A great project

Simon Collins at NZ Herald reports:

A world-first “e-learning” project which is transforming children’s lives in some of Auckland’s poorest suburbs is looking for partners to expand throughout the country next year.

Children as young as 5 in nine schools in the Tamaki-Glen Innes area are publishing their work on the internet and attracting feedback from around the world – with extraordinary effects on their motivation.

“It’s so affirming,” says project manager Dorothy Burt.

Two-thirds of the students are from Pasifika families where often the main language at home is not English. Another quarter are Maori.

They start school two years behind the national average but at Pt England School, the first to use the new technology, they now catch up with the average in reading and maths by Year 5.

That’s excellent.

The trust has been given $1.2 million from the ASB Community Trust to develop the infrastructure to replicate the project, and aims to have “kit” ready for other areas by the end of this year.

The package is not just about hardware. Mrs Burt and her husband, Pt England principal Russell Burt, stress that the starting point is a completely different style of learning.

Instead of learning passively by listening to a teacher speaking to the whole class, children in the nine Tamaki schools are active participants in a process called “learn, create, share”.

“We learn from the internet using online programs such as Maths-Whizz,” said Kaycee Hotu, a 10-year-old at Pt England School.

“We each have a Google account to create documents. We share these with our teacher via the teacher dashboard.”

This is so important – it is not the technology – it is how it is used.

The teacher “dashboard”, developed by local software start-up firm Hapara, allows the teachers to monitor all work from their own computers. All students in the cluster from Year 5 upwards have their own personal “netbook” computers – the cheapest possible device that is capable of online access at a cost parents can afford.

Trialling various payment systems has found that in Tamaki, where the average income is just $19,000 a year, the affordable cost is $3.50 a week for four years. At that price, every family has taken up the offer and about 85 per cent pay on time every week.

A wireless network is being built by Fusion Networks to give home internet access to all 2500 pupils living between West Tamaki Rd and the Panmure bridge by the end of this year, provided that a sponsor can be finalised.

Wow that is impressive.

SELF-MOTIVATION

Learn
A teacher assigned Year 8 students to watch Mt Roskill Grammar student Joshua Iosefo’s inspirational speech “Brown Brother” on YouTube.

Create
Students wrote reviews of the speech, which were checked by their teacher.

Share
They published their reviews on their online blogs. Joshua’s mother, Fetaui Iosefo, came across them and posted a comment saying “how very proud I am of you all for showing great understanding of Joshua Iosefo’s ‘spoken word’.”

The video referenced above is also pretty inspiring. I’ve embedded it below.