Principals and Leads with Stuart Hale

Notes from Stuart's session with Principals and Lead Teachers.

 - Future Investment?  Most important thing for schools to do is to upgrade your wireless network to one that's 'robust' and 'corporate' grade.
         - This will cost initially but save in the long run with students bringing their own devices (BYOD)

- Devices should go the whole day without ever having a cord plugged in - VGA, usb is old technology.  Most devices with have an hdmi attachment but better to connect wirelessly.

- Schools are purchasing wide screen tvs instead of projectors - putting them on your teacher stations, they never need a bulb replacement, shows in bright sunlight and has hdmi inputs.

- Cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com
     - Great site for everything you would ever need to use in schools

- School PD programmes. Recommendation for schools to be hesitant about spending PD on cloud based tools - they change all the time.

- Sharing exemplars of student media by using Madeawards.com and smart awards links.  Children learn by seeing expert examples.

- Teachers will not use professionally that they don't use personally.  Encouraging them to make home movies and learn that way.

    - Showcasing teacher made media, also creating a criteria in awards for movies about the process schools go through to create media.

"You feed the hungry and you do not water stones." - putting resources and PD where it's wanted and needed. 

- BYOD - schools that encourage parents to buy devices before they see the programme in action will be creating problems for themselves.  Show them how you will use them first!

- Using photography to capture student voice, taking pictures from another's perspective.  Also gives creative kids an outlet for their imagination without the burden of the dexterity of paint or drawing.  Children selling their playstation to buy cameras after a newspaper publishes their work.  Gives them a voice and 'mana'.

- Preparing your school for ipads. - resources available in this dropbox file.

    - campus infrastructure, test it out to manage multiple devices

    - how is your wireless network?

    - it's more important to ask the right question than to know the right answer. 21st Century skill where content is everywhere but you need the right question to access it.

    - getting rid of your proxies is crucial to accessing devices.  Proxies are like having barbed wire and broken bottles on your fences - it's against the NZ mindset.

    - having student use agreements that cover content and access issues.

    - BYOD school policies that cover storage, use, protection etc.

    - giving your community a vision of how they will be used

- using twitter to connect - can't encourage this enough. @stuartnz

- Furniture for our rooms.  We have kids that work best in a variety of ways; light, comfort.  Catering for difference.

- Pedagogical Models

    - have your discussed how the devices will be used?  1:1 classrooms work best on project based, independent learning.

- example of device management and school policy resources - Berkley Normal School