Numbat Conspiracy Project

Warwick Senior High School Itouch Project

Warwick Senior High School is pleased to announce it has tendered for and won a significant grant of money to equip each year 8 member of the 2010 cohort with an Apple iTouch to see how using this mobile technology can be used to enhance student learning.

The following is part of that submission. nb The terms iPod and Itouch are used interchangably.

Innovation and the Implementation Strategies

With the small half cohort entering Warwick Senior High School in 2010 we have decided to make this an opportunity to establish a change of instructional practice within the School. Our project will involve a small team of volunteer teachers who will utilize common practice in terms of the use of instructional strategies (cooperative learning) and with a particular focus on use of Learning Technologies (iPod, airport, mobile phones and OTLS). The School will use this team as future change agents to encourage colleagues to see the benefits and effectiveness of Instructional Intelligences. It will also serve to pave the way with teachers using OTLS as a part of their daily practice.

According to Microsoft 2006, Dr Stephen Heppell is Europe’s leading online educational expert. He has been predicting recently that the devices we use to access learning will indeed get smaller, and the uses we put them to will change constantly. He is an advocate for the use of small touch screen devices such as mobile phones to deliver content to students. We believe to prepare our students for their futures, we should embrace such ideas. Indeed, an example of this is the Fremantle Football Club’s use of such technology to download pre-game instructions to their players using iPhones before every game.

We will use the project initiative as a way of achieving alignment of Instructional Intelligence and Learning Technologies. It will form a basis of how the whole school can move forward and embrace learning innovation such as the OTLS initiative. As a small school within a cluster of like schools, it will be of great benefit to be able to showcase how OTLS can operate and lead to a sharing of instruction across four secondary campuses. The use of learning technologies will include student use of iPod touch devices in a designated Year 8 area where teaching team members will take classes in the Math-English-Science-Social Science (MESS) learning areas.

Applications of the iPod technology within a wireless (airport) environment will include their use of a range of applications such as diary-planners, Gmail, Internet research, picture and document sharing, iMovie production and the use of collaborate learning strategies using Wikis, Forums and Bloggers. The use of innovative new technologies will increase student engagement and also provide opportunities for students to use their range of multiple intelligences. One of the first tasks will be for students to use the iPods to determine their learning styles via completion of an online survey.

The teaching team will undertake collaborative planning to develop an integrated program and attend weekly team meetings where professional discussions and conferencing will take place. The pastoral care practices and ethos will be central to the success of the project. Another innovation will be the teaching team’s use of technologies such as Gmail and Google docs to communication with parents and careers and also the use of SMS to provide information about student attendance and progress.

We are fortunate to have assembled a collaborative, innovative and enthusiastic team both in our school, our cluster and via the Web. As well as those previously mentioned, it also includes Mark Weber, 2001 ECAWA Educator of the Year and Robin Leake, ICT Year 8 Coordinator (Warwick SHS), Roland Guesthuizen, ICT Manager, Westall Secondary College (Victoria). We are confident we have the team and resources for success. Benefits to the Schools in our Cluster -Benefit to our school will be immediately to cut the money spent on photocopying and textbooks. Also, there will be efficiencies in terms of monitoring student progress and socialization due to improved communication with (and support from) parents. In terms of the improvement in whole school pedagogical change, we will have some exemplary teachers who will be able to form the basis of a team of instructional leaders across learning areas in the school. This will assist achieving the goals in the school priorities of pedagogy and instructional leadership. For the secondary schools in the cluster (Balcatta, Padbury and Belridge) we can begin with a model for use of OTLS for students across the three campuses for future years.

For the primary schools in our cluster (such as Glendale PS which also has instructional intelligences as a focus) we can share best practice and assist future students in the transition to secondary school. Cross-campus Interaction – We will utilize the expertise of Mr. Rod Blitvich (recognized Apple Distinguished Educator) from Balcatta SHS in a consultancy capacity with a view of establishing a school partnership in subsequent years. Staff from our Admin and teaching teams will encourage visits to and from our school to share evidence of the progression of the project.

Evaluation Processes –

[1] Success indicators – data collected from teaching team will indicate significant uptake of Instruction Intelligence strategies, staff completion of six hours professional learning requirement, evidence of student engagement in learning activities (shown by quantity and quality of work completion), record of parent-teacher contact (and feedback from parent-carers via satisfaction surveys). Additional evidence will be collected by the Project Coordinator (anecdotal regarding parent and student feedback, conducting surveys) and posting of news articles in local media and School publications. Evidence produced will be included in the Warwick 2010 School Report.

[2] Monitoring practices – weekly teaching team meetings (meeting records and student referral data). Marisa Del Pin, Associate Principal (Curriculum and ICT) will oversee the project and promote it within the cluster schools.

[3] Monitoring practices – As the project will be an action learning research project, Ms Meredith Dawn (currently undertaking Masters of Education studies) will oversee the collection of evidence – qualitative and quantitative data.

These results are for Wednesday, August 19th at noon

Don't forget to check out the blog

Mike Leishman was in the Mount Tom Price shopping center. He rang me to tell me he and his wife Jan had a lot of fun mystifying the locals "measuring the diameter of the earth".

latitude 21° 41'40.2"S
longitude 117° 47'42.844"E
Loction Tom Price shopping centre

time 12:00 midday
lenght of shadow for 1.35M stick - 0.90M

direction of shadow 180°(due south)

Reg Whitely : The Year 5/6 class at Beachlands Primary School, Geraldton, took part in Mr Weber's 'Numbat Conspiracy' Eratosthenes Project to help calculate the circumference of the Earth.

12.00 pm Beachlands Primary School, 50 Whitfield St, Geraldton.

Longitude 28 degrees, 47 min 14 sec South, latitude 114 degrees 36 min 14 sec East.

Length of 1 m shadow stick = 88cm +/- 2mm.

Angle of shadow 8 degrees west of north, lying in southerly direction. Make sense ? That's tricky for year 5/6s! We actually measured 352 degrees but that would make it face north, so what's the opposite measurement?

From John Thorpe at St Hilda's AGS, Perth, Western Australia

Hi Mark

My Astro Society was very interested in your measuring the earth project. We were blessed with enough sunshine to make the observation and recorded a shadow length of 99 cm with a 1 m ruler. The hardest bit was finding a 1 m ruler. This gave us an angle of 45.29 degrees.

According to Google, our school is Lat: -32 degrees, Long: 115.76 degrees

The only problem is that we have no school access to Facebook so I am not sure where to go from here!

We would be interested to hear other results.

Best wishes

John

Paul McMahon (Hong Kong) wrote
at 12:25pm

Bummer guys. Midday in Hong Kong was a bit like midnight in Perth!

Took out all of the gear and looked like a very suspcious customer in Hong Kong Central with the gear but alas.

Nothing cast a shadow. Big Dark rain clouds for hours.

Sorry. Will try to repeat tomorrow if any use.

Mark Weber

Warwick Senior High School

We had a shadow of exactly 1 m from a one meter from a one meter rule. Interestingly, the shadow fell almost due south.

From Google, lat and long

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