondering how this could be utilised in the classroom.

My next thought was to find an app that you could plug the GPS coordinates into and then create a "safe zone" geocache setup within the school grounds.

The school that I teach/taught at (I'm currently on maternity leave) has a class set of ipod touches that we won in a competition and also are introducing a 1-to-1 iPad program across most of the school. So GPS apps could be downloaded and utilised very easily.

It wouldn't be very difficult to hide little caches around the school and tie them into what kids were learning about.

e.g.
- We learnt about minibeasts and each geocache could have clues that uses their knowledge about a minibeast to find out where the next cache is.
- It could be maths related and to find the next GPS coordinates to plug into the app they need to complete maths problems.
- Each cache could hold a reading comprehension question and the answers could be multiple choice and include GPS coordinates that they could enter in and then find if they were correct (find the next cache) or incorrect (find a sign saying - go back and have another go)

Kids who enjoy it could then have learnt the skills to enable them to continue geocaching with their family outside of school. Parents who struggle finding things to do as a family would probably enjoy having their child teach them how to geocache.

Geocaching.com has already set up a how to guide for education etc but I have not read it as you have to purchase it. http://www.geocaching.com/education/default.aspx I have just been thinking of these things and not had a class to be my guinea pigs.

I would love to know of anyone else who has implemented something like this with their class.

Victorian Teachers' Industrial Action

There are many articles, blog posts and comments on the Internet at the moment all discussing different people’s take on the current action undertaken by the Victorian teachers against the State Government.

At first I was quite apprehensive about writing a post about this, as there can often be negative reactions to posts about teaching, with many members of the public making comments about lazy, whining teachers. Furthermore, that many teachers are somehow trying to insinuate that they work the hardest of all professions. Comments like teachers need to enter the real world where performance pay is the norm and that there are many professions where employees don’t get paid overtime or time in lieu. The smack downs usually come thick and fast as responses and I wasn’t sure I wanted those to read when they could be personally levelled at me…. However, how can I really be upset about these types of comments, without taking an opportunity to try and explain and perhaps change these perceptions?

So my attempt is as follows….

In most employment scenarios, if you are unhappy with your pay or conditions, you can approach your employer and request improvements.  If your requests are not met, you can then move to another company or organisation that fulfills your requirements. All teachers in Victoria who are employed by the State Government are under an agreement with no ability to negotiate individually and therefore can’t change these conditions unless they move to a private school or undertake industrial action en masse. So, when negotiations break down with the government, teachers are left to their only avenue to voice their grievances – industrial action.  There is also the reality that quality teachers seeking better working conditions will leave the state system, move interstate or leave the profession.  An article published by The Age on 30 May 2012 revealed close to one third of beginning teachers couldn’t see staying in the state system beyond five years due to working conditions.  (http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/teachers-seeing-no-future-in-state-system-20120529-1zhfz.html) All of these scenarios are concerning for the future of quality state education in Victoria.

Teachers are not just concerned about their pay; they are concerned about their working conditions and the cut backs across the board to many support services and funding. However, the public does not have any problem with teachers’ gripes over these areas, but they do have a very emotive reaction to teachers discussing their pay and therefore this is the area of the industrial action that the media focus on.

Teachers are not paid overtime or time in lieu. They are not paid the extra hours worked to complete tasks such as organising and going on camp where they are working and accountable for children 24/7 for the duration of the camp, to attend concerts, information evenings, fundraisers, fairs, parent teacher interviews nor for the whole gamut of other activities outside the taught curriculum. Yes, there are many school holidays but teachers have to work during holidays as well to finish off work from the previous term and prepare for the upcoming term.

Further activities outside of face-to-face teaching hours also include:

• Reviewing individual assessments and planning a differentiated curriculum so that, as an example, a Grade 5 child who is operating at a Year 8 level is still being as challenged in their class as the child who is in Grade 5 but who is operating at a Grade 3 level. Planning a day of classroom activities that has modifications so that all children in the class can be challenged and experience success.
• Composing Individual Learning Plans for students operating either well above or below the standard expected at their level.
• Training and improving their knowledge so that their skills are always up to date and challenged themselves. Ensuring their knowledge is current for the students in their care who may have special needs, E.g. Autism or dyslexia, or for helping children's social and emotional needs. 
• Keeping open communication with parents, especially those of children with strong academic, social or emotional needs.
• Whole staff meetings, level meetings, morning briefings, curriculum area meetings e.g. Literacy Committee.
• Constructing reports
• And much more....

Teaching is not the only profession where time is required outside of the normal working hours and many professionals do not get paid overtime nor time in lieu. Teachers are not suggesting that they are the only ones who work extra hours, however, what they are trying to highlight is that teaching is not just the time in the classroom teaching, the time they are supposedly paid for. Teachers are not trying to insinuate that they work harder than other professions, rather, they are just trying to educate others as to what it is to teach in today’s schools. Teaching and school is a completely different ball game than when we were all at school.

Returning to the contentious issue of reports - this is a mammoth task for teachers and takes a great deal of time after school hours and on weekends. Part of the industrial action in 2012 was to not write comments on school reports.

To try and explain this action it is helpful to understand the process of constructing a report. I have tried to simplify the process of writing Primary School reports down to some dot points.
Teachers:

• Review and collate assessments throughout the year in order to accurately mark each child's progress into the computer program that creates the progression points (the dots on the table) and then meet with other teachers to discuss and moderate the results so that one teacher's marks are the same level judgments of another's. 
• Meet with teachers from your school to decide which comments will be standard across the school or level and how the reports will be structured.
• Meet with teachers in their level and across the school to moderate comments and ensure fair and consistent marking.
• Write comments that correlate to each level or competency they have marked children at across each curriculum area, e.g. writing, reading, computers etc.
• Insert the applicable comments into each child's report. Write individual personal comments about each child and review all comments within each written report to ensure that it is accurate for that child and that you have assessment records that indicate what you have written to be correct, that it reads well and fits within the report character count. 
• Proof read reports (around 20,000 words at my school).
• Submit reports to be reviewed by another teacher then amended for the changes required. 
• Proofreading another teacher’s reports. 
• Print, collate and sign all reports

Reports are a legal document, therefore every word within your child’s report has been very carefully included and checked that the teacher has evidence from assessments that support the comments and progression points. It is a laborious process that is completely undertaken outside of school hours which is why it was chosen as a very visible action to include. The exclusion of written comments from the Semester 2 reports did not mean that teachers taught less content or collected less evidence of this learning.  Many, many teachers felt uncomfortable with not writing comments for children, however, they also did not want to have more strikes. They know strikes can have financial implications not only for themselves but for families when parents have to organise care or time from work to look after their children. They did however need an action that received attention that would hopefully put pressure on the State Government to negotiate on better terms. Just as the Nurses closed hospital beds and the Police put police cars with their lights flashing next to speed cameras to highlight their grievances. Sadly, it appears many parents have directed their anger at teachers rather than the State Government for placing them in this position.

Teachers are in regular contact with parents of high needs students and many families were contacted by the teacher with a verbal update of the child’s progress.  Parents were also invited to contact their teacher, either prior to reports being issued or to explain dot points given, either in person or by phone.

It is sad that children did not receive comments in their report. I still have my school reports and flipped through them when I heard of this action. While doing this, it was also clearly obvious the change in reports from when I was at school, my reports were a list of check boxes of competencies that were ticked if I achieved or left blank if I hadn’t yet. I also had a sentence or two written by my teacher that was a personal comment. Again, clearly highlighting that teaching is very different from when we were at school. Also sadly showing that any action taken by teachers has implications for children which is judged far harsher than nurse strike consequences of no elective surgeries or police strike consequences of reduced number of speeding fines. This fact also sits very uncomfortably with many teachers.

Teachers are striking against the introduction of performance pay. Many comments posted in response to articles about this online suggest not wanting performance pay is another way teachers are avoiding accountability and in the comment author's corporate job they have performance pay and it works just fine, that teachers need to move into the real world.  Like most professions, teachers are accountable for their actions and have a performance review annually.  This is conducted with the principal and either the teacher or the principal is required to write a lengthy submission as to how their teaching has upheld the education regulatory body, The Victorian Institute of Teaching’s Professional Standards.

Teachers do not disagree with performance pay because they do not want to lift their performance. The problem with the version of performance pay suggested is that teachers work in a very collegiate manner, sharing knowledge and resources and supporting each other to achieve the best outcomes for all children at their school. The suggested version of performance pay means that only a percentage of teachers in each school are eligible to receive the extra pay based on their performance.  Such a model may be the norm in many corporate environments, but in education this would turn each school into a teaching competition which erodes the collegiate and supportive environment that schools currently operate within.

How do you even judge a teacher’s performance? It is suggested, mainly through academic results.

Why would a teacher want to help another teacher with their previous experience of a child's needs when they could miss out on the pay rise the other teacher could get from the results their advice could achieve?

Why would they share an activity that will really help a group of children in another teacher's classroom when it will improve that teacher’s results?

Why would they want to teach your child with special learning needs when it will be harder to get results out of that child and focusing on them will take time from others who are easier to achieve results from in the class?

Why would they want to teach your child with behavioural issues when they will distract others in the class and reduce their results? What quality teachers will be retained in the State System and what quality graduates will be attracted to such conditions?

If your child is naturally talented at learning in all areas and has no behavioural concerns then it will probably not have a great impact on you and your family, but is that really the attitude you want in the school your child attends? And how many children like that truly exist?

Honestly I don’t believe it would be the end of education as we know it and not all teachers would take that stance but it would shift the focus at schools which I believe to be detrimental to education in Victoria.

Teaching targets are talking about children and not figures and dollars. How do you measure the achievement of a teacher working with a child with autism to be able to make eye contact when speaking to their peers? Or the child with a language disorder being able to understand and use vowel sounds? Or the child who has struggled all year with their writing, writing an entire page that they are confident enough and proud enough of to share in front of the class? All things to be celebrated and that are brilliant achievements but will not look wonderful on a teacher's class performance test figures.

Teachers work to develop children's academic knowledge and ability but also assist in developing their social and emotional intelligence. How do you measure these areas of a child's achievement or development to add these important areas into a teacher's overall performance?

How do you measure these in a way that is standardised so that every school in the state can complete the same reviews and scales to assign their performance based pay? So that a percentage of teachers from each school can receive a pay rise, even though those teachers that receive the pay rise at one school may not have outperformed those who didn't receive a pay rise at another school simply because only a percentage at each school can receive the rise?

How can this really be implemented so that quality teachers across the state are recognised and remunerated appropriately? I personally don’t believe that it can and the State Government will not budge at all from their proposal.

As I have mentioned, teaching and our schools are very different from when we were at school. Teachers have to have the knowledge and skills of how to educate children with special needs such as Dyslexia, Auditory Processing Disorder, Autism, Attention Deficit Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder etc, etc, etc. All children who previously could have just been labelled “naughty” or “a bit slow” by classmates now actually have teachers who are skilled in the strategies and requirements for teaching these children and giving them the same opportunities as other children. Also not forgetting about the high achievers or gifted students who also need strategies and different requirements to ensure that they are always challenged and their learning extended.

Teachers need to now teach things like cyber safety, resilience, understanding and acceptance of different cultures and ethnicities, environmental sustainability and physical and emotional wellbeing as well as the usual literacy, numeracy, humanities, physical education and arts.

They have to know how to administer an EpiPen as well as the usual first aid and know how to comfort a child without opening themselves up to a parent suing them. They must have forms and paperwork for all manner of policies, processes and approvals - just in case. They must keep a record of everything in case they are sued and to support their reports and discussions with parents.

They have to make breakfast for some kids who come to school without having eaten or look after the emotional wellbeing of the child whose parent is gravely sick.

All while teaching and extending the learning of all children within their class no matter where that child’s skills are currently.

Yes, there are other professions with just as much pressure, expectations of unpaid overtime and difficult challenges but I am certain if you look at the pay of those professions the majority, maybe not all, but the majority would be paid far more than what our teachers are paid. Teachers’ requests are not unreasonable in my opinion and they deserve the community’s respect, not negativity.

Teachers do not get into teaching for the pay but usually for the difference that they can make to children and our future. Education is a long term investment and therefore does not generally win votes unless there are big visible things like laptops in schools or buildings created, tangible things that the wider community can actually see. What schools really need is proper funding and support for students, especially those with special needs so that they are supported and do not detract teacher time from other students and for the work of teachers to be respected and paid for appropriately.

I am not the greatest wordsmith and probably not the best person to write something like this but I couldn’t miss this opportunity and still express my sadness over the negativity that can be directed towards the teaching profession.

Teachers are not suggesting they work harder or longer than anyone else. They are simply just pleading their case as they have to publicly in order to renegotiate their employment terms. They do feel uncomfortable with taking industrial action as anything that they do impacts children and their families, which goes against why they got into teaching in the first place, but in order to protect the working conditions and children’s education these are their options.

If you are fed up with the industrial action teachers are currently undertaking please contact the State Government to ask them to put an end to it – currently they are the ones with all the power and from reports from the AEU they have not budged in their negotiations. Discuss with your child’s teacher or principal the challenges they are facing at your child’s school and include them in your communication with the State Government and be part of the solution and resolution of the industrial action and support teachers and education in our state. Please?

The AEU Victorian Branch suggests you can take action by completing the form on this website http://keepthepromise.com.au/unhappy-anniversary/ but I think any communication to the State Government will help.

Thank you

Parent Teacher Interviews on the iPad

Used my iPad in Parent Teacher Interviews (PTI) this week. Wrote all my discussion notes down in a note and then used it to make sure I covered everything in the interview.

I also recorded important information from the discussions with parents and then used the two tags of "Follow Up" or "File". Follow Up if there was something that I had to follow up from the discussions and File for information that I needed to include in their school file.

At the end of interviews I just did a search for File - had a list of all the children with information I had to include into their file, searched for Follow Up and I have my list of things to follow up after interviews. I transposed those into my to do list app and can check them off and recieve reminders!

Gosh I love my iPad..... and I'm still a newbie. I'm sure there are many more apps that I should know about and could make my life easier. The research continues...... anyone want to give me a heads up!?!?

iPad Backgrounds

Have spent some of today making iPad backgrounds for the new iPads delivered to school. They are being set up over the weekend.

I am creating backgrounds to identify each iPad. They include our school emblem and iPad number and serial number. This information sits above a photo of the foliage of a tree at our school.

I figured out all of the dimensions of the background through screen shots however then found this website with a photo that explains it all clearly.

How to make proper iPad wallpaper

It made me think that, if we do get to move to a 1-to-1 level of iPads at the school, that it would be a very cool activity to complete in Art coupled with photography or perhaps in a "computer skills" session. I am certain that children could create absolutely awesome backgrounds and could also tie in the discussions about user interfaces and whether you would choose to include bright colours, should there be a lot of text etc on it. etc etc

Once I get the backgrounds loaded I will add a screen capture.

Playing around with the idea of assessment records in evernote

Heard of someone using tags in evernote for many different tasks. Thought I'd test it out for progression point checks for reports.

I made a notebook called interpersonal development. Then made some notes for the different progression points. Taken from DEECD-Vels

Then made some fake student names to use as tags to test it. Tagged various students on different progression points.

Went to tags view and clicked on a fake student.

Sorted by notebooks - figuring if I did a different notebook for each subject then it would look like headings.

Then for each student it would have a subject area heading and progression points below. Figured it could be used for rubrics as well and you can walk around and tag students when you see then complete tasks/competencies/understandings that you set out in your rubric. To mark just sort by tags and you know how they went.
Can make observational comments in another note.
All good in theory.... Still on holidays so still unpracticed.