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Activate

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Chaos

Community Technicians

Tuhoe Digital Heritage Project

ACTIVate

Auckland and Southland schools will soon be having classes together thanks to new interactive whiteboard (IWB) technology.

Five Auckland and 10 Southland schools and colleges will be piloting the use of the technology to aid and enhance cooperative, distance and inquiry-based learning. A comprehensive and relevant teaching resource will also be created by teachers during the project.

Cooperative and inquiry-based learning complement each other, and IWBs will help facilitate this. Guided properly, inquiry-based learning allows students to be architects of their own learning and cooperative learning allows for diversity and the provision of larger teaching resource.

The IWBs will be used to provide greater interaction with teaching materials, and as an interactive portal for web-based video conferencing linking participating schools via Macromedia Breeze software. Classes ‘dial up’ and interact through a PC-based conference client and the images are displayed on the interactive whiteboard. Microphones and speakers allow for audio communication.

Resources such as electronic flip-charts, which can be interactive or ‘locked’, will be onscreen and a teacher or teachers will conduct the lesson via the flip chart.

Classes with webcam can have their images projected to other participants, and the split screens allow for several images at one time.

Multiple classes from different schools can participate in the lesson. Guest speakers with access to IWBs and software can also attend ‘classes’.

Teachers have been given training and will receive ongoing technical and academic support from Envision Presentations and Massey University.

	Minister congratulates Project ACTIVate Project Activate participants were personally congratulated by the Education Minister, the Hon Steve Maharey, for having the project’s first year findings into the use of Promeathean Interactive Whiteboards successfully published in the academic journal, Computers in New Zealand Schools.
	Project ACTIVate case studies to be published in an academic journal The 14 Auckland and Southland schools participating in Project ACTIVate have recently submitted their findings on Interactive Whiteboards (IWB) for publication in the November issue of the academic journal, Computers in New Zealand Schools.
	IWB encourages collaborative learning at Viscount School A commitment to learn and a commitment to help others learn are the tenets that guide students at Mangere’s Viscount School, and for one class the fulfilment of the second tenet has become easier with the arrival of an Interactive Whiteboard (IWB).
	Resource sharing between schools attracts interest in Hong Kong Principal of St Mary’s School on Auckland’s North Shore, Paul Engles, recently presented a paper on Project ACTIVate at the inaugural Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) Conference in Hong Kong.
	Prime Minister launches Project ACTIVate The Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Helen Clark launched the latest DigiOps initiative, Project ACTIVate, at St Mary’s School in Northcote, Auckland.

Re Rawhiti Roa student using an IWB

A student from TKKM o Te Rawhiti Roa School using an IWB.