Contents

• Teaching and Learning Guides
• Subject name
• Achievement Standards Update
• Achievement Standards Consultation
• General

Hello there

Second letter from the President for the year – and “Happy Birthday NZACDITT” on 30 March. Yes… we have passed the first year milestone.

Teaching and Learning Guides

The writing group for this task met last term, after a preliminary meeting of all the association presidents involved in Technology in early March. At the pilot meeting, guidelines were established and good progress was made at the subsequent meeting of the writing panel. The panel for Digital Technologies consists of Joyce Speedy for Digital Information, Blair McHugh for Digital Media, Max Ross for Digital Infrastructure, Tim Bell for Programming and Computer Science, Bill Collis for Electronics and Rosanne Donald for both Digital Media and Technology. Each writer brings their own particular expertise to the table, but the group works as a whole for Digital Technologies. If you have any ideas, requests, suggestions as to what should be in the TLG, please direct them to me and I will forward on to the relevant person. They are meeting again in the second week of term 2.

“Subject” Name

The Wednesday before Easter saw me attending a meeting in Wellington, with the other association presidents and a huge range of folk representing a number of sectors that have a stake in Technology. There were folk from Universities, NZICT, NZCS, PPTA, SPANZ, DINZ, NZQA, Polytechs, Design Institutes and others. This was a historic meeting, with the purpose of coming to some agreement about the naming of the ‘sub-fields’ under Technology. After a lot of robust discussion, names for the broad categories were agreed upon – which you will see in the AS. We are Digital Technologies, and both NZCS and NZICT  CEOs were happy to accept this. It was felt that the wider sector could cope with a broad definition at this stage, rather than five new names for each of our strands. It was also felt that we would have more traction with the Universities and understanding by the workforce and recruitment agencies if we were a bigger, stronger group. However, we have not lost sight of the need to allow full courses in each of the strands under DT.

Achievement Standards Update

Wow! The last week of the April holidays was full on with writers from all subjects meeting in the Westpac centre. Technology was finalising level 1 Achievement Standards and starting on Level 2, while the other subjects were finalising level 2 standards and starting on level 3. It appeared as if everyone who was anyone who was connected with NZQA and MOE standards alignment was there. I want to acknowledge the positive support of the Technology management team who have worked hard, and with us, to help us get what we would like. Sometimes their hands were tied because of other agencies and outside factors. Outcomes:

1. The draft level 1 Achievement standards for Technology (all 42 of them) will be released at the end of next week for consultation.
2. All the AS for Digital Technologies (2 for Digital Information, 2 for Digital Media, 3 for Programming and Computer Science, 3 for Electronics and 1 for Digital Infrastructure) passed the criteria from the NZQA Overview Writing Group, apart from a second one for Digital Infrastructure. However, this AS will still be submitted for consultation on an unofficial basis.
3. The naming of the AS has a fairly rigorous pattern, (determined by the framework not the Technology group), but the name Digital Technologies should appear in the domain section. If this is blank in the draft standard, it is because the NZQA folk have not had enough time next week to do all the editing. However the registration will have the name. Please request this in your feedback from the consultation.
4. A consistency of language was required from the NZQA OWG; please keep this in mind when making recommendations.
5. The mode of assessment is important, and has issues for both us and the NZQA. For a student to have course endorsement, they need to have 14 credits, of which at least three are to be internal and three to be external. To allow teachers to design courses that they would like for their students, and to allow for this criteria, at least 25% of the AS in Technology (as a whole) are external. The issue for NZQA is (i) is it the appropriate mode of assessment for the student outcome? (ii)  the sheer logistics of marking portfolios in a six-week period and (iii) limited resources and the recruiting of sufficiently expert markers. For DT, the writers hope that we have satisfied the teacher and student criteria, and are hopeful that NZQA will allow what we have recommended. However, again this is something that needs to be looked at by you very carefully and commented on in the consultation.
6. There are current discussions with the MOE and the Vice-chancellors of the Universities about UE and how it will look in 2013. There are issues across all subjects and learning areas, and there are definite changes that will occur, but what they are, no-one knows as yet. We cannot do anything about scholarships either at the moment, as that is still being debated at a number of higher levels. However, while in Wellington, I also attended a seminar that included representatives from all the Universities across NZ, chaired by Tim Bell, and am pleased to say that there is a volunteer rep from each University that can be contacted for assistance in Professional development, especially in the area of programming and Computer Science. For example, Otago Uni is running a video conference course, starting in a few weeks time, one night a week for however long it takes to teach interested folk the language of Python. This is available to anyone in the country. It was also good to see how Tim and Peter are informing the University Computer Science community of the changes currently happening in schools, and alerting them to the knowledge and skills students will have when they get to tertiary in 2014. I am amazed and grateful for the positive response from so many people to help us get our subject soundly grounded in the secondary sector.
7. There is a period of grace for the implementation of the new AS at each level. Ie You do not have to use the level 1 AS in 2011 – but can still keep your existing assessments if you want to wait. You do not have to use the new level 2 AS in 2012 or the level 3 AS in 2013 (so I understand!). There is a year of grace for each level of implementation.

Achievement Standard Consultation

It is essential that you read very carefully through the Achievement Standards and determine if:

1. You understand what is required to credential your students’ learning for this topic
2. That you will be able to achieve the necessary teaching, learning and assessment in the time allocated working on a rule of thumb of 1 credit = 10 hours of notional teaching.
3. That content for some AS may be taught as part of a larger project, and so the time factor may overlap a bit (for example, the design of an algorithm and the writing of a program based on that algorithm would be taught as a whole)
4. Please read the rationale document to understand the intent and the intense discussion and thinking that went into these AS.
5. Determine if you think you could write an assessment task for the AS
6. What course could you offer students, that could be credentialed by using a range of AS – which could come from any part of Technology or even other subjects.
7. Remember you don’t have to assess everything you would like to teach.
8. Please submit all your recommendations following the correct process, and feel free to take part in the general discussions that will take place on this listserv.

And… if you like what you see, that would also be good to hear!

General

1.The committee will be having a ‘face-to-face’ meeting in early May. Now that we are a year old, we would like to develop a common vision for our community. The committee have some ideas, but would like to hear what your ideas are. To that end, please submit a maximum of three points you would like to see in a vision statement. All suggestions will be considered, and it would be great to have them before the end of April.
2. Please earmark some PD budget to be able to attend the Symposium and AGM in November. More details to follow.
3. What professional learning would you like to see happening for you?

I repeat my comments from the first letter this year: Remember, ‘baby steps’ with planning your courses for next year. Look at your current Year 10s, and think what you would like to teach. Don’t try and change it all. Little incremental changes are good. There is so much change going on with new NZ curriculum, alignment of standards and day-to-day teaching – look after yourselves – you are the most important resource our students have.
Best wishes for the second (and long!) term
Vilna