Reflections on the 2007 Catholic Education Parramatta Learnscope Project

What a journey!

From our first meeting with the teachers to discuss Learnscope; through workshops, and individual meetings; to sharing our progress at conferences and sessions with staff in the Diocese – it has been a steep, but enjoyable learning curve facilitating our first Learnscope Project.

IT VET teachers and trainers made up the core of our team, with VET cluster coordinators providing support. Pat Barrett managed the project, and Judy O’Connell also provided valuable guidance to the teachers and myself. We aimed to support projects that were true to the spirit of the Learnscope guidelines – work-based professional learning with a focus on the ‘end-user’, in our case the student learners.

The project has had two main impacts. Firstly, the work of the team (focused on student and teacher learning) and the conversations around our approach have become a part of a wider dialogue in the Diocese and beyond; and secondly the Project has supported other web 2.0 learning initiatives, both current (Focus on Learning – a school-based project initiative in our diocese) and planned (Teen Life and Second Life). This is very encouraging, as it confirms that the Project has not been operating in isolation but has instead created and supported networks that will be vital in the work of the Diocese, as our teachers and schools move toward supporting 21^st century learning.

Our outcomes include:

• students and teachers learning 21st century skills

• increased student engagement in learning

• teachers introducing web 2.0 technology to colleagues

• conversations occurring across schools

• new ongoing initiatives being created and supported (eg projects in Teen Life and Second Life) because of networks and learning in teams

Our impacts and outcomes are also captured in our team poster, and our thoughts mid-project were documented in this digital story.

Our team members and their students have also been reflecting on the year. Dean Groom has created a slideshare presentation, summarising his learning journey and has also been documenting his developing thinking, and concluding thoughts in his blog.

Some of Bob Cavill and Martin Lennon’s students speak about their learning journey with Web 2.0 tools in this video that Pat Barrett created, and David McMinn discussed his approach to web 2.0 in 2007 with Melinda Phillips on this podcast.

If you would like any more detail about any aspect of the project, please leave a comment below, on our wiki or contact us via our email addresses on our Learnscope wiki page.