bmc

Activities using ICT are appearing to have more focus, and as teachers are becoming more confident, their expectations for students are higher. For example, Year 9 students taking notes by hand from the computer about the meaning of vocabulary in a social studies unit of work. Although it appears as a "back to the past" activity if fits with our focus on litracy and ensuring that the students understand the topic by understanding the key terms. The students were using an online dictionary. (There is also a good dictionary on the computer). The data projectors are being well used. Now that they are in individual teachers classroom they are being embedded in class programmes. For example – teaching a new writing genre, the writing can be modelled as a class activity and the discussion of writing also modelled. When the student (the next week) were reviewing each others writing, they were able to use the same form of discussion that was used to talk about each others writing – which is what the teacher overheard. asTTLe information is being used to guide the teaching of information skills to year 10. There is a “gap” in this area.

• Data projectors are routinely used by staff presenting information to other staff members. We have arange of ways of sharing information including, saving on a shared drive, sharing by way of a myclasses pages or emailing to staff. • Otago wide meetings are starting to take place using the VC. The ICT teachers meetings with the Technology advisor have been very good. • • Staff are supporting each other – facilitated by the new workroom – through incidental ICT help sessions. This peer tutoring of expert knowledge of applications such as asTTle has been very useful to build up the skill levels in departments. Another area where discussion has facililitated is using the numeracy project materials. As the teachers involved find or use resources they share what they have found with the others involved. • Teachers and students use laptops routinely. The ibooks are tak en to study classes routinely and teachers complain that they book them for use in classes and they disappear (from the library to study classes)before they can pick them up. • The quality of the films being made icontinues to improve. The new video cameras have been used for some interesting projects within the school. • An entry was sent away to the Fairgo ad awards. Their had to be a selection process as the 30 second films were all of a good standard. • Staff continue to use myclasses online environment routinely • Social studies projects are using movies from youtube as source material to view and comment on. • Schoolzone problems - email has been hopeless Speed of network has been very poor recently. The non renewal of the microsoft for mac agreement has been very bad for us. • Use of data projectors has spread (Technology department used the data projector to discus report formats at their last meeting) • New teachers, old and young – are supported by their peers in their departments. The mathletics competition for years 9 to 7 used excel to keep scores (formulae already in spreadsheet), and colate house points, a data projector to keep the students up to date with the scores, included a data projector round in PowerPoint. The PowerPoint used scanned images that where manipulated in Photoshop.