Date: Monday 15th of August 2011

Venue: National Library of New Zealand

Purpose: To connect online schools face to face. For teachers and children to work collaboratively, for invited guests to network, to launch a New Zealand author on Superclubsplus and to raise global awareness about the International year of forest and birds.

On Monday the 15th of August 5 Auckland schools who have been using Superclubsplus for teaching and learning gathered together to meet face to face. One school joined the session via skype. The five Auckland schools were St Ignatius, Rosebank School, Blockhouse Bay Intermediate and Newmarket School. Raumati came in via skype. Each school has a very different background. Our school Newmarket is an inner city small school.

The children and teachers in these schools have been using Superclubsplus for teaching and learning and how to be safe and respectful online.

Most of the teachers and invited guests involved used twitter to communicate about the upcoming event. The Hot tags chosen were #scplushotseat We also used Titanpad to share information and wikipages to coordinate timetables and a place to keep information together.

For the Hot Seat project, schools were chosen who proved that they have been actively working with their children about using the internet safely. So the teachers and children who came are already active users of Superclubsplus.

The school came together to be involved in an author Hot seat project where we launched a New Zealand illustrator and author onto Superclubsplus. Sandra Morris was in the Hot seat. We chose Sandra as this is the UNESCO International year of Forest and Birds. Sandra’s specialty is New Zealand birds. We used real time technology for learning such as skype, email and forum. We took lots of photos and the children are writing an online article about their experiences.

This link will give you highlights about the schools, teachers and invited quests involved. http://newmarketenviro.wikispaces.com/scp_highlights

Each teacher was given a designated task to do to help ensure the smooth running of the event.

After the event a picassa folder was set up to put in any photos. We look forward to the children’s articles.