U No IT

Hi

I am about to present to the South Australia Secondary Principals Association on Friday about Aberfoyle Park High schools one2one initiative. To facilitate that session I have put resources that might be of interestthey can be found in the PD section of this blog under  SASPA Presentation.

http://unoit.edublogs.org/professional-development/saspa-presentation/

I will be covering the Aberfoyle Park High School’s journey and the way that the 21 Steps (from the Bruce Dixon materials) has impacted upon their 1:1 planning.

I hope you find the presentation of some interets. Please feel free to comment here or on the SASPA presentation page about questions you would like to be explained.

Tags: Conference, SASPA

Hi

After much reading and investigating I have decided to implement PBL into my teaching. Please feel free to read my initial steps and feel free to add comments about my first task.

It all starts here

Tags: PBL, Problem Based Learning

I spend most of my time on the net reading whats happening around the world and getting a good dose of professional development reading done. Well most of this post comes from the Cool Cat Teacher, Vicki A. Davis’, http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/ . During the weekend while I had a quiet hour continued to read some past posts from bloggers around the globe.

And read these…

The NetGen Educational Challenge has finished but its still worth a look at the work produced from teachers, students and business. Have a look at the website, http://netgened.grownupdigital.com/ and view some of the entries. Here is Vicki’s original post http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2009/04/daily-spotlight-on-education-04072009.html and have a look at one she pointed out to her readers.

Its amazing that many blogs, like this one, directs you to someone else’s thoughts and more often than not the article challenges the way we do things or shows the power of the Net by allowing contributions or comments to delve a little deeper into the topic so here is Vicki’s link to Cathy Nelson’s post on “If an assignment can be plagerized…” http://blog.cathyjonelson.com/?p=713 don’t forget to follow the comments at the end of the post and see what else doors open.

We used to think that this was in the future now its for real. Enjoy the read and next time you hear your students talking about posting to there Myspace or Facebook page remind them about this. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29796962

The IT Coach

Tags: Facebook, Myspace, NetChallenge

I’ve started to think about the Smartboard that sits in our glass classroom and what I could start with. Then I thought what training will I need,  then as chance should cross my path I read this blog from Blogwalker, Gail Desler, http://blogwalker.edublogs.org/2009/03/21/ideas-to-inspire-this-weeks-1-favorite/ and it link to this http://www.ideastoinspire.co.uk/interactivewhiteboards.htm Why not have a read and give it a go.  Other useful sites include http://smartboards.typepad.com/, http://technology.usd259.org/resources/whiteboards/smartlessons.htm,   http://www2.smarttech.com/st/en-US/Products/SMART+Boards/Front+projection/

After spending all day Thursday taking photos of our school’s Year 9 students at Woodhouse, I was thinking what most Art galleries around the world have resources for teachers try these sites:

• San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art – http://www.sfmoma.org/pages/teacher_resources
• The Louvre – Closer Look – http://www.louvre.fr/llv/dossiers/liste_oal.jsp
• The National Gallery – http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/education/visits/resources.htm
• Guggenheim – http://artscurriculum.guggenheim.org/lessons/start.php
• National Gallery of Australia – http://nga.gov.au/Education/resources.cfm

If you want to start blogging with your students then the presentation Blogwalker attened at CUE 2009 by Alice Mercer is worth a read. Here is Blogwalkers post http://blogwalker.edublogs.org/2009/03/05/blogging-with-elementary-students-alice-mercer-from-cue-2009/ follow the links and see what it takes. As a reminder our Education Department is about to release a document on using the Internet safely with students so stay tuned.

ITCoach

Tags: Art, blogging, IWB

I noticed its nearly been a year since I produced an “IT Ramblings” for the staff I work with. The Ramblings came about through my use of staying in touch by using SAGE on my Firefox browser.  It’s not until recently as I transferred the RSS feeds to my iPod Touch that I noticed how much I missed and should continue to share with my colleagues.

Our school is interested in the use of iTunes U and as having held the status of an Apple School of Excellence seemed appropriate that we investigate the space. So my first link is a look at the material produced by other schools at the iTunes U. You will need to download iTunes from http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/ then run and open. On the left select iTunes Store and then select iTunes U its on the left in the screen. There are plenty of material students and staff can download to an iPod, have a look at the amount that’s been generated in the K-12 space, link on left. If you have an iPod why not download and listen to a few and see how they can be used in your subject area.

What happens if we want to view how often a selection of words or phrases occur in a given text. Wordle and Phrase Net offer this ability. Phrase Net at http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/page/Phrase_Net.html allows text to be entered and analysed, the site shows an example of Jane Austen’s novel “Pride and Prejudice.” Then select Create Visualization and either select a text or upload your own, after that choose how you want to view it. Tag Cloud, Wordle http://www.wordle.net/ or Phrase Net are all listed. Try your own text or that Principals message on the school website. Here are two examples:

I found this blog that looks at the use of web 2.0 tools for learning about earthquakes read more at http://blogwalker.edublogs.org/2009/04/06/web-20-tools-for-learning-about-earthquakes/ . While initially started out at http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2009/04/06/the-best-sites-to-learn-about-the-earthquake-in-italy/ it shows the power of the network when people are willing to share their resources.

Hope you find these useful.

ITCoach

Tags: iPod, iTunes, RSS, touch