TOWARDS THE FINISHING LINE -

- What will our teachers write as the eulogy to the Nga Tii Roa Contract once it has finished?

- Has it provided an immense challenge to thinking, pedagogy and community building skills?

- How have teachers been challenged to recognise the impact of ICTs into traditional teaching and learning models?

- Have schools been challenged to develop shared values and beliefs in each school?

Interesting questions as we move into our final year. If there are changes and they are to be sustained, the eulogy will hold consistent positive messages from those involved and these will be supported in teacher's present and future teaching and learning practices.

Our cluster hosted the Regional Dev Day yesterday. This is where the Facilitators and Directors of other ICT Contracts in the Central North Island area come together for a spot of PD themselves. Yesterday's focus was on "Sustainability". Paengaroa hosted the day brilliantly and I am grateful for all they did and the support received from Michele and Bruce, Mel and Vince, and everyone who attended.

If you attended the day and would like to comment and support further discussion, please click the comments link below this posting.
- You can log on as an anonymous poster if you don't want to go through the log on procedure, just adding your name to the bottom of the posting.

Yesterday, we all shared some of our Successful Strategies, and looked at
"What is a Learning Community"
"How do we develop it?"
"What are the barriers?" and
"What do we want to sustain?"
This culminated in the development of Action Plans - "Towards Sustainability"

My ponderings since have been on "Passionate Practitioners". This is something we all want to develop and want to continue beyond the contract. To do this we will need to analyse what it is that switches people on. Susan talked about 'initial reluctants' becoming desperate to learn as much as they can. What a wonderful thing to celebrate. We talked about how this occurred in one case. Wouldn't it be great if the formula could be bottled!

What ingredients make a person become a passionate practitioner through contract initiatives?

What makes a person turn from a reluctant or passive participant to a passionate seeker of understanding, developing their practice to impact on the learning needs of our digital generation?

What makes the paradigm shift from a supplier of information to a facilitator of student inquiry and understanding?