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 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???

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!

John Hendron

Q: How do you provide the time, training, and resources to keep up with today’s education revolution. A: Multiple opportunities, multiple modes of engagement tailored goals, vision looking ahead. Key has been every teacher having a laptop. Virginia has a teacher blogging initiative with each teacher having a blog. They have just intro’d a Ning for collaboration.

What kinds of training do they provide? Classes, Power blogging courses, ethics and cyberspace (every teacher needs to go through this course), Moodle, Google Earth, Using Inspire data, Podcasting, Inspiration and kidspiration. Details of classes here…

What are the goals? Awaremness of new tools and opportunities, Increse comfort levels and familiarity with technology, provide rationale for change towrds developing 21st century skills, change classroom practises, enhanced with best-in-class technologies.

Time is one of the biggest challenges. “money does not change education, time does. Teacher new to the system start one week earlier than the normal start to undergo ICT training. Lots of PD done through Instant Messengering. Weekly email newsletter, Technology Times blog and a podcast are the ways that they communicate to their staff. 1:1 help with teachers for iinstruction purposes not for fixing computers, after school classes from 4-6pm. Every year he meets with all of his teachers to set two technology goals for the year and to set their after school class. Summer term institue which take 2-4 days over 12 hours, mini conference days. promethean user group meetings, online moodle courses.

Top 10 Tips

1. Provide access, ensure the experience can be implemented right away
2. Provide a context and a theme
3. Provide opportunities for anytime anywhere
4. Model Innovation
5. Foster Collaboration
6. Maintain a conversation
7. Make teacher accountable
8. Provide Incentives
9. Use a Gestalt approach approaching technology as a system
10. Look at the results

Great work!!

In the newsletter actually did lessons, showed cool things, interviews etc.

Tech Times blog here..

PowerPoint of presentation necc2008_handout