Beautiful images in Tag galaxy

Today as I continue to work with the teachers in my Intel course, one of the participants came across this beautiful site. Called Tag Galaxy, it is visually stunning and beautifully dynamic. It is a way to search for images and then to narrow the search by choosing categories that appear on the screen. The more planets(tags) you click the more you narrow your search. You do have to have a flickr account to actually get the images and of course if that is the case then you need to at the very minimum ask permission. These screen grabs don't do it justice. You HAVE to go and look at it. It's stunning.

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Dvolver- another new toy.

On reading the blog of 'cyberspaced' called A teacher's adventures in Cyberspace I came across this interesting little tool. Called the Dvolver it allows the user to create a little animated movie. Hmm, not sure how I would use this but I see that cyberspaced is going to try it with his Year 9 science class. Can't wait to see the results. On the site it says Dvolver creates creativity widgets - software that enables people to creatively communicate using internet technologies.

Intel Education- it never ceases to amaze me

I should declare before I write this post that I am an Intel Teach Senior Trainer with the Dept of Ed, Victoria. I obviously teach in my school most of the year but every now and then (about 3 times a year) I train teachers in either the Intel Teach Thinking with Technology course or the Intel Teach Essentials course. Both courses focus on supporting the understanding of sound pedagogy, the use of Curriculum Framing Questions and higher order thinking and embedding ICT into the curriculum. Today I began another course, this time in Warragul with 17 teachers from the Catholic Education Office.
I always love to run these courses. What do I get from it? Well first and foremost it is such a pleasure to see the development and understanding that evolves over the 5 days. There is always a range of ages, experiences, schools, teaching specialties and interest with every group that I train. It never ceases to amaze me how much this course challenges fellow teachers in such a way that they are often feeling pretty uncomfortable and unsure by the end of day 1. I couldn't count how many times I said today, "Don't worry, everyone feels this way, it usually falls into place by Wednesday". But what also pleases me is that we teachers continue to challenge ourselves. We somehow cope with these feelings of inadequacy and unsuredness with a willingness to keep going. I know that by the end of the 5 days we will have 17 fantastic units of work to be shared with others as well as 17 Master Trainers who will go back to their school ready to train another 10 teachers in their school. Isn't life grand.