Kia ora tatou and happy new year

We are very much looking forward to working with the English, ESOL, and Literacy communities to ensure classroom teachers can network and collaborate easily and quickly find the resources they need.

Communities

During the holiday period we have been working to institute mailing lists for the communities. Our experience, and feedback from both our advisory group and the communities themselves, strongly suggests that email based discussion is the most convenient and engaging for teachers. Hence within the next few days we will be in touch with you about new communities, conducted via mailing lists for:

• Literacy
• Secondary Literacy
• Secondary English
• Primary ESOL
• Secondary ESOL
• ICTs in English

We will soon be able to introduce to you the new facilitators for these communities.

The shift to mailing lists does not mean that we are ignoring the huge potential for Web 2.0 tools for future collaboration – far from it. However right now we will use the tool which will best re-connect teachers and that is via mailing list. Once these communities are launched, we will be disestablishing the current web based communities but will inform everyone about each stage of the process.

Professional communities are also about sharing, so high on our agenda is the provision of Teacher Resource Exchanges for Literacy, Secondary Literacy, NCEA English and ESOL. We hope to have these available within the next few weeks.

Site Organisation

We are also currently working on the re-organisation of content of the sites to make resources and readings more visible and accessible from the home-pages. This will involve “flattening” the architecture so that what you want is usually only 2-4 clicks from the homepage. However this is not a simple process and the re-designed websites may not be available for some time. In the meantime if you need any help to navigate the current sites, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Looking Forward

The above represents just the beginning as we work with you to build vibrant, user-driven and supportive online professional communities for all primary and secondary teachers for whom English language is pivotal to the success of those they teach.

We wish you all a successful, happy year in your classrooms and online.

Dr Phil Coogan (pcoogan@cognition.co.nz ) - Project Director

Maria Lute (mlute@cognition.co.nz ) – Project Manager

Cognition Education for the NZ Ministry of Education.