Journeys of Medical Missionary

This morning was stunning! A team of 8-10 year old students had an amazingly bouncy experience, 'live online', with special guest Jo Gundry.

Jo Gundry's a medical student in Tauranga NZ, who's life (between studies) is devoted to voluntary work in third world areas. She's hugely passionate about sharing the experience had in Indonesia last year and became the most outstanding 'Guest' today, that Learn-Now has had in its seven years of operation.

Going 'live' in our workroom (synchronous chat) facility, saw 12 experienced Learn-Now elearners and 11 elearning novices, take her on. Their mission? To inquire after all that she represents, applying their questioning skills, while learning a little more about specific detail and information gathering.

From 'is there punk rock music there?' to 'what's the economy like', Jo Gundry's fingers were smoking in response! Her responses certainly had that 'Wow Factor' - a tag being immersed in all Learn-Now programming this year. Reactions in the computer suite hub, heard the 'No Way! No toilet?' cries, through to 'Oh - no electricity, so of course, no electric guitar'.

Influx vs drip-feed... There was also the reality check for the students, on behalf of the presenter, pertaining to managing an influx of questions vs the drip-feed approach, and avoiding the repetitive nature (ie food being the hottest topic). But such is the nature of learning to work collaboratively and the best use of a community environment. Adopting multi-tasking habits took ahold too, and within moments, the discussion forum almost drowned in a new wave of threads. While Jo was given the go ahead to take up to a week to respond (poor soul's also got an assignment on the lymphatic system to do), just about all was responded to within the next hour.

Journey's of a Medical Missionary launched this week, as a wonderful programme of insight, adventure and problem solving. It's open to elementary, primary, intermediate and middle school students around the world. There's a competition about to launch for the students involved, discussion topics, mind-bending challenges (eg: sterilise some dirty water, fit to drink), and mini case studies. One team enrolled will also bring their whole school on board to be partners in the same journey.

But wait...there's more...
Operation Orphans and One People, One Planet are about to be affiliated partners in this work.

Way2Go Solway Primary!

Solway Primary School, Masterton, has just entered their third year with Learn-Now, enrolling a stunning team of 25 Year 4-6 students.

ERO's visit to Solway presented a favourable reference to Learn-Now last year, so with even greater confidence, another level of programming launches.

Grants, subsidised by parental contributions, a proportion of the G&T and staffing budget manages the funding, while the team of 25 students have been split into two teams. Monday-Wednesday classroom teacher Pam Paterson, is released as the Learning support teacher on Thursdays, supervising the respective Learn-Now teams within the computer suite from 9-11 am, and Learning support thereafter.

The two teams are known as the Year 6 'Lead Team' while the Year 4-5 contingent represent the 'Dream Team'. Each team receives an hour of official school time and already, the students have nabbed extra time in class and at home for more. The long-term plan's been tabled and the learning intentions for Term 1, are already ticking off achievements.

The Learn-Now Solway Primary teams are destined to be:

1. Designers & managers of a Solway Online Student Centre for their Y3-6's;
2. Employees of ChocLot Paradise - designing & marketing a new chocolate product;
3. Participants in Operation Orphans - a Learn-Now international community service programme, producing educational material for a team of 10 orphans in Pakistan;
4. Inquiry learning project managers in Journey's of a Medical Missionary, learning about the life and times of third world survival - spotlighting on Indonesia;
5. Travel consultants for Mascot Mania managing an international Cyber Surfari travel project to selected schools in selected countries;
6. Journalists, Editors, Photographers etc of the Journal Headquarters, creating an Online School Journal, with interactive stories, articles, plays, poems & special features.
7. Youth enterprise business owners, within the Learn-Now Business Zone, designing and implementing small, money making businesses.
8. Vitrual Tourists with Virtual Field Trip to Scotland first... during Term 2-3, as one member of the Lead Team designs a Cyber Surfari for guests (hopefully other schools) to follow, during his lead up and visit to Scotland. In December, they'll head to Pakistan with a NZ med student.
   
9. Programming designers with Made2Order - a student-driven, student-centred programme... Focus unknown as yet, but a real test of applied learning for Term 4, based on Term 1-3 work as they build their own Term 4 programme.
10. Christmas case study workers with Christmas Worldwide - connecting with selected schools & families in selected countries, teaching their traditions to others, reciprocated by international ePal teaching in return.
    

...and that's just what's planned, beyond core key competencies, integrated programming factors, and learning the art of being a collaborative, self-driven elearner. Since flexiblity incorporates highly encouraged spontaneity, there will also be, without doubt other key elements that'll come to fruition. School wide issues, focal points, guests, student requests...etc.

Way2Go Solway!

What's the focus for 2009?

1. We're expanding.
   
2. Our flexibility's changing.
   
3. Repeat clients dominate enrolments.
   
4. Cloning kicks in & criteria modifications feature.
   
5. Quarterly and/OR Annual enrolments now on offer.
   

We celebrate the greatest return of re-enrolments ever this year and having sounded out a variety of markets during 2008, we're set to:

• offer more task-orientated, off-line activities
  
• create an environment for students under 7 years old
  
• provide cultural programmes for exchange students
  
• develop online learning centres, similar to Learn-Now for various schools and a range of community groups.
  

Our 4 enrolment packages have met enormous levels of interest and subsequent enrolment, and while they're deliberately an 'empty-shell' upon individual enrolment, we'll be offering more activity/task based work. We lock into place the following packages:

1. Pick n' Mix: offers to choose from - self help, with parental support
   
2. Smorgasbord: offers to choose from with extensive online teacher faciliation/tutoring
   
3. Made'2'Order: the enrolling student tells us what they'd like to learn & we design & develop the programme alongside them
   
4. The Banquet: All of the above encompasses a single enrolment.

We're looking forward to growing staffing numbers and even working outside the 'student environment'. Aside from all this, we're in the face of tendering for contracts on offer. We know that marketing is not within our field of expertise and so we're also seeking to means to develop a sparklier image and learn the art of marketing.

Forever a work in progress as should any company be :)
Roll on 2009!
:)

Travelling Mascot Chicao, Brazil.

The Learn-Now welcomes Chicão from Brazil. From a class in Colégio São José, Santos, São Paulo, Portuguese speaking students sent Chicão to New Zealand for a holiday.

Hosting Chicão, is Team Solway, the Gifted & Talented Students at Solway Primary, Masterton, Wairarapa, New Zealand. Their mission? To beam Chicão's kiwi experiences back to Brazil as learning bites for his class.

Team Solway's learning the art of character role-play digital photography, third-person speak, blogging, rostering, sales pitching and strategic planning. One student's Chicão's Mascot Manager and when the team's not working with Chicão, they're discovering more about finance in Brazil, international communication and working with the media - as close to home as school newsletters and perhaps even the local newspaper.

The beauty of this experience so far? Grins from ear to ear, a real 'touch' of something international and country that feels 'real' to the students. With such a positive experience as this, we're planning to foster this nature of programming on a much grandier scale. Schools around the world can join and be actual hosts of international characters, mutual learning experiences and a year-long project that could virtually take students to at least 10-12 countries in a year. All we need are hosts, tour guides (students/schools) and exchangable mascots.

Interested? Contact us to enrol!
For more on Chicão, see his Learn-Now site
...and the Solway School bubbleshare movie.

Personalised Learning & Lifelong Learning

This week in Christchurch, New Zealand, the education conference Ulearn, focuses on integrating new technologies to empower learning and transform leadership.

Ulearn is, for many schools in NZ, thee conference to attend, for an uplifting spin re: ICT integration in education. Derek Wenmoth, and his blog presents the highlights and while grabbing a coffee before reading the entry will only see it go cold, the key points stay hot.

Of particular interest to us and our focus with Learn-Now, is keynote reference to 'Tomorrow's Schools, Yesterday's Solutions' (the battle Learn-Now has with schools), with Hattie & Oram. This followed the Williamson & Nussebaum focus on the impact of Web2.0 technologies to enable online participation and sharing and the need to shift from a classroom metaphor to a community metaphor for the way we organise learning in the future... One could 'hear' that this could (and should) refer to teacher communities, but reassuring for Learn-Now, is that this is exactly what we deal with, for students within their schools. We are still getting it right.

Derek's actual reports
a) Hattie & Oram is here...
b) Richardson & Nussebaum-Beach is here...

A year on

We're a year on now and diversity continues. Learn-Now could well be the latest roller coaster. It steadily journeys up steep learning-curve terrain and enjoys the adrenalin rush of fast paced energy.

The Changing Model

The dominating focus as an Online Learning Environment has shifted to also being a model for others. We're delighted! There are those who use it as a working space to see what it's like to create an online life for their students and those who use the continuing R&D to better inform where their own mission could be driven. We don't even have all the bells and whistles! Strangely enough, when we'd gone down the 'should do' track with that thinking, we've scared many clients off. Keeping our site simple has enabled those early in their journey (toward developing their own online environments) in a can-do zone. For now, that's where we're going to sit.

Highlights

Our most rewarding moment this year was a Kids Conference. There are conferences aplenty for adults, corporates and educators, but little exists for those less senior.We joined the committee behind a 3 day event for 350 students and offered a post-conference Virtual Workshop pilot. I know of Virtual Conferences, but ahave yet to find reference (even if only googling) for young students. We're in the midst of working through it - much of the action destined between now and the end of this calendar year. Watch this space

Consulting, Scoping & Developing

Exciting too, is the consultative work we're dealing with too. After being recipients to several research case studies, the spin off has seen us now helping others strategise their own plans for developing Online Learning Environments. The greatest beauty of all, is that others are hugely interested in the voice of the student, student-driven concepts and even the realistic fees respecting the nature of the work involved.

While it's otherwise been business as usual, the bounciest highlights are on the horizon. We're about to even more go global like never before... Just can't say much yet! But meanwhile, it's good to be back blogging - long may it last.

Online Student Centres

We're encouraged! Learn-Now has entered new territory yet again. This time, the theme sees us now also working alongside the development of student-driven online student centres, in schools.

There are thousands of online student centres in existence, but few (maybe if any) are built by students, for students. Why are the sites like Facebook & MySpace etc so popular with their users? The freedom to create & present.

What's with the demise of so many school sites? The teachers typically control the 'systems administration' rights - they load their intention and students 'through duty calls' participate if we're lucky. Learn-Now used to be like this... Now, 3 years on from 'risking' a mess and allowing students to also have top-level systems admin rights, we have students who no longer just come on during their allocated timetable time at school... No longer bound by teacher loaded material, their creative bents and love of an audience has produced stunning results...

So what's in an Online Student Centre and how's it created? To start with, no one centre is the same. In the case of those facilitated by Learn-Now though, several common themes prevail. A group of students need to be enrolled with us and as a team, they break into 'departmental' groups or partnerships, taking on specialist design areas. All that is created is for 'their school' - though openly encouraged to consider adopting participants from other schools too - the biggest challenge to go international. To start with though, they focus on creating an interactive site for students at their school.

Some members of this design team believe that having online clubs would be cool. Others decide a Science Discovery area would be 'hot stuff'. One student decided to create a debate/discussion around the need for a 'house competition' to exist in the school - and succeeded. Some run weekly maths challenges, others create online ebook compositions... Another's planning to feature a music arena, which includes one student teaching others how to read music, share podcasts etc. All up, it's a site by students, for students, with continual student assessment, suggestion and evaluation.