Monthly Archives: April 2015

Online Ticketing A Great Success

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PatronBaseAt St Andrew’s College there are a lot of ticketed events showcasing student talent and performances, from the annual Preparatory Ballet Show through to the Senior Production. On top of these, there are fundraisers, guest speakers and the upcoming Centenary celebrations in 2017, all of which require ticket design, printing and selling.

Historically, these tickets were designed in-house by our Communications team, bulk printed and then sold via the reception desk in the Secondary School. Whilst this worked, it tended to be inflexible if people wanted to change the night they were attending and it was also time consuming for reception staff showing students and parents what seats were still available and then processing the purchase of tickets.

In 2014 the College re-examined online ticket sales as an option and partnered with PatronBase, a Christchurch based company with customers throughout Australasia, the United Kingdom and Spain. We had some clear goals in mind to improve our sales of tickets to events, including:

  • The ability for students, parents and wider community members to see what events were happening at St Andrew’s, choose their preferred seats (where allocated seating was being used) and to purchase tickets online.
  • The ability to pay for tickets online using Visa or MasterCard.
  • Customers to be able to print their tickets at home and for reception staff to be able to print tickets on a “as needed” basis.
  • Event organisers to be able to see very accurately how many tickets were sold/remaining
  • Accurate reporting at the conclusion of an event for reconciliation of payments and disbursement of funds.

The team at PatronBase worked hard to help create a custom skin that accurately matched our College branding and also supported the technical requirements for connecting with BNZ’s BuyLine product for processing online credit card payments.

The PatronBase hosted solution for online ticketing accurately reflects the St Andrew's College branding.

The PatronBase hosted solution for online ticketing accurately reflects the St Andrew’s College branding.

guys and dollsA decision was made to trial the PatronBase system with the 2014 Senior Production of Guys and Dolls with tickets being available for sale online for the first time ever, as well as via the “Box Office” in the College reception. The ability to sell tickets both online and via the reception was a real advantage over the previous ticket system used and reception staff were confident that tickets were never going to be accidentally sold twice.

Furthermore, because tickets could be re-printed as needed, it did not matter if a customer changed their mind about the night they wished to attend a performance, because the tickets could easily be transferred with new tickets being printed and the original seats being released for other customers to purchase.

Ticket view for Reception staff showing booked and available tickets.
The corresponding online view for customers purchasing tickets at home.

The “Box Office” view on the left used by Reception staff to see status of available seats and the corresponding web view to parents at home allowing them to choose their preferred seats.

As can be seen from the above images, the seating layout from the College Theatre could be recreated in PatronBase allowing allocated seating to be selected by students and parents. However, after the initial success of online sales for Guys and Dolls other events in different venues were also sold via the new ticketing system, including:

Parent response to the new system has been incredibly positive, such as this unsolicited feedback we received:

The new ticketing system is really great. It is great to be able to purchase with a credit card and to have a choice of whether to print or collect tickets.

When booking shows in the theatrette it was fantastic to be able to choose your own seats and it was very easy to use. It really was great to be able to see exactly where you would be sitting.

Keeping the self print tickets simple is good. I have had to print out tickets from other places before and they have wasted so much ink printing fancy pictures. 

Your ticketing system is excellent.

A selection of shows through PatronBase with the online sales clearly proving popular

A selection of shows through PatronBase with the online sales clearly proving popular

The ease and convenience of purchasing tickets online is evident from the table on the right, and this encouraged the College to explore other possibilities with PatronBase such as sales of the fundraising recipe book “Recipes From The Tartan Kitchen“. This book, sold to raise funds for the new College Chapel, was launched in late 2014 with the accompanying promotional video:

Since then, 150 copies of the book have been sold through the PatronBase system, often by Old Collegians overseas who wish to have the book couriered directly to them.

A more recent form of fundraising online came after the devastating Cyclone Pam struck Vanuatu. A full blog was written about this that you can read here, and at the time of writing donations during the sale of tickets to UrineTown and Style at StAC are approaching $1000 for Onesua Presbyterian College in north-east Efate,Vanuatu.

Finally, the Old Collegians Association of St Andrew’s College, having seen the value of online ticket sales, will soon be using PatronBase as well for all their ticketed events and reunions. A custom theme is being developed to match the branding of the Old Collegians and then tickets will be available for all events.

With an eye to the future, having run over 15 ticketed events through PatronBase over the last 12 months, the system will definitely be used for managing ticket sales for the 2017 St Andrew’s College Centenary. It is pleasing to be able to deliver an improved service to students and parents that makes the purchase and attendance of ticketed events at the College so much simpler and easier.

Students Catch The Blogging Bug

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Isla Evison and Harrison Cooper (creator of the blog for the trip) at Brockenhurst

Isla Evison and Harrison Cooper (creator of the WW1 European Tour blog for the trip) at Brockenhurst

The StAC eLearning Blog is now over 18 months old, something that I find amazing when I pause to reflect on all the incredible stories we have been able to tell about innovative and engaging eLearning happening around the College. One thing that I am especially pleased about is the increasing number of “tip offs” I get from teachers – suggestions to go and chat with other teachers they know that are doing amazing things in their classrooms with their students. Additionally, more teachers are now telling me they regularly check out the posts and find they are motivated and challenged to try new things in their classrooms too.

In the last week of Term 1, Mr Simon Williams (Head of Television and Media) mentioned that he had been sharing this blog with some senior students who were about to head away on a WW1 Commemorative Tour of Europe in the holidays and he asked if I could help them set up a blog to record their journey. Excited by both the nature of the trip and also the possibilities of students engaging with their co-curricular learning via blogging I met with Harrison Cooper to discover more of what he was hoping to achieve.

Together, we settled on using a WordPress blog (similar to this blog) and we discussed the various themes and how some would potentially engage the readers more than others. We agreed that whilst some of the fancier themes were very cool, with menus that minimised completely to avoid distractions, some of the readers of the blog might not be able to navigate as easily around the blog. This was going to be important, because I taught Harrison how to use category pages within his menu structure, so that posts could be dynamically filtered based on the different locations they visited e.g. Gallipoli, France, Belgium etc. Here is the end result:

Note the names of locations under the main image - these are dynamic pages filtering and displaying blog posts only from those locations.

Note the names of locations under the main image – these are dynamic pages filtering and displaying blog posts only from those locations (click the image to visit the blog).

The other conversation we had was around image ownership – whilst there are many photos on the internet from WW1 that would serve as an excellent banner image, most were copyright and could not be used. This was an excellent chance to discuss Digital Citizenship and link back to one of the three core values in our Digital Citizenship policy:

Respecting the ownership and intellectual property of content they find online by accurately referencing the owner or site they obtained content from and by not engaging in piracy of software or other digital media

creative commons licenseTogether, Harrison and I did a quick google for images that were licensed by Creative Commons and quickly found websites such as the Wiki Commons WW1 Images and a Flickr WW1 Gallery from Oxford University that was licensed under the CC BY meaning the images could be shared or adapted provided appropriate credit was given. I left it up to Harrison to find the final images that he wanted for the blog, along with showing him how to use tags to help label each blog post by author and topic. I mentioned to him that once his blog was ready, I would put it on the front of the College Moodle site to increase the visibility amongst the students at St Andrew’s.

A number of students have contributed blog posts whilst the trip has been ongoing and even our Rector, Christine Leighton, has written a reflection on the trip as well as thoughts on the moving memorial at Brockenhurst a site in south east England where 21,000 wounded New Zealand soldiers were cared for during WW1. This visit was picked up by TV3 News and you can read the full story here and see a video of this here:

Click the image to load the TV3 news site and video

Click the image to load the TV3 news site and video

The WW1 tour blog quickly gained over 80 followers, who would receive an email update each time a blog was posted, and showing just how engaging the content was for readers, it has received a number of comments for the various posts. This one shows how appreciative readers are of the student’s blogging about their trip:

Thank you for the various articles and photos. It is a great way to follow the trip and also share your travels and observations with my family and friends. We are all very impressed by the way your group is representing our country and remembering those brave men and women who fought in WW1.

The WW1 European Trip blog is not the only blogging that has been happening by students at St Andrew’s College over the Term 1 holiday break. Twice a year, students head to Cambodia as part of the College’s commitment to community service and for the last few trips, students have been blogging about their time in Cambodia:

Cambodia

The students take turns co-authoring a blog post in pairs, providing an overview of what activities they have participated in and seen as well as personal reflections – some of which are very moving, an example being reflections from the trip to the Orphanage:

The orphanage was one of the biggest highlights of the trip, and a day that has been highly anticipated by the group … During the day, we as a group witnessed how little we had to do, to make one of these kids smile … As we said our goodbyes and headed onto the bus, hugs, handshakes, presents and tears were exchanged through the windows. The experience was amazing, tiring, emotional and rewarding. The only downside was that we didn’t get to spend more time with them.

It is pleasing to see these two examples of student-led blogs reaching a wide and authentic audience, providing a platform for students to meaningfully reflect on their experiences. There are other teachers who are encouraging their students to blog as well and based on the success of these two, I anticipate more teachers may explore this as an option for student writing as well.

Developing Connections with Business Mentors

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Callum StewartAfter a lifetime of interest in Computer Science, and a more recent involvement in online forums with people from communities less privileged than his own, one St Andrew’s College student has an idea that he hopes will provide a platform for small investors to fund small start-ups in the Third World through a web-based business, tentatively called uEarn.io

Year 10 student, Callum Stewart’s enthusiasm for the cause caught the eye of his Business Studies Teacher, Steve Aldhamland. Quickly identifying the potential benefit, for Callum, of a Business Mentor Steve contacted Robyn Frey, the ‘Head of Special Projects’ at the Young Enterprise Trust. Robyn kindly put Steve in touch with an Alumni of the Trust, Josh Daniells. Josh is currently the Head of Platform and Investor Growth at the successful equity crowdfunding platform, Snowball Effect.

Capture

A screenshot from the Skype session Callum and Josh had, hosted in the Boardroom at St Andrew’s College

Earlier this week, to initiate this mentor relationship, Josh and Callum participated in a Skype session. This session allowed Callum to speak to someone with industry experience and Josh was able to give the young entrepreneur some valuable advice about potential regulatory barriers and the importance of balancing interests between investors and companies.

Reflecting on potential future mentoring within Business Studies

Mr Aldhamland immediately saw the benefits for Callum of this session. The main positives were that it was a medium that allowed each party to see and respond to the body language of the other throughout the conversation. I believe that this was a factor in Josh quickly identifying that Callum has genuine entrepreneurial potential and that he is deadly serious about his business idea.

He is also excited about the future potential of using Skype more regularly in Business Studies, with the ability to connect with business mentors nationally, and even globally.

Reflections on a Term of Integration

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As the first term of the school year draws to a close, I find myself increasingly reflecting on the first ten weeks as the eLearning Integrator here at St Andrew’s College. Due to the fact that this position was newly established at the College, there was always a bit of a sense of the unknown.

Hitting the Ground Running

Almost immediately, I was struck by the willingness of the College’s staff to embrace change in their pedagogy, and the overwhelming acceptance that eLearning has an important part to play in this development. While, obviously, staff are at differing stages of their experimentation all have been extremely welcoming and responsive to whatever assistance they have received.

OneNote in the Classroom

By far the major focus for staff has been the continued use of OneNote in their classrooms. With a compulsory 1:1 laptop programme now covering all Year 9 and 10 students the majority of secondary staff have been extremely keen to use OneNote in their classrooms. Feedback from staff has been overwhelmingly positive and success with its use to manage and improve student feedback in English and the potential of student collaboration have already been blogged about this year.

By far the most significant development for staff, has been the launch of the OneNote Classroom creator tool. Numerous staff have mentioned to me how they have appreciated the streamlined organisation that this tool facilitates.

The other major developments that has impacted on our student population are the improvements to the complexity of the OneNote app for Mac. Approximately 65% of our students are using Apple laptops and, although the functionality of the app is still not equivalent to that of the Windows Client version, the improvements have helped to raise the engagement levels of students with the software.

Skype developing

A second area of growth within the school has been the use of Skype. Within the senior syndicate of our Preparatory School especially, Mystery Skypes have been popular. Teachers have found them a great way to make initial conact with students in other areas of the world and also as a valuable way to investigate questioning strategies – not to mention they are great fun!

This term has also seen us experiement with other ways to utilise Skype in the classroom. On World Read Aloud Day 8C jumped at the opportunity to connect with a children’s author, Jennifer Swanson via Skype. SwansonThis session was really motivating for the students and it was great to see them having the opportunity to ask their own questions to an experienced author.

“I think that it’s pretty cool that although Jennifer Swanson is so far away we felt like she was right there in the room thanks to Skype. I think that the whole class enjoyed this experience and we all want to do it again!” Elena, 8C

A final development has been the number of staff in the Senior College beginning to experiement with the potential with Skype to supplement the learning occuring in their classroom. A Year 13 English Teacher, Tam Yuill Proctor, is teaching a course based around James Bond. As part of this I am endeavouring to confirm an academic from the Film and Media School at Aberysthwyth University to join the class in an expert capacity. A second example is from our Commerce department who are beginning to develop relationships with business mentors through Skype. Stay tuned for a future blog post highlighting this!

Staff redefining their own boundaries

Elsewhere in the school, it has also been pleasing to see a number of staff experimenting with other aspects of eLearning. Examples of this has seen Google Earth being used to effectively study setting in English, and Excel being used in conjunction with OneNote in the Preparatory School. It has been really rewarding for me to see increasing examples of staff developing the confidence to conceptualise, develop and implement such tasks in an increasingly independent manner!