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Is It Possible To Have Self Directed PD?

Published on February 4, 2006 in Staff Training. 4 Comments

I’ve been pondering a rethink of the ICT training and development opportunities that I might provide my staff in 2006. Part of my role description here at my school calls for me to provide T&D to improve skills and confidence for my onsite colleagues. So in previous years, I’ve run courses on FrontPage, digital cameras, saving files to our network, trouble shooting where I’ve designed a step by step approach with handouts, examples, personal support and explicit demonstration. Has it improved the overall skill set of our staff? I’m not convinced. For example, my FrontPage course started with 10 participants which dropped to 8 the following week when a couple of junior primary teachers couldn’t see the relevance of designing web pages for them. A few more dropped out halfway through when they acquired the basic skills they were after and eventually two continued to the bitter end. One staff member moaned that I responded to the loudest voices when they wanted help, some others wanted handouts with step by step instructions and a couple needed to start from the beginning of every session. Clearly, the one size fits all model doesn’t work with learners, especially adults who have their definite preferred learning style and who, like kids, all have different levels of confidence, experience and expertise. So, inspired by my own experiences in the edublogosphere and Leigh Blackall’s concept of Networked Learning, I am trying to draw up a plan that would guide my interested staff members towards self directed professional development. It’s still embryonic so naturally I’m gonna put what I’ve got here and if anyone [please!] wants to give me feedback/suggestions/ridicule, I’m all ears. Here goes:

2006 LNPS Staff ICT Personalised Learning Program
Proposal for regular T&D opportunities on Tuesday afternoons.
Rationale: We are in the business of lifelong learning – developing this in ourselves will help us to facilitate this mindset in our students. ICT and e-learning have developed to the stage where we can personalise our learning experiences – new technologies are constantly providing us with better ways of connecting to others, documenting our own practice and developing our own content.
The IWB program needs to be supported with a regular time set aside for (1) the practice and use of the IWB, (2) planning and designing of own resources and lessons, (3) finding, reviewing and bookmarking of relevant/useful online resources, (4) professional reading and connection and (5) personal professional reflection.
Teachers may also wish to develop other skills related to specific software applications (desktop and online) by accessing online tutorials and courses to work through. The goal is for teachers to become self-directed, self-paced “just in time” learners, so that they can acquire ICT knowledge and skills from multiple sources and modes of instructions.
In my role as Coordinator, I would assist teachers to put together a Personalised Learning Program (as the guide on the side). Each week, a limited number of slots would be available for closer personal assistance while other staff would work in a more independent mode, using each other and a network of outside educators developed over time via social software (bookmarking, blogs, forums). Time spent would be documented and count towards DECS professional development hours requirement.

 Does it even make sense? Any suggestions? Help!!!!

2006 Beckons

Published on January 2, 2006 in Digital Convergence, Future Directions, Information Literacy, Interactive Whiteboards and Staff Training. Closed

Now even though I’m officially on holidays and enjoying the time with my wife and kids, I still find a chunk of time in the day to check on the edublogosphere and participate in the conversations. Yesterday, I checked out some parts of the World Bridges New Year’s webcast marathon. It was a bit like running into someone you know at the supermarket when Jo McLeay surfaced in the chatroom as we have followed each other’s blogs for a while now. Typical Australians – our first greetings involved the weather (scorchers two days leading into New Year) and she asked me if I was doing any IWB training at conferences interstate for 2006. I read this and thought, “Is she serious? I haven’t even be out of the state to attend a conference. What would make her think I had any credentials in the IWB field?” Then I thought about all of the posts over the past six months re: our IWB implementation here at my school and maybe the way I’ve presented things via this blog and the team blog Activboarding makes me sound more expert than what reality says. I can’t even recall my typed response to Jo. I don’t know, maybe that little voice at the back of my head saying, “You don’t know that much. Leave it to people further up the Pyramid Of Influence,” that is the problem.

So, it was really interesting to read John Pederson’s post today with his newly announced plunge away from conventional educational employment. It’s got me thinking about the coming year and where it might be going. And you know what? What I do at my school is pretty good and I shouldn’t undersell its importance in the least. I still have heaps to learn and could always improve but who is totally on top of things. I certainly don’t want a Seachange in the same vein as John. So with a few weeks of leisure still ahead of me and when I still have time to pontificate, here are a few things I’m looking forward to as part of my job. (Caution: Half baked ideas may look good on the outside but may need to chucked in the bin if they are inedible.)

  • Another six or seven ActivBoards going into classrooms and the Resource Centre early in the year.
  • Restructure of my role gives me only half time in the class and half time in my coordinator role. This means an overhaul of the Problem Based Learning program, and me working with each class in the school for a 8 week block of 2 hours every week. One of those 2 hours to be spent on a class ICT Project – I’m thinking digital stories, blogs, information literacy skills etc.
  • My middle school team has a submission in to present at the 3rd International Middle Years of Schooling Conference. I wrote it and titled it “Engaging The Digital Native – Use Of New Technologies In The Middle School Classroom.” (See abstract submission here.) We’ll see how it goes.
  • A proposal to get more of my staff blogging for professional development. If I can convince my new boss (she’s very tech savvy) then my goal would be to give teachers a chance to set up and maintain their own blog (at edublogs, where else) as well as a Bloglines account and give them accredited T&D time to read, comment and post their way to a better understanding of what faces them in the rapidly advancing world of Education 2.0.

Who knows what else will crop up? John knows for sure that in today’s world, nothing is certain.

E-Portfolio Workshop

Published on December 2, 2005 in E-Portfolios, Future Directions and Staff Training. Closed

We’re ready to roll in one of the double computer rooms and Janette Ellis is starting the day by walking us though the creation angle of her e-portfolio. Hers is HTML web page based – looks like it could have been created in FrontPage or DreamWeaver. As she explains, her e-portfolio was very text based but it operates on a very definite structure and incorporated a lot of links. She also pointed out that Paul‘s structure was well planned with layers of resource links within each section. In Janette’s portfolio, images that she has chosen all illustrate skills or initiatives that she has expertise in. She also points out that an e-portfolio is a work in progress – she even goes to sleep with ideas about how to improve her portfolio buzzing around in her head.
Dr. Helen Barrett was next to tell us how her e-portfolio developed. She started her website in 2005 but her portfolio went from desktop to CD to Adobe Acrobat in format. The issue in 2000 was that her faculty had not seen a portfolio in CD form before so she had to supply a 10 minute video on how to navigate the CD! She included reproductions of attestions (what other people have said about you) and productions (photos etc. of things you have created/ been responsible for). She then started to take us through her online portfolio on her website. She trialled 17 different formats and has links to her versions of all of these.
We spent some time exploring mind mapping and how it can be used to organise the content and structure of a portfolio. I signed up for an account at Mayomi – free online mind mappirg tool. After a morning tea break, Helen started to show us how to organise artifacts using an Excel spreadsheet. This was then followed by a half hour setting up of a template plan in Word. I think we will be working on the next part – selection and reflection. I think I’ll post back on that at a later time.

Blogging Conversations In The Staffroom

Published on November 23, 2005 in Blogging and Staff Training. 1 Comment

I ran an after school workshop on an Introduction To Blogging on Tuesday after school that attracted a crowd of three interested colleagues. Probably not surprising because there are less than four weeks left in the school year and most teachers at my school don’t want any more professional development, thank you very much. And I suppose after the peak of 20 attendees at my Interactive Whiteboard Basics last week, the numbers could only go down.

Now, I’m no expert on this topic but I thought I’d base my workshop on my own journey into this new way of professional learning. I showed them my blog, and then I spent a fair bit of time checking through the inner workings of Bloglines. I’m a real convert to Bloglines after being shown FeedReader and using Abilon for a couple of months. I like Bloglines because I’m never at the same computer throughout the work day or at home. I also like poking through the public subscriptions of other edubloggers and finding new bloggers to read. So I’m talking away, showing them how to set up an account, chuckling at Dilbert feeds and fielding questions and the question I’ve been asked more than any other comes up, “How do you find all this stuff?”

I tried to explain the whole journey has led me to discovering all this stuff, how it’s all about connecting the learning and taking charge of it yourself. I think they got it but I think it all could have been a lot to take on board at once. However, one teacher, who is an admitted technophobe thanked me at the end and said that she now knew what her teenage son was talking about and she realised that teachers needed to get their hands dirty and dive into the new internet technologies. Today in the staffroom, that same teacher was being ribbed a little bit about what she’d gained from my workshop by another attendee (who had started her own blog which is stalled after one entry) and testing her on some of the things I’d mentioned. But at least her awareness has been raised – she now knows what I’m talking about because the usual response when I talk about my blogging experiences and how I seem to “know so much stuff”, someone will say, “Will you be running T & D on that next year?” A quote of David Warlick‘s beamed to Bloglines this morning via John Pederson says it all about the mindshift the majority of Aussie teachers still have to make.

If we are trying to help our students to become life-long-learners, then this is what teachers should be right now. The question, “Who’s going to teach me to do that?” should be replaced with “I’m going to teach myself to do that!”

Can it be so hard to want to take charge of your learning? Especially if you call yourself an educator.

E-Portfolios – What Are They Really?

Published on November 22, 2005 in E-Portfolios, Future Directions and Staff Training. Closed

I am lucky enough to be booked in for an interesting couple of days of training next week. It’s called e-Portfolio Conference – Using Professional Standards For Teachers on the Thursday with a follow-on workshop the next day limited to 35 places. The featured speaker is Dr. Helen Barrett, of whom I was pretty ignorant when I first looked at the descriptor on the DECS Leadership website. So I found out that she had a blog, I checked it out. She promises to be a extremely interesting speaker and although her blog is very good, it will be good to hear her define the concept of e-portfolio in person. An e-portfolio can mean many different things to different people and I’m no expert (that’s why I’m going). Leigh Blackall certainly has his opinions and believes that a lot of web 2.O technologies can do the same job or be called the same thing.

There’s been a steady stream of talk around the idea of ePortfolios. I’ve been watching, interested in how the name alone is a good way to get people who are opposed to blogging, interested in what amounts to … blogging! Amazing what a word can do.

So I’ll be keeping my naivety in check and seeing what our education system is wanting to do with this concept. I know that the term has bandied around and used in a number of settings to describe a variety of end results. One primary school here in Adelaide, Hallett Cove East was a bit of a mover and a shaker in this area, producing student digital portfolios in CD-RW format so that more work samples could be added to it. I went to a workshop there in 2003 where they plugged this concept pretty hard. And maybe primary schools have a different headset to what secondary schools or higher ed would envisage. As for what an educator’s e-portfolio might look like, I suppose it is something that pulls together the reflectiveness and ongoing learning of a blog, with storage capacity of digital artifacts like I’ve got at RWLO. Anyway, I’m reading too much into an area where I have little practical expertise. I know that at leadership conferences and workshops I’ve attended, there is a big emphasis on the maintenance of a professional portfolio, a black folder where you stick all of your training certificates plus paper copies of job applications, feedbacks etc. but I have most of that stuff on my hard drive at home or backed up on CD. It should be interesting.

Centres of Innovation – Aussie Style

Published on November 18, 2005 in Resources and Staff Training. Closed

Clarence Fisher posted a few days back about the concept of Centres of Innovation and lamented the demise of this concept in the Canadian education system.

At the national level, the Canadian government does almost nothing to support innovation in education and my provincial government (who is responsible for education) designs resources for schools to use, but does not monitor their use or support and promote centres that are using their tools in innovative ways. At bestin Canada, we have lab schools that are hooked to schools of education and are centres of new ideas, but their overall “effect” on education is regional at best.
We need to find ways to do better…..

This got me thinking about parallels in my own education system here in South Australia. We are a small state population wise and one initiative created in the mid 90′s was the Technology School Of the Future – a place where computing initiatives were trialled, a lot of crystal ball gazing was involved and high tech education solutions were funded regardless of the barriers of practical implementation in mainstream classrooms. I remember going on a staff training session there when TSOF (the popular acronym) was out at The Levels and thinking that it was a real ivory tower. Everything they showed us was too expensive, too complex and required too much technical knowhow even for our newly appointed ICT Coordinator.

Eventually as schools became networked and the department made educational technology a focus, TSOF gained relevancy and a new address at Hindmarsh. When I-Movie first came out, TSOF had rooms full of Macs where you could spend the day editing footage with your students. Even up to a couple of years ago, if it was new to education, TSOF had it and the expertise to teach it to you. In 2002, Queen Elizabeth II got the royal tour of this cutting edge facility. I remember being involved in a Quality Teacher Program there, taking my class there for a day to use Audacity to add soundtracks to our Milestones In My Life projects and attending or presenting at the annual Exciting Learning Expo.

But the edge has gone from the place. Courses and professional development are now excessively expensive for the average teacher, it costs you a fee to book a room and the number and quality of presentations at the Expo has dropped. I’ve even heard of it being referred to by a colleague as “The School Of the Past”. Ouch!

Obviously, TSOF is suffering from budgetary cutbacks and is being expected to “pay its own way “. But being a DECS site, why shouldn’t it subsidise teachers to attend their courses? So Clarence’s issue is an international one – even in the so called lucky country.

Next In-School IWB Training Session

Published on November 14, 2005 in Interactive Whiteboards, Staff Training and Uncategorized. Closed

Well, the school’s Governing Council has given the go-ahead for the purchase of and installation of six more ActivBoards in our classrooms to go with the six that were installed in August. I presented the plans to my colleagues a few weks back and stated that we (the ICT committee and leadership) were after expressions of interest for the next rollout and that attendance at a Professional Development session would be the way to go. So, that ball is in my court but I have extremely busy and found it hard to put together the sort of information session I might have liked to – sort of a mini-keynote that explained the basics and let people know what they were in for. I started a Powerpointesque flipchart presentation to cover what I thought all the essentials might be – hooking things up, using the tools, planning the first lessons but then I thought, “How will I know that all of this is hitting the mark?”
Then it was obvious, turn the direction over to the stakeholders! I thought back to my presentation to the School Council where I just showed the council members “stuff they wanted to know” and the overwhelmingly positive feedback I got back as a result. Now I’d hope that teachers would be a bit more critical than parents and not be as swayed by the wow factor but why not let drive my session. That’s not me copping out as I still have to demonstrate, answer the questions, make notes for future reference but this way, the group are guaranteed to walk away satisfied that they got something personally worthwhile out of the hour. So I’ve designed a quick and simple Word document (could have easily been done in Open Office as well) that can be downloaded here to view.

It gives them space to identify 5 things they want to know (How do you save a flipchart? How do you add backgrounds? How do you create counters for a game?) and then I use the IWB to log their answers in a mind map, drag them into broadish categories and go from there. I then demonstrate the board’s possibilities all while sorting the participants’ needs. I think I’m on the right track – I’ll post tomorrow night on the outcome.

Who Wants An ActivBoard? Anyone?

Published on November 7, 2005 in Blogging, Interactive Whiteboards, Staff Training and Uncategorized. 1 Comment

The first six ActivBoards are humming along as well as can be expected with our pioneering bunch from ActivBoarding. Although I still moan regularly about the fact that 95% of the posts there come from me, I have got my boss to check out educational blogging and she even contributed a post. I think I have a solution to try and get them on the blogging train and encourage other staff members to give it a go. In my role here, I offer Training and Development sessions for staff that counts towards their T&D hours for the year. (Here in South Australia, we need to complete 37 and a half verified hours of T&D every year – then the Government gives us the final week of the year off before Christmas, bringing us into line with the rest of Australia. Adelaide is sometimes referred to as the “sleepy hollow” of the country.) I’ve shown teachers how to design webpages, how to operate a thumbdrive or use a scanner (don’t laugh) or even how to use attachments in e-mail. So, maybe the go is to run a course on Blogs 101, get them reading blogs via a preset Bloglines account (original idea, Steve Dembo), set up their own account (Blogger is good, but hey, you can’t go past edublogs, I say!) and show them the basics of posting, comments etc. Then give them an hour every week on a Tuesday afternoon where they can come in, read their feeds, post to their blog, play with some of the other tools – Technorati, deli.cio.us, Furl, plus others that will have evolved by then and they accumulate hours of official T&D towards the required 37 and a half. I would have no idea how much time I’ve committed to developing my blogging skills and knowledge – it would be a lot by my own choice. But the big argument thrown in my face is that there isn’t enough time to do this. Well, if I provide the time to get my colleagues started, there goes that excuse.
Well, I’ve strayed completely from my original intent for this post but it was to mention that the school is doubling its IWB quota and I am holding a workshop for interested staff next week to groom the next prospective IWB users. I’ve been developing a flipchart presentation (similar to Powerpoint, but with interactive components) that I might post a link to here when it is ready. It covers the starting points as I’ve already covered the pedagogical reasons at staff meeting a fortnight back. There are some very keen teachers, some who think they might be interested, a few from another private school dropping by to check it out and one very brave teacher who is not technologically confident at all who wants to come to find out what it all involves, even if in her words, she would be “daunted by it all.” So, what you want to know before you had one of these exciting tools installed in your classroom? I hope I hit the right notes with this.
Current staff member using ActivBoard

District ICT Meeting Notes

Published on October 23, 2005 in Interactive Whiteboards, Resources and Staff Training. Closed

Well, today I attended a South West Metro District ICT Meeting held @ Blackforest Primary School just off South Road here in Adelaide. I haven’t been a regular attendee at these due to my teaching commitments during the regular Friday timeslot. But a renewed commitment to making these meetings a work priority and a visit from Wendy Legge and Russell Phillipson from DECS to inform us about the future directions of our esteemed education system in ICT was an important lure. We all settled in the staffroom of the largest R-7 primary school in SA. The meeting was chaired by Judy Anderson, one of the Learning Band Coordinators from the district office and after round the group introductions, it was down to business.

Can’t recall how it unfolded but the topic swung around to interactive whiteboards and the DECS official position (or lack of). Wendy made the comment that she didn’t believe IWB’s would  make a difference unless practitioners are going to use it well. Hard to disagree but you could argue that could apply to any new piece of technology. There are of plenty of unused computers sitting in classrooms but there’s no talk about taking them out for effective re-deployment. Wendy even said (and I’m sure that I’m not misquoting here) but she was still to be convinced that the job of an IWB couldn’t be effectively covered by the use of a data projector and a good multimedia computer. I could feel the karma of last night’s blog post coming back to get me – I immediately thought of  Will Richardson’s Tablet PC program. There’s still a lot of convincing to do. I soon had my opportunity. Judy called me out as being from a  school in the midst of an IWB rollout and before I really got my thoughts into gear, started to describe, and justify at the same time, our program. I mean there was a mixture of interest and healthy skepticism from the othe participants but that’s good. I do have to be prepared to defend, no justify, my school’s decisions and in forums like this, everyone’s technological savvy is pretty even. So they want to know – what led you to your choices, what proof do you have of improved learning for students, where do you find the money? So that was my ten minutes in the spotlight. I don’t think I was too much of a rabbit.

Anyway, Russell and Wendy then gave us the lowdown on a lot of what’s high on the DECS agenda. There was a plug for CEGSA – their quarterly journal  Rampage was acknowledged as a good way to keep abreast of things ICT. I’ve just joined CEGSA. Well, sent my application form in anyway.  I’ve never depended on one source for keeping up to date and so I’ve been loathe to tie myself to an official professional organisation. But as my dabbling in blogs has shown me, there is infinitely more to gain by interacting with others compared to just working things out by myself.

Next stop was the latest on the Learning Federation  (a lot of federal money sunk into this) where they hope to have 4000 learning objects available for free download from mid 2OO7. Russell talked about emailing us details about the BELTS server to access the 1000 objects that are currently housed there.

Objects are searchable via the LMS, using key words or SACSA reference points. Interestingly, the Learning Federation resources are available to non-government schools. I suppose it’s because of the federal funding angle.

There was a mention of a learning gateway Scholaris from Microsoft. Didn’t really know anything about that but blogging educators might be able to inform me.

Vicki, from Cowandilla PS, expressed some of the frustrations with accessing DECS resources for Mac schools. While my school is very much PC based, I can sympathise with her sentiments.

In ’03, all South Australian schools participated in a statewide online ICT skills survey. I recall my staff coming in above the state average which was a bit worrying from the point of view of other schools. I still see a lot of basic skills on site that have scope for heaps of improvement. However the 2006 version will have the capability to generate individual reports, or to identify key areas across the staff profile. I think you can choose to take out site-irrelevant sections as well. Still it is only the first step towards the main goal. Russell talked about the 4 steps to integration of ICT into teaching and learning. (1) Skills, (2) improve performance, (3) making changes and then (4) transforming practices.

The remainder of the meeting involved touching on a variety of issues. They involved:-

- a new tab on our Educonnect system called EdCap which could become part of Performance Management within schools.

- an Alan Reid article in the Independent Weekly focussing on the federal push in education.

- feedback from educators is being sought on draft Statements of Learning and the new E-learning policy.

- the flagging of the NetAlert package on  internet safety.

- a look at the ACT Emerging Technologies policy.

The meeting wound up with one attendee expressing some frustration in knowing what was coming out from DECS. Russell pointed out three websites of importance – E-learning, TSOF and MCEETYA. Actually if these sites all provided a rss feed then anything new comes straight to you. Web 2. 0 will solve the problem.

ActivBoarding Post

Published on October 6, 2005 in Interactive Whiteboards, Staff Training and Uncategorized. Closed

Just posted to the team blog at ActivBoarding. Thought it needed to be here as it is really from my own unique standpoint!

Well, we started off the term with the promise of our interactive whiteboards and we’ve ended up with something with more potential and scope then we could have hoped for. We held a very successful Staff Development Day where the team members drove the day (see my post A Highly Productive Day) and we scratched the surface of the possibilities our boards could give us in the classroom. So this post is to touch on some of the milestones throughout this term and put my spin on them. Maybe team members might feel inspired to post a comment, put me straight on a few things or blog their version of events.
Actually getting the boards installed was a major undertaking. I had to liase with the ActivBoard suppliers at Commander, the installation company while considering the aesthetic and technical requirements to make the whole scenario work. Remember, no-one really knew what this would look like. When I described to Steve, our on call technician what I wanted as a working solution for the laptop set-up, he was also using intelligent guesswork as he hadn’t seen a school with ActivBoards before and didn’t know how the connections to our network should be made. The laptops also had their fun moments especially when I thought they were defective but I just hadn’t stumbled onto the correct resolution for the data projectors. Note to any schools going down this path and you want to use notebook/laptops for your computer link to the ActivBoard, don’t go for widescreen. Well, the first one was installed into Learning Area 21 and we had our training from Peter Kent and I know my head was buzzing from that session. I think the frustrating part was that most of you guys didn’t have a board yet or the ActivStudio software to play around with. Then it turned out that the laptops needed insurance before they could leave the school grounds! Anyway, looking back at my digital notes from that day I recalled the following points:
– configure USB port (this process is actually on the CD-ROMs that came with the board)
– board calibration (once every two or three months)
– ActivStudio toolbar – TRAINING BOOKLET learn the software go through the tutorials to gain a specific level of competency
– stores a history of sequential flipcharts
– ideal viewing is Yellow font on blue background – minimum font size 24.
add ons for the AlB – microphones, multimedia speakers
The USB port isn’t an issue that will bother most teachers unless they stick the USB link to the board in a new port. The board calibration is an important thing to remember as I’ve a couple of callouts where the flipchart window couldn’t be closed but on close examination the cursor was about 2/3 cm away from the point of the pen. That’s a calibration issue and you just re-calibrate using the appropriate tool from the palette. Now the availability of the tutorial booklets has been a sticking point – we only got two (or three?) and I’ve had plenty of requests for extra copies. I was assured that a pdf copy would be e-mailed to me last week from Commander so you could print or use it from the file. Personally, the lack of a tutorial/ training manual isn’t an issue as I can learn a heap more from playing with the ActivBoard, but I realise not everyone prefers or learns that way. The preferred colour note is interesting because I trialled a few colour combinations with my Maths Group to see what they preferred. They ended up telling me that lime green font on a black background is superb to look at but it could be just that is a cool colour combination that doesn’t measure up optically! Also, I bought a pair of multimedia speakers which have been trialled by a few teachers. Annabel was less than impressed when she viewed a German DVD with her class but a “digital native” informed me that the sound was down because the laptops sound settings were set too low. See. we’re learning from them all the time.
Anyway by mid-term we had all boards installed and all but Meredith’s in the Science Room up and running. Hers turned out to be a connector problem, sorted out eventually by the installers. This was frustrating for her as we were looking forward to our Staff Development Day, she was under pressure to report back to the powers that be on the progress on her Science Grant and she hadn’t even conducted a working lesson involving the ActivBoard. Team members, don’t forget to support her via her blog New Wave Science – post a comment, give her a link, offer to review some of her research.
One big issue I touched on the training day was the need for us to show the way for our fellow staff members. Some of them are still unaware of how the whole interactive whiteboard thing works (can I come and play with it sometime?), some want to be ready for the next rollout in 2006 and a bit of awareness raising on our part on how big and steep the learning curve won’t go astray. They are watching us with interest and we have that responsibility to keep them up to date with realistic, not idealistic, information. We have to think of ways to give them hands on experiences which we, in a lot of ways, didn’t get. We are the digital pioneers and I have seen a lot of really great stuff from all of you just in passing or in professional conversations around the school.
One last thing before I finally wind this post up. I think that being accountable and documenting our learning journey is really important as we go. Being time poor, I think this blog is the best way for all of us to have a conversation that is not dependent on all of us being in the same room at the same time. I am really thrilled to see that several of us have started their own blogs and can see value in this two way technology tool. Our colleagues can then read up on our findings, frustrations, check our resources and be part of documentation that is living. Please contribute any little bits you can to ActivBoarding and make it part of your week to either post, read or comment on this blog. My thoughts and ideas will get pretty boring after a while if others don’t put in their point of view. As Marg has said in her blog digital immigrant – It certainly was food for thought pointing out that it wasn’t much good if we used technology such as the active boards to produce vamped up versions of old curriculum.
Thanks, Marg – couldn’t have put it better myself.