presentation

INSTEP Presentation Thursday 23rd October 2008 Content analysis [|Wiki statistics] || strategies facilitating passwords
 * **Area** || **Key Ideas** ||
 * **Introduction** || **Who are we and why did we do this?** ||
 * **Data gathering methods** || Questionnaire [|Survey Monkey]
 * **Transition** ||  ||
 * **Learning** || **Technical cycle **

strategies virtual party palm trees   Sens wiki palm trees discussion page Strategies ||
 * Social cycle **
 * Pedagogical cycle**
 * **Conclusions** ||  ||

October
8th Looks great Janine, thanks. However, i'm not imagining we'll have enough to talk for 120 mins about 'learning'. :) We'll need to go on first as i have a workshop that afternoon with 30 keeners coming. Originally we had 9-12.30 booked for this presentation according to my diary, now it seems we're going till 2pm so I won't be there for the afternoon sorry girls. You'll have to field the questions without me. Heather

7th Hi girls, couldn't get on last night but it's playing the game today thank goodness!!! This what we thrashed out yesterday, hope it's okay set out like this? Our names don't line up with cycle when it saves sorry, but I think we know what cycle we are doing? We are going to be awesome!! Janine Everyone || as below but reminding that all our findings were contextually based. as below || (how)
 * **Time** || **area** || **person** || **ideas to discuss** ||
 * 5mins || intro || Janine
 * 5 mins || methodology || Heather ||  ||
 * l20 mins || learning || Glynis

Janine (how)

Robyn (what) || **Technical cycle -J**anine's - teacher's seeing us as learners Paddy - facilitating passwords Robyn - wiki available at workshops Glynis - putting on pictures/how to page

chocolate fish real and virtual, meeting organisation Paddy - palm trees Glynis - virtual party All - putting up photos of classrooms
 * Social cycle -** Isteam - puppy (how we recognised it)

Glynis - expert invited Paddy - support the engagement by scaffolding - sitting beside teachers || -our purpose may be differnt than the teachers' - need to know this to continue. -we are learners ourselves, we went thruough 3 cycles in our own space. -data showed our assumtions were correct - was this because we had the same barriers? -modelling/scaffolding support imperative like any learning. -relationships important, real need for face-to-face component (blended) -time important both for 'things to happen' and in our research - setting up meetings where time was dedicated and planned. -the inquiry cycle worked although we didn't realise how wew had followed it until we could begin lookingh back. -expert support important (both in research and for COPs) ||
 * Pedagogical cycle** - What do "I" need to do?
 * 10 mins || conclussions || Heather || -different levels of engagement have come through different groups having different needs; eg: some will just be a pataka for information others will be true COPs.

Clarify that this is about online communities. The fact that we used a wiki is irrelevant, it was just a tool.

Stats for our learning communities

 * name || frequency of face to face cluster meetings || frequency of in-school/centre visits || frequency of 1:1 meetings with teachers || number of members || numbers of schools/centres || purpose ||
 * Glynis || 1 per term || 4-6 weeks || not applicable || 50 || 12 || to maintain and sustain conversations about learning ||
 * Paddy || 1 per term || 1-3 weeks || 1-3 weeks || 60 || 5 || sharing ideas, collaboration and sustaining practice around professional learning ||
 * Robyn || 1 per term || not applicable || varies - 3 times a term || 60+ || 60 || to assist sustainability so lead teachers would have support when we weren't meeting face to face ||
 * Janine || 2 per term || 1 per term || 1 per term (when in school visits) || 25 || 8 || to maintain and sustain conversations about learning ||

__Glynis__

Kia ora Koutou, I am an Early Childhood Facilitator working in the Kei Tua o te Pae Assessment for Learning contract. I joined this COP to learn how to set up a Wiki; developing an online community to support and sustain professional relationships and learning of educators who are members of 2008 (face to face) Assessment for Learning Clusters during the contract year and beyond.

__Paddy's Story__ I am currently the adviser for the SENS cluster of 5 schools which has approximately 50 teachers. In 2007, the SENS Wiki was established by my predecessor, with the intent of encouraging and promoting an online learning community. The wiki has served primarily as a resource bank. The main purpose in continuing, developing and maintaining the online PLC/COP, has been sustainability. The use of an online PLC/ COP seemed a logical solution to supporting teachers/educators learning and development through professional conversations around sharing practices and ideas. It provided an opportunity to could go further afield, beyond the bounds of the school learning community. The challenge for me was: · Identifying the needs of the community/learners · Identifying my own needs to support their learning needs · How to encourage active participation by members whose primarily use the wiki for its resources

I have taken the idea from Janine so below is __My Story__ I am a member of the Maths/Numeracy Team with the focus now on sustaining the teaching of Numeracy Project. One of the requirements of this contract is to hold four Lead Teacher Workshops during the year (one per term). These have always been well attended and one of the great features has been the positive and open communication between the participant teachers. As stated, this only occurs four time a year and it occurred to me last year, the teachers could benefit from interaction and sharing with each other on a more regular basis. An on-line community of practice was considered and following discussion with colleagues at Ruawharo the Wikispace ideal seemed the ideal tool to use. Another of the output areas within Maths is that or Innovation and I felt trying something new to assist the sustainability of the NumP would be well worth investigating. Robyn

8 September Well I've been stuck at haome with sick and injured children - it's been a year of it!!! Anyway decided it was probably my job to do the intro for the presentation so have put a little bit together to get us started, see what you think. i can't imagine that I'll read it more than likely just speak but these will be the main points to follow. At the time I was asked to lead an INSTEP team at the Napier Ruawharo Centre, I was also sitting down with three of my colleagues to each set up a wiki space for a group of teachers we were working with. We each had ideas about why we were doing this and as we began working together we began to ask questions about how we would get teachers to see this as a community of practice and how it might change the way we work. It was an obvious step to turn this informal research into a puzzle of practice to be supported by the INSTEP project. The initial group of three soon became five. Each member is going to quickly explain their part of the story and then we will move onto the learning that has happened for us so far. __ My Story: __ One of my four outputs is the Assess to Learn contract, and within this I have a cluster of eight small, rural schools. Most of these schools participated in a perquisite course together in 2007, and all of these schools had an existing relationship as they are all within the Central Hawke’s Bay area. My previous experiences with the teachers involved led me to the realisation that they liked working together as a community of practice and saw this as a very positive move to avoid being insular and ‘out of touch’ because of their physical isolation and lack of staff numbers. I had two main purposes for setting up an online PLC for them; firstly was the big picture of sustainability when the contract drew to an end especially as the principal turn over in these schools is quite high (there have been four new principals this year alone since the contract started), secondly it made sense for us to have a central online meeting place for discussion, resources and planning meetings etc rather than scattering e-mails and phone calls all over the place, basically I saw it as a way of being more time efficient.
 * __ INSTEP Presentation: __**
 * INTRODUCTION **
 * ‘What can I/we do to strengthen teacher learning through the use of online professional learning communities?’ **

See what you think Janine

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Please feel free to add stuff as you feel the urge take you :)

Puzzle of Practice
wikis to sustain our learning communities

Research Process - what we did
Robyn's diagram - inspiration bubble map

__methodology__
action research focus group

__methods__
media type="custom" key="1839519"
 * [|questionnaire] survey monkey
 * results of analysis- link to a wiki with this info on it
 * [|wiki data] (graphs)
 * individual wikis
 * analysis of contibutions
 * analysis of growth - Literature review and synthesis: Online learning communities (Lai, Pratt, Anderson and Stigter, 2006)

Our Learning

 * relationships
 * tuakana - teina
 * looking at our own practice and what this meant for our plcs
 * social, pedagogical and technical - show the connections between our practice and way of working, and the impact on the way we developed our groups
 * impact of the data on our practice. identifying hte barriers, originally based on our assumptions

Future learning
what is the impact on student learning?