Monthly Archive for April, 2008

May 2nd – Getting A Positive Conversation Started

Published on April 30, 2008 in Blogging, Future Directions, Information Literacy, Internet and Web 2.0. 2 Comments

Kudos to educationau for offering to host the May 2nd event titled “Learning In The 21st Century” as a positive spin off from the issues coming to a head with Al Upton’s class blog closure. Now the event is not about Al’s situation but is more a roundtable discussion as a starting point for moving [...]

Laptopmania

Published on April 27, 2008 in Mobile Technology. 10 Comments

Seeing that we’ve had our twenty wireless laptops running for the whole eleven week term in the four upper primary classrooms, it is a good time to review the program and make some observations. For me, I’m really interested to see how it has changed learning for my students, how it has impacted on my [...]

Anzac Day 2008

Published on April 25, 2008 in Personal Reflections. 0 Comments

Lest we forget…. Own photograph of War Memorial, High Street , Wirrabara, South Australia.

Drought’s Not Done Yet

Published on April 23, 2008 in Personal Reflections. 5 Comments

When I get the chance I go for a walk along the Torrens linear park – accessible down the end of our street. I took a couple of shots on my phone a few weeks back when the drought seemed to have hit the hardest on Adelaide’s distinctive waterway from the bridge on Henley Beach [...]

My Top Five Of The Eighties

Published on April 21, 2008 in Personal Reflections. 4 Comments

I’ve been playing around with YouTube tracking down old music videos and seeing if I can track some of my obscure favourites. A few days back, I read a Stephen Downes post that linked from a Rob Wall post starting a meme called Top 5 Of The Eighties. Although not officially invited to be part [...]

On Avatars, Disposable Identities And Sock Puppets

Published on April 20, 2008 in Blogging and Future Directions. 4 Comments

I know I’m writing on this topic a good week or two after an interesting discussion on the TALO forum on the topic of Learning In The 21st Century, but I’ve been thinking about some of the ideas on student identity that were explored on that thread. This all ties back to the Al Upton [...]

Moving Into The Digital World

Published on April 10, 2008 in Digital Convergence and Interactive Whiteboards. 4 Comments

I’ve been hosting a few visitors again and it’s the interactive whiteboards that seem to be the main attraction. I had a team from a local educational publishing company sit in on one of my lessons to see one in action and gain some ideas about how to design content (books, digital resources, support materials) [...]

Safer Out In The Open

Published on April 7, 2008 in Internet and Web 2.0. 9 Comments

Reduce your digital footprint. Make all of your online profiles private. Restrict the photos you post of yourself online – they can be used for purposes you may not like. Ensure your Bluetooth is turned off to avoid “data slurping”. Be aware that mobile phones with cameras and voice recorders may be in your school [...]

The Risk Free Classroom

Published on April 4, 2008 in Future Directions and Internet. 12 Comments

Does risk to students trump learning? Perceived risk, slight risk, possible risk – is risk something to be avoided in the classroom at all when it comes to using internet based technologies? This summary paragraph from Al Upton’s Update No.3 is really making me think: A number of analogies were presented … many stating any [...]

Add Your Voice – Al And Update 3

Published on April 3, 2008 in Blogging and Future Directions. 0 Comments

I saw and spoke with Al Upton last night at the Annual General Meeting for our state association CEGSA – ironically in the same room where two years earlier he was standing clutching his CEGSA Educator Of The Year award in recognition of the groundbreaking work he had been doing in his classroom. He had [...]