Lucy's Blog

For me, the end of a year brings with it the opportunity to reflect on what has been achieved and, most importantly, lessons learnt.  Of course, by the time we reach the end of the school year, most of us are tired, run-down and looking forward to the holidays!  On the positive side, though, there are feelings of satisfaction in regard to the year’s achievements as well as excitement looking forward to the following year’s projects.  However, the end of 2009 didn’t have me looking forward with the usual excitement to the new year.  Why?  How on earth could my enthusiasm be dwindling?

During 2009, the main projects I worked on were:

• Continuing with the establishment of curriculum content on our SharePoint Portal
• Commencement of our ICT Professional Learning Teams Program and, in particular, working with Year 9 teachers in preparation for our Personal Netbook Program
• Providing training to approximately 100 staff for our school’s Online Purchase Order System
• Continuing with our school’s Virtual Worlds Program and, in particular, assisting Year 6 teachers with the implementation of Quest Atlantis
• Researching ways to establish our school’s own virtual world and, in particular, commencing work to establish our own OpenSim space with ReactionGrid

Whilst all of these projects were/are interesting, exciting and challenging, I find myself feeling quite “flat” as I look to the future.  I think that part of this comes down to neglecting my personal life and being consumed in my work.  Much of what I do in my role is also a hobby for me.  It is, therefore, easy for the school/home line to become blurred.

A colleague once said to me,

“You plant the seeds, Lucy.  All around the school, you plant the seeds.  Some of these grow and flourish and others don’t.  And that is to be expected.”

Once upon a time, I was happy for just some of these seeds to grow and flourish.  However, now I find myself questioning if the heart and soul that you put into planting these seeds is really worthwhile.  At times, the pace of change is so slow that I fear we will just continue plodding along.  Is it acceptable to continue having a handful of staff who understand the importance and possibilities when using ICT in the curriculum?  Can we achieve a whole-school approach to this as others do, where it is clear that ICT is a priority?

Whilst I am not one for “New Year’s Resolutions”, I have decided that I need to devote more time to “getting back to basics” in terms of my own well-being and that of my family.  My hope is that in feeling better about myself I will be able to contribute with greater clarity to my school work and renew my sense of enthusiasm.

I will take great care in planting the seeds – but only where they will grow and flourish.

“Do you have a black keyboard that you don’t need anymore? We just need the keys.”

My colleague, Jane, must have seen the blank look on my face and responded immediately with, “I have a student who’s making a dress out of recycled computer parts and she’s using the keys to make a belt.”

I was immediately intrigued by this and knew I had to take a look at the student’s work. After all, it was computer parts we were talking about!

I’m happy to say that our Technical Services staff were able to locate a keyboard and the dress was completed!  The next day I met the creator, Thea, and watched as she made the finishing touches and completed her semester long project.

Apart from the belt made from keys, I was amazed at the work that had gone into the bodice, using a number of motherboards, carefully crafted with metalwork tools.

When I asked Thea how many hours she estimated her project had taken, she smiled and said, “A looong time!” Her peers agreed with her!

I would like to thank Thea for allowing me to publish the photos of her project and share them via this blog. An incredible example of creativity and recycling!

I was fortunate enough to attend the Exapanding Learning Horizons Conference which is held each year in Lorne.
2009 was the third ELH conference I had attended and, this year, I had the pleasure of sharing it with five of my colleagues. This definitely added to the experience!

The highlights for me were many and varied.  During a number of sessions throughout the conference, you could have been forgiven for thinking that we were attending a personal development conference and not an ICT one.  For me, this was why this year’s ELH conference made an even bigger impact on me than previous years.  I really felt that things were “coming together”, so to speak.  Valuable lessons in life were merging with ICT and educational issues – I loved it!

It was during two of the Critical Conversations sessions that I felt real connections were made between life and ICT in education.  The discussions during both of these sessions headed down the ICT Professional Development path.  In one session, I heard Margaret Meijers talk about the importance of the right attitude and, in another, I met Roy Williams, who told me of his great passion for Physics.  The idea of the importance of picking up on people’s passion and linking this with ICT was then raised during the Critical Conversation by Peter Steer.

I was first introduced to the idea of Attitude determines Altitude by Roger Barrow, whilst he studied for his Private Pilot’s Licence.  Although the “attitude” it refers to is the attitude of an aircraft, of course it also suggests that with the right mental attitude and self-belief, we can achieve great things!

Teachers with the right attitude, even those who lack ICT skills, means that we are half-way there.
Teachers who do not have the right attitude towards the use of ICT in education means that we have an even greater challenge on our hands!
I would rather train a room full of “believers” who lack the skills than try to convince the “non-believers”!

Keynote speakers Andrew Douch and Travis Smith were both inspiring. Andrew showed us how ICT is “Redefining the Classroom” and how his use of Web 2.0 tools has improved the academic results of his students.  However, it is not just his use of Web 2.0 tools – it is also his passion for learning.  His students love Biology!  Travis’ enthusiasm and sense of humor was also a highlight for me.  His keynote presentation about “Scaling Innovation in Teacher Practice” touched on a number of important issues that generated valuable discussions with my colleagues.  He also included just the right amount of free software to keep us “Web 2.0-holics” happy!

I was fortunate to spend an entire afternoon with Steve Collis as he outlined his school’s “Real Audience Project“.  He illustrated the many innovative ways his school uses ICT to publish a variety of student work from traditional printed books via lulu.com to podcasts aired via their own school internet radio station using SHOUTcast.

Steve’s colleague, Mark Liddell, gave an incredible presentation titled, “Technology Ideas for Mathematics“.  Maths is definitely not my strength so I was intrigued to see how Mark approached his use of ICT with his students.  Again, it was this presenter’s passion that shone through.  If only I had a Maths teacher like Mark when I was at school!

Learn how to learn with passion and curiosity

There were many other highlights throughout the conference and I would need to several blog posts to do this conference justice.  However, for me, all of the highlights involved people who have an enormous amount of passion for what they do.  At the 2008 ICTEV Conference, I heard Margaret Meijers say, “Learn how to learn with passion and curiosity”.  At the moment, I am reading Sir Ken Robinson’s book, The Element, in which he speaks about “how finding your passion changes everything”. It was clear to me from the keynote speakers, presenters and the many people I met and spoke to at ELH that they had all found their passion.

At the end of 2008, we embarked on our virtual worlds journey with the introduction of Quest Atlantis in our Year 6 English program.  You can find more detailed information about this project on our My Quest Atlantis Blog.

As Quest Atlantis is designed especially for middle school students, we started to explore ways in which we could extend this type of virtual world experience for our students.

After exploring options such as OpenSim, Active Worlds and a closed estate in Teen Second Life, I was amazed and excited at the possibilities.

I was aware of the wonderful work being done at Suffern Middle School in New York by Peggy Sheehy and, a little closer to home, at Northern Beaches Christian School by Steve Collis.  I think the real “light bulb moment” came to me when I read Steve’s blog post, Practical Examples of 3D Virtual Environments for Learning in High School.  As I watched the accompanying movie I was, to say the least, completely blown away!  You may wish to read more about Booralie and Ramapo Islands on their blogs.

I have been very impressed with the possibilities available to students and educators using a virtual world such as Second Life.  In particular, the opportunities for students to develop 3D design or “building” skills are enormous.  Their completed objects and buildings have a real purpose as they can then be featured in the virtual world and used by teachers and students as part of the curriculum.  I have loved “playing” in jokaydia’s building sandbox so I can only imagine how much the students would enjoy this type of activity!

At this stage, I have explored a number of different educational areas in Second Life’s main grid.  I am particularly grateful to Dean Groom for suggesting that I explore the islands of jokaydia.  It was the perfect place to start for a Second Life newbie like me!

We are now at the stage where we will soon be putting together a project proposal and I have been in discussions with different staff members to gauge the interest in this type of curriculum development.  Their reactions have been extremely positive and part of the purpose of this post is to provide a little more background information to interested staff.

For those who have never experienced a virtual world, it can be difficult to visualise based on the blurry descriptions of an over-excited ICT Trainer!  I hope the links in this post and the slideshow below will give staff a little more insight into the exciting possibilities of this type of project.  If you are unable to view the slideshow below, you may wish to go directly to flickr and view the full set of images.

I am very excited to be visiting our City Cite Campus this week!  It will be my first visit and I am keen to meet with the staff and see the unique learning space. Part of the reason for our visit is to look at ways that we could assist in helping City Cite to continue in the development of an ICT-rich environment for the students. Given the location and nature of the programs that run at City Cite, it lends itself beautifully to a variety of exciting computer-based and mobile learning activities.

The following sites and tools are some suggestions:

Create a City Cite Twitter account to share events and activities with others.  Twitter is an excellent way to connect with educators (and their students) around the world.

Flickr is an excellent way to store and share your photos online.  Image from City Cite activities can be uploaded and shared publicly or privately.  Staff and students can even email photos to your Flickr account from a mobile phone!  There are also many exiciting online image manipulation tools such as Big Huge Labs that can use images directly from your Flickr account.

Using their own images, students can quickly create and share professional movies with Animoto.  Animoto Education allows teachers to register a class allowing free access to full-length movies.

At our school’s recent Lorne Conference, I had the pleasure of running a hands-on SAM Animation session with a small group of staff, including teachers from City Cite.  This free download allows you to create stop-motion animation and even time lapse sequences.  It’s simple interface makes it easy to use for students of all ages.  You can click here to read the post, Play, Create & Animate with SAM Animation, featuring examples created in this 45 minute session.

Blogging is an incredible way for students to build literacy skills, share ideas, reflect, publish work, connect with a global audience…the list goes on!  There are many sites available to create a blog but Edublogs is one of my favourites.

Once you have a blog, it opens the doors for other exciting activities with your students like mobile phone blogging.  Sites like Utterli allow you to call a designated number, record a response then have it automatically posted to a specified blog.  Click here for some examples of mobile phone blogging.

QR Codes provide a simple and exciting way to share informtation with students via their mobile phones. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of QR Codes, click here to read a previous post about this technology. A treausure hunt around the city could be set up making using of QR Codes linking to online resources such as web sites, images and audio.  Below is an example of a QR Code generated especially for City City. (Click to enlarge the image and use a QR Code reader on a mobile phone to read the code.)

Trail Guru allows you to plot a journey using a GPS device.  An excellent, free iPhone app is also available, making it simple to record a journey along with photos and a number of interesting statistics which can then be posted an analyzed on the Trail Guru web site.  Click here for an example of a journey plotted with Trail Guru.

A complete list of resources mentioned in this post is available via my Delicious links.

Addendum:

We had a great day at City Cite! The staff were very enthusiastic and open to new ideas. It was also fascintating to hear about the program that is run there and the unique experience that is offered to students.

Whilst there, we were able to illustrate uses for the above tools and especially the iPhone, Comic Touch and Flickr. Click here to view the City Cite photos on Flickr. An Animoto movie about City Cite, using the iPhone app, was also created.  You can click here to view the movie. Special thanks to Nathan Burgess for introducing me to the fabulous Animoto iPhone app!

Nathan also mentioned another great iPhone app called AroundShare. This app allows you to take a photo, post it to the AroundShare site or another site such as Twitter.  Your image appears alongside a Google Map showing your location and other geographical information. Click here to see City Cite on AroundShare thanks to Nathan.

We are really looking forward to returning to City Cite in March to take the first steps in introducing more technology. Getting staff started with Twitter, creating a Bluetooth server and exploring bulk SMS tools are the first items we are hoping to explore.