Teaching and Learning in the 21stC

Zombie Game | ICE Distance Education Portal.

Starting to explore some programming tools and this looks like a fun one to engage my Year 9s with.

As an educator, what do you really need to know about staying safe online? Why do you need to? How can you share your understanding of safety with the students in your care.
Google Safety has a lot of easy to digest information on:
Passwords
Phishing
Malware
Secure sites
Safe networks
Mobile security
Check your Gmail account
Family safety
Shopping safety
Signing out
Google’s security tools

Phew… the end of another manic week, and it just doesn’t stop.
We had an interesting session on Tuesday for the Tech Tasters with Pat McGarry inspiring us as to what we can achieve, not only with iPads, but a range of 1:1 technology.
Full details are on the iPad project blog here –
With some links to amazing resources.
The Year 7 iPad trial has begun at Beaui with 7W and we have had sessions in basics – Thanks Dave – and some Digital Citizenship and safety. If you would like to see what the kids get up to as they explore these devices check out our blog

We are quickly heading towards our ratio of 1:1 devices from Years 9 – 12, and by the end of the year there will be over 500 new devices across the 3 campuses, so needless to say the technicians are very busy setting them all up. They have also upgraded the wireless network installing new Wireless Access Points (WAPs) across the college, which should see an improvement in connectivity. If you know of a dead spot lease let me know and I will pass this on to the techs to try to improve it.

Please make sure you check each notebook, netbook etc before and after use by your students so we can check any damage, and follow up immediately. Try to get into the habit of each student using the same device, this will make it faster to log on, as well as assisting follow up of damage. Keep a list of who uses which – I have a template which I can send out if needed.

Make sure you check out the new Edustar software on these devices, and on the new teacher notebooks. There is Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements, which means all students have access to these powerful tools. Take some time and check out the other stuff… and ask if you would like a specific software PD , either individually, small group/domain based or whole school/campus.

Edumail is still a pain for many people – if you are still having issues (or know of someone having issues, as they can’t get this mail) let Wayne know as he is dealing with the department.

Thank you once again to Sharon and Ingrid for providing some great eLearning PD this week. Ben has offered to run PD for anyone interested in developing a wiki or Facebook group for their students. Let him know if you are interested, and he will work out a date and time.

I am looking for interested people who would like to participate in a trial of eLearning Peer Coaches, email me an expression of interest… no special skills required.

Our eLearning Vision, as decided by you
Sandringham College provides access to an innovative curriculum which connects and engages learners every hour of every day.

The wordle (http://www.wordle.net/) your feedback on the College vision generated is the banner on this blog.

A Question for you to think about this week…. Are we as educators really using the technology available to transform learning…. Or enhance it?

I know this has been a while in coming, since I collected the information last year… but we shall wipe off last year, and continue on now…. The feedback on our eLearning Vision, wants and needs for the DER funding as well as looking at where we are on the eLearning Matrix has been put together… and ready for your further feedback and information. A huge thank you to the Domain teams across the College who put their responses in to me. We listened to your feedback on where you felt we needed to put more hardware etc, and have taken this into account when allocating funding for purchases.

Today I would like to focus on our vision, and further defining it. I feel it is important for everyone to have a say in developing our eLearning Vision, so we are all agreed and heading in the same direction. It was interesting as I was coallating all of the information, thoughts and words that I felt similar words and issues kept coming to the surface. So I put all of the words… in their raw form, into Wordle and came up with this

Our eLearning Vision

There are a few brief statements that immediately spring to my mind when I see this word cloud of our vision for eLearning…. but I would like to hear your thoughts. If you could just reply to this post with either a group or individual statement, based on these words/image as to the eLearning Vision for Sandringham College, please include your name and campus.

Looking forward to sharing your thoughts.
Suz

Via: OnlineEducation.net

iPads
The time has come…. when we got the iPads into the College last year we made the decision to allow staff to have some play time with the them, and develop strategies and plans with how they could be used in the classroom…
If you have used an iPad for any amount of time would you please take a few minutes to complete this short survey

http://www.ipadsforeducation.vic.edu.au/education-apps

iPads in Education – and the iCloud

I was fortunate to spend time on Friday and over the long weekend participating in the Flexible Learning Network’s eRealite conference. Many areas of eLearning were covered including a look at the Horizon Report – as well as exploring a range of tools and applications, issues and concerns which face educators and the use of eLearning in a number of situations.

Using audio as formative assessment…

Digital Artists Competition

The Horizon Report is a report put out each year which looks at emerging trends in the digital age. It has been fascinating over the past few years watching what I have read in the reports come to reality. In this year’s reports the trends looking at less than a year for widespread adoption are electronic books and mobile devices. Two to three years to adoption – augmented reality (overlaying the real and the digital world) and Game based learning. Four to five years to adoption sees gesture based computing and learning analytics

http://www.ohgizmo.com/2011/04/21/shelvar-augmented-reality-app-automatically-sorts-library-shelves-will-librarians-ever-catch-a-break/

http://www.pcworld.com/article/157231/minority_report_style_gesturebased_interfaces.html

And some other things to be thinking about….

What you have missed in education discussions if you were not on Twitter

http://bigthink.com/ideas/38698

Leveraging Social networking in the classroom

http://www.educause.edu/blog/kwalsh1/7ReasonsToLeverageSocialNetwor/230035

Looking forward to the conference….will be taking the iPad…and seeing how I travel…hope to cover it live as well