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!

As I was unable to hook up to the internet today at the conference I could not blog my sessions as I went. But with great thanks to @LucyBarrow who has told me which network to log on to hopefully I will be able to improve on this tomorrow!

Excellent presentations today in a rabbit warren like venue and some unusual rooms! (Actual hotel rooms with the furniture cleaned out!) The first presentation was Travis Smith the AP from Frankston High School demonstrating the Tablet Laptop. I have seen these before but never actually played with one, which was fun. I could immediately see the advantages for senior students in particular especially if you were going to choose one of these over an IWB. Travis recommended buying a Tablet laptop with a wireless projector. Some of the software that we played with was free Microsoft software that can be used on non tablet PC’s as well as tablet PC’s but was particularly suited to the Tablet variety. They were the Microsoft Education Pack and the Microsoft Experience Pack. Must also check out www.schoolkit.com a website with heaps of technology rich lessons.

The next session that I went to was on Cybersafety presented by Greg???. He spoke about the Cybersaftey Outreach Program run by ACMA. They have created a PD module registed by VIT on Cybersafety in Schools. You can get accreditation to certify your school as a cybersafe school. He then presented some interesting statistics about teenagers being the major decision makers when choosing ICT equipment and Internet plans for households. That Gamer rooms are becoming more popular in new houses that home cinemas in new houses, homework is the number one reason that students use computers, primary students have on averagre 2-3 emails and secondary students have 3-4 emails on average. He then presented on emerging Issues that schools are having with students playing online games such as World of Warcraft such as

Conflicts with Parents
Food Habits
Problems with personal hygiene
Neglected school work
Late Nights
Addictions

Then Greg presented on Identity Theft and ways to avoid it, which was very intertesting sharing on such topics as Limewire, chain emails, Premier SMS services etc.

The last presentation I attended was Blended Learning by Westley Field from MLC Sydney. This was an I interesting presentation on how MLC defines and uses blended learning through their own in house learning management system. MLC have no blocks on their Internet other than for porn which I guess is OK if you have a large download limit and robust Internet connection at your school!

Overall it was a good day and I look forward to tomorrow and my sessions!