Well since I wrote my initial posts a lot has changed.

• Three members of my faculty (myself included) have had a laptop since the last week of Term 3 in the initial T1 rollout.
• WAP have been installed in parts of the school – but as yet are not working
• We have commenced working through using laptops training as provided by DET (DET Only – I think!)
• The Maths staff have started on the online GeoGeBra training course as provided by DET. (DET Only)

However some things also haven’t changed. There is still a large element of fear (in my faculty and generally) of the introduction of laptops and the impact that this will have in our classrooms.  More often than not this fear is expressed as denial – “I’m not going to use laptops – they won’t help my teaching at all”, or as an excuse “I can’t start teaching with laptops until the department provides all teachers with one”.

While I agree that it certainly would be better if ALL staff had laptops before the students so as to facilitate skills acquisition and good will, it simply is not going to happen.  In fact Dianne Marshall explained the financial reasons at the North Coast ICT conference the other day – it is linked to the financial year spending of DET as the teacher laptops are funded through the state and not the Commonwealth DER project. As educators we NEVER have the perfect environment in which to perform our duties. Sure we should always aim for the best, but have to have coping mechanisms to deal with the actual reality. Simply refusing affects our students far more than attempting in less than perfect circumstances. – End of rant

The wireless install has been fraught with glitches. Some of the information that has been passed on to our network administrator and the Head of the ICT committee by the contractors is just wrong.  Thank you to the DET online communities and Tweeps for passing me the correct information. We needed to locate our new box approximately 20 metres from the Campus Distributor – and put in the adjustment paperwork prior to install. Conduit was run to enable the two boxes to be connected.  When the IBM guys turned up 3 weeks ago to hook them up, they only had the short leads, then proceeded to spend 3 hours arguing with the network administrator that the new box and the Campus distributor would communicate with each other wirelessly! Needless to say eventually they realised that this was not the case and left….. 3 weeks ago.

On a more positive note, like many schools CHHS had only 2 of 4 building distributors with optic fibre cabling, with one BD (that serves Maths & TAS) a run of over 110m of Cat 5.  However as part of our 7.5 million Capital Works Project the Maths faculty has just taken possession of 2 new classrooms – and the Cat 5 cable that supplied the BD was replaced with Optic Fibre!   I will post some pictures of our new classrooms later!

A lack of available LAN connections in our staff rooms means that the majority of T1 rollout users have not connected at school (only at home) and subsequently the copies of Windows are now past the 30 day trial – annoying but still functional. It will take considerable time before the teachers at my school are taking responsibility for their own PL in non-school hours, there is still a common opinion that this should all occur 9 – 3 and the amount of upskilling that is required WILL NOT be possible during these hours. I have already dedicated 1 Maths Faculty Meeting to the GeoGeBra introductory course.

But I do agree with Stu Hasic – DER NSW is an awesome accomplishment thus far and it has only just begun.

There are several things that must be considered regarding L4L before the actual planning of specifics can start. The most obvious is: when are our students actually going to get the laptops? Will all Year 9 teachers have laptops at this stage? Will there be network/internet access in the staffroom for those teachers with laptops? Will there be network/Internet access in all the Maths classrooms for the teachers? Will there be network/internet access in the classrooms for all the students? What access to projection devices will there be for teachers? How do I inspire a somewhat techno-phobic Mathematics staff that this is all a good idea?

This post will look these issues in some detail as they relate to the circumstances of my Department, but hopefully they will allow other people to reflect and solve issues prior to them becoming a hindrance to the actual implementation of L4L.

Laptop Rollout Issues

This information is taken from the L4L intranet site today.

Staff Rollout: July 22 laptops in initial rollout
Student Rollout: August

There are 6 Year 9 Mathematics classes that all run at the same time – thus my department would need 6 laptops from the initial rollout (7 if you include me – I take a Year 9 class once a fortnight). However I have heard rumours that there is also going to be a discretionary allocation of laptops to schools initially, and it would certainly be our intention to issue these to teaching staff to enable them to familiarise themselves. Lets hope that the teacher rollout is before the school holidays start on 10 July as this would allow staff to “play” with their machines over the holidays and for the staff day at the commencement of Term 3 to be dedicated to Professional Learning on the Laptop.

The end of August is Week 6 Term 3, so for curriculum planning this is when we will plan for first implementation of laptop based activities.

Network Connection Issues

The L4L programme incorporates a wireless network rollout to all learning spaces in every eligible NSW school – eventually. The wireless installer visited our school last week but as yet the L4L wireless rollout schedule has our date as TBC.  From everything I have read the initial wireless installation will be in one central space to be followed up by other spaces later (potentially by the start of Term 2, 2010). In our school the Mathematics department is definitely not central – so we won’t be in the first rollout. However there are bigger issues for us initially. Every classroom at our school has a network point – except for the 4 existing Mathematics classrooms. In fact the switch on the network that services our staffroom is at the end of a 105m length of CAT5 network cable, and is not reliable.

Fortunately there are currently 2 new Mathematics classrooms being constructed that will have network points (and IWB’s!) albeit running from the same switch. Our staffroom currently has 7 staff, 2 desktops, my personal laptop and 3 network points. Obviously we need to ensure that all staff have internet and network access in the staffroom as soon as they receive their laptops. My current thinking is that this may be possible through installing a wireless router on one of the network points as an interim measure. I am also considering installing a wireless access point in one of the new classrooms to service the other 4 classrooms for teacher use only.

As part of the wireless rollout it will be necessary to install fibre-optic cable to the switch servicing our office which will alleviate many of the reliability issues. But at this stage we can’t really count on student access until Term 2 2010. Hopefully the above measures will allow teacher access almost immediately

Projection Issues

Currently the Mathematics Department has 1 multimedia projector. At the commencement of Term 3 we will have two new classrooms fitted with Interactive Whiteboards (Yes I am excited!). There is access to one other projector in the school (but this will possibly be in high demand). In my experience it is almost impossible to teach students with Laptops (in most cases) without having some form of projection device. Short term is that I will try to purchase another projector with Departmental funds (and look at ways of ensuring 1in every room ASAP) and to organise a roster system for the rooms with IWB’s and the departmental projector.

Inspiring staff?

So far the best I have come up with is to believe in the L4L programme myself and to take every opportunity to spruke it! (Not quite a SHOUTY ad, though). I am hoping that involving all the Year 9 teachers in the process and supporting whatever Professional Learning needs they have will help.  The Mathematics staff at CHHS are very cautious in their approach to “new” things, until a real benefit is seen they are generally not implemented. Thus it is essential for all aspects of this process to have a real value. Hopefully my reflections on this blog will be of assistance to them as well.