VELS ICT resources

Victorian Northern Metropolitan Region  Ultranet Coach Anesti Anestis has agreed to share a VELS wiki he has been developing.

VELS ICT wiki homepage
VELS ICT wiki homepage

Anesti explains:

Paula Christophersen, ICT Curriculum Manager, VCAA and her team has released a range of new resources and support materials on the VELS website that is designed to support the application of ICT in learning and teaching programs. It is a very comprehensive list of ideas for Prep through to Year 10. There are many practical resources that schools, ICT teachers and classroom teachers can use. Another useful link that may support our understanding of the role of ICT in the curriculum and its interdisciplinary nature is here: http://vels.vcaa.vic.edu.au/about/faq.html#21

VELS Primary and scope and sequence
VELS Primary and scope and sequence

He continues:

This wiki is a community effort to share some “teacher friendly” resources for the VELS ICT domain. In addition we hope to add links to lots of useful resources from the web to aid in its implementation.

Please use the discussion tab above if you have comments or suggestions. Or just jump right in and start adding to the pages.

We are collecting a large number of ICT documents from many schools and cluster educators and placing them in the resources section. We will use these documents as the basis for collaborating on the wiki.

Secondary scope and sequence
Secondary scope and sequence

You will also find that there are examples of Scope and Sequence for both Primary and Secondarylevels. Here schools have been invited to share what they have been doing and add links to documentation so that other interested teachers have easy access to support materials.

Another excellent wiki Anesti. Thank you for your work and for sharing with the readers of Bright Ideas.

Futurelab

Futurelab: is a not-for-profit group from the United Kingdom. Their goal is innovation in education and their website states:

Who are we and what we do

Futurelab is passionate about transforming the way people learn. Tapping into the huge potential offered by digital and other technologies, we develop innovative resources and practices that support new approaches to learning for the 21st century. A not-for-profit organisation, we work in partnership with others to:

Futurelab homepage
Futurelab homepage

Futurelab has a range of resources for educators. There are pages on:

  • projects (includes research data)
  • resources
  • events

Some of the projects include Games and learning, Design challenge and Innovate to educate.

Games and learning
Games and learning

Futurelab is a portal to all things innovative in education. Well worth a visit and reflection on how these ideas could be used in our classrooms. Not all projects are current, but the ones that have been completed are usually accompanied by research data and reports on the efficacy of the project.

Moozement

Moozement could be a great tool to share with your Phys. Ed staff.

Homepage
Homepage

It is a way to document and share your sports training program with other people. Users can encourage each other and it is a great way to keep track of training times over a set period of time. Eighty sports are currently catered for, and if your sport is not there, let the developers of Moozement know and they will add it for you.

A great way to incorporate ICT into Phys. Ed.

ICT Toolkit

Anesti Anestis, the Whittlesea Network Coach for the Department of Educaton and Early Childhood Development‘s Northern Metropolitan Region Ultranet Team, is one of the people responsible for a sensational ICT toolkit wiki.

ICT toolkit homepage

Anthony Oldmeadow, Tennille Blake and the remaining NMR Ultranet Coaches joined Anesti in developing the wiki, which is home to all sorts of ICT tools.  Anesti says,

Since its inception in March other state Ultranet Coaches have also contributed, notably Krystie Alleaume. We have designed it as a resource that any teacher looking to apply various ICT ‘class tools’ has a choice of over 40 categories, with each category linking to and listing anywhere from 5-20 tools.  On last count, there are over 500 different tools teachers can explore!  The site links to other powerful wikis and the epotential resource (which provides student and teacher examples of some of the tools). In addition to class tools 1 & 2 there is detailed support for elearning leaders undertaking the job of eplanning in a school.  Many of the resources are custom made by Ultranet coaches (like the epotental analysis spreadsheets) to assist with greater interpretation and analysis of school data.

A - Z of online tools
A – Z of online tools

The wiki is not locked and is open to any member who would like to share their work, findings and ideas. Look forward to seeing you in and around the icttoolkit wikispace!

 Thanks to Anesti, Anthony, Tennille, Krystie and all of the other educators who have developed such a useful resource.

More thoughts on Will Richardson and Successful use of ICT in schools

A letter in the Fairfax magazine Northern Weekly dated 24 March 2009 seems to sum up what the SLAV conference featuring Will Richardson on Monday 23 March was all about. Written by Caryl Oliver she says,

Imagine a learner who has grown up never knowing life without the internet, never being “off the air” and always able to access answers to questions the minute they arise because there is a mobile phone, wireless connection and more?

How much more do you learn if your study group is made up of learners from all over the world, connected by computing networks? Wouldn’t it be great to plunder the resources of any library, anywhere in the world?…. Mini-laptops and wireless connectivity make mobility as commonplace as current mobile phones; students no longer need to be tied to classroom, campus or even city. Learning becomes part of life because it is always there and always available.

2020? Sure, but we can have it now if we think outside the classroom and make policy and infrastructure decisions that will allow us to exploit the enormous opportunity that technology offers education.

As Will says, ‘When there’s an internet connection in a room, I’m no longer the smartest person in the room. My network can answer all of the questions I can’t answer myself.’ Thanks to my Mum for pointing Caryl’s letter out to me. Mum’s 82 but really gets what we are all trying to achieve.

While on the theme of using ICT in education, the latest Victorian Institute of Teaching digest focuses on ICT in education. Topics include:

  • Successful use of ICT in schools
  • What do we know about the ICT literacy of Australian school students?
  • Is ICT availability and use assoicated with student performance?
  • What is the evidence of the impact of ICT on learning?
  • ICTs in science classrooms
  • ICTs and learning.

The Commonwealth Government’s Building the Education Revolution Primary Learning Environment

The Commonwealth Government has recently released the guidelines for Primary Schools  applying for grants for 21st Century Learning Neighbourhoods, 21st Century Libraries/Learning Resource Centres and 21st Century Multipurpose Centres. 

Of note to library staff (whether or not they are eligible for the grant) will be the information on what a 21st Century Library/Learning Resource Centre should offer:

21st Century Library / Learning Resource Centre

The 21st century library provides a learning resource hub and a central location for storage and coordination of facilities and services for use by the whole school

community. In contrast to the libraries of the industrial era, 21st century libraries can be thought of as places, opportunities and resources for individual and shared investigation for all learning styles.

 The library will house the majority of the school’s resources and provide formal and informal spaces for both students and staff.

 The library area performs a number of important functions associated with the range of learning and teaching activities to be undertaken at the school. It should be able to house the physical resources of the school, such as books, magazines and maps, as well as offer access to online, electronic, audiovisual and other resources through provision for computer terminals and audiovisual equipment.

 It offers flexible teaching spaces that can be used by whole class or smaller groups to undertake learning activities based upon library resources. There are spaces for quiet reading and discussion as well as space for formal lecture and discussion for larger groups of students.

 Audio-visual recording and editing facilities, with ‘green screen’ and acoustic separation, an animation zone, computer access, central storage of communal ICT resources and a small presentation space are integral to its design as a ‘high-tech’ digital learning hub. A staff work area, areas and facilities for dynamic displays, displays of books and other learning resources, an adjoining conference room, interview room, collaborative zones, quiet reading and study areas, relaxation zones, including an integrated café style area for senior students, provide spaces for independent learning and social interaction and ensure that it maintains a ‘hightouch’ quality.

The 21st Century Library is a sophisticated learning resource centre for joint school and community use with resources, spaces and programs that can accommodate the needs of people at all stages of the lifespan.”

Also of interest is the information provided on “Embedded, Integrated Information and Communications Technology.

“Communication is the key to building and sustaining a community of learners. Seamless access to information and communications technology (ICT) by students and teachers is essential for contemporary teaching and learning practice. ICT is broadening the scope of how, when and where learning occurs. ICT provides a powerful, integrated set of tools to improve learning, teaching, communication and administration. Effective use of ICT enhances a school’s capacity to:

  • Personalise and extend learning
  • Support creativity, risk-taking, higher order thinking and problem solving
  • Connect learning beyond the school
  • Promote self-directed and self-managed learning
  • Develop 21st century literacies – digital, technological, visual, collaborative, interactive
  • Embrace authentic assessment and ‘assessment for learning’ through presentation software, ePortfolios and online assessment
  • Communicate across geographical, cultural and temporal boundaries
  • Creatively develop and manage learning and teaching resources
  • Efficiently access and store information.”

The full guidelines can be found here and fact sheets can be accessed here. Information on leading practice and design is located here. For specific information on the Victorian implementation of the program, contact your Regional Office or email ber@edumail.vic.gov.au.

Good luck with your application and we would love to follow the process of building some new primary school libraries on Bright Ideas.

thisMoment

An interesting Web 2.0 resource that could be useful for the beginning of the school year is thisMoment.

thisMoment is a type of digital portfolio that can chronicle events in a person’s life. As with all of the best Web 2.0 tools that can be used for educational purposes, thisMoment has privacy settings so that students’ work can be shared only with selected people.

‘Moments’ appear in the form of a timeline, with the ability for you to upload photos or videos alongside the text that you write; a description of what the moment is and how it made you feel. Getting students to create their own moments could be a great way of getting to know them at the beginning of the year. If thisMoment was introduced to year 6 students on orientation day, they could collect moments over the Christmas holidays ready to upload and share with their new school mates and teachers. For those schools with pets, accounts for pets can be created and (for example) the life cycle of a pet could be chronicled. This type of activity has applications for VELS areas such as Science, English, Humanities, ICT and Personal Learning

There are lots of social networking tools that users can tweak to add to their thisMoment experience.