So I have been incredibly neglectful of my blog over the past couple of months! It has been crazy at school setting up reports for the new semester, completing the timetable (which I haven’t really quite finished yet) finishing off the ICDL, VASS, developing a new college website, handling the implementation of eduKate and general ICT PD and support plus teaching! So tomorrow I am off to the VITTA conference which I am really looking forward to. I can’t wait to catch up with some people I went on the ACCE Study Tour with and to see some new ideas and get some inspiration. I am only attending the Monday and Tuesday of the conference as our reports are due in this Friday and this when staff have the most tweeks and queries on their reports. The conference has free wireless Internet access so I will try and blog each session that I attend. This is what I am planning to attend

• 1101 LAB: Keynote Address – Shift: Tectonic and granular
• 1209 LAB DBL: Tablet Notebooks Computers Across the Curriculum
• 1209 LAB DBL: Tablet Notebooks Computers Across the Curriculum
• 1410 LECT: Cybersafety in schools
• 1510 LECT: Blended Learning – a working model
• 1601 LECT: Open Source for Education
• 2101 LAB: Games in Learning
• 2215 LECT: I’ve Got a Blog and a Wiki so What’s Next?
• 2312 LECT: Google@School: Bringing Google Technology on Campus
• 2412 LECT: Podcasting :: Ed Tech Crew way – first hand tips and tricks
• 2516 LECT: Collaborative Student-Centred Learning Using an ePortfolio

2009 Plans

12 Business Management

I am teaching a full class (not job sharing) next year and I am planning how I am going to integrate technology into this subject. We have eduKate next year but I would also like to use an external blog as it has greater functionality and I can collaborate with other classes. This year in Business Management (year 11) I had a central blog and the students had an individual blog. It worked to a point but was hard to set up as our students don’t have school email addresses and of course hotmail, yahoo mail etc are blocked. So I thought that I would set the students up as contributors to a central blog for ease of use!

PD Plans

Well I am going to be busy doing eduKate training but I would also like to continue PDing staff on web2.0 and we also have to keep on with the IWB training. We had a great session the other week from Callie Whelan from Beyond Chalk which was really well received by our staff. I am really incredibly blessed to have a staff who are champing at the bit to integrate ICT and are doing some great things with blogs and wikis! I am planning to use any official meeting times to do eduKate training and then to run some informal sessions on web2.0 during the first 5 weeks of each term.

Well that’s all for now must be off and get ready for tomorrow and of course watch the Australian Idol final. Go Wes!

After our ICT development network meeting today I realised just how much I have learnt about the world of ICT, PD, web 2.0 and ICT trends just by being a member of the study tour and checking out every-one’s blogs and following leads. i was having conversations with people about topics that a year ago I would’ve had very limited ideas about. I can only imagine what I am going to gain from two weeks of intense learning about ICT with some incredibly passionate Australian educators and tapping in to what the rest of the world has to offer. I think it will be some incredible hot housing going on on my part. I am looking forward to bring back all I have learnt and trying to implement some of it into my school.

I  think I have finished my conference program and have a good mix of serious sessions about PD and leadership with a couple of “fun” hands on sessions thrown in for good measure. I have also tried my best to spend some time in the expo and given the itinerary that was mailed out to us earlier this week I am very grateful for the Tourist Day in San Antonio as I think my brain will need some down time!

Well thanks to the inspiration of some fellow travellers I am going to attempt to keep a blog of my travels on the ACCE study tour. I am really looking forward to the trip and all that I can learn and hopefully bring back to my school. I am really hoping to bring back some ideas on staff training in  ICT, strategic direction setting and a raft of new tools a goodies to inspire staff and provide resources for them to help change they way that they think and teach with ICT.  ICT is such a huge field and there is so much that can be done in and with it to inspire and engage our students. I would also like to explore ways to be innovative and to shift educational paradigms of how ICT should be done. Phew I am exhausted already. Hopefully I will also get a little bit of sightseeing done! I also hope this will be a great way to keep a record of the trip and especially the conference as I am sure that I will be brain dead by the end of it. So many sessions to choose from and go to, 17,000 plus educators, San Antonio to see, people to meet. So please enjoy the journey!