2 weeks ago
Friday, July 24, 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
Biting bullets
I'm really gearing myself up for this. I've carefully avoided writing anything here for a while but the time has come for some much needed reflection and here's the place to do it.I'm a reflection avoider I have to confess so I'm going to have to wring this out!
Since a small group of us joined the Powerful Learning Practice cohort for advancing the use of Web 2.0 technologies in education, we have made huge personal leaps in this area. My friend and colleague, Sue Tapp, has been an endless source of ideas and support for me as we have both endeavoured to put into place the basic tenets of 21st Century tecnologies in an educational context.
The opportunites we have had to meet with the folk from the USA, Sheryl Nassbaum-Beach and Will Richardson has been inspirational and getting together with other Aussi teachers has been fun and very interesting.
I have continued to use blogging as a platform of communication and presentation for my year 7 classes.We have been having fun with visual literacy, movie making, comic life and reflective writing. I have made a wiki for my year 12 class on the George Orwell novel, 1984.My year 11 english students frequently work on their computers although we have not gone online that much.
I often bring in the projector to class and project off my laptop on to the whiteboard to demonstrate a new tool or useful site - something I never did until this year.
While I write in this blog rarely, I have kept up my 365 pics a day challenge assiduously.
I have spent many long hours setting up the blogs for my junior students and puzzling about how they work. It has been an interesting and very satisfying personal journey. Of course we have not experienced significant advances in persuading other members of staff to similarly explore the potential of ICT in education. This has been a particular bugbear to Sue but I'm not so fussed by this failure. Looking at the big picture, there are lots of teachers out there doing what we're doing. You can't bash people around too much, they start to get surly and oppositional. Conversion will inevitably be sporadic and scattered - but it is happening.
Since a small group of us joined the Powerful Learning Practice cohort for advancing the use of Web 2.0 technologies in education, we have made huge personal leaps in this area. My friend and colleague, Sue Tapp, has been an endless source of ideas and support for me as we have both endeavoured to put into place the basic tenets of 21st Century tecnologies in an educational context.
The opportunites we have had to meet with the folk from the USA, Sheryl Nassbaum-Beach and Will Richardson has been inspirational and getting together with other Aussi teachers has been fun and very interesting.
I have continued to use blogging as a platform of communication and presentation for my year 7 classes.We have been having fun with visual literacy, movie making, comic life and reflective writing. I have made a wiki for my year 12 class on the George Orwell novel, 1984.My year 11 english students frequently work on their computers although we have not gone online that much.
I often bring in the projector to class and project off my laptop on to the whiteboard to demonstrate a new tool or useful site - something I never did until this year.
While I write in this blog rarely, I have kept up my 365 pics a day challenge assiduously.
I have spent many long hours setting up the blogs for my junior students and puzzling about how they work. It has been an interesting and very satisfying personal journey. Of course we have not experienced significant advances in persuading other members of staff to similarly explore the potential of ICT in education. This has been a particular bugbear to Sue but I'm not so fussed by this failure. Looking at the big picture, there are lots of teachers out there doing what we're doing. You can't bash people around too much, they start to get surly and oppositional. Conversion will inevitably be sporadic and scattered - but it is happening.
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