Category Archive

Last year, I had a bit of a soapbox I jumped up on.  I posted about it on our other blog, Technoblog (which, I think, needs a new name and broadened directions, but that’s for another time).  Quite simply, putting into place an electronic system to manage the vast amount of data we have on student learning achievement.

Seems like people were listening.  This conversation ensued several weeks back with my principal, a colleague and myself during a recess break (well, as best as I recall)…

Principal (holding paper student record card): You know, we’ve got lots of data and we’ve got to make use of it.

Colleague and myself: Yes, that’s for sure.

Principal (using record card for demonstration purposes): Now we’re living in the 21st Century, but our record keeping is 20th Century stuff.

Me (looking at record card filled in by hand): Actually, I’d say it was 19th Century.

Principal (facetiously): Now Robert, don’t interrupt… What we’ve got to do is get this on computer, and bring it up to the 21st Century.

(Me thinking I had this conversation last year, but happy we’re getting a move on with it)

Now don’t get me wrong, my principal was never anti- electronic data system.  Our school system’s strategic intent has now made the tracking of learning achievement extremely important, and this need is showing up just how inadequate our current paper-based systems (with the odd Excel spreadsheet) are.

So now it’s a priority.  It’s pretty much been placed down as my single most important Learning Technology goal to achieve this year.

My first step was to email all the Learning Technology contacts in our system of schools to see if they used anything.  Almost every school that replied said “we don’t, but when you find it, we’d love it if you could let us know, because we really need it too”.

I just wonder now if anyone else in the broader educational spheres have tools they know work really well.  I know I could develop this from scratch in Access for example; it’s just that my Access skills are woefully inadequate (a little like handwritten record cards).

We’ll keep looking, but we would welcome any feedback.  Even feedback like in one email reply I got…

“Just don’t use [name of program omitted to protect the innocent/guilty/etc.] - we had nothing but problems”

… is useful to us at the moment.

P.S.  I think this is the first Learning Curve post I’ve ever made on a Mac.  I have to borrow my classroom laptop at the moment because my trusty IBM’s a little sick :-(  The laptop I’m typing on right now is the one featured in my blog header pic.  It’s a trusty little workhorse that always seems to struggle on - it reminds me of what a learning technology colleague of mine told me once about the Mac LCII; “they only had one problem… they never died!”

I feel as if I’ve not been in the classroom at all recently.  In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been out of the room a lot as a number of different tasks have drawn me away.  The most time-consuming of these has been my completing of the Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement on every student in my class.

There is no arguing that the data collected will be beneficial; already my reading groups have experienced a complete reshuffle as a result (we’d temporarily used the end of Kindergarten data in order to make a start with our Year 1 students).  It’s going to be good, however, to actually get back into the routine and resettle my students into the same after a prolonged period of casual teachers.

The difference this year with our start of the year diagnostic assessment is that it has been system mandated, rather than school-directed.  Our Catholic Education Office has invested a serious amount of money and time into training, resourcing and release time to ensure that this happens in every Year 1 class across our Diocese.  The aim, I believe, is to improve the literacy learning outcomes for every student.  The next step after the assessment, that is, teachers working together in networks to analyse the data and implement learning programs that meet the needs uncovered, is going to be crucial.

Well, today I had some more success, despite the multiple interruptions to the usual classroom routine over the past seven days (a third of the day gone three times isn’t always easy to work through).

The simple task involved using the Activstudio software that came with our interactive whiteboard to drop shapes onto the flipchart pages and use the line tools to mark the lines of symmetry.  Some other features of the software also got tested by the students - the bucket fill was used on shapes and backgrounds.   I intended in a way to be a simple diagnostic assessment to see if children could already identify axes of symmetry and how much work would be needed, if any (the recent interruptions have meant there’s less time to properly address our learning in 2D space).

So one maths group got the task done, and quite well.  Yet the mind was still ticking.  “Let’s get this up on the blog”, I thought.  “There must be some kind of export function.”  Sure enough, I found I could export the flipcharts to flash.  A bit more fiddling (needed to get a host for the flash files as they won’t upload to learnerblogs), and we’ve embedded the students’ work into posts on our class blog (post 1, post 2).

So, what have we achieved today?

• We’ve integrated technology into our mathematics lesson
• My students have used our interactive whiteboard for learning
• We have work samples
• We’ve been able to assess what the children know about axes of symmetry
• Our parents can see what their children can do - simple reporting in less than 24 hours!

Now tomorrow, I’ll have to get some of the children to visit the principal to share their work with him and how they’ve used our new interactive whiteboard.  He’s just going to love it!