Introduction

This blog is to help me keep track of my ideas and notes and discussions while I undertake studies in the Graduate Diploma in applied eLearning, the paper Evaluation of eLearning for Best Practice.

Who am I?
I am Gerard (sorry no last name being posted as students google me)

Where do I work?
I work at Papatoetoe High School in Auckland, a 7-13 Secondary School. I teach year 12 and 13 computer studies, year 13 web design and a couple of year 9 classes in ICT.

Your Interest in evaluation and what I know already.
I suppose this is where the course is going to help me, I am constantly evaluating(self reflection and talking to my colleagues) my classroom practice on what works and what doesn't work. As a department we look at the schemes and where the students are going and what the course offers the students each year. This has now been made harder by NZQA with the lockdown on what Standards you offer as these cannot be added to or changed after a certain period in the year. I also evaluate resources I use in my subjects, what needs to be done to implement them, will the students understand them and will it help them with their understanding. At the end, was that a good resource to use.
Example
Last year I used a book as a resource for a unit standard to help the students create different types of lego robots and to help program these robots to battle each other. The book had wonderful examples of battle bots that the students enjoyed building. The problem was that the programming in the books was above the students level of understanding. This year I am looking at including the designs for the students to build, but will incorporate a different software program to control the bots, there will be more skills taught to teach the programming and the book will be used as a guide to provide specifications on what is required in the program to control the bots in battle.

What I hope to get out of the course?
At the moment I don't really know what I will get out of the course, this is the first time I have done some study since leaving my Bachelors in IT and my teaching diploma. I am an open book with some pages missing at the moment due to I haven't been able to find a course that interests me. That is why when a mate took some papers in the graduate diploma course a couple of years ago I found something of interest to me and will help with my future path.

Ideas for an evaluation project?
Can I get back to you on this one, this is my first day...

Questions?
What tag or label do I put down for this?