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.

Speakers worth listening to

As I continued my search for 'keynote' superman (or woman) for my cluster PD day I stumbled across two more incredible people. Colin Pidd from BTLi (Below the Line)had all 200 staff at the Brentwood Cluster PD day talking. He talks about communication, and the difference between effective communication and the 'above the line'corporate talk. He is engaging and personable, and he is now booked for the 31st August, for the Templestowe Cluster.

Another "must see" is Marco Torres. He was out here courtesy of the Department of Education, talking about the future of education, and what we have to do for our kids. I liked his philosophy about teachers who are resistant to change; they have three choices - 1. Quit, 2. Complain, 3 Innovate. Many bloggers have discussed him in detail, see susanvg's blog reflexions The movies his students have made are truly amazing and can be viewed at sfett. He began his presentation with the following film .. wouldn't you just love to show this to your staff

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 ?

for the kids....

I have had such an amazing week, some days I can barely believe I get paid to do this, by the end of the week however, I was reflecting deeply on what I truly want to do. The week began with a curriculum day at Ivanhoe Grammar and my brain was invigorated by professional conversations with a range of people, I met up with Joseph Papaleo, our minds and ideas raced faster than we could speak. I presented at Huntingtower and by the end of the workshop had eight staff blogging, groups making podcasts, mini-movies and feeling so much more comfortable with technology.

I liased with the Principal team at Bulleen Special School about establishing the Principles of Learning and Teaching into their setting so that it was non-threatening, sustainable and effective. Sat in on a full day session on Effective Writing in the Primary Classroom (Writer's Workshops) at Templestowe Heights Primary- they are adopting a whole school approach. I was asked to run a half-day Professional Development day for Manningham Park Primary in June. I will run Sessions on Assessment, and using tools for assessment incorporating some protocols. Manningham has also asked me to model 'thinking tools' once a week at their staff meetings.

Thursday I drove to Rowville to meet my mentor Daphne Clements, Assistant Principal at Rowville Secondary College. I have been fortunate to have been selected to be a participant in the Eleanor Davis program. This was just an informal meeting before the program begins but the thought of shadowing her, and getting the 'big picture' experience of how a school operates is exciting and inspiring.

On Friday attended the Assessment PD afternoon at Templestowe College and assisted a small group of LOTE staff with how to incorporate the standards, and a range of assessment tools to determine how to report on students against the progression points. That evening I attended the Year 10 formal, it was then I was overcome with a great sense of sadness and began to question what I was doing ......

Although I don't have classes now, this group had been my year 7 cohort when I was year 7 co-ordinator, the girls had invited me, many of boys sidled up beside me, cuddled me and wanted photos taken. They love towering above my almost 5 ft stature, to show how much they have grown. I watched them dressed in their finery, dancing away, I danced with some, I loved their proud faces, smiling at me, the banter and the 'connectedness' we shared and then it dawned on me, if I keep going in the type of job I am doing now, then in two years time I will have not have a relationship with any students !!!! An overwhelming feeling of melancholy came upon me......

Using a Blog to do the teaching

On Monday 16th April I am presenting at Huntingtowers' Professional Learning Day. My brief is to provide samples of many different ways teachers can incorporate ICT ( Information Communication Technologies) in their classrooms - from Prep through to year 12. I will do my best to try to inspire them with examples of Blogs, Podcasts, using programs such as MovieMaker, Photostory, imovie, Comic Life and embracing mobile technologies such as phones and iPods. After my talk staff will break up into groups and they have an hour and a half to "produce something" using any of these technologies.

To encourage staff to use the technology, instead of producing a handout, I have included the task requirements for one group, here on my Blog. So welcome !.

Your task is ;
1) to post a comment in my Blog about my presentation today - good bits, bad bits, how I could improve, (anything really !)
2) Make your own Blog
3) it must have at least one "post"
4) A link to a website
5) A photo ( it can be of you or anything else)
6) You must include links to the Blogs of the other staff in your group
7) Make a comment in another persons Blog
8) Inlcude information about yourself in the profile section
These are the mininum requirements. As in any classroom offering a "differentiated curriculum", there are many more aspects you may choose to include, if you have time.

You may use any of these free sites, Blogger.com, Edublogs , Schoolblogs.com or Classblogmeister.com. Although at the time I wrote this, there was some difficulty with the Schoolblogs site. You may even be adventurous and find another site to host your Blog. Good Luck and I look forward to linking to your sites.

The last month

Wow! How time flies. It has been over a month since I sat down to write something. What HAVE I been doing !!. I have actually been working in four of my five schools. We have begun the PoLT (Principles of Learning and teaching) process. In the state system this is really BIG. The six principles of effective teaching. . In our cluster we have conducted the teacher interviews ( called Teacher component maps), and surveyed our students both about their learning preferences and their perception of their teacher. It is quite a daunting task for teachers who volunteer. The data will be analysed and Professional Learning Plans developed for individual teachers, for each school and for the cluster.

ICT everywhere.

I have sat down many times to write a new post over the past two weeks, and each time stopped to think carefully about what to write. What do you say that is going to be of interest to others? I have done many things over the past two weeks, that will hopefully be of benefit to staff in my cluster schools. I have also seen some incredible examples of ICT. I have done protocol training and de Bono DATT ( Direct Action Thinking Tools) Training. Attended an ICT Professional Learning afternoon at McLeod College where a colleague used an impressive site from INTEL to compare staff and student understanding of "communication" . I also visited Huntingtower School in Mt Waverly. A school confident enough to have their parent survey results displayed on their website.
Somewhere along the way I discovered The Web is Us/Using Us on Youtube. Well worth a look. It had a million hits in its first week and 3200 comments. An interesting lesson alone for students. What would YOU say to a million people?
My son's friend showed me his MYSPACE - to my amazement he had had 6800 hits, and 415 friends registered. No wonder the kids are addicted to them.