Fellow travellers ... my friend would say

One of my friends used to refer me to as a "fellow traveller", it is an expression I have come to appreciate as I meet many other teachers who fit into this category nicely. Joseph from Ivanhoe Grammar Plenty campus is one such person. We have met only briefly a few times but we think alike. Actually blogging has proved that you do not even need to meet a 'fellow traveller', you communicate with people who you know are just like yourself.
Joseph invited me to the Plenty Campus on Friday 25th May to take part in a SKYPE with
Tom Barrett Tom is currently an assistant headteacher and Year 6 teacher at Priestsic Primary and Nursery School in Nottinghamshire, England. He was a finalist in the Best Wiki awards for Edubloggers in 2006. He talked to us about the many ways you can use Google Earth in the classroom. This has huge potential not realised by most teachers. He also showed us a site that records where visitors to your blog have come from. Many people visit and read blogs but do not comment, a little disturbing for the kids who look forward to seeing if anyone has been visiting them. digital point shows where 'visitors' have come from. It looks like this in a blog. ... hmm yes I know no-one visits mine !!! but you can see how this would be interesting for kids and it spring boards discussion and interest about other places in the world.

Whilst at the Skype I met two ladies from VITTA and they invited me to speak at a mini conference being held at Ivanhoe Grammar Ridgeway Campus in August. I will be speaking about Teachertube and Mojiti. Quite amusing when you think that two years ago i didn't even know how to use the video camera !!. The conference is being held in conjunction with a visit by Will Richardson. i have added his blog to "blogs I read. Anyway keep a look out for their conference details it sounds really interesting.

wonderment and awe !!

I have been a bit of a PD "groupie" lately attending Professional learning days of other schools and clusters, in search of a keynote speaker and presenters for our Cluster Day in August. The focus of our day is (of course) ICT and PoLT. i tend nowadays to be drawn to like minded people and over the last 2 weeks have had some incredible conversations and learnt so much. I decided I had better record some of what I had learnt to share with others. Some of the stuff that is "out there" now is so exciting and just literally makes me respond with "WOW" !!" It reminds me of Art Costa's Habits of minds - one of which is responding with wonderment and awe. I did take a minute or two to wonder though, do our students respond to these new technologies in the same way, or is it so much a part of their world that they don't find it as A M AZ I N G as I do ????????????????

For example, Youtube may be blocked but you can access Teachertube which has some brilliant videos on it. Or check out Mojiti where you can add "spots", text, animation, audio, whatever you liked to existing clips. See my first, very amateur experiment below.



Now the question has to be asked, how can we use this in our classrooms ?