Monday, November 13, 2006

Is it all too much? The LINUM 21 Conference

Today I presented a session at the LINUM 21 Literacy and Numeracy conference for the Northern Metropolitan Region in Melbourne, Victoria. My session was entitled Teaching with Technology and was designed to showcase the Intel Education Teach Thinking with Technology Tools as well as tell a little of the story of the work we are doing at Wedderburn. In the second half of the hour long session I also planned to demonstrate the Teach with Technology wiki that I currently use to document my work at Wedderburn and the blogs and Wedderburn P12 wiki that I have been using with the students at Wedderburn College as well as mention and demonstrate some other tools such as Skype, podcasts, rss etc. I was hoping to excite and enthuse teachers to have a go at some of the thinking tools and the Web 2.0 applications that are freely available on the web.
As I began the session I simply said to people that if they wanted any information about any of the work that I was showing that they simply needed to write down the url of my blog (this blog) and they would be able to get all the information they needed and more.
I think that I probably demonstrated my personal enthusiasm for the potential of the internet and the power and engagement value of discovering ways that can create and relate the curriculum in a meaningful way to our students. But I'm not sure that was a good thing.
I fear that I may have lost a few people along the way by being too enthusiastic and assuming that participants were more aware of the Web 2.0 apps. There were people there who weren't familiar with blogs and wikis and although I tried to explain and demonstrate in the time that I had I'm not sure that I was too successful.
So if any of you have been brave enough to come visit this post, and check out this blog, tell me what you think.
Would it have been better to just look at one thing..I have this terrible tendency to get excited about things and want to share them with everyone else assuming that you will all love them and see the educational potential as much as I do.
Anyway if you do make it maybe just have a go at one thing...
try a blog, or try a wiki or download Skype

anyway post a comment. I'd love to hear from you.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't worry about covering too much material. It is the enthusiasm that will sway the 'swinging voters' to give something new a go. I doubt that there is such a thing as too much enthusiasm. Steve M.

Anne said...

thanks Steve
that was the intention and if only a couple get into what is possible then I think that will be great for our kids. Thanks for visiting the site.
let me know if you have a blog or wiki to share :)

Anonymous said...

I'm going to come to your session at the VITTA conference and having read your post I am looking forward to it. I don't think you can have too much enthusiasm either! I have just started out with blogs through the Global Teacher so I'm keen to get some ideas.
Maree

Anne said...

Good on you Maree. The best thing to do is just jump in and have a bit of fun. Make sure you come and say hello.
I'm interested in what you are doing with Global Teachers too.
see you Monday.