Thursday, 2 July 2009

A Slice of Learn-Now

While Authentic Encounters Online itself scored a wealth of contract work, its core project Learn-Now found itself further embedded in Canterbury, Southland, Tauranga, the Wairarapa, Kapiti - Wellington, Auckland and Scotland!

It's been a stunning couple of months/term! ERO's been involved again and we keenly await any updated reference of it within their report to the school under review. In August, feedback on Learn-Now was acknowledged in this context: "School-wide assessments are appropriately used to identify students who require additional learning support and those requiring gifted and talented education (GATE). A part-time teacher provides high quality withdrawal programmes for both groups. Students in learning support groups receive targeted assistance and their progress is well monitored. Those who participate in the GATE programme are taught and encouraged to use a range of thinking, inquiry and computer skills to assist in self‑selected investigations and practical projects."

Maths Tuition, Science, Youth Enterprise, Literacy programmes, Team work and Virtual Field Trips currently dominate the life of Learn-Now. Scotland is at the top of list, with dozens of students following two NZ students in ancestral homeland Scotland, while also creating their own travel centre and partaking in challenges, case studies and collaborative activities. A new chocolate product's all go again with its associated survey still seeking participants (please be one). 84 students are actively enrolled and thrown into the mix is homeschool support, learning support tuition, gifted and talented programming, after school activities and a wealth of tools.

Student programming has involved Skype, Adobe Connect, VoiceThread, YouTube, Twitter, Wix.com, SurveyMonkey, Google Docs, Flickr, Online chat & forums, Jabbster, various widgets, wikis and LAMS - through to even PowerPoint (still) and the MOE's Digital Learning Objects (c/- Learning Federation). Many are age-old tools to some of us, but ALL those above are brand new to 85% of the students who've adopted them with us this term. They're but tools applied to the learning intentions and are just a taste of those commonly used, rather than the life of the programming. Even Bebo's been a requested connection for one student's Astronomy work with us...integrating her associated community as interactive participants for her work :).




No comments:

Post a Comment