Tuesday, November 20, 2007

MySpace TheirSpace ..... a practice

This is a presentation I did for the parents and staff at Templestowe Heights Primary after working with Robyn Treyvaud from Cybersafe Kids. I have uploaded it as a trial run to see if if would work. Next I will do my "Dinosaur to Avatar" one, (see post below)

(Still waiting for it to be uploaded to Teachertube .... hhhmm a bit slow on the Mac ! Will pop back later today and add video)

I need to re-do it with music as obviously when i present it I TALK my way through it. Maybe after I do my PD day on GarageBAnd on Thursday I can put it to some original music rather than doing something illegal ! This presentation is based on the work of research of Robyn Treyvaud in her paper "Young people's use of the internet and related technologies" Seminar Series July 2007. Hopefully I will be working with Robyn to further cyber education throughout schools and the community.

Anyway off to Andersons Creek Primary School today .. apparently they have an excellent ICT program throughout the school, then helping Temp. Heights organise a Scope and Sequence and to integrate ICT into their programs for 2008.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

What a week ....

It must be almost December, there is so much happening all of a sudden. This week is full of exciting things in my cluster, and for me. Today (Tuesday ) I went to the VITTA conference There was a range of interesting people speaking, I was just one of huge number of presenters... actually i felt quite strange a "humanities and Legal Studies " teacher presenting at the Information Teachers Annual conference !!

After lunch I was fortunate to attend a session by Professor Stephen Heppell on "Building the revolution - starting at your own school" I must admit my ignorance ( I have been so busy writing job applications lately I hadn't done my homework and checked out who he was !) He was fabulous. Entertaining, humble, inspiring and so articulate about "how schooling and learning SHOULD be,, my only question is WHy isn't he talking to our Educational Leaders.... ???





I loved his 5 Things to try now





1. Get the KIDS to run a staff development day on what they think the teachers need to learn ( How kool is that !!)
2. Give kids a pre-paidmobile and let them TEXT in ideas, complaints, suggestions ... he went as far as to say let that replace the school council ( WHOAHHH )
3. Set up a learning research project for examle " how does sound and music change our learning"
4. Knock down some walls - Give the kids 5 sticky labels each, ( and staff in a different colour) and get them to choose a wall. How quickly you will discover where all the Bullies hang out !
5. Give the kids a STOP watch, get them to press stop when packing up and moving around the school and START when actualy working. (great way to prove the need for longer lessons to get through some deeper learning.

He also has a Phone Blog .... takes a picture and adds text and zaps it direct from the phone . Another idea i am definitely going to try. Imagine the instant publication of student observations, recordings, excursions.... loved it.

My session was called " From Dinosaur to Avatar - You can too" I discussed my journey from only ever using a data projector two years ago to what i do now. I think i got TWO party bookings ! Ballarat Grammar and maybe one other.
As soon as i adjust the timing on my slides with video clips, I will save it as a Podcast and put it on my blog.... i may even get some more party bookings