Building a New "Paradigm"
The Perfect [education] Storm Part 4
 

 

 

The third storm:


Capability & Professional Development

Schools should have the capability of delivering a curriculum that provides the knowledge, capabilities and attitudes required by the 21st C learner. That educators and administrators will be provided with the necessary upskilling and resourcing to make this transformation successful.

This capability will include:

  • ICT Clusters: The grouping of schools into ICT clusters can dramatically accelerate the use of appropriate technologies to improve teaching and learning which will, over time, morph into teaching and learning clusters once each cluster has gained the necessary technology skills. Teaching and learning clusters should be able to access online professional development readings each month and take part in cluster and national discussions on these themes (thinking, information literacy, action research, inquiry learning . . .)

  • Digital Learning Objects: In a web based resourcing environment it is important that the resources that teachers present to students to interrogate, be robust and provide a high quality environment for students to work within. To that end the Department of Education/MoE need to work towards creating high quality Digital Learning Objects that will be made available to teachers.
    On a second front access an international federated search portal which presents to teachers a one-stop search of Digital Learning Objects is also essential.


A list of Digital learning Object Libraries/repositories

(these are not all strictly DLO's but they conform to the basic structure. Please check with each library as to the allowed uses of each element of each collection)

DLO Database Name
Year level
No. of DLO's
Description of contents
KidzOnline
4-13 25 online seminars The focus of these online video assisted seminars is on information and communication technology. They cover aspects such as digital awareness, the Internet, animation, videoconferencing, information literacy . . . They are free and are excellent courses.
COL Knowledge Finder 8-13 1 000 000 The COL knowledge finder indexes about one million documents on education from selected websites related to education and development.
Merlot
6-13 100 000 Merlot is one of the most established digital learning objects databases. Aimed primarily at tertiary level studies, there are nonetheless numerous digital objects here that would be suitable for some secondary school courses as well as upper primary.
MIT course database
12-13 700+ courses A free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners around the world. OCW supports MIT's mission to advance knowledge and education, and serve the world in the 21st century. It is true to MIT's values of excellence, innovation, and leadership.
LEA ICT learning Object database
(click on ICT Learning Objects)
0-8 370 A range of high quality non-web objects including excel, Word, Access, PowerPoint and Publisher that can be downloaded.
Alexandria (Careo) 0-13 4000 Campus Alberta Repository of Learning Objects: free membership that allows you to add objects to this repository. Science focus.
SMETE Digital Library
4-13 1500 (approx) Science, Math, Engineering, and Technology Education
Ilumina
9-13 1000 (approx) Ilumina is a digital library of sharable undergraduate teaching materials for chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics, and computer science. It is designed to quickly and accurately connect users with the educational resources they need. These resources range in type from highly granular objects such as individual images and video clips to entire courses.
The Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM)
0-13 39,064 The Gateway to Educational MaterialsSM is a Consortium effort to provide educators with quick and easy access to thousands of educational resources found on various federal, state, university, non-profit, and commercial Internet sites. GEM is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education.
Fathom
4-13 40 online courses (approx) A collection of online seminars (brilliant!) covering a wide range of topics including Victorian England, undersea animals, Shakespeare, African studies, the pyramids . . . .
Ibiblio

unstated 10.000(s) ?? Ibiblio.org averages 3 million information requests per day, and the contributor-maintained collections are expanding daily. Home to one of the largest "collections of collections" on the Internet, ibiblio.org is a database of freely available information, including software, music, literature, art, history, science, politics, and cultural studies.
FREE (Federal Resources for Educational Excellence)

0-13 24000+ Gateway to Educational Materials, which offers a database of more than 24,000 education resources across more than 400 web sites. This database is made possible by the Federally supported GEM Consortium, a group of non-federal organizations and Federal agencies that have developed an education-specific metadata profile, controlled vocabularies, and tools for using the profile and vocabularies.
Teachers@work

0-13 3500/7200 Reviews of web sites for educators
EOE Foundation

3000+ Java Applet Library. (Click on the Education object economy icon) fantastic collection of applets here but read the conditions of use.
Quia
0-13 2000+ Java applets Matching game Flashcards Concentration game Word search puzzle Battleship Challenge, board Columns activity Hangman game, Jumbled words, Ordered list activity, Picture perfect activity Pop-ups, Rags-to-riches game, Scavenger hunt, Cloze activity Patterns.
For $US49 you can create your own using their simple applications package
Pict(ure)s for learning

0-13 1000's (unstated) Pics4Learning is a copyright-friendly image library for teachers and students. The Pics4Learning collection consists of thousands of images that have been donated by students, teachers, and amateur photographers.
Free Foto

0-13 50 000 50 000 images that are royalty free for private non-commercial users

Library of Congress

0-13 1 000 000 The Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs Division is pleased to announce that between January and March 2004, it added thousands of catalog records and images to the Library's Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC), bringing the number of images in the catalog to nearly 1 million.
Discover: Visual Arts and Music

0-13 2500 Discover is a database of visual arts and music resources selected for use by New Zealand schools. Over 2,500 multimedia items are available and almost all are from National Library of New Zealand collections. Access to Discover is free.
Timeframes: NZ Images

0-13 30 000 More than 30,000 images from the Alexander Turnbull Library collections. Most are of early NZ life and people.
National Science Digital Library

0-13 100 000's (?) NSDL is a digital library of exemplary resource collections and services, organized in support of science education at all levels. Starting with a partnership of NSDL-funded projects, NSDL is emerging as a centre of innovation in digital libraries as applied to education, and a community centre for groups focused on digital-library-enabled science education.
Papers Past
(Newspapers)
5-13 400 000 Papers Past showcases selected 19th century New Zealand newspapers and periodicals. The site currently contains digital images of over 600,000 pages from 30 publications.
Educational Object Economy

3-12 3600 Welcome to the educational Java applets section. Please add new applets! This helps our community grow. Simply click the add button and fill out the short form. You can also edit your entry. To browse, click any subject below. Use the advanced search to select items by title, author, description, etc. Please review or comment on the applets.
NEEDS

11-12 ? NEEDS - The National Engineering Education Delivery System is a digital library of learning resources for engineering education. NEEDS provides web-based access to a database of learning resources where the user (whether they be learners or instructors) can search for, locate, download, and comment on resources to aid their learning or teaching process.
The Ranfurly Collection

0-13 4000 The Ranfurly Collection is an online collection of paintings and drawings, papers and photographs created by Lord Ranfurly, Governor of New Zealand from 1897 to 1904, and his entourage.
Paintings and drawings - two sketch books and seven separate watercolour paintings. Papers - 2,970 pages of letters, account books, diaries and scrapbooks. Photographs - four albums containing 450 photographs plus 24 separate family photographs
Education World

0-13 2000 Not actually a DLO collection but could be used as such without metadata. This is an excellent collection of knowledge items that can be utilised in unit creation. Read copyright information carefully to appreciate limitations on this content. Excellent content.
National Library of Australia Picture Library
0-13 67000
A tremendous collection of both historical and contemporary images covering all aspects of Australia : its people, places and history.