Well, after 3 years, my time as a full-time Educational Technologist has come to an end. The school year is over, and after a wonderful 5 weeks to rest, recharge and recuperate, I will be moving on to new challenges. Of course I will still be focusing on technology in education, as the eLearning and Innovation Coordinator at a new school, but I will also be returning to the classroom for the first time in 3 years and moving into a leadership role in the school.  So, as I have mentioned before, no doubt the focus and tone of this blog will change, as may the frequency of my posts.  I intend to use this blog to be more self reflective about my teaching experiences, especially with technology in the classroom.  But, for the next 5 weeks, things might be a little quiet around here.  I intend to take full advantage of this Christmas break, so I may not post for awhile. I’d like to say I will be enjoying the sunshine of a Melbourne summer, but it’s actually been pouring for almost a week….

I have worked with a fantastic team of people for the last three years - I wish them all the best of luck and a very Merry Christmas to everyone!

I just read an inspiring blog post by Vicki Davis over at her CoolCat Teacher Blog, ‘What happens when students take the reins’. It is wonderful to read about the amazing things can happen, when students are encouraged to think independently and take the lead, and when schools have the confidence to support them. One of the things about this story that I found especially interesting was that the students saw the value of a Ning Community as a social network for the extended school community.  Ning has interested me mainly due to its inherent similarities to the structure of sites such as Myspace and Facebook, as I thought that may appeal to students and encourage participation.  I knew that the Flat Classroom Project had successfully used a Ning Community, but this was the first time that I heard a story of students choosing to use Ning, and foreseeing its advantages.

I will look forward to hearing more about this end of term project with Vicki’s class, and seeing where it leads.  And hopefully, I will be able to inorporate that approach, even if in a small way, in my classroom work next year.

Do you know of any other great examples of student led curriculum?  Please share!

Something exciting is happening tomorrow. A group of special students from around the world are collaborating to share their voice with the edublogosphere, through Student 2.0. And we should all be listening. It is a great opportunity to discuss education from the student’s perspective, and gain some valuable insight.  As Arthus, one of the student contributors, says: “It is time: time for authentic student voices in the edublogosphere; time to hear from those who are affected by education the most; time to regard students as more than just blank floppy disks to be written upon.”

I will be following this blog with interest. I’m sure it will be an engaging read and will have much to offer to educators everywhere. Welcome to the era of Student 2.0.

It’s been a busy few weeks at work lately. I have presented at 2 conferences in less than 2 weeks, helped organise a 2 day PD and worked closely with several teachers on curriculum design and some software training. So finding time to blog has been hard, although I have been trying to keep up with reading edublogs, and have bookmarked several issues to come back to later.

I suspect that the direction of my blog might change a bit next year, when I return to the classroom for the first time in 3 years. I imagine my focus will be more on what works (or doesn’t) in the classroom and less on the issues of technology in education in general.

Yesterday at the PD day I was introducing a new project to our staff. I have recently worked on a successful grant application to create a unit of work revolving around GPS and Geoaching. The substantial funding will principally be used to purchase handheld GPS devices and provide time for staff to receive training and undertake collaborative curriculum planning. So, in the introductory session, we discussed the variety of ways in which geocaching could be used to enrich the curriculum, and for teachers to have that discussion, they had to first understand what it was all about.

So, we set off to a local park to try and find a Geocache, and although we were disappointed to discover that the cache had bee removed, it was great to see the enthusiasm and excitement our little ‘field trip’ generated. I think it gave the staff a taste of the excitement it might generate in their own classes…

Our friendly chauffer

Loading the troops

Safety first

In search of treasure

Following the GPS

Searching high and low

A likely spot?

Leaving empty handed… but smiling.

We discussed how the students might design their own caches, and the clues to find them, using skills and information from various subjects.  We talked about multi-caches, virtual caches, travel bugs, muggles and triangulation.  All in all it was a great discussion, and I’m quite sure an inspiring unit of work will come from this project. It’s a shame I wont be around to see its fulfillment in this cluster of schools, but I hope to develop something similar at my new school.