This year teachers in the Lanyon Cluster of Schools have access to a wiki to document and share their work in the Lanyon Cluster Teaching and Learning projects. This is a Cluster initiative in which all teachers conduct action research in their classrooms.
Four times a year the teachers in the Lanyon Cluster meet. These meetings help us to fulfil our system professional learning requirements. The main idea of the meetings is to promote professional dialogue about our Cluster work. We focus on curriculum, pedagogy and assessment – teachers’ core work. Over the years we have used the meeting to discuss issues such as engagement, diversity and technology, system initiatives such as the ACT Curriculum Framework and the Quality Teaching model, Cluster work such as Learning by Design, assessment for learning and CQ rubrics, and national initiatives such as values education, Studies of Asia and sustainability.
Approximately 120 teachers attend these meetings; there are always about 20 or so absent and quite a few teachers attend feeling quite stressed because there is so much to do back at school which they see as more important and/or more pressing.
So engaging them in the meeting is always a major challenge. We try to vary it, eg collaborative planning for Peacemaker and Earthsaver Cluster days, annotating learning elements and this year we have used the Lanyon Cluster Teaching and Learning Projects.
There has been some amazing data collected which will enrich the change stories which teachers will be compiling in July. One great example isJen Dennehy’s data in her project, Losing Hearts and Minds: The Vietnam Conflict Fought at Home, as she incorporates written comments by students as well as you tube interviews to demonstrate knowledge and attitudes, and maps to show geographic knowledge.
The action research has encouraged some amazing reflective comments by teachers. My favourite is one by Veronica Rapp who is studying Japan and teaching year K-2 students about writing information reports in their project, Kaizen: Global Connections:
The journey so far has been humbling. I have had many a discussion with peers about the intensity of the learning element and the fact that we are expecting high quality intellectual engagement from students as young as 4. We have debated whether or not we are expecting too much and or trying to put too much into our days. I have been so inspired by my students to continue this journey. I did not expect the students to retain as much as they have or to be as engaged in the project as they are. This is going to be one amazing term. If the students are producing quality of work now, what will they produce at the end of the term? Never underestimate the power of your students they will give back what you give them.
And of course the student data contains their insightful comments too – sometimes even in Japanese as Christie’s Harvey is investigating students’ Japanese language and intercultural communication skills through Global Connections using Epals and Skype, a project in which Lanyon High students are emailing students in Niigata in Japan.
Teachers at our term 2 week 5 meeting learning about the wiki at a BarnRaising event.
It's all about learning 
Hi Rita,
Now I know that when my class worked together to start our wiki off they were participating in a “barn raising!”. Your post also made me think about the amazing work that so many of our teachers are doing – something that is really effectively documented in the wiki.
In fact, your post made me think about the capacity of a wiki to share and build knowledge and a learning community. It is quite remarkable and very under-utilised in schools, perhaps getting teachers involved in our wiki project might make more of them consider the wiki as a learning tool.
Rachael
Very insightful as usual, Rachael. As our new virtual learning environment, to be launched at the end of 2010, will inlcude wikis and blogs, I hoped this wiki would be a learning opportunity for our teachers.
Rita