We are lucky at my college that we have made it our choice, and we offer a 1:1 Laptop Program in Years 7 and 8.  Year 8s will continue with the program from this year, whilst our 2010 intake of Year 7s will begin next year.  It is certainly an exciting time ahead, and we have learnt much in our journey.

Key for us, besides making sure the nuts and bolts of the program were right, was making sure the learning designs were well explored.  We are still moving forward in this area and believe that the technology is not just a new way of doing the “same ol’, same ol’”.

“My goal in life is to find ways in which children can use technology as a constructive medium to do things that they could not do before; to do things at a level of complexity that was not previously accessible to children”
Prof. Seymour Papert 1998

We are having our Year 7 Info night this Wednesday, so look forward to getting some feedback from our community.

Initially I was going to attend on my own, having been once before in 2004 when it was co-organised with NavCon.  Since 2004 I have met many new educators online through Classroom2.0, Twitter and Second Life.  With a hectic year, both at work and home, I saw it as a great chance to regroup and refresh.  So I submitted my presentation proposal to Sherry and Gwenny at CORE and was accepted.

From little things, big things grow

After an email to my principal with a suggestion of taking someone with me, we soon had organised our party of four Now there’s a little seed growing into something more.  Registrations, flights, accommodation and sponsorship needed to be sorted.  With the help of my business manager, ICTEV and my hubby we had things happening.

The conference trip was a great chance for the four of us to bond as a team and to discuss our thoughts about education from our own perspective as well as a global one.  Not much time for this to happen in the school day.

We also met up with many of my Twitter friends at the Twitter dinner organised by Mel at Valentino’s, just around the corner from where we were staying.  This was a great event to help my teachers and principal make connections with the wider educational community.  Emails and other contacts were exchanged and overall a good time was had.

Over the course of the week we attended a range of presentations and workshops that both supported our thinking and challenged it.  As a team we had varying experiences with education and the range of breakouts to choose from was excellent.  My favourites were by Tony Ryan - Innovative Teachers, and Dr. Julia Atkins – Leading for Learning, Learning for Leading.  I work closely with teachers at my college so these fitted with me.

On the last session of the conference we presented our workshop – “Preparing for a 1:1 Learning Environment – A pedagogical view”.  As both Gail and Rohan were present it was a great chance to include them in the presentation.  Gail shared her class unit on Cyber Citizenship and Rohan shared his unit on Copyright.  Both fitted in beautifully with the theme on preparing the kids for 1:1 learning with laptops.  The session was received well and we look forward to some visits now from regional Victoria, Sydney, Adelaide and perhaps educators from other areas.

On Monday, we are presenting a snapshot of what we have learnt to our staff, and sharing new ideas and ways of thinking within planning sessions with teams.  As the Assistant Principal for ICT and Student Learning I am excited to see things already starting to take shape in both Rohan’s and Gail’s classrooms.

We will continue to share and learn together both locally and globally.  Thankyou to ULearn for making our first experience a good one.

The day began with a live meet up with Marco Torres from US via iChat.  Three main points that Marco made were – Think Big, Think Bold and Think Ahead.  There’s a lot to be said about this as often we go gently, gently.

What I liked about this conference was that it was held on a school day.  It was lovely to see real teachers (and students) presenting in a school using real examples of student work.  From a list of many sessions I was able to attend one on Blogs and Wikis and one on SuperClubPlus.  Both were informative and practical.  There were many other sessions which also wish I had had the chance to attend.  Lucy Barrow has taken some photos of the day here.

We done Lynbrook PS.  A great conference.

Our very first online conference is fast approaching. The WMR Ultranet Team has been sponsored by the Knowledge Bank, DEECD to host an online conference.

The purpose of our conference is to support our teachers and leaders in the Western Metropolitan Region, as well as others from around the state and globe. Our three key themes are Create, Collaborate and Communicate. Our program is designed around these themes with a look at tools such as wikis and blogs, digital stories, mobile technologies, and strategies around thinking, cyber-safety, budgeting and resourcing for effective eLearning.

We have some wonderful presenters lined up with Kym Nadebaum as our keynote presenter. Kym’s session “The Song Remains the Same” is sure to raise as many ICT questions as it answers. Other presenters include Anne Mirtschin, Stephen Palmer, Tony Richards, Peter Davis, Trudy Brentnall, Louise Bowe, Rob Pyers, Colin Schot and Martin Mielimaka and the Ultranet Team.

Our online presentations run between October 7th and 9th. To support these sessions we have also planned hands on workshops between October 21st and 30th. So I guess, it is a hybrid – virtual and f2f.

A full program can be seen on our Ning and on our wiki. You can also join our Ning and create your own profile.

A poster can be seen here – now-conference-poster.

Hope others can make it too

This is a photo taken on April 16th at the Dimboola Memorial Secondary College. DMSC put on a great 2 day conference to highlight their work with the Leading Schools Fund with the focus on technology in the classroom. Dimboola teachers were passionate about the use of their Interactive Whiteboards and had them set up in just about every classroom.
Here is a snapshot of how the IWBs were used -

• Modelling lessons
• Interactive quizzes
• Manipulating data
• Shared writing
• Reflective dialogues
• Student presentations
• Podcasts
• Videos
• Skype sessions with students from other schools

Deputy Prime Minisiter Julia Gillard was there to acknowledge their wonderful work and was available for questions, chat and photos after her speech.

Obviously I took the photo opportunity