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!

Blogging is a wonderful way to engage students in class, to help develop writing skills and to connect with other students from around the world. What makes blogging different to using a word processor is the ability to comment on each other’s posts. This gives students an authentic audience and creates engagement in the classroom. A blog would be a great way for students to reflect upon their Personal Learning Goals and to allow you and their parents to encourage them on their progress.

There are lots of different ways you can blog in and out of the classroom:

• 1 blog for the whole class, teacher does the blog posts students can read it and comment on it:
• 1 class blog teacher and students share the blog posting responsibility
• Each student has their own blog
• The teacher has their own blog to reflect on their personal learning journey in an area of interest (highly recommended and an excellent way to learn about blogging and to model this to your students)

Where do you get a blog??

There are several different websites where you can sign up for a blog each have their own advantages and disadvantages. All of them are free but some do have an option to get more space and turn off advertising for a small fee.

Edublogs

This blog is an edublogs blog. Set up sepecifically for teachers and schools. It is fully featured and easy to use. There are two options a basic servioce which is free and aedublogs supporter option which costs $40US a year which gives you all the bells and whistles.

21 Classes

Designed for schools. It is an easy to set up otion for blogging. Not as many bells and whistles available but the nice thing is that you don’t need student emaila ccounts to set it up. You can also kepp the blogs private until you are ready to unleash them on the web!

EduKate

Out LMS has a blogging function you can put pictures and videos into the posts but you can’t change the look. This is great as you don’t have to do anything to dset it up. If you are not planning to use the blog for connecting ewithoutside classes this is a great option.

Global Teacher

A website set up by edublogs for victorian teachers. Thos is another really good option if you want bells and whisltes with out cost. It is run by the Victorian Government

Global Student

This is the student version of the above blog site and where you would set up a class blog.

Blogger

This is Google’s version of a blog provider and offers a good free service. Not

specifically design ed for educatinala purposes but easy to use and lots of teachers use it none the less

Some blogging terminology and goodies

Post: An entry into a blog. It can contain text, photos, sound or videos. They appear on the blog with the most recent entry on the top

Page: A blog has a main page but can also have other pages where you can add additional information. For example I have an About Me page on my blog.

Comments: These are added to blog posts and pages by other people you can then reply to the comment on the blog and start a conversation. It is a really good thing to comment on someones blog!

Tags: A list of topics that your post or page is about. Kind of like cataloging a book in a library. E.g. the Tags for this post are: blogs, blogging, edublogs, eduKate, Global Student, Global Teacher, etc

Widgets: These are tool and gadget you can have on the side of you blog to make it more useful/entertaining. Such as a voki, map, calendar, favorite links

Clustr Maps: This is a little map that shows you which countries people have come from who have viewed your blog. Click here to go to Clustr maps website and sign up for one. The kids love them….even the big kids!

Blog Roll: A list of blogs that you read or that have useful information on them.

Tag Cloud: A visual representation of the Tags on your blog posts. A very quick way to see what your blog is about

Categories: A good way of separating blog posts by giving them a category. If you click on Wild Wednesday Workshops in my categories section you will see all the posts relating to that topic on my blog.

Very useful blogging info

The Edublogger Fabulous blog with HEAPS of hint and tips on how to blog with your students. I read this all the time!!

Blogging Challenge i  If you have had a class blog or understand th fundamentals but would like to take it a bit further this year I would STRONGLY ENCOURAGE you to give this a go. It looks like great fun and a great way to connect with other classes!

Connecting with other classes Here is another blog post that has some great ideas on how to connect with other classes when doing your blogs.

I would encourage you to have a go at blogging either personally or with your class. It is great fun!

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.

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!

So over the holidays I have been thinking of how on earth I can encourage collaboration between teachers at our school and between teachers at our school and other teachers at other schools.  Our school is small and traditionally has had many one person departments, for example I was the only Business Management teacher for many years. So there isn’t a strong culture of teachers working together and collaborating on projects or curriculum although in some areas of the school it is starting to change. So my challenge is to encourage teachers to collaborate more, encourage conversation and dialogue about powerful learning all with the purpose of helping staff to integrate ICT into the curriculum and to develop 21st century teaching and learning. I know, I know easy peasy what am I worried about, right????? NOT!!!

So to help with this I am going to get teachers to set their own professional learning goals next year that I will meet with them to help develop and meet at various times during the year to check their progress. I will also tailor the PD that I run/resources I show them etc, etc to their Professional Learning needs.

So to “encourage” staff I thought that I would use a web2.0 platform to run this Professional Learning Program out of and at the same time to encourage some dialogue and perhaps some collaboration. But which one??? A central blog and get all staff to comment on the blog entries at various times? A wiki and use the discussion page for teachers to post their goals and discuss their progress whilst using the wiki pages for resources etc?? A ning where every staff member has a page where they put their goals and can comment on their goals and others as well as add photos and do blog posts etc? Or each staff memeber having their own blog to reflect on their own learning. Too many choices! Or we could do something inhouse via Moodle or eduKate. Or perhaps another format all together. Anyone with any ideas??

On another note all together I thought I had made a decison about the LMS that we are looking at for next year being eduKate however I had somehow all this time overlooked to little but very important words “per annum”! Yes that right I tought the price was a once off price but no it is a per annum price and when I realised that i nearly fell over!! $6500 per year is fairly steep I think. So what do I get for that? I suppose it pays for the help desk support that you wouldn’t get with Moodle and it pays for upgrades but it doesn’t pay for any training which is additional. Now I am totlaly unsure of which way to go as for that amount per annum we could have an absolutley cracking, gorgeous installation of Moodle with lots of bells and whistles. However we wouldn’t get with Moodle the integration with TASS which we use quite heavily and eduKate links directly into our reporting system which is good.  If anyone has used either sytem and can offer me some advice that would be great!

Anyway now that I have those questions of my chest back to lovely holidays and PJ days having a lovely relax and unwind from a very hectic year!

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!