“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.

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.

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.

Since returning to school, I have continued to follow Jarrod’s journey via his tweets on Twitter and have had very worthwhile (and fun!) discussions with my colleagues, Nathan and Stephen.

If you are not familiar with the concept of QR Codes, these sites are all an excellent introduction. A comprehensive site for information and news about QR Codes is the 2D Code site. Links to the Code Readers and Code Generators are particularly helpful.

For me, the first step was being about to use my mobile phone to read QR Codes.  I tested a number of QR Code Readers for the iPhone:

• 2D Sense (free, includes move and scale feature)
• Barcodes (free, includes move and scale feature)
• iDecode (free)
• NeoReader (free)
• QR Reader ($2.49)
• UpCode (Free)
• Snappr (Free, includes move and scale feature)

After working out how to actually read a QR Code, I started looking at creating my own codes. Snappr is a great site to generate your own QR Codes.  After signing up, I was “like a kid in a lolly shop” as I explored the different types of codes that could be created!

Snappr allows you to create many types of codes that fall under the headings of Classic, Social and Snappr. Codes can be created quickly and easily then embedded into a site, downloaded to insert into a document or printed on an item.  (Yes, people are printing their own QR Code t-shirts!)  The content of a code can even be edited later so that the actual QR Code image looks the same but the content is different. There are so many exciting possibilities for sharing information on this site.  It is definitely well worth a look! Click on the codes below to view a larger image and see if you can read them! There are four different types of codes to give you a taste of what is possible:

So now the big question is, “How can QR Codes be used in education?”  Again, Jarrod has some exciting ideas in his QR Codes in Education post.  We are particularly interested in looking into the following uses:

• “The Amazing Race” using QR Codes: Codes could either be printed on a sheet and given to students or displayed in different locations.  Students could then access clues that are not just text-based, but include images, web sites, etc…  This adds a whole new dimension to this type of activity.
• Sharing resouces with students: Because you can create QR Codes that link to content such as images and audio files, students can easily access these items via their mobile phones.  This could have exciting possibilities for student access to content such as podcasts.
• QR Codes on library books:  During a Twitter discussion, Jarrod suggested QR Codes on library books with a link to a web site, audio file, etc… with additional information about the book.
• Add QR Codes to printed materials: If you need to give a printed copy of information to students, you can add QR Codes with links to online resources.  Students are then able to easily access this extra content without the need for a computer.
• Voting via QR Codes: Snappr allows you to create codes that link to an online voting system. This is a great way to quiz your students or gauge their opinions.   
• Create a Snappr Micropage: Snappr also allows you to create a Micropage. This is a basic web page with a title, images, text and URLs.  The page is optimized for viewing on a mobile phone.

At our school, I am looking forward to displaying some QR Codes in our Computer Centre and around the school to generate some interest in this exciting technology.  I think this prize might be the first reward I offer:

My PLN is not just made up of colleagues or even former colleagues.  It is made up of educators from around the world, some of which I had the great pleasure of meeting in 2008 and some of which I certainly hope to meet in the future.

Without doubt the most valuable tool I have used for establishing my PLN has been Twitter.

Twitter has provided me with the opportunity to:

• share and discover new resources (my Delicious links have gone through the roof, thanks to Twitter!)
• ask for and offer assistance to colleagues about a range of ICT and education issues
• have access to a never-ending amount of professional development (reading the blogs of other educators has been extremely worthwhile)
• feel a deep sense of gratitude for my home, town I live in, school I work in and the wonderful people in my life
• share lots of funny moments and even some heart-breaking ones

I compiled the slideshow below using One True Media which was passed onto me by the lovely Amanda Marrinan via Twitter.  (Of course!) If you are unable to view the movie via the player, please click here. Special thanks to Lisa Dumicich for the fabulous photo of Twitterers at the VITTA 2008 Conference.

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

In response to Jarrod Robinson’s challenge via Twitter, here are the “7 things you don’t need to know about me”. However, one of the following statements is completely untrue.  Which one is it?

1.  I am the youngest of four sisters and our names all begin with ‘L’!

2.  At my first swimming lesson in primary school, the teacher made me jump into the deep end – then had to rescue me!

3.  I was put off alcohol at the age of 16 when I witnessed a friend throwing up into a gutter with her police officer father standing behind her.

4.  I love music and reached 8th grade level in piano and used to play the guitar, flute and saxophone.

5.  Although my family is originally from Malta, my parents grew up in Egypt.  My father came to Australia on a Super Constellation aircraft which was very ambitious for that time!

6.  After teaching for 5 years, I had a change of career and worked in the airline industry for 4 years.  This included working as a flight attendant with Ansett Australia.  (I couldn’t wait to return to teaching!)

7.  I once met Ian “Molly” Meldrum when working on a flight from Melbourne to Perth and spent most of the flight chatting with him about Egyptian Artefacts, something we both love.

Thanks @mrrobbo for challenging me – although I was reluctant at first, I really enjoyed the task!  Thank you for also reminding me that behind all of the amazing educators in my PLN, there are “real” people, each one with their own “story” that is usually untold!

It’s a difficult task to choose seven more people to challenge, so I’m asking each and every one of you to consider sharing “7 things you don’t need to know about me”!

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