Little ripples

I had such big plans for 2010, I had found my feet pretty much across the 3 campuses, and I was ready to jump in and really hope to make a difference…

We had reliability issues being sorted out, infrastructure getting stronger, the Ultranet was on the way… staff were positive in looking at trying out new things…  even Moodle had come onlline to external access… things were going well…

Then I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer during the term 1 break… and everything seems to have gone on hold…. except it can’t… life goes on… school goes on, the big wheels keep on turning. I may not be there, but positive changes have continued.

The infrastructure has definitely improved, even though there were issues from the Ultranet side on the Aug 9th training day, staff were able to be online most of the day, and get to where they needed to be (as long as it wasn’t the Ultranet). This was not possible 12 months ago, to have large online groups on wifi. So that is a positive. It was awesome that it was held on a “good” day for me, so I could go and visit each campus, and see how they were going. The day really tested their resilience, but I think most of them worked through it.

I think one of the biggest roles that ultimately comes down to me… and I don’t quite know how I will keep on top of it this year, is developing a college approach, rather than campus based. My being away has seen great people pop up to take the lead, but often, only for their campus… I guess this is a comfort zone thing, and hopefully both with my guidance, and the Ultranet design spaces we can work around these things. So there is follow up Ultranet training being developed on each campus, and hopefully will be shared on the eLearning Design Space I have set up on the Ultranet.

Was lucky to spend some time in an elluminate conference session with Greg Whitby – organised by Helen Otway this morning (love doing PD in my PJs) “It Takes a Village” . It related really well to how we can think about the spaces we will be designing to develop new learning structures across the college as part of the “masterplan”. Still concerns with how we ensure every student gets the most out of the structure. The open approach works really well for kids who want to learn… how do we foster this desire to learn in all of our  students? There are still formal assessments with huge amounts of content which have to be “taught to” or “poured into” our students. Year 12 teachers have huge commitment to ensure their students have the best possible opportunities to do well in the exams, which ultimately decide their immediate tertiary learning future… when will this change to reflect current teaching ideology?

Finding a school who is really happy with how they structure their “open” learning at senior levels is going to be interesting… I may have to pop down to Langy and see how it is going in their open spaces.

Well I think that is all my head can cope with at the moment…. more of a twitter brain than a long blog post brain.

more to come….

This year my eLearning focus is to spend more time coaching/mentoring staff in the development of specific projects. I hope to record some of my milestones and achievements here.

My timetable has meant I have Fridays free from my own classes, so I am hoping to use these for regular visits to the other campuses, for scheduled appointments, as well as getting together for the just in time learning stuff.

So far I have managed to catch up with a number of people at each campus to help them on their elearning journey. I have also taken on a VCAL ICT group… my first time taking VCAL, what an adventure that will be.

Beaui – Working on a wiki/blog based project with Ingrid. Have done the set up, and will continue to develop over the year.

Trying to build Garry’s confidence and competence in a range of basic Mac skills and knowledge. Time is an issue, as we don’t seem to have any time off together, and he is flat out with a pretty crazy load.

Nigel and I put together an application for the Innovating with Technology grant to develop a Geocaching type project for 3C9. It’s in and we should know this week, as the first lot of PD is next week. I hope we could run a similar thing at both of the junior campuses. Time to go caching Have been discussing this with Adam and Nadine, at the Sandy campus.

At Sandy I have been working with Jodie and Mary to develop wikis, and with Nat to help her set up a Ning social group for her year 10s. I have seen and heard of many other blogs, wikis and nings popping up all over the place.

The Mac people who are new to Macs have asked for some assistance with the basics, so I have set up a Mac User Group Support network on Moodle, with links to some very helpful self paced tools.

At Senior I have been… teaching and using a range of tools myself, trying to excite the kids too. I decided to go with Blogger for my VCAL kids blogs, as I want them to be able to mobile blog as well… I know you can set up any blog with posterous etc… but trying to keep it simple. Working with Pete is great… he has done the IT side to a T… so I can focus on the new technology… Once we have a handle on blogs, and the current task – creating a range of products to publicise the student’s “business”, we will get started with ePortfolios.

Working with Jenni to develop her understanding and use of blogs and wikis for her English classes… The Psych staff have had the iPod touches and are developing their understanding on how they can be used in classrooms. About to start handing them over to the VCAL teachers, so they can explore them as well. These may be a better approach for some literacy challenged students. I need to develop better ways of getting feedback from ipod users, currently it is just word of mouth, and not much else… I have set up a blog to track the project…. we shall see what happens.

As well as developing teacher competencies, myself and the eLearning team will be developing the new eLearning Plan to complement the college strategic plan, which is up for review this year, and the allocation of the NSSCF money across the college. The easy way would be to go by “per head”, however, will that be most effective and ensure the best and most innovative uses of technology? I have developed a set of tasks for Domain teams to explore by the end of the term. Hopefully we can get some exciting projects underway.

I hope to use this blog as a way of sharing my performance review achievements. Should be an exciting year ahead.

Can you believe Term 1 is nearly over???…

What is Twitter… I wondered that myself when I first joined up with Twitter a couple of years ago , when working on my Teacher Professional Leave Project, to see what it was all about… like I have with many other things web2.0.
What is Twitter???? It is a form of “micro blogging” posting short messages to other people, informing of updates, how you are feeling, things going on, interesting links and so on. A bit like the status updates in Facebook. The characters are limited to about 120 per post, so using txt spelling is sometimes a must.
I was at first confused, and not sure that my phone was able to cope… I tried the sms way to no avail, so used it sporadically when I was online… suprisingly it was not blocked at school like so many other sites are. I loved the Twitter add on in Firefox, but lost that when the newest version came out, and I can’t find anything similar in IE… ahh well

I added people I knew through my web 2.0 wanderings, and it took a while, but I now often use the internet on my phone to connect… and am kinda glad I don’t do the sms thing.

I was then introduced to Diigo, through Alexander Hayes, who was one of the first people to inspire me with the use of some of these tools, through funnily enough a twitter link on my phone…

Diigo is sort of like del.icio.us, sort of like a social networking site…but when you go to bookmark sites you can add them to a twitter post as well… (I always wondered how these clever people added the links in their posts… seemed too much like hard work… hehehe) This connection opened a whole new world of professional networking opportunities for me, as I was no longer just a passive getter of information, I could also share sites I had found

Finding people to follow can be interesting…. I have gradually added to my Professional Learning Network as well as a few interest/fun ones…

The people I follow are mostly very inspirational and innovative user web 2.0 tools, like Alex Hayes, Harriet Wakelam, Jo Kay, Kerry J, Helen Otway, and so on…. I must add Sue Waters too She is another one who has been very inspirational…

Twitter may seem a bit gimicky, but the power to build a Professional Learning Network, of like minded people not only locally, but around the world is its most powerful use I believe…. and I am going to see if I can twitter this… hehehe

I am really enjoying the challenges being set by the blogging group at Edna… it is keeping me on track, or I could so easily wander away and just think about things, or use them and not always share them. The sharing aspects of Web 2.0 are some of its greatest strengths, so I think it’s only fair since I have learned so much by others sharing, that I should make the effort to share as well…

The task this week is to discuss some of our favourite blogs… I use google reader to read through the blogs. Mostly I skim, until something grabs my attention, then I usually check out the post on the site. I had been using email links and del.icio.us to read through blogs, but found as I get so many emails catching up with blogs often got lost, and the same with bookmarking them, I seldom went back to check for updates and changes. With my Google account I check my mail, and then check my reader… I have different folders set up for a range of themes. I have a folder for the Redback Project blogs I monitor, so I can see at a glance when they are updated, rather than having to go to each site, only to find no changes. I do also use my iGoogle page to keep up to date with some sites as well, more of the news sites, or tutorial sites.

Now… some of the blogs I read regularly include several which have already been mentioned (oh dear, there are close to 200 in my reader… I won’t list them all .

Sue Water’s Edublogger and TAFE blogs are brilliant – the ideas and guidance, I owe a lot of my journey to having read her blog.

The Fischbowl by Karl Fisch, one of the creators of the Shift Happens video

Dangerously Irrelevant by David McLeod – another of the Shift Happens creators

Learning 2.1 a continuation of the 23 things project

and many of the blogs from BloggingCorner08 – an edna group… I have been reading Tania’s blog Brave New World a lot, some great stuff

weblogg-ed

Michelle Martin’s The bamboo project

The Age technology news, on my phone google news

There are so many wonderful blogs out there, I often wander through reading and linking to my google reader. Some are busy others less so.

I have been loving reading the blogs from my  peers participating in The Redback Project – a 23 things style of project – it has opened up some even better relationships and discussions.

So much has happened in the last few weeks, I feel like the world is spinning so fast…

I got the eLearning position at Sandy… wooo hoooo… and yet.. how scary to be changing schools for the first time in 21 years…Looking forward to the challenge… not looking forward to sorting out my 21 years of “stuff” hehehe

The Redback Project has launched… and there are about 17 staff involved so far…making good inroads to learning about Web 2.0 tools, and how they can help across a number of areas, from personal to professional classroom activities.

And over the two week break I have been project manager at the pool construction site in my backyard…. it only got to 19 C today, but was a balmy 25C in the water… lovely for a dip after finishing some yard work.

Now… to get back into the swing… edublogs is offline due to maintenance, so it’s good I have this one as well

Just a quickie post…

Friday session 4 (we have 4 session days, so last thing Friday afternoon) class of 25 eager year 7s eager and enthusiastic, and so good as we worked through dramas last week with PBwiki being blocked… they all were able to get on this week, got straight into editing and personalising their ePortfolios.

Then we introduced the voki… weren’t sure if it would work… and it did… not blocked… and the kids loved it… we had skeletons, animals etc having a ball. The were not even perterbed when they couldn’t hear the sound they created, or the fact they couldn’t make a voki account because they were under 13 – many US sites are having that restriction because of their COPPA legislation about what information the young ones can put online. They created introductions, and were uploading them to their portfolios to be a “guide” for the viewer. Introductiosn, learning goals, etc.

They worked through tech issues with a minimum of fuss, and it was a beautiful site to see 25 kids totally engaged in the task which was set… not one student was off task… a challenge in any computer room I think, as they escape to games or emal whenever they can…

The Education channel had PBwiki blocked for some reason… but was unblocked within a day. Success all round

I had a bit of distracting fun creating my voki on the weekend. I thought , yeah cool, a bit of fun. But…. today I was looking through some links on the Victorian Education site and saw a sensational use for the voki, where in student ePortfolios they recorded their student learning goals through their voki, and added it to their site. What a great way to engage the kids in a task they don’t often seem very interested in.

Looking forward to see if it is blocked at school…. hmmmmmmm

Also, thanks to Anne for the guides to import/export blogs, I have posted all of my stuff over on global teacher… so I wonder if I still have to repost what I post here….I guess I will find out … I am thinking I will just have to keep exporting etc…

and… drum roll… I have posted week 1 of the Redback Project… enjoy

Learning really is a lifelong thing, and what a wonderful and challenging (in a good way) time we are living in as there is so much to learn. Time is such a valuable commodity however, it can be a need to know basis that learning happens, or for a subject where you have a love or passion.

For me I know I had to learn scripting and HTML a few years ago to teach my Multimedia students, I found that challenging, and my kids have a giggle when I tell them I have to put on my other “head” (left brain) when I work through Action scripting and programming (my brain is not too logical,very right brain, – and I love the creative side, very much a wysiwyg kinda gal). I had to learn it, and I did, and it still surprises me when random logical thoughts when scripting come out. I think, scarily enough, my work with the programming stuff has actually trained my brain to see more from both sides. In the Dancer test I can make it go both ways….   ahh but I digress… I found lots of reasons to avoid completing the scripting stuff I had to do, yet, when there is something I am interested in, I will find the time, currently I have been working on using essential oils as an alternative therapy for a range of stuff… and created a wiki, and create blends and research oils and so on… learning, what I want to.

Where this path of exploring and embedding new technologies has lead me, is in a role of staff ICT support across the college. This has been a challenge in that other people are not necessarily seeing learning and embedding new technologies as a priority, after all they have been teaching successfully for a number of years, why should they get involved in this new stuff? Where would they find the time? what is the motivation? Getting this motivation to explore beyond their comfort zone has lead me to suggest a project which has got the support of the principal and the major curriculum drivers at the college….. and it starts next Tuesday.

The Redback Project

The project is based on the Learning 2.0 project, or 23 Things, developed and used by librarians in the US. A similar style has been created by Michelle Martin in her Bamboo Project. I have also seen a few other similar projects around, but none of them were just the right fit for my staff. I wanted something that would not be too intimidating, and was available at school. There are many blocked sites (both from the department and ISP) so trying to explore something like Flickr would be frustrating, as there are still a number of staff who do not have access to the internet at home.

So my challenge was to provide something very accessible and usable, and yet provide challenges for those staff who may want it. And so the Redback Project was created. Why Redback… well I didn’t want anything tech in the name, and Redbacks are beautiful and alluring in their webs. So with the aim to entice more staff into the web to see some of the beauty, fun and maybe a little silliness.

The project will be running over 10 school weeks, with the term 3 break it will be 12 weeks. We will look at blogs, wikis, image generators, RSS, social networking, social bookmarking, tags, Moodle and other stuff. Tasks will be kept achievable for basic level skills, but also issuing challenges for those wanting a bit more. And the lure…. prizes, looking at a range of tech gadgets to give to those who complete the project, as well as weekly draws for those on track and trying out the challenges or just trying something outside their comfort zone.

Just saw a very enlightening video by Michael Wesch – of

Presentation to the Library of Congress by Michael Wesch

He gave a very interesting review on how the culture of community is being developed globally in places like YouTube. It’s an hour long, but it didn’t feel like it.

The start will be with little ripples, hopefully becoming a tsunami of learning and fun.

Interesting to see the global teacher blogs have the same interface as edublogs…. I just felt since this was local I should check out and see what the difference was….

The Redback project is coming… and already my little bit of bait is starting to gather some attention… let’s ripple some more….