Microsoft Partners in Learning 2014 Microsoft Innovative Educator

Microsoft Partners in Learning 2014 Microsoft Innovative Educator – Expert Application Te Aroha College Troy Smith Using O 365 and Authentic Projects to deliver 21 st century learning.

Student LMS Using Mosaic to redesign the Intranet and replace Ultra. NET In 2015 we are introducing a BYOD program at year 9 and all students will need to interact with the school via a web portal instead of the traditional intranet on the school domain machines. We are using Mosaic to skin our O 365 site and will be looking to incorporate the student timetables and notices from the student management system. Currently this is a working concept of the prototype. Students in my digital technology classes help in this development by tailoring access and permissions and being involved the entire process to see the schools authenticate project being managed. The students are key stakeholders in the project as well as the final users. The systems that we use in the school are in continual development and O 365 is a very good fit. At year 12 and 13 we look at these systems for the information management case studies in Level 2 and 3 NCEA Digtial Technology. Here we have our department links across the top, a news feed that will be linked to our daily notices, and a calendar which I hope to link to our Student Management System. We have documents that are important to our students like the prospectus, course outlines and uniform policies. There is a Facebook feed which is live and this was a previous students project in 2011 to setup an alumni page, this now has over 1000 members from a school of only 350 students currently enrolled. Along the bottom is a group of picture galleries which are all live tiles linked to the gallery page. We are showcasing the athletics sports day, the swimming sports, school ball and cross country and these will change during the year based on the current activities. The current static intranet page is inserted to see what we are moving away from.

Students Blogging The move from blogger to O 365 All students are encouraged to blog on their authenticate projects and to share it with the global community. This provides a learning log as evidence for assessment and helps to develop 21 st century learning skills. The blogs here are from two pairs of year 11 -13 students working on their own Raspberry Pi Projects for the national Codeworx competition. The two blogs seen here are… • Mind Controlled Human Computer Interface for a Biped Exoskeleton. • School Bell Timer with global time sync and windows 8 application interface via htmlerver Authentic team projects encourage ‘Collaboration’ and with regular blogging ‘Skilled Communication’ develops. Student enquiry through a ‘real-world problem solving and innovation’ project promotes engagement. They choose the project themselves and this ensures the ‘Knowledge Construction’ is genuine and personalised. The students are working to a deadline with the national Codeworx competition as well as their National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) promote good ‘self-regulation’. This year we trailed moving away from having so many different systems to offer all of our learning needs and as such now have some students moving from blogger to the blog site feature of O 365. We still need to encouraging students and support them to make their blogs visually appealing, updated regularly. We also need to get the blog in the correct place as the default My-Share. Point blog is only for sharing inside the organisation. I have discussed this in some detail on my own Blog, Working On It… This feature is however of great security to primary schools that want to monitor and provide security to young children’s blogs. In secondary school we need our students to reach out to the global community to showcase their projects and collaborate in a complex team environment that is typical of the modern workplace. We will be encouraging all students to have a learning blog in O 365 from 2015.

Year 7 and 8 Digital Technology 2015 LEGO Mindstorms EV 3 introduction to programming and systems In 2015 we will be starting to teach digital technology to the manual students that attend our secondary school from the surrounding primary schools for their technology education. Traditionally we have taught Metal, Wood, Cooking and Sewing and to break away from this has been a large amount of work over many years, involving parents, principals and students to educate them of current teaching methods and employment opportunities. This is a very exciting time and everybody is keen now to see this become a success. We will deliver this program via O 365 as our LMS and use a Mosaic Skin for the course sub site. All resources will be delivered digitally and no printed materials will be handed out reducing our environmental footprint. All assessments will be practical with video evidence of the students progress uploaded to their blogs within O 365 to share with their family and school. We will promote websites of interest as links and have video links to motivational students work stored in the video module. The students are working in pairs to build and program their robots and this will require a high level of collaboration. The students will develop ICT skills working in O 365 as well as learning to understand that digital systems have inputs and outputs which is level five in the technology sytems strand of the New Zealand Curriculum. Students Will… • be introduced to digital technology and robotics in general • learn flow charts and sequential code structures • build a working LEGO EV 3 robot and make it move • measure distance and speed of a robot • draw basic shapes using scratch and then with a real robot • learn about basic logical operators; AND, OR, NOT • program their robot to complete a simple predefined path • Video and Blog about their progress on O 365

Social and Professional Networking How to get the message out… Twitter @smith_t_r PIL Network (Microsoft Educators Network) http: //www. pil-network. com/profile/details/aba 2 b 296 -be 8 e-41 a 1 -9732 -db 0 aead 59956 Office 365 Community http: //community. office 365. com/en-us/members/troysmith/default. aspx Linked. In nz. linkedin. com/in/troyrsmith Blog https: //tearohacollege. sharepoint. com/sites/staff/Blogs/Working. On. It/default. aspx This is in it’s very early stages and I would like to continue and grow the following of this blog beyond just my local school district with the support of the MIE-Expert program. Pond A beta project by the MOE to network teachers and share resources. Currently no external invites are available and no public viewing is allowed but this is a very good tool for sharing. Facebook https: //www. facebook. com/troy. regan. smith School Website www. tearohacollege. school. nz Currently a Content Management System Made Simple Web Engine driven standalone site that we host onsite on a dedicated server. We are in the process of moving this to the O 365 public site collection and aim to have this live by term one 2015. Troy Smith