So I have been at this blogging thing for the last nine months and been at the trying to transform my school thing for about a year (well really 13 years but officially….). What a year it has been! We have gone from a non networked, the odd class doing the odd thing in ICT to a fully networked, IWB’d school with very concrete plans for computers in all P-9 class rooms two and a half labs for the 10-12’s plus Media room facilities, teachers using, blogs, wikis and talking about global collaborations etc. It has been very cool! We still have a long way to go though there are some staff who are really struggling to cope with change, but they are trying very hard and for that I am proud of them. There are still staff who are going to the labs once a term to look at the Internet and therefore ticking off the ICT ‘bit’ of their curriculum and thinking they have done enough. To conquer that will all take time. I am planning next year to sit with every staff member and to help them to set learning goals for themselves to achieve over the next year (just as we expect the students too! Radical hey…not!) then I can direct PD their way through out the year. I would like the teachers to learn about professional learning networks, sometimes being a small school can mean that you tend to stick to your own as your community becomes very small. I would also like to encourage the staff to become contributors themselves, make comments on others blogs, contribute to wikis etc for some reason I think that this is going to be the biggest learning curve of all!

Blog wise I am trying to work out how I would like this blog to appear! I think that trying to espouse my opinion and wax lyrical on educational philosophies is just not me! As much as I would like it to be and I have tried with some posts but basically failed dismally! I think I have worked out that if I keep it true to myself that would probably be the best. (I sound like Anne of Green Gables realizing that she needs to write about Avonliegh and not fanciful romances!! ) so I am going to try to make it about what I am doing and a sounding board for what we are researching in regards to 21st century learning and anything that i see that is interesting. I think that sums up me in a nutshell! I am not a natural writer and one day I would like to take this blog into the podcasting world as I am more of a speaker than a writer, however finding a qiet spot to do that at this point in time maybe more of a challenge.

So what is on the agenda at the moment? Well there is LMS for my school which at the moment I am favoring eduKate, headsets for the whole school, actually getting us officially registered for the ICDL (this has been a ridiculous nightmare admin wise which hopefully will be fixed soon), policy writing for a student email policy, planning next years PD topics idea so far are delicious, RSS and Google reader, Google Docs (or Adobe Buzzword which looks cool), and some basic movie editing seeing as we will hopefully be getting some more Flips next year. As well as the standard IWB training. Am also working on my next newsletter and how to get it viewed in html by a very basic web based email reader. All of that as well as reports, timetable and VASS. Very busy at the moment!! So had best be off and whip those teachers into line (all the way from home!!) as reports are due today!

So in recent days I have been researching the concept of a Learning Management System for my school. It has been an interesting journey! I was first introduced to the concept of a learning management system last year when my Principal asked if I had heard about a program called Moodle which at that time I had not. She mentioned that Northern Beaches Christian College had Moodle running and were doing some pretty good things on a low budget and would I like to go and see it? I said yes and along with another colleague to visit NBCS to see what they were doing with Moodle and ICT intgration. They had some very innovative ideas such as the HSC online and calling the primary version of Moodle for their school P.E.T.E (Primary Education through e learning). They have obviously spent a lot of time with Moodle and getting working and looking good and been working on some quite innovative ideas such the HSC online and beyond borders and blended learning. But we did not see a large amount of evidence of 21st century learning and pedagogical change.

Progress forward 4 months and one of our local schools has done a similar thing to Northern Beaches with a slick Moodle install but no real pedagogical change.

Progress forward another 6months to a visit to a well known private school to view their install of eduKate. Not all teachers were using the LMS but their was evidence of some innovative teaching practises being encouraged however still lacking a true 21st century skills focus.

Progress forward another 2 weeks and a conversation at the most recent blogger’s feast with a university employee who was talking about all the different aspects of Learning Management Systems that they have installed but bemoaning the fact that the pedagogy of teaching at a uni level i.e. lecture/tutorial had not really changed.

Progress to the next day to a visit made to a school that again has a very good Moodle install that they have spent 18 months developing but again acknowledging that they need someone to change they way teachers teach, and in fact they are advertising for a Director of Learning Technologies to answer this need.

So where is this leading me? I have come to the conclusion that the most important thing that transforms teaching and learning is not a learning management system. It is a focus on good pedagogy, project based learning, 21st century skills, higher order thinking and pwoerful learning. It is about using techonology as part of the learning environment. A learning management system does in no way replace or answer any of these thing. It is merely a tool to help organise the resources for a class and perhaps (depending on the type you choose) a method for delivering some web 2.0 type tools to the classroom. So as we go about the process of selecting a LMS for our school I must remeber that it is not the panacea of all ills!