Share, exchange, learn, benefit and publish.

We’ve now made it easy for you to share your online lessons and curriculum resources with fellow KnowledgeNET educators and the world! With one click you can publish your online lessons, classroom ideas and instructional resources to the Internet. All resources will be published to www.resources.knowledge.net.nz and also fully searchable through the KnowledgeNET search centre (Global Tab)

Why would I want to share my resources? It’s about teachers helping teachers, sharing with and learning from each other. Teachers give and share all day long. Let’s do the same online – digitally – so that we can all benefit – and breathe easier. And don't be afraid, you will always be acknowledged for your work and have control over the copyright licence.

Learn how to publish your KnowledgeNET resources to the Internet by reading this help forum.

Competition opens now!

Design a dynamic online lesson in KnowledgeNET and simply publish your resource to the Internet for your chance to win an iPod.

What makes a great digital lesson?

• Provoke - Does it use higher order thinking skills and open ended questions to challenge students’ thinking? Do you have a hook to engage your target audience?
• Provide – Does it use multimedia and links to quality online resources to support learning?
• Promote - Does it promote opportunities for collaboration, discussion and sharing

How to enter? By publishing your resource to the Internet you gain automatic entry into our competition. The competition closes on the 18th November 2011. The winner will be contacted and announced in our November Newsletter.

Portfolios for Teachers – Web Diary

KnowledgeNET has always had portfolio tools for students and we’re now pleased to announce the release of our portfolio tool for teachers – Web Diary. Check out some of the key features and benefits of the Web Diary.

• Ability for admin to set school wide topics for teacher to reflect on.
• Ability for teachers to set their own topics to reflect on such as personal teaching goals.
• Easily attach artefacts such as video, documents and images as evidence
• Tag entries to multiple topics 
• Invite specific colleagues to comment on entries in your web diary
• Get notified when you have been invited to comment on a colleagues entry or when somebody has commented on your entry

Learn how to set up and manage your Web Diary by reading this help forum.

KnowledgeNET and the Ariki project – Digital Portfolios for Principals

What is Ariki? It is an independent professional development programme for school principals run by Te Ariki Charitable Trust - A collaborative initiative from NZPF and NZEI Te Riu Roa.

The Ariki Project is a school leadership and school development initiative which seeks to demonstrate the connection between principal intentions and teacher behaviours and student outcomes. The processes and protocols offered are based around the notion of collecting evidence of practice which is then exposed to collaborative critique. Digital tools and resources for this work are available, online, and direct facilitation of the project is provided regionally by practicing principals.

The Ariki Project uses the KnowledgeNET Web Diary tool to capture evidence and gather feedback from peers.

If you wish to find out more about this project please visit http://www.arikiproject.ac.nz/

Exciting new templates added

We’ve added a range of new templates to the online text editor or as people in the business like to call it the “WYSIWYG editor”. Access all our templates by clicking the template button  in the toolbar when editing the content of a page.

Community Gal Pick: Cyber Lesson – Design digital lessons online using this colourful cyber lesson template. Learning intentions, success criteria, lesson sequence and reflective question prompts are headings included in template.

Renovated filing cabinet

Have you ever experienced the situation where you have been adding items to your class page from your class filing cabinet only to realise the file you want is stored in your personal filing cabinet? Arrrgh!!! We heard your frustration so we’ve now made it easy for you to navigate to other filing cabinets you have permission to view and retrieve documents.

You asked for it, now you’ve got it. You can now add subfolders to folders in your filing cabinet....whoohoo!

Community Gal Tip: Did you know you can drag folders from your filing cabinet into the links area to provide easy access to a group of documents stored in a folder.

Make it easy to find resources using meta-data

You now have the opportunity to attach meta-data to any page you create, any page you publish, or any site you review. Meta – data describes the characteristics of a resource and makes it easy to find resources. We have adopted the TKI standard for meta-data which gives you the ability to:

• Write a description about the resource/page.
• Link the resource/page to the curriculum, year or TKI levels
• Associate keywords to your resource.
• Link your resource to curriculum areas and strands. 
• Choose the resource type and the target audience e.g. students.

Each user in KnowledgeNET can set their very own TKI meta-data search and review preferences under tools > preferences.

Primary teachers will not need to search or review resources using NZQA levels and standards. You may prefer searching using TKI levels e.g. Lower Primary, Middle Primary as opposed to curriculum levels e.g. Level 1, Level 2 etc
Remember to configure your preferences once your site has been upgraded.

Goodbye EDNA

It’s time to say a sad farewell to the old dingo! The fabulous search engine EDNA has been decommissioned so you will no longer be able to access it from the KnowledgeNET search centre.

KnowledgeNET Administrator Checkpoint

Publishing to the Internet - Please follow the instructions outlined to ensure you give teacher’s the ability to publish to the Internet and set your school’s default copyright notice. Read this help forum to see how.

Parent Emailer - Have you checked out the parent emailer functionality? A quick and easy way to inform parents of their KnowledgeNET login credentials. Learn more about the parent email system.

Do you have interoperability with KnowledgeNET and your student management system?

• Make sure you give parents access to their child’s classes and groups – a new check box in Security Configuration “Caregivers can read their children’s groups”
• Check out our new parent email system - a quick and efficient way to inform caregivers of their login details. Read the help forum to learn how to send group emails to parents.
• Is your school running the latest version of WebSYNC version 2.03? We have a number of schools still using the old version which could be causing intermittent issues. If you are unsure please contact our help desk. Download WebSYNC 2.03 here.

In brief

The development team having been working hard over the last few months implementing requested enhancements and fixing bugs. To view a full list of bug fixes and enhancements please login to your KnowledgeNET > Help > Bugs and Enhancements.

Upgrade to KnowledgeNET V6.11.3.1 and get all these new features now!

Contact LMSsupport@watchdog.net.nz or phone 0508 WATCHDOG  (928 243)

Special note to those schools using Web Diaries with students – please tell support before the upgrade.

Remember to tell us what you think by commenting below and send us your suggestions!