Entries from September 2008 ↓

Well we are finally starting to break through and drum up some interest in this new technology!! 2 of our Senior School Teachers have asked about setting up blogs for use with their classes. This all seems a bit surreal at present as LG and I have been pushing the message for so long, but I do also feel the excitement as things are starting to happen. We have our Junior (k-4) classes about to start using blogs as well.

One of our Senior School teachers who has an “Australian History” class has started a blog to use with his students. After spending a fair bit of time working on the content and doing a fantastic page heirachy so its really well laid out he asked:

So tell me again why I am using a blog and not just putting it on our School Portal?

I’ve responded with my initial thoughts, becomes a living thing rather than just static content, allows Collaboration etc, but thought I’d throw it out to you all for comment.

What are your thoughts and responses to his question?

Having just celebrated the First Birthday of Teacher Friendly Tech, I decided to have a read over “the year that was.”

Not sure whether that was a good thing or not. But through the haze of what has happened, the important things shone out, and will continue to do so. The main one being Passion for our Students’ learning.

We seemed to come back from ELH-2007 fired up and wanting to change the world, well our little slice of it in Paradise that is. We have managed to take small steps since then, but nothing like we envisioned during our catch up sessions at the end of each day. It’s amazing how things can happen that send ripples through the whole College, and affect us all in ways we wouldn’t have thought. These ripples started whilst we were away at Lorne, we got to see the bits and pieces that filtered out to us through email. Lets just say 2007/2008 has been a interesting time.

So now ELH-2008 is over. Again we were well represented there. We had 2 of our Heads of School’s – Junior and Senior, our ICT Learning Coordinator K-12, our K-6 Curriculum Coordinator, a Stage 2 Teacher looking for the next step, and myself. It would have been fantastic to have our Principal and Head of Middle School there as well, but we intend to pass on the things that we brought away.

Now for the challenge. It’s been a few days since our return. A bit of time to unravel all those thoughts and see what directions we should take. Now for the lessons learned:

• We are meeting tomorrow to debrief and decide how we as a group are going to present this to the College
• This should include some form of SWOT as to where we are now, and of course where we want to take our Students.
• Then we need to look at what needs to be done to get there
• Many ideas were thrown around at Lorne. These include:
  1. Laptops for Middle School, incl. what type of Form Factor to use for them?
  2. Laptops for Senior School.
  3. Voluntary of Compulsory Laptop programs?
  4. How to promote integration?
  5. How do we get “the time” that we need?

• What staffing changes need to be made to achieve our goals?
• The need to develop and promote Positive Professional Development for staff, make it specific to our Campus, and the Infrastructure and Technology that is in place.
• Inclusion of our School Admin System into the bigger picture. PC School is a wide ranging application that we are using about 10% of at present. We need to make staff aware of its power, and how it will streamline things if used appropriately.
• Can we implement an Intermediate LMS until we get Scholaris? Will this just confuse the issue?
• Internet Filtering (one of my all time gripes) and its place, or not, in Education. How do we get around this issue, and what levels should get what access?

As you can see this list could go on and on. These are only my thoughts, what will be added when we all get together? I’ll have my Tablet at the ready, and will no doubt be scribbling Diagram’s and taking notes. Lets see what we end up with……

Wow, its been 1 year since I started Teacher Friendly Tech! Time has certainly flown.

Although things have been quiet on the Blogging front lately, I am currently at ELH where it all began, and yes I have collected many thougts these past few days so be prepared. Keep your eye out here or at Paradise Unplugged.

Thank you to all my readers for your comments and suggestions. It has been great getting TFT off the ground.