Monitoring

= Monitoring = Once you have spent all this effort, you will want to see that things are actually happening in classrooms. There are a number of ways you can do this.

Asking teachers and students to keep a journal of some kind is a powerful way of hearing the stories from the classrooms. A model for this is the journal template that Sara Taylor developed. [| Reflective Journal.pdf]
 * Reflective journals/ blogs**

Or you could ask teachers to reflect online in a blog such as these examples from teachers in the Eastnet cluster eastnet Wiki [|Amanda's Blog] [|Lyndal's Blog] [|Lauren's Blog]

If you are using electronic forms of reflection, you have the added bonus of being able to use RSS to have feeds from all the sources coming into a single space to make it easier to see what people are adding. You can do this in tools like NetVibes, iGoogle, Google Reader and Bloglines.

This is a strategy from the professional development resource PLOT. Obviously, you would need release from you classroom to be able to do this. You develop criteria that you will be looking for when walking through classrooms in conjunction with the staff and then go for a tour through the rooms to see what is happening in relation to this criteria. You could be looking for something as simple as checking that computers being used as part of a lesson or be focusing on a more complex objective for use of ICT in the classroom that aligns with your strategic plan.
 * Classroom walkthroughs**

An excellent way to ensure things happen in classrooms is to ask teachers to bring something to share at a staff meeting. It doesn't suit all teachers to share to the whole group so you could do this in small groups to take off the pressure. Another approach is to go on a tour of classrooms after school where each teacher talks to things happening in their room.
 * Staffroom discussions and sharing/ classroom tours**

Teachers can be asked to add the results of what they have been working on to a shared resource with digital artifacts uploaded as well. An excellent example of this is from Whakarongo School where each syndicate adds the goals they were working on and examples of work by the children to a wiki page. I have pasted an example from their wiki underneath the link. http://mic-whakarongo.wikispaces.com/ Junior Classroom Example We are learning about what foods keep our brain switched on As part of our 'All Aboard' unit at the beginning of the year we explored what foods are brain foods. We took photos of ourselves against the bluescreen and and then took a photo of our lunchbook. We used Keynote and the alpha key to bluescreen ourselves in. Our teacher Mrs Pearce typed in the words.
 * Adding materials to an online community space**

You can put together surveys for teachers to complete where they are asked to reflect on their use of ICT in their classrooms. You can find out everything you need to know about using SurveyMonkey which is one online survey tool on my wiki at: http://learningweb2.wikispaces.com/Zoho Creator and Survey Monkey. You can make a survey in SurveyMonkey for free if it has 10 questions or less. The children can also be surveyed about their experiences with ICT in the classroom - they are always extremely honest!
 * Surveying**

If development of authentic uses of ICT is a priority school wide, many schools ask that teachers include an ICT related goal for their teacher appraisal. This helps when expecting teachers to provide evidence of what they have been doing in classrooms and for themselves professionally.
 * Links to teacher appraisals**

Also very effective is setting up a system of mentors around the school so that teachers support and give feedback to each other. One school who does this told me that they try to pair up two teachers who have different and therefore complimentary skills so that they both get something out of it eg an experienced classroom teacher with excellent management skills with a young teacher just getting started in the classroom that has excellent ICT skills.
 * Critical Friend**

Point England School does this and it is extremely effective. Teachers have to include a digital way of accessing the children's understanding of a topic into the unit and these digital artifacts are then shared through Knowledgenet at the school. It is a baseline expectation that all children will complete that activity and therefore teachers have to ensure it is happening in the classrooms. Schools that are bringing in e-portfolios such as Bucklands Beach Intermediate have the same kind of expectation.
 * Pairing student assessment with ICT**

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