Dear Colleagues,

It is already two months into 2007 and it seems like yesterday that we started the new scholastic year. Yet a few more weeks and we will be preparing for the annuals.

In September we were thinking of launching an e-Learning programme for all teachers. We have been quite busy at DTiE and it is high time we started the ball rolling. As a preliminary exercise to fathom the response from teachers we are suggesting a video clip featuring Seymour Papert in Sydney. Our idea is to have as many teachers as possible entering into a discussion about major issues facing us teachers in our pursuit of professional development. In the book Mind Storms, Papert says that teachers must be allowed time to learn. A learner (our students) will learn best from professional learner as someone who wants to become a carpenter will look for a good carpenter.

If you care to join this initiative, please join the skola forum (http://skola.gov.mt/skola/home/), and let us all start Learning a living.

Cheers

Emmanuel

ps the video for the first teachers’ forum can be found at

http://homepage.mac.com/stager/iMovieTheater23.html. Watch Prof S. Papert's lecture. Comment on his ideas about education. Which points do you agree/disagree with? How does it all apply to your subject?

Please keep your comments brief.

Dear Colleagues,

I hope that school life has settled down after the initial ups and downs.

It is time to update our ICT teachers' database and we would appreciate your usual cooperation. Very shortly, you will be receiving a Teachers' Database Update Form by post which you can fill and send again by post.

Alternatively you can download the attached form which you can either print, and again send through the mail or fill in and send it electronically. In each case please make sure that the Teachers' Database Update Form reaches the DTiE by the end of October, 2006.

Best regards,

Emmanuel

Dear Colleagues,

I hope that school life has settled down after the initial ups and downs.

It is time to update our ICT teachers' database and we will appreciate your usual cooperation. Very shortly, you will be receiving a Teachers' Database Update Form by post which you can fill and send again by post. Alternatively you can download the attached form which you can either print and again send by through the mail or fill in and send it electronically. In each case please make sure that the Teachers' Database Update Form reaches the DTiE by the end of October, 2006.

Best regards,

Emmanuel

Dear Colleagues,

Welcome back to a new scholastic year. I hope you all had a good summer break. All good things eventually come to an end, giving way to new and challenging experiences. 2006 – 2007 is ahead of us with all its joys and difficulties.  I am sure that your enthusiasm will be a key element in overcoming difficulties but please remember that collaboration and sharing of ideas help to minimise or overcome most problems we will be facing this year.

I will be keeping you informed with new plans. Keep coming back for new info.

Best regards,

Emmanuel Zammit

A Train-The-Trainer project was initiated at the Department of Technology in Education (DTiE). Nine projects are now available to all Secondary schools. Please remember to acknowledge the authors when using their material.

Dear Colleagues,

It is already two months into 2007 and it seems like yesterday that we started the new scholastic year. Yet a few more weeks and we will be preparing for the annuals.

In September we were thinking of launching an e-Learning programme for all teachers. We have been quite busy at DTiE and it is high time we started the ball rolling. As a preliminary exercise to fathom the response from teachers we are suggesting a video clip featuring Seymour Papert in Sydney. Our idea is to have as many teachers as possible entering into a discussion about major issues facing us teachers in our pursuit of professional development. In the book Mind Storms, Papert says that teachers must be allowed time to learn. A learner (our students) will learn best from professional learner as someone who wants to become a carpenter will look for a good carpenter.

If you care to join this initiative, please join the skola forum (http://skola.gov.mt/skola/home/), and let us all start Learning a living.

Cheers

Emmanuel

ps the video for the first teachers’ forum can be found at http://homepage.mac.com/stager/iMovieTheater23.html.

Watch Prof S. Papert's lecture. Comment on his ideas about education. Which points do you agree/disagree with? How does it all apply to your subject?

Please keep your comments brief.

Dear Colleagues,

Please note that telephone number 21236952 is no longer operative. In case you need to contact me phone on my office number: 25982739.

The general number for the DTiE ICT Learning Centre is 25982805.

Secondary Schools support staff at the DTiE can be contacted on 25982146.

You will be shortly receiving the forms for the July and September ICT in-service courses. Booklets have already been sent to schools so please have a look.

Skola Portal The Skola portal has registered over 3,000,000 hits for the second consecutive month. Please keep encouraging your students to visit the site. New web site Watch out for our new site after Easter. Half Yearly Examinations Thanks to all teachers who have sent in a copy of the half yearly exam.

ICT Across the Curriculum In our efforts to encourage secondary schools to integrate the use of ICT across the curriculum, we are posting the following two items: 1 ICT across the curriculum - Pedagogy 2 Powerpoint Presentation to Heads of school   Charles Galea Education Officer carmel.galea@gov.mt

 

Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to our new ICT Sec Collaborative Website!

We appreciate your feedback. Many thanks goes to Emmanuel Zammit for the design, implementation and maintenance of this site. I hope you make full use of it. Please note that it is now open to students and parents.

Enjoy!

Attn: Form 3 Junior Lyceum ICT Teachers

Dear Colleagues,

Please advise students who applied for ECDL tests in Form 3 that these tests are being held by the Examination Branch as follows:

Module 3 - Word Processing - Tuesday 19th July, 2005

Module 7 - Information & Comm. - Thursday 21st July, 2005

Module 4 - Spreadsheets - Friday 22nd July, 2005.

It is strongly advised that sample papers/practice tests for each module are given and corrected before the end of the scholastic year. Please also emphasize to students the importance of revising and working out ECDL sample tests during the 3 weeks after their Annual examinations and before the ECDL tests in July.

Sample tests as provided by the ECDL Foundation and others such as those of  'CityCol' are to be made available to students before the end of the scholastic year. These can be downloaded form the ECDL site:

http://skola.gov.mt/ecdl

You should have received the forms at your schools for the In-Service 2005 "An Introduction to Creating ICT Teaching and Learning Resources". The course is compulsory for all ICT teachers. You are to choose ONE of the following options:

a) VB.Net (one day course to be held at the ICT Learning Centre Floriana) or

b) Web Quest (one day course to be held at the ICT Learning Centre Floriana) or

c) Front Page (one day course to be held at the ICT Learning Centre Floriana) or

d) Teaching ICT to Adults (two day course to be held at the Faculty of Education).

With the exception of Course (d), the other courses will be repeated in September 2005.

Please fill in the form attached to the note sent to your Heads of School and post them to me as soon as you can. Remember to give a second preference. Do not hesitate to contact me if you need further clarification.

Have a look at the "ICT Across the Curriculum" section by clicking the animation on the left. So far 20 schools have been made aware of this initiative during their Staff Development Meetings and/or School Development Plan seminars. Is your school one of the 20? If not, why not?

Dear Colleagues,

I hope you are now settling down for the new scholastic year and wish you a fruitful year in the best interests of our pupils.

We will soon be communicating to you our policies regarding Automated Assessment Testing (SSr) for scholastic year 2005/2006, so please watch this space and check your email. We will also be posting the ICT Teachers' Information sheet on our website so that you can fill in your time-tables etc.

It is advisable that you inform your students about the ECDL procedures and schedules so that they know exactly the course they are following and the timing of the tests.

Good Luck.

Dear Colleagues,

Welcome back to school after the deserved Summer Holidays. Hope you are rested and fresh for receiving your new students with the challenges and satisfactions that teaching ICT brings with it.

I strongly recommend that you visit our ICT Collaborative Website to keep up to date with ICT in the Secondary Sector. Again, please do not hesitate to share your recourses, ideas and comments with other teachers. Do have a good look at the ICTaC section of this site.

Prepare your schemes of work in consultation with the other ICT teachers in your schools and remember to keep a record of the lessons done and of assessment marks given. Planning and organising your lessons schedules at the start of the scholastic year will ease your work as you go along. Refer to the schedules in our site for curriculum considerations.

Good luck and do not hesistate to contuct me if you need help.

ICT Across The Curriculum (ICTaC) Training

The third session for the core groups in ICTaC Training is scheduled for the 13th, 14th and 15th June 2005 at the ICT Learning Centre, Floriana. Time: 8:30 to 12:30. We intend to finalize the six projects during this session.

Participating schools are: Maria Regina GJL, Carlo Diacono GJL, Sir Adrian Dingli GJL, M. A. Vassalli BJL, Ninu Cremona BJL and the Sacred Heart Seminary Gozo.

Mr. L. Zammit Director of DTiE attended the presentations of the work done so far and was impressed by the collaborative spirit shown by the participants and standards reached.

Holy Spirit, we thank You for the precious gift.

Charles Galea

Education Officer

carmel.galea@gov.mt

Dear Colleagues,

Now that the SSr Form Five tests are ready, each school is to work the ICT annual examination marks for 2006. May we remind you that :

1 Each student is to have his/her marks averaged from the two tests carried out during November and January/February

2 Students absent for any session get a zero for that particular session.

May we also remind you that the SSr results and the teacher’s assessment are two separate marks.

Dear Colleagues,

Now that the SSr Form Five tests are ready, each school is to work out the ICT annual examination marks for 2006. May we remind you that :

1 Each student is to have his/her marks averaged from the two tests carried out during November and January/February

2 Students absent for any session get a zero for that particular session.

May we also remind you that the SSr results and the teacher’s assessment are two separate marks.

Dear Colleagues,

Please sent by email an electronic copy of the Half Yearly ICT Paper as soon as possible to Mr Manwel Zammit on emanuel.p.zammit@educ.gov.mt These are urgently required for uploading to our Teachers' Collaborative Website.

Now is the time also to submit some resources for our website - just one from each ICT teachers will increase the resouces by over 70 !

May I also remind you to send copies of the ICT Departemental Meetings which should be regularly held since they are time-tabled. Of course, submit a copy for approval to your Head of School before sending them over.

Mr Charles Galea

Please fill in the ICT Teachers' Details Form found in the On-Line Form accessed from the Home Page of the Teachers' Collaborative Website at http://skola.gov.mt/ictsec by Friday 14th October 2005.

Do not forget to include your official email. In the case of new teachers please submit your private email and then we will make arrangements for supplying an official email account.

We will be asking you to submit ICT Time-tables at a later date.

Thank you

Dear colleagues,

Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of Mr L. Zammit (Director), Mr C. Galea (E.O), Subject Coordinators and the support team at DTiE, I wish you all a Blessed Christmas. We thank the Lord for what He has done for us and ask Him to be with us during the coming year.

Best regards

Emmanuel
ICT Sec Support

ps We have now collected all the SSr Form 5 results and we will be publishing some general comments about the tests. We are also looking into the difficulties which some of you had during SSr testing.

Dear Colleagues,

Please see that you keep an electronic copy of your Half Yearly ICT Examination Papers so that you can send them to us after the exam is held. These will be uploaded to our website.

May I encourage you to visit our collaborative website which is now being updated with students' notes. Excercises will soon follow.

Enjoy your holidays.

Now is the time to catch up on some reading regarding ICTaC and ICT in general. Browse this site - click on Teachers then follow ICT Across Curriculum.

Good luck.

Dear Colleagues,

May I thank you for you committment in teaching ICT in your schools and in the support many of you gave to your school administration and colleagues in the DTiE ICT Across the Curriculum initiative during the past scholastic year. You should have received the ICTaC brochure by now and it should serve as a document to show the way forward next year in your respective schools.

I wish you and your families Happy Holidays.

You should all have received postings for the In-service courses to be held in July and September. We tried to meet your first preferences as much as possible. In case you have not been informed for which topic and for which date you have been chosen, please contact as soon as possible Mr Dennis Zammit on 2598 2146.

School computer lab technicians will be receiving their Certificates next Tuesday 14th at MCAST by the Hon. Minister of Education. Congratulations to them for successfully finishing this course.

I wish good luck to your students for the coming ICT Annual Examinations. Of course their results will reflect the effort you have put throughout this scholastic year.

Dear Colleagues,

ICTaC Brochure

We have posted an ICTaC Brochure showing the position of the DTiE and the way forward in this initiative. You will also be receiving a copy of the brochure at home.

Annual Exams

Teachers of Form 4 are to correct the ICT Annual Paper out of 80%. The SSr Automated Test which is shown as a percentage is to be divided by 5 and the resulting mark added to the Annual Paper mark. If a student was absent for any part of the exam, the mark given is still to be out of 100 but the result can show that s/he was absent for that particular section.

Web Quest Example

Have a look at our website in the section STUDENTS - WEBQUESTS. Manuel Zammit has submitted a very good example of how a webquest can be constructively used across the curriculum. It can be shared with teachers of English, Maltese and Social Studies.

Happy holidays and see you in the In-service course.

F5 Conversion Course

The ECDL Conversion Course for students who have completed Form 5 will be starting this week in all centres. I strongly recommend that students are given sample tests after each module to prepare them for the tests to be held at a later date.

Remember to follow the schedules given during the meeting held on the 28th April 05. Do not hesitate to contact me if you need curricular clarifications.

Dear Colleagues,

Thank you for the information that you submitted via the electronic form.

The students' notes section is being updated and hopefully will be available to your students for revision purposes. You will find these notes a welcome supplement to your own work. Please remember that the notes can be reproduced provided Sir Adrian Dingli Junior Lyceum is credited.

I would like to thank Sir Adrian Dingli Junior Lyceum ICT teachers for giving me their permission to publish the notes on our web site.

Emmanuel Zammit
ICT Sec Support

Dear Colleagues,

A few ICT teachers have not yet submitted the Teachers' Information Sheet found on this site as requested earlier. Will these teachers please do so immediately as they are holding up the updating of our database?

Thank you.

Dear Colleagues,

Please fill in the ICT Teachers' Details Form found in the On-Line Form accessed from the Home Page of the Teachers' Collaborative Website at http://skola.gov./ictsec.

Do not forget to include your official email. In the case of new teachers please submit your private email and then we will make arrangements for supplying an official email account.

We will be asking you to submit ICT Time-tables at a later date.

Thank you.