Virtual teaching rounds – week 1

This week marks the first week ofvirtual teaching rounds.Three student teachers, soon to graduate have taken up this innovative but challenging trial project. This is a partnership between the Country Education Project, University of Ballarat and Hawkesdale P12 College. It is running on a shoe string budget.

 Bianca, is going to be with us for three weeks and over in China for four weeks. From China, Bianca hopes to teach virtually her grade 4 class from China. The other two teachers will be off campus for one week, teaching virtually. She will work with grade 4 at our school and Carly Vize. Abby is working in the humanities area and Michelle in maths/humanities – both are in the middle years. Due to Bianca’s almost immediate departure to China next week, she was a priority to set up with some online teaching skills – Bianca will use skpye (the chat, audio, video and screen sharing ability), a class blog, wallwisher and other tools for her virtual interaction. Biance will purchase a dongle once in China to give her 24/7 access to the internet. The challenge will be blocked sites.

Getting Ready:

As we can find no experience to work upon, we are ‘playing this by ear’, ‘winging it and’ learning on the fly’!! The three girls are ideal candidates – willing to learn, enthusiastic,optimistic, have a sense of humour, are confiden, willing to work hard, eager to learn  and best of all are keen to make this work! Bianca is working in the primary section with grade 4 and their teacher. Each of the supervising teachers have differing levels of expertise with technology, ranging from highly experienced to still mastering some of the tools. Here is the setup for them!

Day one

1. Our technician worked on their laptops so they can access our school network and wireless internet. It was too much to reghost their laptops as they would have to be wiped at the end of the round, so our school lent them a netbook each which has the Edustar image found on all our netbooks and a wonderful suite of software tools
2. Two lesson times were set aside, to work with the girls on tools that they might use for teaching online – voicethread, wallwisher and wordle.

Day two

• worked with their classes and shadowed their supervising teachers.
• emailed Julie Lindsay to see which online tools are blocked in China.

Day Three

1. Abby and Bianca joined my accounting class to see how the virtual student from Balmoral is accommodated.
2. Britt Gow and I worked with the girls after school in our usual WIWOW time.
3. Commenced a class blog for each – learnt how to edit and add an image using irfanview See  Bianca’s class blog, Michelle’s class blog and Abby’s class blog
4. Recorded Bianca with her impressions of her first class – introducing them to the fact she was going to China
5. Abby registered for and  started a voki (animated avatar)
6. The girls enjoyed one of our staff functions at the TAFE Endeavours  restaurant in Warrnambool at night.

Day Four

• worked with Bianca to ensure she knew how to work her class blog

Day five

• Online linkup with a teacher, Lorraine Leo, from Boston, USA, listening to her share her class, classroom and the city she lives in. Lorraine is an experienced and effective online teacher and uses inteactivity with students wherever possible. However, data transmission was slow this time and her video image cut in and out for a start. Abby and Michelle sat in on this.
• worked with Bianca again and discussed her approach whilst in China

Constraints

1.  The dongles, allowing mobile internet access,  did not come with the girls. This has been a real constraint as they need internet access at night time to complete their journals, online lesson plans etc. (they will be picked up this weekend from Ballarat)
2. The lack of a budget. Means that all work has to be done in spares etc with no promise of CRT replacement
3. Lack of netbooks that can be dedicated to this round so our school had to allow the girsl one from our library sets. These are in high demand from classes and senior students who do not have their own netbooks
4. Time – time to write this all up, blog about it, share in discussions etc Time to keep in online contact with Lesley MacGregor, our great support from Country Education Project who liaises with us and the University of Ballarat.
5. Their lack of knowledge of many of the potential tools that can be used for eLearning. This needs to be taught in the Education faculties of Universities and become part of teacher training.

Other factors

1. Need to take care of our stress levels as this is extremely demanding and time consuming.

The unexpected factors:-

1. We have laughter, excitement and the influence of youth in our staffroom
2. Three young innovative youth are working with innovative teachers within our school and pushing innovation at a faster pace. They are sharing their ideas, approaches and experiences with digital technology and I love it! It is worth all the hard work!

Britt and Michelle working it out!

Meeting/TeachingTaman Burkitt Maluri School students face to face!

After waiting patiently for a driver to collect me from our hotel in Kuala Lumpur and enjoying a drive from China Town to the edge of KL, I could not contain my delight at meeting the  Taman Burkitt Maluri School  students face to face when I first walked into their classroom. Nurul and Zainuddin accompanied and another staff member whose role it was to take photos.  This is a Malay school and in true Asian tradition,  the welcome and greetings were warm, friendly and hospitable. The IT class had worked in real time with my IT class, so I felt as though I knew them.

Some of the students

First, using a powerpoint presentation, they showed me what they learnt in their subject and this correlated very closely with the course that I follow with my students. Next, they showed me images of their school and activities. I found this really interesting. Each student then came up to me, one at a time, welcomed me with the Malay welcome (two hands, I think, as I am still unsure of protocol) and introduced themselves, told me their favourite sport, foods etc and each student asked me a question. At the conclusion of the introduction, I received a small gift.

It was then my turn to speak to them about cyber safety. I had created a blog post that they could go to, and then complete the activities give. A cybersafe in Kuala Lumpur wall had also been created and the students approached this task in a very mature manner and gave some very thoughtful and different responses. As I left them to visit the year 7 Kodu class, they were making their avatars. Thank you students for your wonderful gifts. They will be much treasured.

Making an avatar

The year 7 group of boys who are using Kodu –  a MS game making program are part of a global trial. They demonstrated their knowledge with pride and showed me the wonderful games they had created – ranging through a number of themes, including some impressive educational games! I was fascinated as they discussed their games. The boys usually attend the afternoon school, but had come in especially, in the morning to demonstrate to and share with me. Thank you boys – I was most impressed and my students will be quite jealous! It is hoped that we can linkup online and have these boys teach my students how to make a game with kodu.

Learning about kodu

At the conclusion of my visit, the principal met with the staff concerned and we had another wonderful meal – I love the food in Kuala Lumpur!

School, staff and food

A special thank you to my special and innovative colleague, Zainuddin who took time off from the conference that he was convening, to spend time with me and to organise the students. Thank you to the principal, staff and students for your warm welcome!