6th October 2008

 

To Whom It May Concern

 

Jan Clewett joined Oakey State High School secondary education and Vocational Education all on the same day in 2006. She has been on an incredibly steep learning curve dealing with adolescents, a new way of teaching and a new set of skills to relate with students and her colleagues.

Jan has taken our Business Studies Department and has raised the effectiveness of leaving in the following three subjects from low level to a very high standard:

• 9/10 Business Principles
• 11 Business Information and Communication Technology
• 12 Business and Computer Studies (2006)

Over the past few years Jan has devoted a lot of her own time and energy to developing her ICT skills to the point where she is recognized as one of the ICT Leaders within the school and district. Because of this she was asked to be a district facilitator and moderator for the ICT Pedagogical Licence and a Smart Classroom Mentor.

She has used technology as the magical tool to make learning, "just in time" relevant, self-paced and rewarding for students who have a wide range of abilities, technology skills and interests. She has done this, not through teaching skills in isolation, but by integrating this all into the online units she has developed for her students. The webquest “Lorikeet Lodge” put into practice unprecedented engagement in learning with hands on practical learning in business and information technology. For this she received a Highly Commended award through the Learning Place and received a Darling Downs Smart Classroom Award in 2007.

The Workplace Health and Safety unit for Vocational Education and Training, shows her professional enthusiasm to transform a mundane subject into and engaging learning experience for her students. Her willingness to share her materials with colleagues inspires others to integrate ICT into their teaching practice. For this unit Jan involved the students in real life opportunities through the use of synchronous (chat and overseas teleconference) and asynchronous online communication tools (discussion board, blogs, wikis) that she built into the unit.

Jan strives to improve her teaching skills and pedagogy through further study. She continues to study a Masters in Education Technology degree at USQ and following achieving her Pedagogical Licence in 2007, she trained as an Accredited Facilitator for the ICTPL and completed the Mentoring Online Course in order to further her online facilitation skills. This enabled her to become an online facilitator for the Curriculum Integration Course. Her commitment to professional development demonstrates the value she places in extending her knowledge, skills and teaching practices towards the integral use of ICT in and educational setting.

As an active member of the Oakey State High School ICT committee, she has maintained and provided a supportive online environment in blackboard to encourage staff to develop and refine ICT skills and pedagogy. She provides quality resources for staff to evaluate and integrate into their classroom. In doing so she has built a strong, professional network in the school and this networking and communication has helped her make such great progress in her area.

She has also undertaken with enthusiasm a coaching and mentoring role within the school amongst her colleagues. This semester Jan presented the SCPD Framework at a staff meeting. She recognises the need for staff to become qualified to ICT Certificate and ICT Pedagogical Licence level. At present she is facilitating individual and small groups of teachers to improve their ICT skills and teaching pedagogy to achieve these qualifications. Jan contributes to ICT school planning and has collaborated with the librarian/IT teacher, technicians, administration and teaching staff, to assist in completing the School ICT Census. At present she is in the process of developing and gathering required documentation for the National Schools computer grant.

I believe Jan Clewett is a great asset to our professional community. I fully endorse the quality and professionalism of her application for the ICT Pedagogical Licence Advanced.

Yours sincerely,

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CG McNally
Principal Oakey State High School

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