Happy Birthday James

james and danny
Originally uploaded by annieb3525

Happy 22nd birthday for Oct 3rd to my beautiful son James who is at trade school at the moment in Melbourne. This time last year we were preparing a 21st birthday party in the local footy sheds. This is James on the left with his good mate Danny only 12 months ago. My how time flies.

Blogging is worth it

I have been on holidays for the last two weeks and have taken a little break from blogging. But in that time I have received 4 or 5 comments on previous posts that I have made on this blog. Some comments were on posts made over a month or so ago. That is really heartening and encouraging as sometimes when you send these thoughts out into the blogosphere you don't really know if the only one reading it is YOU (as in me).  It made me wonder about the immediacy of the web and the feeling of moving on that I often get when I read or post something. I think it has to do with everything happening and changing so quickly on the web. It's like, once it's gone it's time to move on to the next thought. It's good though to every now and then go back and read and respond to previous thoughts. So thanks to Sarah, Jess and anonymous for waking me up again and getting me back on the blogging trail. Looking forward to another exciting term of fun !!

Blogged with Flock

Adding images on the web

A few weeks ago I was reading Darrel Branson's blog The ICT Guy and he mentioned that he uses pic resize to resize images that are to be uploaded to blogs and wikis. In the past I have (and still do) teach my students how to quickly optimise images in Fireworks or Paintshop Pro. But pic resize will now also become an additional option for our students to use when they quickly want to resize something to up load to the web. It's so easy. All you do is select the picture you want to resize, choose quick resize, go through the options, download the image (you have to download it within 20 minutes or you will lose it) and the upload to your blog or wiki. Cool !!

Recently I was in a Grade 3/4 classroom discussing the possibility of setting up some new blogs and adding them to the class wiki. As part of the activity we decided to explore the blogs of other students in other schools. My purpose was to have students consider why we blog and to hopefully see their value. One of the student blogs we looked at used an avatar that moved and spoke and looked pretty cool. Thinking I would be teaching something new I asked if the students knew what an avatar was and to my surprise some students not only knew what they were but had created them. A little further probing revealed that they had been taught how to create an avatar by older siblings. It made me wonder what else they knew how to do (many of them knew about myspace and youtube) and once again it forced me to consider the challenge we all have as teachers to keep up with the changes that are occurring in our students lives even as we read this article.

Talk about the Being green activity. Planning with skype

Ubiquitous technology

When I went to South Korea earlier this year to run a workshop in Intel Teach Thinking with Technology I remember talking with one of the participants about the notion of ubiquitous technology. At the time I really had no idea what he meant and he explained that it was the notion that technology will become such a part of our lives that it will sit in the background working for us; available to us at anytime, anywhere.
The reason I thought of this conversation is that I am presently travelling on a school bus with Year 8 students from Wedderburn College going down to the Pixar 20 Years of Animation display at ACMI in Federation Square. While travelling I've logged into the internet via a wireless connection which means that I can do a little bit of work (or blogging) as we head to Melbourne. Every second kid on the bus is texting friends and family and we are listening to music via an FM transmitter that one of the kids has brought on their Ipod.
Serendipidously (it seems to happen to me alot) I was reading John Pearce's blog and one of his posts was about m-learning called Today Two Years is Tout d'abord in which he discussed in part his progress along the continuum of ICT capabilities. He concluded that in some sense he wasn't as far along as he thought when comparing himself to Alex Hayes a senior Education Officer with TAFE NSW who writes about m-learning in a very interesting presentation that he is presenting at a conference in Canberra very shortly. According to WikiPedia as of August 22nd 2007, M-Learning is "learning that happens across locations or that takes advantage of learning opportunities offered by portable technologies"
Check it out here:


But Alex's point made me think again about the fact that ubiquitous technology, m-Learning or whatever you want to call it is changing the way we work, think, communicate, share, talk, learn, manage, reflect. But has it yet changed the way we teach???? I think in your case John, the answer is a resounding yes.

Being Creative

This morning I went into the Grade 3/4 classroom. We began yesterday by setting up a wiki for the kids to create and post their ideas and reflections about what they are doing in class. In planning for this session I had a chat with Tanya, the class teacher and she told me that every Tuesday afternoon she challenges the students to be more creative by having them design, create, problem solve and produce an article or plan that addresses a particular problem or issue that she poses. For example she has asked them to design the best handbag for a teacher, or a farmer or a carpenter. They have designed and planned the best holiday for their family. They have designed the ideal spot for them to spend three hours relaxing and thinking.
As she was telling me about this I firstly thought- what a fabulous teacher- someone who values creativity and expressive thought and gives it the due time that it needs. It's no surprise to me that Tanya was once a pre-school teacher. But I also thought about how we could use the wiki as a repository for their ideas. We could scan the ideas that the children draw. We could have students descibe and explain their plans and upload the audio files. We record students demonstrating their inventions. I'm really excited about what we could achieve with just a little bit of effort and imagination.
Serendipidously I was reading a blog entry from Cherie Toledo this evening and she commented on a video presentation by Tony Buzan on creativity. He says "creativity is the engine of all curricular" That it's not about what we learn but HOW we learn. and that is the challenge for us as teachers. Not to teach facts and knowledge (although he says we have to do that) but to teach HOW to learn. By teaching and allowing for creativity we are unleashing the potential of every student, every brain.
check it out here:

Our new project- Being Green

This week we are beginning a really exciting new project with a school in Andale Kansas. The opportunity arose through some funding that I received through the Knowledge Bank. My idea was to create a connection with a school overseas and to develop a problem based project that used the Intel online Thinking with Technology tools So I approached a fellow Intel Senior trainer, Dyane who is a curriculum consultant in Andale. After about three months of planning we have finally started with our Year 8 students here and Year 7 students at Andale.
We did our planning via Google Docs which was a fantastic way to collaborate and share . We have set up a wiki using PB wiki for both teachers and students.
Beginning with a viewing of An Inconvenient Truth and a skype interview with Dyane and our students, the main task is that students will work in cross country teams and will research an issue that has some effect on their community. They will compare and contrast the differences between our two rural communities and prepare an environmental action plan.
The task after viewing the movie was to reflect on it in the wiki on a shared page for each group.
This is what one of the students said.
After watching 'An Inconvenient Truth' I was surprised at how bad the problem actually is. I never realised it was that disastrous, especially the part about the melting polar ice caps. It was a very confronting film. The statistics shocked me. It made me want to take action.

I am looking forward to learning about my American group members. I want to know how they look and what their personalities are like.

Another two students wrote their response together
The other day we watched an Inconvenient Truth.

It was really surprising to see all of the changes that could occur to the world if global warming continues at the same rate as what it is now and. What surprised me a lot was the amount of people and animals that would be affected by this. For example the polar bears drowning was a fact that reached out to us. Also that whole country could be submerged by water and the central town of Wedderburn might just be on the beach.

Also the increasing temperature and less rainfall was a concern to us as Ashleigh lives on a farm. But we have run out of time so we have to go Bye.

Tomorrow our students are going to calculate their own ecological footprint and add that to the wiki. I think it's going to be a pretty exciting time for us all.