2014 eFellows from CORE Education listening to presentations at St Andrew’s College

CORE Education is well known in New Zealand for delivering major educational events such as ULearn, Learning@School Roadshow and the Emerging Leaders Summit.  Earlier this month I was asked by Margot McKeegan and John Fenaughty if they could bring their 2014 eFellows to St Andrew’s College to learn more about eLearning in our classrooms.

This struck me as a good opportunity for some of our teachers to meet the eFellows, teachers from around New Zealand recognised for their commitment to eLearning and the successful implementation of it in their classrooms. Additionally, it was a perfect chance for the great work our teachers are doing to be shared with a wider audience, with hopefully some of the connections made today growing with shared professional development over the coming months.

The morning started with a warm welcome from our Rector, Mrs Christine Leighton, and then I provided a broad overview of the move to 1:1 Computing at St Andrew’s, what eLearning in the classroom can look like, as well as some of the main platforms we use such as Moodle and OneNote / Office365. The following teachers then shared some aspects from their teaching and learning:

• Dr Jeni Curtis talked about use of OneNote and Moodle, particularly with her Yr9 BYOD class. This blog post would give a good summary of her discussion today.
  

  Tam Yuill Proctor presenting to the 2014 eFellows from CORE Education

• Mrs Nicola Richards talked about integrating the SOLO Thinking Taxonomy into her PE and Health teaching, along with her aim to have a “paperless” class with her Yr9 students. This blog post would give a good overview of her chat today.
• Mr Matt Nicoll chatted about his personal reflective blog, approach to his classroom blogs with his students and also some of the practicalities of recording his teaching moments. This blog post is worth reading if you’re interested in this and he was also interviewed for NZ Science Teacher on this subject too.
• Ms Tam Yuill Proctor talked about how technology has impacted on her teaching, particularly with the Yr9 Cohort 1:1 programme, along with some of the MLE furniture she is trialling in her classroom. This blog post shows some of the innovative use of technology she has used in a Level 3 English “Digital Narratives” assessment.
• Ms Rachael Hoddinott gave an interesting perspective from the Preparatory School, calling herself a “self taught dabbler” in eLearning! She demonstrated her regular use of Moodle, Socrative, LiveBinders, and OneDrive as part of the Office365 suite. Teaching extension maths to Yr7 students, she is also in charge of the GATE group involved in the Future Problem Solvers competition, and she explained how technology facilitated the sharing of resources even when students didn’t always meet regularly.

It is great to be able to facilitate the sharing of knowledge amongst progressive teachers like this and hopefully there will be more opportunities like this in the future!

Matt Nicoll presenting to the 2014 eFellows from CORE Education