21st Century Learning Conference Overview

• West Island School-Thurs 17th– Sat 19th February

Kellett will be sending 29 members of staff to the

3rd Hong Kong 21st Century Learning Conference

later this month.

Keynote speakers for the event are David Warlick

and Stephen Heppell (pictured). Renowned ex-

perts in their respective countries, Warlick and

Heppell are sure to make you think about your

everyday teaching and learning.

Congratulations to Katrina Hall who will be giving

a workshop at the conference. Having presented

at the previous 21st Learning Conference as well

as the recent HK Handheld & Mobile Learning

Festival, Katrina’s work with iPods and iPads has received huge interest from around the re-

gion.

Conference Registration opens at 5 p.m. on Thursday 17th. The first event will be Stephen Hep-

pell’s introductory keynote accompanied by “unlimited food and drink.”

Most education conferences these days are not complete without a “backchannel” and the

West Island event will be no exception. Most delegates will be using some kind of device that

keeps them in touch with other delegates throughout, via Twitter or via the conference Ning

which can be accessed at http://21clearninghk.ning.com. To get the most from the conference it

is recommended that you take your own device with you and that you register on the Ning to

participate in discussion before and after the event. Real time backchannel conferencing will

take place on Twitter using the hashtag #21CLHK If you’ve never used Twitter before this is

your chance to get started and make loads of new contacts who can help you in your profes-

sional development.

KEEPING YOU

UPDATED IN THE

TECHNOLOGY

RUSH @kellett

Professional Development

Teachers at the Primary Cam-

pus recently attended a staff

meeting looking at the use of

ActivInspire. One of the re-

quests from that meeting was

the need for ongoing training.

Promethean provide online

training and accreditation.

If you would like to undertake

the Level One course, or if you

would like more information,

please contact

Clive Dawes

NEWSLETTER

In an attempt to keep up with

the ever increasing pace of

change in technology, we

will be producing a regular

newsletter to try to help. The

publication will focus on

curriculum, strategy and

provide tips to help your

tech experience run a bit

more smoothly!

DATES

Fri 11th Feb

Parent Tech Coffee Morning

Games Technology (Primary

Campus)

Thurs 17th Feb-Sat 19th Feb

HK 21st Century Learning

Conference (West Island

School)

Fri 4th March-Sat 5th March

Apple Leadership Summit,

Singapore

Mon 7th March

iLearn Training Week

Fri 18th March

Parent Tech Coffee Morning

E-safety (Primary Campus)

Kellett Server Farm!

Whilst there are plenty of computers across

the two Kellett sites, did you know that most

of the server infrastructure is outside of the

school? The main Kellett servers are based at

a data centre in Kwai Fong (not to be con-

fused with Lan Kwai Fong!)

Behind the scenes in Kwai Fong , we have

recently migrated SIMS, email services, files

and server applications from our 3-year-old

servers onto two new larger servers and a

centralized storage system. Each of the serv-

ers has two quad-core processors and 24GB

memory. The centralized storage has robust

features such that even if two harddisks failed

at the same time, all systems can continue to

operate without any information loss.

We have also “virtualized” the servers so that

when we need to do maintenance work on

one machine, we can move critical services to

another machine with minimal interruptions to

the users. The virtualized platform also ena-

bles faster system recovery in the event of

failure.

Billy

Email Issues

Did you know that when sending out ex-

ternal emails from your school account,

emails destined for a foreign email server

(e.g. yahoo.co.uk) may take longer than

emails destined for a Hong Kong email

server (e.g. netvigator)?

This is because our local bandwidth is 20

times that of the international bandwidth.

International bandwidth is also more ex-

pensive. Think of bandwidth as highway

lanes.

As the international bandwidth is limited, if

there are a lot of international emails go-

ing out or if they contain large attach-

ments (e.g. high resolution photos), the

emails may queue up and delivery may be

delayed.

Please avoid sending out emails with

large attachments externally to keep

the school’s official email communi-

cations efficient and effective.

this issue

Tech update - what’s going on? P.1

Upcoming Dates P.1

Primary Laptop-go-round P.2

iUpdate P.3

Jonathan Ching P.3

HK 21st Century Learning P.4

ActivInspire P.4

I S S U E

F e b 2 0 1 1

01

@kellett Issue 01 Feb 2011

Stop Press! Stop Press! Stop Press!

The first day of the 21st Century Learning Conference involves a number of school

tours visiting a variety of educational settings throughout Hong Kong, including librar-

ies, and schools running 1:1 laptop progammes.

As part of the tour, a group of teachers from around the region will be visiting the Pri-

mary Campus on Thursday 17th to have a look around the school and find out what’s

going on in our classrooms.

This is a great opportunity for teachers to share their work with other professionals.

That the future of educa-

tion technology is mobile

is not in doubt. As

schools around the world

move towards increasing-

ly mobile environments,

the best way to service

the needs of learners re-

mains problematic.

Students at Kellett are extremely

lucky in that there is a wide

range of technology at their

disposal, but the core of our

provision remains our laptop

resource, with over 200 laptops

in use across the school.

Secondary students benefit

from having a one to one re-

source which allows a degree of

ownership and personalization

but also requires a responsibil-

ity to ensure the resource re-

mains in good working condi-

tion.

The opportunities afforded by

one to one are numerous, with

the ultimate goal of personal-

ized, anytime anywhere learning

coming a little closer.

Parent Technology Coffee Mornings

Before CNY we held our

first Parent Technology

Coffee Morning which

looked at Social Network-

ing, with a specific empha-

sis on Facebook and

YouTube.

Having set a target of 15 parents

as the Success Criteria within the

School Improvement Plan it was a

little overwhelming when nearly

60 indicated they would like to

attend!

As it was, an audience of 50

turned up for a lively discussion

on young people’s use of technol-

ogy. They were very receptive and

keen to know about some of the

tweaks within Facebook’s Privacy

Settings and how to implement

YouTube’s Safe Mode.

Along with the Secondary Cyber-

Safety Committee the Parent

Technology mornings are a key

element in ensuring that we move

forward as a community.

Technology isn’t going away; the

internet as we know it isn’t even

10,000 days old yet! What devel-

opments might we see in the next

10,000?

All Things “i” and “e”

JONATHAN CHING

Jonathan Ching has joined

us at the Shaukeiwan cam-

pus as full-time IT technical

support. Stephen will be

back at Pokfulam to help

with the IT support. Jona-

than is also newly married.

Congratulations!

In the primary school things are

a little different with laptop carts

dispersed around the school to

support learning. The theory

behind this is that should any

student need access to technol-

ogy they should be able to find

an appropriate resource.

However, the management of

The advantage for class teach-

ers will be that they can have

the laptops set up more or less

on a permanent basis.

They will, of course also be re-

sponsible for their general up-

keep, charging and storage,

similar if you like, to secondary

students with their one to one

devices. this expensive

resource is ex-

tremely time con-

suming and can

sometimes lead to

frustrations as

problems accessing

the network, or with students

not shutting machines down

correctly can negatively impact

upon learning.

In an effort to improve this situa-

tion it has been decided to try

something a little different in the

KS1 area of the school.

Laptops that were previously

held around the Gym or the Art

Room are being moved into the

P1 & P2 classrooms.

As we speak, the

laptops destined

for these class-

rooms are being

updated and made

ship-shape before

they are moved.

It will be nteresting to see how

this change in resourcing im-

pacts upon learning in KS1.

With many of our competitor

schools looking at extending

one to one Apple programmes

into upper Primary as well as

rolling out large numbers of

iPads and iTouch devices into

Early Years classrooms, the

focus is very much on mobile,

digital learning.

Clive

“The focus is very

much on mobile,

digital learning”

All Things “i”

All "i" equipment are currently undergoing updates

on their iOS and apps. The iOS released on Mon-

day, January 10 was causing some problems with

updating apps and a subsequent iOS release on

Monday 17 January seems to have corrected that

problem but only after a full restore was carried

out.

Apologies for the seemingly endless amount of

time the iTouches are blocked out for maintenance

and updates.

A warning though, the iPads are next in line for

maintenance.

All Things "E"

Equipment, particularly ICT Equipment, such as

iTouches, iPads, digital cameras, Flip Videos, digital

microphones are not being returned promptly. I

think it is fair to say that everyone wants to be able

to use equipment that is well-maintained and in per-

fect working order. Unfortunately, the magic wand

that will make things right in a second does not exist

(yet?) so your prompt return of any equipment bor-

rowed will ensure that the next person borrowing it

will have it reasonably charged and in working con-

dition. It will only take an ESA or a responsible stu-

dent/s 2 or 3 minutes to return equipment promptly

after a session.

Tessa

Freeman’s Technology Tip

Q: My general keyboard fluency is not

great. What can I do to speed up?

A: A great way to speed up your fluency is to learn

a few keyboard short-cuts. These can help you

because you no longer have to take time moving

your hands towards the mouse, allowing you to

keep both hands on the keyboard.

Keyboard short-cuts on a PC are accessed by

using the Ctrl key and on a Mac the Command

key.

Here are a few to get

you started;

Ctrl or Command plus;

A = Select All

C = Copy

V = Paste

Z = Undo

D = Delete

S = Save

P = Print

N = New

There are numerous

other combinations

which can help, but

these are the basic

ones.

From the other side of the Primary ICT office door

Primary Lap-top Go-Round

How to get the best out of our laptop

resource is a question that causes

much creasing of the brow!