Journeys in Education » discussions

Blogging from my iPhone

ldumicich — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 04:56:13 +0000

Well thanks to Sue Waters post on the Edublogger today I am now blogging from my iPhone. I had tried the WordPress app, but as mentioned in Sues post it did not work! However BlogPress seems to be working well. I hope this is the beginning of some more frequent blogging as I have been a bit neglectful lately. I have a post brewing in my mind that has been just waiting for me to write it hopefully I will now get some time to get the post written.

– Post From My iPhone

Like a poorly tuned car

ldumicich — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:12:34 +0000

Well it has been a while since I have done a post! I have been slack on the blogging this year, not through lack of desire I might add! Mostly though lack of time and a the feeling that I have not much to say! This year I feel like I have been behind the 8 ball right from the start. I went back to work 3 weeks early which unfortunately was not enough time to get everything done that I needed to do at the start of the year and I feel like I have been behind ever since until now!

With my e-Learning role at my school I have felt this year very much like a car that is in desperate need of a tune up,very rough and jerky and not getting anywhere smoothly. I guess after the massive year that I had last year some form of plateau was inevitable. I have spent the most of my time doing background admin type activities such as setting up our Parent Portal, Setting up our Google Apps for Education and setting up our Learning Management System. All necessary tasks, but hardly setting the world on fire!

EduKate:
So we have had EduKate set up for 6 months now and it is really starting to take off. Teachers are using it to deliver work and assessments to students and students are all jumping on bard with it. I didn’t get time to out a piece of work on it one week for my class and they all told me off for not having it on there! EduKate links in with our Parent Portal and that is getting some really good feedback from the Parent body! There is still more training to do with staff as it is a year ,long training program that we are running, but thus far I am very happy with the uptake!

Wild Wednesday Workshops:
Had the ‘brilliant’ idea to run workshops on Wednesday afternoons for the first 5 weeks of each term for staff to show them web2.0 tools. Whilst initially well received as the year has worn on attendance has dropped off. We are a very meeting driven school (as I am sure most schools are) and adding another meeting into the schedule just hasn’t worked, so I am going to rethink that idea.

Changing the Teaching and Learning:
So whilst I there is lots of good ICT integration going on at school from Nings to blogs to wikis to IWB’s. I don’t think that what is actually happening in the classroom has changed that much. I think that the ICT’s have just replaced former paper based activities with ICT based ones. It is very much still teacher driven and the idea of collaboration and 21st century teaching skills even within the class itself isn’t really on the radar! As I am not in charge of this area as such I am kind hamstrung as I am reliant on my Head of Teaching and Learning catching the vision, however she also is snowed under with lots of admin style tasks! I am totally frustrated as while what we are doing is a good start there is so much more. I think this is the thing that is making me feel like an untuned car the most!!

Google Apps for Education:
I know this is hard to believe but we have not had email for students until about 2 weeks ago!! Much to the frustrations of many! It was almost at the point (and I think we were a 1:1 school I would’ve bypassed it all together) that we could’ve skipped email and gone straight to something like edmodo! However we were not quite ready yet as a school to grasp the no email concept!

Cybersaftey:
Went to the Developing Leaders conference for CEN (Christian Education National, the movement my school belongs to) and heard a very interesting/shocking presentation from Susan McClean the Cyber Cop. She argued that teachers should not be on Facebook and especially should not befriend their students. She had seen too many cases where teachers however innocent have been accused of dubious behavior because of something taken out of context on MySpace or Facebook. She quoted the VIT Code of Conduct Principle 1.5 d. which states

Principle 1.5: Teachers are always in a professional relationship with the students in their school, whether at school or not

Teachers hold a unique position of influence and trust that should not be violated or compromised. They exercise their responsibilities in ways that recognise that there are limits or boundaries to their relationships with students. The following examples outline some of those limits.

A professional relationship will be violated if a teacher:……

d. holds conversations of a personal nature, or has contact with a student via written or electronic means including email, letters, telephone, text messages or chat lines, without a valid context

I have to be honest and say that I struggled with being told this. I associate with my students out of school all the time and always have! I go to church with them, am friends with their parents, play basketball with them, have done Sunday school with them and use students as babysitters I constantly do life as a teacher with these students and I love it! So it was difficult for me to deal with this! However I have to follow the code of conduct so I have dutifully, but not happily, deleted any current students from my Facebook profile. It was great to see a more balance approach by Jenny Luca on her blog.

So the next 6 months should be interesting hopefully I can start to get more in tune and get some really good stuff happening at school and affect more change!

The Power of Social Media first-hand

ldumicich — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 04:31:06 +0000

On Friday night at 9pm I was sitting on my couch, kids in bed, husband away, feeling very sleepy when I felt what was like a huge gust of wind hitting the house and all the windows started rattling. I wondered what it was and then realised hey wait a minute I think that’s an earthquake! I had actually been through a couple when I was a kid as we lived a few hundred metres away from a fault line. However it was still an incredibly unnearving feeling, especially as I was home alone!

So after all the ‘oh my goodness is it the end of the world?, What do I do with the kids?’ type thoughts went through my brain, I decided to jump on Twitter and Facebook to see if I was the only one! Well I definitely wasn’t the only one as many others certainly had the same idea and there were people tweeting and changing their statuses on Facebook at an amazing rate!

It seemed that the quake had affected people from Gippsland right out to the southern and eastern suburbs of Melbourne and the Mornington Peninsula. It was only about 15 mins after the quake that a link was tweeted to the US earthquake site which had the size (4.7) and epicentre (10km’s below Korumburra) reported.

So I thought just for interests sake was was happening in the mainstream media as Twitter and Facebook seemed to have a pretty good handle on it. The Age website at about 9:20 had not a mention of it, The Herald Sun had a very brief article saying that there was an earthquake and interestingly had a link to tweetscan, channel 7 newsbreak at 9:30 had no mention of it, Sky News and the ABC had some mention of it reasonably quickly but still not as quick or as thorough as Twitter. So this is the power of social media, people on the spot reporting the news as it happens. What an incredibly powerful force. It was said that the reports were using Twitter to research their articles. Made me wonder if we need reporters at all?

Interesting implications for education, we have traditionally been focussed on finding and analysing news from the mainstream news sources mainly the print versions, rarely is news footage used unless it is on a video that is produced months later. Imagaine if a major issue was being studied and went spent the period on twitter with our kids actually making the news by addiing their insightful comments on what is going on, including links to relevant websites and being part of the gloabl conversation? That would be powerful teaching and learning! Imagine if the quake had been during school hours and the students immeduatly got on twitter to report their observations and feelings? Then researched and presented on earthquakes, found out the nearest fault lines, contacted some geoscientists, saw a richter scale in action, looked at myths of earthquakes, biblical references presented it all on a wiki that others could contribute to. Powerful Just in time learning! With Twitter being banned in most schools at this time I suppose this is just a pipe dream!!

Getting educators involved with using web technology

ldumicich — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 00:25:50 +0000

I had a very interesting time at a staff meeting on Thursday afternoon. To set the scene…… we have purchased a you-beaut, whiz-bang Learning Management System this year and we were having our first all in staff training session. We had all the teaching staff in a computer lab, a Go-to-Meeting set up with eduKate up in Qld and the lovely Kate from eduKate on the phone for the voice component. The session went for half an hour and to me it seemed fairly simple. But at the end of the meeting there was a few enthusiastic looking staff members and the rest (about 95%) looking at me absolutely shell shocked! At first I wondered why? To me it was nothing new I have been looking at learning management systems for the last year anda half, there has been lots of talk in our local area as well as in our school system about schools getting LMS’s set up and what they were doing with them. The staff had all gone through basic ICT training the precious year, and I had been talking to them about eduKate for the last 4-5 months! I assumed everyone would have a basic understanding of what a LMS is and have the basic ICT confidence to be able to make a start on using it. Hmm I was very wrong as the silence of my staff was overwhelming! But then my lovely Principal jumped up and gave a fantastically reassuring talk to the staff that it was OK to be totally overwhelmed with this and that we have a year to learn how to use it. Immediately the mood changed in the room.

Some things I realised…..only 1 or 2 of the staff (other than the small group of teachers that have commenced expert training) members had actually seen a Learning Management System before and knew what one was! I had assumed (incorrectly) that because staff had completed the ICDL last year that they now had the skills to explore all web 2.0 and ed tech has to offer by themselves. But obviously they don’t! So what to do?? How do I inspire, encourage engage this group of adults to embrace ICT and want to integrate it into their curriculum, to encourage collaboration and to look at Project Based Learning? Without needing constant hand holding?

My current strategy up to now has been to showcase a little bit of everything to the staff and hope that they will pick and use some of it. Whilst this has worked for some people; the people who have a natural tendency and a confidence with technology and aren’t afraid to try new things, it hasn’t worked with many of the staff who have found all sorts of excuses not to use technology in their classroom. I don’t think it has been a deliberate attempt to thwart my efforts but it is borne out of a genuine fear of the failure and a fear of the unknown. Our culture demands that we have the right answers all the time and that we don’t make any mistakes so experimenting with something as ‘risky’ as technology (so much can go wrong) is going to be a major issue for some staff.

So I am changing my strategy some what. I am still going to showcase lots of different web2.0 tech for those staff that are willing to embrace it. But for the staff that are struggling with the leap I am going to encourage them to pick one tool and gain mastery of it. E.g. master the Interactive whiteboard or a class blog or wiki. A tool that is foundational that will lead to the use of other tools. For example if they are using a blog well and then want to pop up some video footage of what they have been doing in class then that will enable them to explore the Flip and You Tube etc, etc. I am also going to resource as much material as I can from educators who are not tech gurus who can inspire my staff that all you have to do is take the first step. Sometimes having someone who they see as an IT geek talking to them all the time does not help as it produces the “well that’s OK for you, you’re good at IT!” response.

I have realised the importance of baby steps and keeping thing simple, and trying a strategy that build confidence and not fear or resentment.

This post has been written on Ideas for getting educators involved with using web technology as part of The Edubloggers birthday celebration competition.

Professional Learning Goals Program Initial thoughts……

ldumicich — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 09:17:30 +0000

So I thought this blog would come in handy! Thought i would share my preliminary thoughts on the Professional Learning Goals Program that I am planning for next year. The assumption that I am making is that we expect our students to create learning goals and measure whether they have met them or not to help them become life long learners so why not teachers?? My scope is the development of teachers in ICT integration and use but I am hoping that is could be used for all areas of a teachers growth. So the plan thus far is by using a Ning staff will join a learning community within the school and post answers to a series of questions via a blog either on the ning or RSS’d (what is the past tense of RSS?) to their ning page on the goals that they would like to set for themselves.I will then meet with each staff member to help develop a plan of action to help them achieve their goals, which will include after school training sessions, external PD’s, readings, peer reviews, mentoring and joining a professional learning network. Staff will then need to blog their progress and reflections at least 4 times over the year (obviously they can do more but that will be the minimum) and to utilise the features of the ning to collect evidence of their achievements e.g uploading photos, videos, documents, commenting on other’s pages etc. (It is also a sneaky way to get staff to use some web 2.0 technology and hopefully begin some collaboration and conversations!) I will also meet with staff over the year to chat with them about their progress. Staff will be encouraged to set goals that are meaningful and relevant to their teaching and needs.

So I am hoping this will work and these are just my initial thoughts. I need to work out what will happen if staff don’t work on their goals at all. I need to work out what the questions will be. Anybody see any other glitches, flaws, suggestions needed???

Starting to plan for next year

ldumicich — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 04:30:50 +0000

So I have been at this blogging thing for the last nine months and been at the trying to transform my school thing for about a year (well really 13 years but officially….). What a year it has been! We have gone from a non networked, the odd class doing the odd thing in ICT to a fully networked, IWB’d school with very concrete plans for computers in all P-9 class rooms two and a half labs for the 10-12’s plus Media room facilities, teachers using, blogs, wikis and talking about global collaborations etc. It has been very cool! We still have a long way to go though there are some staff who are really struggling to cope with change, but they are trying very hard and for that I am proud of them. There are still staff who are going to the labs once a term to look at the Internet and therefore ticking off the ICT ‘bit’ of their curriculum and thinking they have done enough. To conquer that will all take time. I am planning next year to sit with every staff member and to help them to set learning goals for themselves to achieve over the next year (just as we expect the students too! Radical hey…not!) then I can direct PD their way through out the year. I would like the teachers to learn about professional learning networks, sometimes being a small school can mean that you tend to stick to your own as your community becomes very small. I would also like to encourage the staff to become contributors themselves, make comments on others blogs, contribute to wikis etc for some reason I think that this is going to be the biggest learning curve of all!

Blog wise I am trying to work out how I would like this blog to appear! I think that trying to espouse my opinion and wax lyrical on educational philosophies is just not me! As much as I would like it to be and I have tried with some posts but basically failed dismally! I think I have worked out that if I keep it true to myself that would probably be the best. (I sound like Anne of Green Gables realizing that she needs to write about Avonliegh and not fanciful romances!! ) so I am going to try to make it about what I am doing and a sounding board for what we are researching in regards to 21st century learning and anything that i see that is interesting. I think that sums up me in a nutshell! I am not a natural writer and one day I would like to take this blog into the podcasting world as I am more of a speaker than a writer, however finding a qiet spot to do that at this point in time maybe more of a challenge.

So what is on the agenda at the moment? Well there is LMS for my school which at the moment I am favoring eduKate, headsets for the whole school, actually getting us officially registered for the ICDL (this has been a ridiculous nightmare admin wise which hopefully will be fixed soon), policy writing for a student email policy, planning next years PD topics idea so far are delicious, RSS and Google reader, Google Docs (or Adobe Buzzword which looks cool), and some basic movie editing seeing as we will hopefully be getting some more Flips next year. As well as the standard IWB training. Am also working on my next newsletter and how to get it viewed in html by a very basic web based email reader. All of that as well as reports, timetable and VASS. Very busy at the moment!! So had best be off and whip those teachers into line (all the way from home!!) as reports are due today!

Converations about Learning Management Systems

ldumicich — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 07:00:15 +0000

So in recent days I have been researching the concept of a Learning Management System for my school. It has been an interesting journey! I was first introduced to the concept of a learning management system last year when my Principal asked if I had heard about a program called Moodle which at that time I had not. She mentioned that Northern Beaches Christian College had Moodle running and were doing some pretty good things on a low budget and would I like to go and see it? I said yes and along with another colleague to visit NBCS to see what they were doing with Moodle and ICT intgration. They had some very innovative ideas such as the HSC online and calling the primary version of Moodle for their school P.E.T.E (Primary Education through e learning). They have obviously spent a lot of time with Moodle and getting working and looking good and been working on some quite innovative ideas such the HSC online and beyond borders and blended learning. But we did not see a large amount of evidence of 21st century learning and pedagogical change.

Progress forward 4 months and one of our local schools has done a similar thing to Northern Beaches with a slick Moodle install but no real pedagogical change.

Progress forward another 6months to a visit to a well known private school to view their install of eduKate. Not all teachers were using the LMS but their was evidence of some innovative teaching practises being encouraged however still lacking a true 21st century skills focus.

Progress forward another 2 weeks and a conversation at the most recent blogger’s feast with a university employee who was talking about all the different aspects of Learning Management Systems that they have installed but bemoaning the fact that the pedagogy of teaching at a uni level i.e. lecture/tutorial had not really changed.

Progress to the next day to a visit made to a school that again has a very good Moodle install that they have spent 18 months developing but again acknowledging that they need someone to change they way teachers teach, and in fact they are advertising for a Director of Learning Technologies to answer this need.

So where is this leading me? I have come to the conclusion that the most important thing that transforms teaching and learning is not a learning management system. It is a focus on good pedagogy, project based learning, 21st century skills, higher order thinking and pwoerful learning. It is about using techonology as part of the learning environment. A learning management system does in no way replace or answer any of these thing. It is merely a tool to help organise the resources for a class and perhaps (depending on the type you choose) a method for delivering some web 2.0 type tools to the classroom. So as we go about the process of selecting a LMS for our school I must remeber that it is not the panacea of all ills!

Second Life, Real Life and other musings

ldumicich — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:56:00 +0000

So call me crazy, call me a plebe but I don’t get all the fuss that is being made about Second Life! Don’t get me wrong I can see how it can be used as a good way to meet online and run professional development, I can see how could be used in education for some powerful learning activities (MaggieMarat’s presentation at NECC about students and body image was a great example) but I am not sure that I get why you would want to do more than that? Why do you want to spend your real life living in an online, virtual world? It is hard enough as a Christian to be not of this world, but in it John 17:14-16 but then to be not of this world but be in it in a virtual world, it does my head in! Also wonder about why it is exciting to ‘do’ things in world when really you are just sitting at a computer operating a keyboard and mouse. I think it is more exciting to do real things, see people and talk to them in the real world. I know, I know that makes me not a real ICT purist and with that I am very happy. I do like to meet (or at least see) people that I have an online relationship with. I think it enriches the online relationship greatly. I also wonder about the loss on inhibitions that can happen in a virtual environment. I have seen students gain incredible amounts of confidence when online and for some it gives them a voice that was previously unheard which is great, however when people feel like they can throw away normal moral boundaries, be a bit flirty, be a bit of a bully or generally behave in manner that they would never do in real life what happens then? Is that OK? Are you still answerable for your actions in Second Life or is it amoral because you don’t know the real person? I think as tools such as Second Life are embraced in education serious discussion needs to take place about educating students about appropriate online behaviors and moral consequences.

Enough confused ramblings now onto the task of Learning Management Systems and a ICT resource wiki!

Leading the way

ldumicich — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 04:02:31 +0000

Can’t wait for tomorrow as hopefully I will get to see what NECC is really like. As after today I think that Australia is leading the way in iCT education and that the group of people that I am travelling with and their collected wisdom is worth more to me than anything that the US can offer. Today’s leadership forum was not on leadership, as a classroom teacher it was very interesting seeing some teachers do some interesting activities with their students using web 2.0 technology but from a leadership point of view nothing was really spoken about.

We were welcomed by Don Knezek the CEO of ISTE and Trina Davis the President of ISTE which was an informative conversation and then we had an International delegates welcome reception in which we were by far the largest contingent…and the loudest hehehe.

The keynote was thought provoking about the wisdom of crowds, meaning that by collaborating we can achieve more very similar to 1+1=3 synergy theory with more scientific study to back it up. It was interesting and some excellent discussion was had afterwards with some fellow study tour attendees.

Very geeky moment after the keynote there was a welcome hoe down over yonder. It had a band called one horse shy (quite good for country music) which was on stage and then on a big screen next to it was avatars of the band playing in Second Life with people in second life watching and dancing to the band. Really geeky but kind of cool none the less!! Definetlly at a Texas IT conference y’all. COuntry Hoe Down with an IT twist

I am really hoping that tomorrow when the workshops start that there will be some inspirational material and some good ideas to bring back.