The end of the academic year is a busy time in most schools, but also a time that many teachers engage in professional development. It is no different at St Andrew’s College where three hour, small group sessions were organised for all secondary teaching staff as a refresher on eLearning. This professional development was run by Arnika Brown, an eLearning Integrator from Cyclone Computers who has previously worked with teachers in our Preparatory School.

This year has also seen increasing requests by other schools and organisations for our teachers to deliver professional development in the area of eLearning and technology use in the classroom. An example of this is earlier this week our Assistant Head of English Ms Tam Yuill Proctor was invited to deliver a keynote at the Dunedin English Big Day Out conference. The title of her message was “Putting the “E” of E-Learning into Teaching and Learning” and as a summary reflection of presentation she recorded a terrific Office Mix overview (click the slide below to view):

The topics covered in the keynote included:

• Teaching and Learning: knowledge building, learning communities, practice
• Office365: Office Mix, OneNote and OneDrive
• Inquiry Learning: putting it into action with Year 10
• Blogs and Twitter: effective use of these in professional development.

Other examples of our staff delivering or facilitating professional development in eLearning recently include:

• Mr Dean McKenzie and Mr Ben Hilliam presenting at the Canterbury Maths Association ICT Afternoon hosted at Canterbury University.
• Mr Matt Nicoll showcased the use of eLearning practice in science classes to student teachers studying at Canterbury University. He presented at the inaugural #edchatnz conference earlier this year, along with leading a breakout at a recent Christchurch educamp unconference. Matt also helped curate the month of blogging from Christchurch educators as part of Connected Educator Month 2014.
• Ms Tam Yuill Proctor and Mr Ben Hilliam running professional development for the English and Maths teachers at Cambridge High School later this week.
• Mrs Jacqueline Yoder, Mr Ben Hilliam (our two Microsoft Innovative Educations of 2015) along with Mr Matt Nicoll presented short “taster” sessions of their eLearning practices to various principals and senior leaders from the Independent Schools of New Zealand. From this, they have been invited to deliver extended professional development at Scots College in Wellington in December this year.
• Mr Duncan Ferguson has spoken at a number of events on using technology in music including at the NZ Music Educators Conference in Auckland and at an NZQA Best Practice in Music workshop in Christchurch.
• A selection of staff provided an overview of eLearning in their classes to the visiting CORE Education eFellows of 2014 earlier this year.

It is excellent to see teachers from St Andrew’s College being invited to share their expertise and experience with the wider teaching community, as it highlights the value our own students are receiving in their tuition. As well as requests to speak at events, the College has hosted numerous staff from other schools on visits to see eLearning in action in our classrooms.

To build on this momentum, St Andrew’s has created a new position starting in 2015 called eLearning Integrator. This role will focus on supporting innovative and best practice in eLearning amongst our teachers and I am confident this will lead to even more teachers being asked to speak at future events.