The Open Classroom

School of Life

2008-07-19T19:21:00.001+10:00

This would be a great film to teach students about irony, to have them think about life lessons and how we learn them, and to do a What Happens Next writing prompt.
Thanks to Lauren O'Grady for the link

Plurk timeline

2008-07-19T13:46:00.001+10:00

Plurk.com

Oz/Nz Educators' Network grows

2008-07-14T22:08:00.002+10:00

The OZ/NZ Educators’ group (started by Sue Tapp) have been meeting on Sundays for about three months, using Flashmeeting. I haven’t been able to get to all the meetings - one Sunday night I was actually at a Ball (!) - but the meetings, audio and chat, is always archived at the Ning and wiki for Oz/Nz Educators. There has been quite a lot of global collaboration between Australian and New Zealand educators but also a bit with England and Wales. Flashmeeting only takes 25 people and several of the meetings had people who couldn’t get in as there were too many in there. So there was discussion: should we move to a different meeting platform? Should we move to a different night? (on Twitter it was revealed that Sundays were not always the best night because of family commitments for some would be participants). Eventually Sue decided to move the meetings to Tuesday nights and go for the Elluminate meeting software. Our first meeting in this format is tomorrow night at 7.30 pm.

“Our meeting night has changed due to a number of requests We are now going to meeton Tuesday nights at 7.30pm -9pm. Also due to an increasing number of people not being able to access the room as it is full, we are going to try Elluminate and have access to a free 50 seat room through Knowledge Bank online events. So on Tuesday 15th we will attempt to meet using elluminate and do a NECC roundup to discuss what was hot and not at NECC.I apologise to the NZ crew who will have a late night if they attend ,but the meetings will be recorded if you can't stay up that late. See you all there- new members most welcome. You can download elluminate here and do a practice session here too. “

But on the Sunday night Joe Dale from the UK who hadn’t realised the change was looking forward to the regular collaboration with those from downunder and so held an informal chat with a few who were around. I found out about it some time into the meeting. There was a new person at the meeting, Steve Collis, who soon had us all inspired with the programs, including Beyond Borders, he oversees at his school. One of the projects he mentioned had students mobile blogging using utterz, sparking a rash of interest in the site and puzzling some. All in all it was an exciting meeting, and an inspiring one.

And what about the different interests of the two sets of stakeholders? How did we resolve the issue? We will have the meetings on BOTH Sundays and Tuesdays. People can go to one or the other or both. As I have always said, there can never be too much social networking (sorry Vicki, educational networking

Goodbye to San Antonio

2008-07-04T11:37:00.005+10:00

NECC 2008 has been and gone. And it was great. I still can't get over the number of hugs I gave and received, and the emails exchanged and contacts made. The theme was "Convene, Connect and Transform" and I think a lot of that happened. I was surprised at how at home I felt, and reflected on the reality of the virtual relationships forged and sustained through on-line communities. I sometime hear of people who do not want to get involved in on-line groups because they prefer "real" face to face interactions, but I believe we can make community wherever we are, and it's definitely better to have these relationships on-line and affirmed by occasional meetings than not to have them at all. I have been travelling for sometime and am still a way from home. I can't wait to get home, hug the family and unpack so I can get to reflect on all that happened. There are a number of ways I will be aiming to transform my classroom next term (one is through a contact with Lisa Parisi) and write up some of my learnings. The Australian Study Tour part of this trip was fantastic with a great group and a fabulous tour leader in Tony Brandenburg. If you get a chance to go on such a tour in the future, I highly recommend it. The photo is of me being interviewed by Cheryl Oakes who is wecasting live for the Women of Web 2.0 episode, part of Edtech Talk, the best best on-line community I have had the privilege of being involved in. In the yellow dress is Kristen Hokanson of the Connected Classroom who was also interviewed on the showed along with many others. The photo is by Lucy Grey and is shared via a Creative Commons licence on Flickr.

Technorati tag: NECC2008

More Learning and Conversations

2008-06-26T15:12:00.005+10:00

There's the places we visit, and the students and teachers at the schools and then there's the bus trips, the meal times, the walking and sometimes the waiting. And each of these are potential learning times. That's when I am the happiest. In Auckland we have been to two primary schools: Summerland and Marina View, one intermediate school Bucklands Beach Intermediate where we met by Lenva Shearing, and one secondary school Papatoetoe High school. The most amazing thing about all this was the ways students were doing the morning announcements as a TV news broadcast. A few of us from the study tour even got to have a go with students as directors. It wouldn't surprise me if a video of this ended up on YouTube. The welcome the students gave us as we visited their classrooms showed us they were old hands at showing off their work, letting us see their ePortfolios and the VoiceThreads they were making about visits and excursions they had they had done. They were truly remarkable, seeing what they were achieving with the tools in everyday use, and not something special.

We also visited Nextspace and will be visiting Oracle, Google and Apple before heading off to San Antonio. But one off the best things for me so far was a conversation I had in the bus with Al Upton and others about a unit I was planning in my head for Year 10 in Term 3. Being inspired by what the primary and intermediate students were doing I wanted to see what my students could do in making content for others on the novel The Secret Life of Bees. Al took me through the Understanding by Design model of planning as I took notes. We were both really engaged in trying to solve a problem that I had perceived with teaching this novel, that it is not one which students like to study. I wanted to make it more engaging by giving students choice, making the learning collaboartive and having the students have input into how the unit takes shape. The content can be published in a number of ways: VoiceThread with the possibility of comments, photostory provided they use Creative Commons licenced photos (or their own), films, soundtrack, roleplays, 3D animations, and possibly interactive games. The overarching question will be (I am sure) what will I get out of reading this book? or Is this book worth studying? I am looking forward to the answers at the end of the unit. I want to thank both Al and Sue Tapp for their help in inspiring my thinking with this.

It's finally here

2008-06-22T21:03:00.004+10:00

It was bound to come, no matter how far away it seemed and high the mountain I still had to cross was. And now it's here. Leaving tomorrow with a group of thirty Australian teachers to see some schools, visit Google HQ and Apple and attend NECC. That means my 4000 word essay for my Masters has been completed, the mountain of marking has been scaled, the reports have been written. No more than what any other teacher and learner for life has to do. But for some reason it's taken a lot out of me this term. I am looking forward to my time away to do some reflection and to re-evaluate my working life. To put transformative education first, and to inspire students with the creative possibilites that I see unfolding around me in my personal learning network. I am looking forward to NECC because I feel that there is so much to learn and that I will renew my inspiration, enabling me to go on doing what we all do every day. I feel that often I simply just touch the surface of what possibilities are out there. It would be better for me and for my students if I chose one thing to do and to do it well. Having just finished my reports for students I really enjoyed reading this great post by Dina, a 7th grade English teacher about report cards for teachers - our own report on ourselves. I will be reflecting on this term in the holidays, writing my own report card, and I know there are a number of things I will try to change. One is, I really HAVE to get more organised!

If you are feeling that you would love to stay on top of what is coming out of NECC this year even though you can't be there, have a look at this blog post by Vicki Davis. She is writing about following the rss feeds of interesting things being written from NECC and as she said, the first year she went she wasn't even there but was following all that went on remotely. I am so looking forward to waking up tomorrow and finding myself on holiday, but the best kind of holiday - no housework and lots of education, lots of technology and lots of talk. Who cares about sleep? I'm sure Sue Tapp will tell you when we get back. After all, she has to share a room with me!

Finally I have enjoyed making my wordle and seeing those of others. Digital Maverick Drew Buddie shared his wordle (love his words such as "amazing", "cool" and "fun") and has an idea that we could be writing shape poetry with it or something like it! Looks awesome.

Podcasting revisited

2008-06-10T22:16:00.003+10:00

I just spent some time listening to Aussie biology teacher Andrew Douch speaking about how he is using technology in his biology classes on this elluminate session. It's the why and how of his talk, the philosophy of teaching and learning that I found so engaging. He makes a number of great points and gives us his take on what questions he needs to answer about a new technology before he would consider taking it up in his classroom. I do recommend that you give "Podcasts, vodcasts, screencasts, discussions and blogs: new teaching with Andrew Douch" a listen, it's very inspiring. Just what I needed at this end of the term. While I'm on the topic, if you like what you hear you may like to give this a listen as well. LOTE teacher Jess McCulloch interviews Andrew, as well as all about podcasting - what it is and how to get started doing it. Great stuff

IWBs in secondary classrooms: Where is the Interaction?

2008-06-05T19:47:00.003+10:00

Thought provoking slideshare by jasondenys which I found through a new group I joined in Diigo IWB-Pedagogy set up by Lauren O'Grady. This is a group set up "to discuss, collaborate and share IWB pedagogical research, resources and projects."

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Toondoo and more...

2008-05-31T17:41:00.003+10:00

Year 8s have been exploring some new tools as they work out how their group wants to represent their learning and thinking about the novel we have been reading as a class. The novel Falling from Grace by Jane Godwin is a tensely written narrative told in two alternating first person excerpts. What Godwin does with language cries out to be visually represented. The students have been looking at Photostory 3, Voicethread, toondoo and making digital videos with the school camera and in some cases their mobile pones (with appropriate authorisation from me, as mobile phones are generally banned at school). They spent some time in their groups storyboarding what they wanted to represent and thinking of ways to do it. Then some lessons looking at the other computer-based ways of telling their bit of the story and later they spent some time filming. Some of the students are making plans to keep filming on the weekend. One group is making a movie trailer using photostory and even though unfinished I am loving how it is coming along.

Here is one of the toondoos that one group made. The students are willing to explore the tools and use more than one way of displaying their ideas. This particular toondoo had the students discussing animatedly how they saw Ted, and wat sort of character he was. Can we show a feeling about a character even if the way we represent him isn't how he was described/implied? It was a fantastic lesson for a Friday afternoon and I love how excited the students are about the novel.

XO Laptop and people I met

2008-05-26T21:01:00.005+10:00

On Saturday 24th May I attended the ICTEV conference in Melbourne (as I did last year). This year my experience was enriched by meeting so many online friends f2f. One highlight was meeting the Edtech Crew , Darrel and Tony, whose podcasts I have so much enjoyed listening to. They were podcasting from the conference as well as you can see from the photo. Tony Richards is holding an XO laptop belonging to Daniel Stefyn, who along with Roland Gesthuizen was giving a series of workshops about the OLPC. I heard about the new projected $75 laptop called the XOXO which was mentioned by Dave Cormier in the Edtech Weekly podcast "a completely new redesign - a tablet PC folded in half." Seeing the XO was exciting and seeing what it could do was amazing, especially the connectivity.

I went to a workshop on Google given by Greg Gebhart which was most interesting given that I will be visiting Google headquarters in San Francisco in just under a month. Learnt some cool things and played with google maps. It was great to hear that Greg has had a rethink about the educational uses of twitter after seeing it used as a backchannel in his workshop. Margaret Meijers gave the keynote lecture and she was inspiring, but I did wonder if more benefit could have been had if the keynote had been ustreamed. Maybe that's something for the Conference committee to think about for next year.

Daniel Stefyn at ICTEV with his XO laptop

Darrel Branson and Tony Richards podcasting at ICTEV

The Literacy Wars

2008-05-21T20:48:00.002+10:00

Just back from a great session that ended up being really good Professional Development (PD) even though I thought I was just going to a meeting. As a member of the VATE PD committee I attend monthly meeting where we plan events for English teachers around the state. It's always great to work with other (mostly) passionate teacers who care enough about their work to look at helping other teachers, learning a lot as we go as well. But this evening there was a visit by Monash academic Illana Snyder who was there to talk about her new book The Literacy Wars. A wide ranging discussion ensued among the twenty or so teachers there, about topics of interest in working as English teachers in the political and cultural climate of arguments about literacy that construct teachers as somehow being the problem instead of as professionals in the classroom. We talked about the moves towards a national curriculum, teacher workloads, preservice teacher education and the varied takeup by teachers of the new technologies such as blogging, podcasting and game-making, among other things. While I was there I reflected that I was privileged to be hearing wise and reflective discussion where people shared their experiences. It was an inspiring meeting (and yes I know that sounds like an oxymoron).

Melbourne Bloggers Feast

2008-05-15T22:05:00.003+10:00

Here we are at our first Bloggers Feast. We ended up with ten people there and I think, we really impressed the wait staff (standing) with all our tech gadgets which came out as the evening progressed. As you can see it's still early in the evening. In this picture we can see Lauren O'Grady, Helen Otway, Tony Richards, Howard Errey, John Pearce and organiser extraordinaire Sue Tapp. Just want to say thanks to Sue Tapp who organised it and to everyone for coming. Tony Richards from IT Made Simple who recorded several of the conversations he had with participants for his podcast Ed Tech Crew. Lauren O'Grady also has blogged about something we discussed on the night, the sessions she had with Marco Torres during the day. Worth a look.

Below: Helen Otway (front right) and John Pearce (front left)

Below: Al Upton and Jenny Luca

Re-Imagining Web 2.0 applications and implications

2008-05-12T20:56:00.004+10:00

I tried live blogging - and felt the results were less than awesome. I tried ustreaming and wasn't sure that I know how to do it to get te best results, but now I want to reflect on the day as a whole. It was certainly enough to get us all excited again. Will Richardson spoke with his usal passion and thoughtfulness. My colleague felt that the enthusiasm for web 2.0 is definitely contagious, and then you have to be part of the real world where access and equity are real issues.

But there were lots of suggestions about how to get people to look at the changing pedagogies that go along with the use of web 2.o (see bookjewel's reflections here and Jenny Luca's reflections here). What really struck my colleague was the emphasis that the speakers placed on conversation. The podcasts of the talks as well as the presentations designed by the speakers are going to be made available soon for your viewing pleasure. The best part of the day was meeting so many of my personal learning network, the synapses in my outboard brain and how close I felt to people I had only known in a virtual way before. One really good piece was the presentation by Cecilie Murray on the results of studies on safety on the internet and gender and the use of ICT. She reported that studies in both Australia and the UK showed that girls were using the internet especially for content creation. The emphasis on the students was also noticeable although I did notice as an absence that that was no participation by students. I feel that I have not had a complete presentation on education nowadays unless I have heard directly from a school age student like the students of youth twitter or the students of school 2.0. I took lots of notes that will influence my blogging in the next little while. Altogether it was a most worthwhile day and the results will become clearer as we go along.

Liveblogging post 2

2008-05-12T13:47:00.002+10:00

Right now John Pearce from Geelong and Anne Murchin from Hawkesdale are giving a talk on their experiences with web 2.0 or the way they are giving experiences to their students to develop conversations and collaboration within Australia and globally. John is having his new book technology toolkit Introducing you to web 2.0 published next week. Anne is talking about her global collaboration with 150 students from Canada. It is really inspiring.

Live blogging from SLAV Conference

2008-05-12T12:15:00.000+10:00

Jenny and Susan are here at the SLAV (School Library Association of Victoria) Conference presenting to an audience of teachers and librarians and teacher-librarians. Jenny is talking about using Slide Rocket as a presentation tool now in beta. The direction her life has taken has changed since learning about and learning with web 2.0 tools which enable conversations to happen which would otherwise not be possible. It has been great to meet a number of my Personal Learning Network here today Jess, Anne, John, as well as Jenny .

Reading for Pleasure

2008-05-11T13:25:00.004+10:00

Blame it on the busy life of someone trying to hit the ground running after long service leave AND stay in the holiday mode for a while but I've been remiss in blogging lately. There are many subjects I want to write about, still percolating in my mind and will no doubt find their home here in due course. But on last week I was able to take a photo of my students in the reading area of the library (a designated part of the library with comfy chairs and small round tables) and I hope I was able to show some of the love of reading that this practice our school has adopted has generated. Late last year when the program had been running for a year the library gave me some date to show that the amount of fiction borrowed had increased by a significant amount compared to the last years records. What I wanted to have was a place and a time in the curriculum where our teachers put their money (investment of time) where their mouth is. If we value reading for pleasure and see it as something that will enefit the students in their quest to become conscious life-long learners we have to give a time and place for it in the curriculum. iT's no good saying there is too much material to cover, that we don't have time. So in our school the reading for pleasure is exactly that. It is not associated with any assessment or extra work. There are no restrictions on what they can read - it can be fiction, non-fiction, magazine, newspapers or picture books. They do not have to finish the book or report on it in any way. The only requirements is that they don't chat to each other while reading (and I am even in two minds about that) but I want to generate at atmosphere of calm and peace and pleasure associated with reading. Each English class from Year 7 to Year 11 has a half or one period a cycle devoted to this and it is great if the teacher can model reading for pleasure as well. It is hardly a chore for English teachers. So why was I a bit miffed when I explained to a parent what our system was and he said "wish I got paid for sittng around and reading!" Any way the students love it, the borrowings are going up and when we do have student volunteers talk to the class about books they are reading at the end of each session, I get to hear how much they value our system. I think Stephen Krashen, who inspired me, would be proud, and I thank the librarians at school for organising it all.
Technorati Tags: Stephen Krashen, reading, education, libraries

Travels with my PC

2008-04-10T02:25:00.006+10:00

Even though I am travelling and even though I have had a serious eye condition while travelling (necessitating hospital visits in Norway and Holland) I am still trying to keep up with my Masters in Education course (ICT in Education). While checking out one of the readings in preparation for an essay on "the potential and problems associated with the use of the Internet in Education and how the maximum potential could be achieved in this area," I came across this site, via the Oz-Teachernet site which “has been working with and for teachers since 1995. It is a non-profit community service managed and maintained by academics at the Queensland University of Technology.“ The site is The Fifth Dimension Community and describes itself thus:

The 5DLAByrinth is an Internet-based gamelike environment which is constructed as a labyrinth (maze). The idea of the virtual maze is modelled on the psychical maze present in 5D-sites. The 5DLAByrinth can have 3-6 rooms in which a group of pupils together complete a task, a so called Mission, which comprises several different tasks. The pupils must investigate, create, communicate and cooperate in order to complete their Mission. The purpose of the 5DLAByrinth is to give students the opportunity to work as a team and to communicate, collaborate, learn and at the same have fun.

I have been interested in global collaboration for a while and one of the bnefits of travelling has been to make a contact in Sweden where our Year 11 students in Australia will be working together with similar age students there. While I have been travelling I have been trying out an ASUS eee pc which has been ideal for the purpose. Even the Linux hasn't been too hard to learn as I have had no option. There is a good review here via Paul Harrington, but overall I have to say it is excellent, quick and light and easy to use.

Middle Years Book Club

2008-03-18T21:20:00.002+11:00

The OzProjects Middle Years Book Club (MYBC) is up and running - just waiting for some more team/group profiles to be added, along with some book reviews. Kerrie Smith really does want to read about what everybody else is reading. Go on over and have a look.

Your Day in a Sentence

2008-03-16T21:23:00.006+11:00

Just added my thoughts here on Voicethread. This was previously hosted by The Reflective Teacher. What a wonderful way to have teachers collaborate on a project. Hosted by Anne Mirtschin (alias Murch on Twitter) it has voices and text comments from different countries and in different accents. What a fantastic idea, with a lot of new teachers that I had not met before. The day in a sentence project seems to be mostly hosted by Kevin, the writer of an excellent blog, Kevin's Meandering Mind where he write a lot about his slice of life story challenge project. A great new discovery for me.

A Place for Learning

2008-03-16T17:54:00.002+11:00

A little while ago I went to the VATE English Coordinators Conference and have been wanting to write up my reflections on it ever since. And now here they are. The keynote lecture, by Chris Walsh, was on "Multiliteracies and Design in the secondary (or high school) English classroom". Looking at the kind of student who is sitting in front of us, and reminding us of the environment these young people are in when not at school (channeling Marc Prensky), Walsh focused on the variety of digital media available and wondered if "print based assessment" actually "disables" students. He pleaded with us to let the students represent what they know in new ways. No argument from me there. He demonstrated examples of student work from his classes in New York where his original experiments in making webpages (before Web 2.0) had been redesigned by students to incorporate elements of great design (channeling Dean Shareski's K12 online conference presentation). Some of the resources he mentioned can be found here and here.

The best session I went to was by Lisa McNeice. Titled "Leading Change" Lisa, poet and teacher, started her session with a story, which was a fine idea on a hot Friday afternoon. She talked about how the teachers in her department had worked on their vision, and asked us to write ours. This is what I wrote: "To build a team who work together, prepare and share experiences that we offer to our students and ourselves as a group of learners. We enact a curriculum with our students and model life long learning for them and ourselves through reflection, discussion and collaboration."

She talked about the things we might have to abandon in our pursuit of excellence (one suggestion was lengthy text assignments, especially ones consisting mainly of busy work) and the ways that she had sought to bring together the English teachers in her school as a team by means of a weekly morning tea. We discussed the need for itemising what it means to be professional rather than leaving it up to possible misunderstanding. She wrapped up by finishing the story - the theme of which was The Journey and emphasised that it takes time to change a work culture.

What I got out of the day was how hard it is to be the kind of English Coordinator I want to be, how much time, patience and tact (in short supply in my world) and how much more I could be doing. I got lots of ideas to consider in creating a "high performance work culture". A few ideas I want to implement in my Domain are:
1. Asking "What's the best English class you've ever taught?" and sharing this, using it as a goal.
2. Develop a bank of sample answers for tasks at each year level for discussion and modelling purposes
3. To focus on each teacher's strengths and goals for themselves as we go about working with students to maximise their potential.
It was a useful day and I'm glad I went.

New (Web 2.0) ways with Shakespeare

2008-03-16T12:32:00.002+11:00

A colleague and collaborator from the US, Chris Shamburg recently told me of an exciting new adventure he is involved with: the Folger Shakespeare Library has published a video of Chris explaining an audio workshop with Shakespeare. A group of high school students studying Macbeth create original audio drama, using as Chris says, "the material of others in original and creative way," taking into account the ethics of using such material. The video goes for about 5 minutes and on the site there is also a PDF tutorial and other examples, as well as links to sound effects. The students are seen talking about this way of studying Shakespeare and we can see their engagement with the material. I can imagine this working well for other Shakespeare plays and able to adapted for poetry also. This will suit teachers who have a "willingness to give up more control to the students", as students in their lives outside school are both consuming and creating media.

Chris is also the author of a new book to be published by ISTE called English Language Arts Units for Grades 9 to 12, to which I contributed a chapter. The book contains

"examples of these units include fanfiction and creative writing, teaching Shakespeare with film and images, using blogs and social bookmarking to facilitate independent reading projects, podcasting for a variety of purposes, and creating and sharing digital video safely and meaningfully."

I can't wait to meet Chris at NECC and to see myself in print.

Technorati tags: Chris Shamburg, ISTE, education, NECC 2008, Macbeth, English classroom, Folger

Looking forward to NECC 2008

2008-03-11T22:24:00.003+11:00

I can't get over how lucky I am. Off to Europe in a few weeks and then going to the National Education Computing Conference in San Antonio in June. This morning dipping into twitter over breakfast I caught a tweet about the Constructivist Consortium, went to the website and thought that it was just my sort of thing so I registered.

From the website: "The Constructivist Celebration is an opportunity for you to let your creativity run free with the world's best open-ended software tools in a great setting; with enthusiastic colleagues who share your commitment to children, computing, creativity and constructivism. You might think of this stimulating event as a spa day for your mind and soul!" The keynote will be by Gary Stager and among the faculty will be Sylvia Martinez from GenYes. Hoping to see some of you there as well. If not there will be some tweeting and blogging happening, I am sure.

International Edubloggers Directory

2008-03-10T23:32:00.005+11:00

I have just spent a happy hour (or more) browsing this wonderful resource: The International Edubloggers Directory. I saw many of my friends there: Stephanie Sandifer, Darren Draper, Stephen Downes, Julie Lindsay and our famous student blogger Arthus, among many others. But it was the people I had not heard of that really caught my attention. There is material for reading there for weeks. Not many students though. The gender split (for those interested) is 40% female, 60% male. Why am I not surprised? The range of countries represented was also interesting,
USA - 44%
UK - 23%
Canada - 8%
Australia - 3%
Ireland- 3%
New Zealand - 2%
Thailand - 2%
Belgium - 2%
Japan - 2%
Mexico - 2%
Netherlands - 2%
Bulgaria - 1%
Cayman Islands - 1%
China - 1%
Hong Kong - 1%
Indonesia - 1%
Malaysia - 1%
Morocco - 1%
Qatar - 1%
Romania - 1%
Singapore - 1%
Spain - 1%
Uruguay - 1%

I was interested in some edubloggers from the Netherlands as I will be travelling there in a few weeks and want to get my language, now rusty, up to speed. I am hoping to visit some schools in Holland while I am there so if anyone has any contacts with Dutch educators I would be very happy to hear from you. The Directory which was launched in January 2008 already has 140 members and was set up by Patricia Donaghy from Ireland. If you are an edublogger add yourself here. The more the merrier.

Encountering Conflict Network Ning

2008-03-09T17:55:00.004+11:00

Visit Encountering Conflict Network

In my capacity as Professional Development committee member of VATE I have just started an Encountering Conflict Network Ning which brings together teachers in Victoria who are teaching Year 12 English. The new study design being implemented this year has an Area of Study called Creating and Presenting. This area of study is divided into four Contexts out of which students write to various audiences and purposes out of a study of two set texts in the Context. Read more here. At my school the students are studying The Secret River by Kate Grenville and The Crucible by Arthur Miller. The idea of a social networking site to bring together teachers in a teaching and learning community was too good to pass up. Looking forward to seeing how it works. Of course, I want to use all the modes available to me so some of the teachers will be meeting face to face as well this week, but I hope the Ning will take off as well. And who knows, with any luck it could become a useful resource for students as well. I love the idea that we are all learners and we are all teachers as well. And maybe we all will gain some ideas about how to usefully "encounter conflict" and how to not let it destroy us.

Inspired to blog

2008-03-07T00:07:00.002+11:00

It's late and I've been feeling that I have neglected this blog lately. This week the students at my school have been on camps, retreats and work experience - the whole school goes out at once and gets it over with in one hit, so I haven't been in the classroom. But now I'm listening to a podcast I've just heard about through a new blogger I've just started following on Twitter, Jenny Luca. The podcast is the SOS podcast with Jeff Utecht and David Carpenter. SOS stands for "Shifting our schools," and here they highlight events and people in Educational Technology. They speak about inspiring teachers they know and about the ideas these teachers are exploring in their classrooms. It's great and they have reinspired me to write tonight. And then I got an email from Evie, a Year 8 student who had been on the Melbourne City Camp letting me know that she had blogged about her experience. Have a read: My Friends, My Life, My Shoes