Category Archives: Professional learning

Spreading the word

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Three new presentations on social media have become available in recent days and could be good to use for staff meetings or professional learning sessions to promote better understanding of social media and discussions on how it may enhance learning.

The first presentation is the recently released TED Talk by creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson, who “makes the case for a radical shift from standardized schools to personalized learning — creating conditions where kids’ natural talents can flourish.”

The second presentation is a slideshare by Jane Hart on social learning.

Social Learning: an explanation using Twitter

View more presentations from Jane Hart.

The third presentation is a video that focuses on the ways social media has changed products, services and communication. (It is in no way an endorsement of students using Facebook, but an expose of how people are communicating.) “The Social Media Revolution 2 video is a refresh of the original video with new and updated social media & mobile statistics that are hard to ignore. Based on the book Socialnomics by Erik Qualman.”

These presentations don’t have all the answers, but they should be conversation starters at school.

Upcoming free virtual conference events

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There are some exciting web conferences scheduled next week for both teachers and students in the Virtual Conference Centre:

*         Switching on to Literacy – Blogging

*         Act 4 Nature with Zoos Victoria (Student Session – join in
with your class!)

*         Music Matters

*         Tech-Talk Tuesday: Web Conferencing for Student Collaboration

*         What’s burning in eLearning? – What’s on the Horizon for P-12
Schools

*         Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Ultranet – Episode 1, A New Hope

*         Where’s the Remote? – Rural Education Forum

These sessions are free and you don’t even need to sign up. Further details of these sessions are below. Details of upcoming events can be found on the Virtual Conference Centre calendar at:
http://www.education.vic.gov.au/researchinnovation/virtualconferencecentre/program

Switching On To Literacy – Blogging

WHEN:                          Monday, May 31, 2010, 3:45 – 4:45pm

PRESENTER(S):          Nathan Black and Joanne Scott

SUMMARY:                  Are you a busy teacher who needs quick and easy tips for integrating ICT effectively into literacy sessions? Are you already using ICT’s in your classroom, but are looking for some new ideas and uses? Are you an enthusiastic teacher of Early Years student? This is the right place for you! Switching on to Literacy’ is a professional learning series aimed at promoting ICT use in the Early Years literacy classroom. We welcome passionate educators will all levels of experience with ICT. In this session, Nathan Black will demonstrate practical ways for using blogging tools within the classroom. We will look at the technology and explore ways that blogs can be used to enhance class activities.
SESSION LINK:
https://sas.elluminate.com/d.jnlp?sid=2007026&password=switchingontolite
racy

Act4Nature with Zoos Victoria

WHEN:                          Tuesday, June 1, 2010, 2 – 3pm

PRESENTER(S):          Rick Hammond and Donna Livermore, Zoos Victoria

SUMMARY:                  Chat to Zoo experts each month and take the pledge to Act4Nature www.act4nature.org.au
<http://www.act4nature.org.au/> . 2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity and we’re asking schools to get involved. Each month we’ll be profiling a different animal species that is under threat and recommending a simple action we can all do to help. Students will be given opportunities to contribute their ideas and strategies to an online blog between sessions.
SESSION LINK:
https://sas.elluminate.com/d.jnlp?sid=2007026&password=D.0CF489E02A6E495
D9D1489D20983A4

Music Matters

WHEN:                          Tuesday, June 1, 2010, 3:45 – 4:45pm

PRESENTER(S):          Sally Walsh

SUMMARY:                  Are you ready to try new things in your music room? Do you want a forum to discuss and share new ideas for music technology? What about hearing from the experts about innovations in music education? If so, “Music Matters” is for you. Come and join us, share ideas, or just listen. In this session we will be discussing free and cheap software to add interest to music lessons. This session will show ways to involve students in music education without them knowing they are learning anything! Great (free!) ideas for using interactive whiteboards in your music room.
SESSION LINK:
https://sas.elluminate.com/d.jnlp?sid=2007026&password=musicmatters

Tech-Talk Tuesday: Web Conferencing for Student Collaboration

WHEN:                          Tuesday, June 1, 2010, 3:45 – 4:45pm

PRESENTER(S):          Claire Bloom and Anne Mirtschin

SUMMARY:                  Web conferencing software enabled Year 10 students from Warrandyte High School, Victoria, Australia to work in e-teams with students from Wellington Girls College in New Zealand. As a
virtual team students created a website that investigated and compared social networking habits across the schools, explored some of the social issues related to social networking and then reflected on the experience
of web conferencing. Hear Claire Bloom discuss the ‘nuts and bolts’ of establishing a web conferencing-based global project. Learn about the achievements experienced as students worked globally to achieve many
cultural understandings.
SESSION LINK:
https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2007026&password=M.8152C2264B49785
5EFA90562C76F

What’s Burning in eLearning? – What’s on the Horizon for P-12 schools?

WHEN:                       Wednesday, June 2, 2010, 4 – 5pm

PRESENTER(S):          Mark Richardson

SUMMARY:               What will be the latest emerging technologies that will hit schools in the next few years? How pedagogically sound are they? How will these technologies enhance teaching and learning? Will schools, teachers and students readily take them up? Tony Richards from ITmadeSimple, will discuss the projections of The Horizon Report 2010 K-12 Edition, as well as sharing his ideas on the topic. What do you think of cloud computing, collaborative tools, game based learning, and mobile devices? These are rapidly becoming part on the school landscape. While others such as Augmented Reality and Flexible Displays may be just
over the horizon..
SESSION LINK:
https://sas.elluminate.com/d.jnlp?sid=2007026&password=whatsburninginele
arning

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Ultranet: Episode 1, A New Hope

WHEN:                          Thursday, June 3, 2010, 4 – 5pm

PRESENTER(S):          Becky Marley and Narissa Leung

SUMMARY:                  A long time ago, in an Education Department far, far away, a revolutionary idea was born. Since its inception, the Ultranet represented a revolutionary vision of Web 2.0 and its potential for improving outcomes in Victorian schools. Well folks, the revolution is NOW! On March 10th the Ultranet was launched at Ringwood Secondary College. As Ultranet Coaches, Lead Users and intrepid teachers set out on a process of discovery with this new educational tool, this series will seek to bring together educators keen to make the most of the Ultranet in its various stages..
SESSION LINK:
https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2007026&password=M.86C960AB8207714
BBEC43D22DE36D5

Where’s the Remote? – Rural education forum

WHEN:                          Thursday, June 3, 2010, 4 – 5pm

PRESENTER(S):          Cameron Peverett and Kane Horwill

SUMMARY:                  Feeling isolated or ignored? Struggling to find relevant PD close to home? Watch this space! Each week we will be discussing issues common to those in rural settings. Need more information or ideas on ICT? Additional Needs students? Classroom management? Become part of a collective group willing to share experiences, advice and professional development in a context relevant to you in a supportive and understanding environment. Our informal discussions will be aimed at narrowing the gaps of professional learning and advice available between rural and metro schools through the coming of digital age; where distance should no longer be a deficit.
SESSION LINK:
https://sas.elluminate.com/d.jnlp?sid=2007026&password=wherestheremote

Bookleads wiki

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Joyce Valenza blogged about this terrific wiki a few days ago.

Bookleads wiki

Although her message was primarily about the book trailer resources, there’s a lot of other great stuff to be found!

Resources on the wiki include:

Joyce welcomes contributions from any interested educators. This can be done by applying to join the wiki here. Thank you yet again Joyce for developing and sharing excellent resources.

Social Media Reading List for School Leaders

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Hans Mundahl is an American “educator working in experiential learning and technology”. He has developed a YouTube video and accompanying wikis to build a remarkable resource for developing social media learning in schools.

As his Social Medi Read List wiki explains,

The idea for this page is to build a ‘best of the web’ reading / watching list for school leadership regarding using social media for school advancement. Rather than talk about how great social media is we’re using social media to build this reading list. Articles will fall into one of these topic areas:

  • What is this stuff: Simple explanations for common social media tools
  • Making the Case: Does social media really matter?
  • iPhone: Making the case for bringing your message to hand held devices, in particular the iPhone.
  • Joys & Concerns: Case studies of successful and unsuccessful social media engagement.
  • Good Models: Effective blogging, tweeting, FB’ing school administrators.
  • Next Steps: What steps should schools be taking next?

Anyone who is interested in social media and wanting to introduce it to a wider range of teachers at their school will find the video and wiki useful, informative and persuasive. The wiki is a particularly good resource as all educators are invited to edit and add content to it.

Digital Particpation

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The UK’s FutureLab organisation have produced two informative videos on digital participation in schools.

Running at just over 7 and 9 minutes each, the videos look at incorporating technology into the curriculum in primary and secondary schools respectively.

The most interesting aspect is that students appear on camera to give their feedback on what they had been learning and why they liked using specific technologies. Teachers explain how teaching styles were different and how students excelled by using technologies not normally used is the classroom. The fact of students using technologies outside of the classroom (at home) was also acknowledged.

Components of digital literacies such as

  • Creativity
  • Critical thinking and evaluation
  • Cultural and social understanding
  • Collaboration
  • Finding and selecting information
  • Effective communication
  • E-safety
  • Functional skills

were discussed. Well worth viewing.

A Prescription for Healthier School Librarianship: Transforming Our Practice for the 21st Century

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The brilliant Buffy Hamilton has agreed to share her presentation on A Prescription for Healthier School Librarianship: Transforming Our Practice for the 21st Century with readers of Bright Ideas.

A Prescription for Healthier School Librarianship: Transforming Our Practice for the 21st Century

As Hamilton states, the challenges we all face such as:
  • budget contraints
  • filtering
  • fear of change

Can be overcome by:

  • seeing change as an opportunity, not a threat
  • creating a participatory culture and environment
  • multiple forms of literacy
  • multiple modes of learning
  • shared knowledge construction through collaboration
  • listening, sharing and risk-taking
  • Energise your mind by plugging into your PLN

This is a presentation that is thoughtful, creative, intelligent and timely. As Hamilton states, “Libraries are in the change business”. A visit to her website, The Unquiet Librarian is highly recommended.

Alan November – How Can We Make Change?

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Recently Alan November spoke at the ACEC2010 Conference. On his ‘soapbox’ he discussed how teachers who want to use technology in the curriculum can help to encourage and make change within their schools.

  • It is the role of the Principal to manage change.
  • We need to change the way Principals are trained to include information about embedding technology into the curriculum.
  • When teachers go on PD days, take two students to PD to build in urgency to make change once back at school.
  • What do you love to teach? Custom design tools for that.
  • Principals should ask teachers ‘which countries are part of your work?’ They need to make contact with teachers across the world for kids to work together. The Principal should organise this so there are no excuses.
  • Assessment: capacity to show students in any subject fitquest library.
  • Find 12 student projects for this unit. Kids develop rubrics for assessing projects. They design the assessment.
  • Who owns learning? is an important question we must consider.
  • Publishing student work online is vital. Continuous assessment over years by comments, etc.
  • Different search engines for different problems. An example is to narrow a Google search down to articles coming from a specific country eg for Turkey you would type in Site:tr after your search phrase. To narrow down to government sites, use Site:gov
  • Technorati is  a search engine for blogs. Includes comments.
  • Good tools to create content and communicate are Jing and Skype. We must have fearless global communicators and learners. Teach them well.
  • YouTube is blocked? Teachers should be able to create folders inside your school filter. Every teacher can have their own filter.
  • School Leaders need to learn how filtering software works.
  • See Alan’s web literacy book./website Information literacy. Add to PLN
  • Teach strategies for search – setup a Google custom search engine at (you will need google account). This makes searching safer and more reliable for students as the only results are from the sites you’ve nominated to be reputable. Designed by teachers, students won’t get distracted by millions of search results as the only results are ones you put in. Students can contribute sites as well. More information on how to implement this – read this handout by Alan November.
  • A good idea is to have students with specific tasks, change the students daily:
  • Tutorial designers. Students can design and produce learning lessons and tutorials for other students, within their class, school and across the globe. An example of this was featured in a previous Bright Ideas post about Mathtrain.TV.
  • Official scribe. Create a Google Docs account which all students can view. Have one student take comprehensive notes for the class daily. Students will take great care when taking notes on behalf of the class, teaching them responsibility and good writing skills.
  • Daily researcher. Adding resources for class study every day. Set up a Diigo or Delicious account and have students add links and tags. Set up tagging on the first day. Teachers can see who is tagging what.
  • Collaboration coordinators. Have a small team of students who take responsibility for organising and making contact with other classrooms across the world via Skype.
  • Curriculum reviewers. Students can review the resources and curriculum via their own podcasts.
  • Contributors to society. Kiva is an excellent website that organises small loans for third world countries. Great for geography.
  • The best job for kids is to make a difference.

More information is available in Alan’s “Power Up or Power Down” chapter of Curriculum21.

Moving from Facilitation to Constructive Partnerships

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Recently The Journal featured an interesting article on how schools can use technology to change relationships with students.

The article The Changing Role of Instructors Moving from Facilitation to Constructive Partnerships looks at:

  • Guides and Coaches and the Art of Facilitation
  • Learning Partners
  • The Importance of Democratizing the Process
  • Learning as a Process–not a Product

The article states that with technology enabling students to author and publish a wide variety of digital materials and products, students and teachers are becoming collaborators and partners in learning. What are your thoughts?

Pass it on!

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Over the past few days, Bright Ideas has been fortunate to be recognised by some wonderful peers.

Interactive content corner award

An award has been given out to Bright Ideas by a number of other blog authors and in turn, I am awarding some blogs the same award. Thank you to Interactive Content Corner, The Nerdy Teacher and I Learn Technology

For those I am awarding below, here are a few rules to follow:

1- Copy and display the picture of the award given to you;

2- Link back to the blog that nominated you;

3- Nominate 10 different blogs yourself;

4- Inform the people you nominated, so they can in turn, continue the chain and spread the word about other great blogs out there.

My awards go to (in no particular order)

Many thanks to @ktenkely for introducing me to many of these blogs via the wonderful I Learn Technology blogging alliance.

Gateway to 21st Century Skills

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Teachers can access a wide range of educational support materials via The Gateway to 21st Century Skills website.

gateway

Teachers must register to use The Gateway, however, it is free to do so.

The “about the Gateway Project” page explains more:

Mission

The Gateway expands educators’ capability to access Internet-based lesson plans, instructional units and other educational materials in all forms and formats. The Gateway’s goal is to improve the organization and accessibility of the substantial collections of materials that are already available on various federal, state, university, non-profit, and commercial Internet sites.

The Gateway is administered by JES & Co., a nonprofit serving educators and trainers at all levels in the USA and around the world.

Vision

The Gateway will be the world’s leading digital library and metadata cooperative, helping educators serve students by providing access to educational knowledge through cutting edge innovation and collaboration

Resources are listed by subject:

There are thousands of links to sites available for learning and teaching.

Thank you to Helen Boelens for passing on the information for this site.