Netbook Parent Info Session
Recently I attended a parent info session at the HS my son attends. He was told that parents who attended would help to secure a netbook early as it showed home support, I smelled a ploy to get parents to come to a meeting. Now, if you thought that you would have about 100 community members attending would you prepare something to ‘wow’ them? You would think so but the session proceeded with, what looked like, educators fumbling with something they knew very little about.
So we see 20mins about the new rollout by the DP who has little or no idea about the package. He did, to his credit, contact Arthur Phillip HS to find out how it is working there. 
We move on to… Moodle- yes they just purchased the hardware to get moodle running. Do they mean a GProxy or a Linux box? Librarian demonstrates saying that teachers will begin to use from T3.
Then Clickview which can be used at… School. Personally I don’t see the new netbooks running clickview very well even though the librarian was keen for students to be able to.
I was expecting to see how the school was going to use the new netbooks in the classrooms. Alas, they showed a lot of “we are going to” and “we can do this”.Group breaks into 2 groups; Robotics and Connected Classroom.
Robotics
A yr8 team demonstrates their entry- a team of 4. Over yonder a group of yr9 boys are demonstrating their Photoshop/flash/movie maker efforts on their 17in screens. Funny how my yr9 son hasn’t done any of this to date this yr. Mind you many of the parents watching are impressed. How any of this demonstration relates to the l4l is not very clear.
Connected classroom.
Shock, horror. This is the first IWB in the school. At the forefront of educational change! None trained for it yet.
So, what do we have here?
We have a school about to be flooded with netbooks coming to terms with 1xConnected Classroom, Moodle and a new set of software (Adobe). Ever heard of the term ‘Jack of all, master of none’?
On discussing the presentation with my son he was flabbergasted, exclaiming that what I had seen was bulldust. ‘I’ve used school computers 2 or 3 times this year when our class has been to the library to research using the internet’.
Now, I know this will not be the case in all HS in NSW but I would hazard a guess that this is not an unusual situation. For many schools the integration of ICT is just not a priority, it means retraining and rethinking how to teach effectively.
Filed under: Uncategorized and tagged det, high school, school
Vince,
It was the same at my daughter’s high school. In her six year, she rarely, if ever, put her hands on a computer keyboard – and NEVER as part of her set learning. I thought her sitting the “pen and paper” computer skills tests (or whatever it was called) in year 10 was the ultimate irony. Whatever ICT skills she and her age cohorts demonstrated had been learnt in complete isolation to her schoolwork and entirely off campus.
I’ve been saying all of this for quite a while. It’s very much the norm in most high schools (yes, it’s 2009), and it’s a huge worry.
Some points of clarification – “Lenovo *is* a good chinese brand”. When IBM closed down Wangaratta and other IBM plants around the world for manufacturing desktops and notebooks, they contracted Lenovo to do it for them. In the end, Lenovo bought them out. IBM don’t make desktops and notebooks anymore.
I’m pretty sure Clickview needs a “Clickview Player” installed on each client computer. So that ain’t going to happen with the DER netbooks.
Let’s hope that the teachers will come on board and fully embrace the technology that they could empower the students so well.
Similar story here. I know most teachers will place blame upon the DET, upon their senior executive if DER falls flat, yet ICT isn’t a new focus area, it has been everyones business for a significant time now, yet those who have embraced the ability of ICT to engage and develop learning will now have to sit back in some cases and watch others take over.
I’ve had my netbook for two weeks. I use 2007 at home, so not a problem there, honestly I am still looking and playing with things on it. I was contacted by the person in charge of our staff development day, the focus of course will be DER. I suggested I introduce the idea of PLN and how Web 2.0 (blogs, edmodo aspects my classes and I are already using) could be used in class by showing and using in my 17 minute session. I suggested I’d need the IWB. I suggested I’d email all staff attending my session the overview, links, resources, so once in the session we could all open our DET email and move at our own pace with selected explicit focus points on the IWB- a similar situation I’ve learning experienced I’ve had with 13 year olds, with 16 year olds. I was told I could only focus on one thing, that I would only be going over something briefly- like pointing out that Office 2007 is different from 2003, that I wouldn’t need an IWB and that I would have to have hard copies of the notes to make sure the teachers walked away with something. Ouch. I don’t blame my colleague who is great classroom teacher, it is a culture of some high schools, of some teaching staff and it isn’t unique.
My high school will have an info session like this soon, i’m looking forward to seeing just how much they know about the netbooks.