This is the main Managed Learning Environment for PES. This environment has been approved by BOT and Management for the storing of and access to work related to Learning and Teaching. It is also our main communication and collaboration environment and allows for parent participation in student learning.
We do not expect student work to be housed anywhere in the cloud apart from the environments listed on this page, without express permission from the Pt England Management Team.
All staff need to be fully operational inside this domain to work at Pt England School.
The essential applications for day to work are: Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sites and Teacher Dashboard.
New staff need to be inducted into this environment, after having their account set up by Kent who is our Domain Administrator.
Trainee Teachers need a temporary account which Kent will set up in response to an email from the Associate Teacher.
Making Learning Visible
The Teacher Dashboard is the Management Layer for GAFE. This interface was designed and built by Hapara Inc. in partnership with the Pt England Design Team. It is now sold to and used by learning institutions internationally.
All Pt England Staff need to have an account and be conversant with the use of TD and use it to help manage and direct student learning as well as helping our learners to be Cybersmart.
Pt England parents access their children's work in the cloud via the Parent Portal module of TD.
Digital Development @ PES
Pt England School became a leading school in the successful implementation and embedding of digital tools for learning, precisely because we followed and continue to follow the Technology Process as outlined in the NZC and apply this to learning innovation understanding school delivered education as a complex set of interrelated technologies. The back story for this can be found in Russell Burt's Blog
This approach is based on thoughtful collaborative design that is pedagogically driven where the affordances of the technologies in question will:
increase cognitive engagement
increase acceleration for specified student achievement outcomes
enhance visible learning
promote the principles of Learn, Create, Share
enhance formative feedback & feed forward
promote and enhance learning collaborations
scale easily and be capable of being well scaffolded for learners, teachers and learning partners
have ease of deployment and management at a team/school level.
Now that Pt England School is a complete scaffolded digital learning environment, teachers are naturally beginning to explore new apps/sites/programmes for learning.
In order to keep to our kaupapa of having a 'lean, mean' set of very effective learning resources which deliver against the bullet points above, we ask that all staff submit their development ideas to our Development Design Group, that is currently chaired by Russell.
The membership of this group will change from time to time, but currently includes:
Hannah, Kent, Helen Squires, Toni, Rob
The best way to contact this group about your exciting new idea/app/site/resource is to email and then bug Russell/Kent if you did not get a response.
Russell, Kent & Toni can be your initial points of contact so you don't have to remember all the members of this group.
Please note:Â
This idea about us having a formal method for a conversation and vetting /guidance of innovation, applies just as much to current approved managed environments e.g. Teacher Dashboard, as much as it does to anything completely new. Some innovations to existing PES supported environments are clearly for the North American market and do not support Visible learning, Personalised learning, Learner Agency etc.
Classroom Desktop iMacs, otherwise known as 'Multimedia Machines'
Part of what has made our school digitally great, is retaining both the Creative Space 'Lab-Type' environment and the Classroom Desktop iMacs. The Creative Space Programme is to be integrated with the Class Programmes so that an aspect of the class thematic work is being created in both the classroom and the Creative Space. For this to occur the learners in the room need to be on rotational timetable so they all get an equitable amount of time doing these creative tasks and have a fair chance of getting their projects completed in the allotted time. We do not want to see the Classroom iMacs being used as 'defacto loaners' for children who have had a problem with their personal learning device.
We want to see high quality learner generated 'Multimedia' content appearing in kids blogs, in movies, on PENN and at other approved publishing points.
Google Sites
We use Sites to direct and lead student learning. The Sites are public and available to parents as well as our learners. Class Sites should not only record the direction and intent of learning but should lead the learning effectively to allow for differentiation of time, pace, space, place.
Obviously our learners are on a developmental continuum and the use of Sites is expected to be developmentally appropriate for the age and learning level of the learners. Our learners will be moving from being largely teacher dependent to becoming increasingly inter-dependent in this collaborative learning environment. The way Sites are used will reflect this journey from dependence in one time/location to interdependence and greater variation with respect to time, pace, space, place.
We all agree that we need to continue to explore and discuss the tension in this development and in the associated developments of independent time management versus collaboration and creativity versus compliance.
Google Drive/YouTube
Now that Students have unlimited space in Google Drive, Student Videos content can now be uploaded to Google Drive and from there embedded in Sites or Blogs. Videos in Drive use Youtube in the background without our students risking the exposure of the Youtube environment. Videos are now included in the Teacher Dashboard for every child, so that content children create can be uploaded and have the same oversight as the work in Google Docs. Please make this the first choice for video hosting/storage for our learners.
We no longer need Team by Team Youtube Channels unless teams have some special purpose they wish to achieve.
Please do not make your own Class or Team based Youtube Account. Ask first!
There is still too much risk management overhead associated with these accounts for us to have multiple Youtube channels without very clear management understanding
Please do not host children's video content in your own @ptengland account, or your private gmail account.
This creates liability for you and the school in the future
Vimeo
Pt England has Team Accounts for Vimeo and these are being discontinued now that Google Drive is so effective for hosting video.
Our MO from now on, is for all of Pt England to use Google Drive in the Pt England Domain
Please do not set up your own Vimeo or Class account for use at school.
Pt England is using Google Meets to hold learning conversations in other places. When meeting with MOE and other agencies we also use Teams and Zoom.
Because these activities make our school visible and audible in other places, teachers need to include this in their planning and include the school management in discussing desired outcomes along with helpful hints and possible pitfalls (rather like school trips). Russell, Hannah and Kent are great first people to talk with.
Blogs
We have an entire Google Site on this as well as pages on this site.