Today for our weekly whole staff meeting/professional learning, we had an opportunity to share our learnings from uLearn09. This was a great way to empower our two classroom teachers who attended, and a chance for my principal and I to talk about our ‘wow’ moments.
Often professional learning opportunities can lose their impact upon the return to school. Day to day pressures can easily erode the memory of these days. As a team we spent quite a bit of time reflecting on what we had learnt and ideas that resonated with us. This was a most important for us to ensure we would keep the learning alive.
October 19th, 2009
The ULearn09 Conference began with a Powhiri on the Tuesday morning. Men were seated at the front whilst women were seated behind them. Powhiri is a spiritual welcome to the land. More info here.
I’m the one in the black parka and faux fur collar, trying to keep warm!
October 17th, 2009
Last week I attended the ULearn Conference in Christchurch, NZ with my principal, Jason Smallwood and two teachers, Gail and Rohan, from my college. It was our first conference together as delegates and presenters. Not bad for our first year as a college!
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.
October 17th, 2009
