Further to Derek Wenmoth’s earlier post about the desperate plight of schools in the Canterbury region following the earthquake, educators throughout New Zealand have swung into action to provide some temporary support to students, families, and schools.
Response to a plea for resources for students
A plea from GCSN project director, Carol Moffatt to put together some resources for students who currently do not have a school to attend, or who have left Christchurch to find some temporary accommodation away from the stress of the continuing aftershocks, has led to the development of the Shakeup School Wiki.
CORE Education facilitators quickly put together the skeleton of a wiki, and tapped into their networks of teachers, facilitators and other educators to populate the site.
The response has been overwhelming, and shows how “many hands make light work”, and “many heads are better than one”—the benefit of ‘crowd-sourcing’!
The place technology has played in this disaster response
As well as the impact of the people, the use of technology has also enabled very fast and very far-reaching support to take place. Whereas in the Napier Earthquake, people donated books to help refurbish local school libraries, in Christchurch, people from all around New Zealand, and probably beyond, have created a rapidly increasing resource through providing links to their regularly used sites.
They have also begun to plan units of inquiry or opened up their own school websites and LMS systems for others to use. Secondary schools, whose servers with all their courses are still out of action, are able to join with other secondaries to utilise their course work for students.
Need for future reflection
This response to emergency-need should later be reflected upon by all schools to really capitalise the opportunities that e-learning can provide for our students. This is their world, and increasingly will be the way they will work.
If 24 hours can create this type of resource, imagine what is possible given due time and our best educators’ input.
Want to view or contribute?
To view or contribute to the wiki visit http://shakeupschool.wikispaces.com/
Jill Hammonds
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Thanks for providing us with some future focused solutions Jill. The secret will be also in the quality of the resources uploaded. There is a real opportunity to provide resources that are high quality examples of inquiry and problem based approaches that are real for students. The danger is if the resources merely reinforce old style activities, word finds and busy work.
There are many possibilities for something positive to come from the earthquake – a pushing forward of educational collaboration and vision for what learning could be. It is great to see Core Education playing a role in creating the future of education. As usual they are leading the way.
I absolutely agree Cheryl. At present we are in the “bottled water and toilet paper” stage of providing resources. I am longing for a spare day to sit down and get into the real stuff that needs to follow. Unfortunately there are other items in the diary but hoping for some time next week.
I’d love to see teachers all around NZ who have had the benefits of the ICTPD cluster progamme dig deep and find those units of innovative work that we hear about on the NZ Curriculum site and other places. That’s what we need to be focusing on now that the first rush of effort has been made. You will see that I have posted a “coming soon” note in the inquiry areas. I’d love to see some people get in and start creating an inquiry that will support students to really find out what NZers are made of on the inside. How can we scaffold and yet allow for ownership and innovation to be unleashed in our students? That’s what I want to see next!
[…] Jill Hammonds of CORE Education is working with educators across New Zealand to upload a range of learning activities to a wiki for primary students – Shakeup School Wiki (See also the CORE blog, 15 March Towards a temporary virtual solution for schooling in canterbury) […]