Making Connections

~ Image from zoomar’s flickr photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoomar/2265202595/ ~

Today I cam across a forum entry on Classroom2.0 entitled “Audacity and Oral Administration of Test“. The post had been made by Julie sharing an idea she’d gotten from some recent PD.

Here’s the big idea:

The plan is to record the test in audacity, download the test to an MP3 player to hand to the student and allow the student to control the pace of the test (repeating a question, pausing, etc).

Now, I’m just starting to delve into the area of podcasting. I’ve done a lot of video work and a lot of blogging, but somehow I skipped over the podcasting side of things. Then I got asked to do the Speaking and Listening component of the Year 8 English for this term for half the classes (the others are assigned a different teacher) and one of the middle school teacher’s I’m working with suggested podcasts. I naturally jumped on board – a new tech toy to master…bring it on!

Actually, I’ve just spent a few hours editting the first contributions of two of my classes and uploading them within the walled garden, in the process figuring out Audacity as I went.

With the podcast project fresh in my mind and Jodie’s fantastic idea I’ve just added a new thing to my to do list over the weekend – create a podcast of the terms for our current Year 10 English unit to help students prepare for their coming exam.

This is what I love about making connections with teachers from around the world – there’s always a new idea to try, a new project to celebrate, a new application to play with, new possibilities. Love it.

Whilst in the process of completing my nomination for the 2008 Smart Classroom Teaching awards I figured I should probably also complete the paperwork in order to apply for my ICT Pedegogical Licence.

The paperwork itself was fairly simply – what proved difficult was compiling my digital portfolio. I had to select THREE items which I felt showed my use of ICTs – that in itself was hard because my integration of ICTs is just something I do, I’ve never just done it to tick boxes, and isolating what I do in order to analyse it was actually difficult. Writing it all up so that someone else would be able to understand it…drove me insane!

Anyway, during the Awards ceremony and workshops I am fairly certain I was the only one who hadn’t yet been approved for their licence – it was at that point I started to worry…afterall, how embarrassing would it have been to win the award and then fail my licence application!

Two weeks ago I checked the accesses to my digitial portfolio and freaked when I saw that two moderators had been sussing it out. My local ICT mentor scoffed and told me I had nothing to worry about. Turns out she was right, I got an email today informing me I’d been accepted and with some feedback.

For the main part the feedback was great, glowing in fact, but two things kind of irked me. Apparently I need to broaden my use of ICTs…given that at the moment I’m feeling held back by the department policies and the restrictions of these policies are blocking some of my more out there ideas, I’m not sure what the moderators meant by this. I’m working within the department’s walled garden and incorporating outside web2.0 applications as I can, but there’s so much I feel I can’t do without risking a knuckle wrap – I’m using:

• wikis
• blogs
• discussion boards
• the department’s multimedia rooms
• online tests/quizzes
• online applications such as nota, del.ic.ious, ask500people

What more can I do and stay within guidelines (all work hosted on department servers, only accessible by approved people, controlled/managed by teacher)? I’m really confused by that one.

At the end of the day though, my application was successful and I’ve got to be happy with that.

In the last two days I’ve heard two things which have literally struck fear in my heart.

The first was on the news as I rushed to get ready for work yesterday morning. When I heard it I literally stopped, looked at the television and stared in disbelief. There is talk at the moment of introducing mandatory filters on Australian internet access. Read about it here:

Conroy announces mandatory internet filters to protect children (ABC report)

Filtering out the fury: how government tried to gag web censor critics (SMH paper)

The announcement has caused a stir – see:

Dean’s Blog, Amnesia’s Blog, and the Petition

The second moment I had to remind myself to stop breathing…when I heard some colleagues make this statement:

Seriously? They had to be kidding right? I wish they were…how sad is it that teachers out there honestly believe this? If we banned phones there are so many things we’d be denying ourselves the opportunity to do, things like MrRobbo’s recent mobile blogging whilst on school camp (check out his student’s posts and leave your comments – HERE) – and let’s face it, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

I honestly hope those of us out there devoted to the integration of new technologies into our classrooms are prepared to dig in for a long war of retrition – the technophobes have well and truly entrenched themselves in our education system.

Okay, so an email found it’s way into my inbox today that had me litereally squeal, drool and demand one of my very own all at once.

It was a link to this article: YouTube Users Create Games Through Video

Basically, someone somewhere (who is now in the running to become my new person idol) has invented a way to use the annotation feature on YouTube vids to create a “pick-a-path” adventure video game. At the moment it appears to be very popular in Spanish speaking countries, but not a great deal happening in English yet. Still the idea is very very cool. Below is the embedded start point video – please note the “pick-a-path” links won’t work in this, to play with that feature you’ll need to go to the YouTube site (http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=BckqqsJiDUI)

Guess what I’m doing with the cyberdrama unit next year?

The last few weeks I’ve been thinking a lot on what it takes to be a good teacher in my eyes. It turns out I have incredibly high standards – I justify that by holding myself to the same standards.

Here’s my key diagnostic question – are the students interested, excited, and engaged?

Looking for ways to express my frustration and convey my standards to a colleague I turned to my trusty web-based resources and found a couple of slideshows on Slideshare.net that make some excellent points. Below is the first one I’ll share, it’s very academic but “nails it”

Whilst this week hasn’t been as drama filled as last week I’m still totally snowed under and simply don’t have the brain power to write much just yet. I promise I’ll get on top of things over the weekend.

Three years ago I reached my first grade belt at Rhee Taekwondo (brown belt black tip), about a month later I was transfered to a small rural school and sadly couldn’t continue to train. One of the firs tthings I did when we transfered this year was start back. It’s been a humbling experience – wearing the belt which says you’re so close to being a black belt and yet having to basically start from scratch with basic techniques and accumulation of skills. I’ve still got a very long way to go, but I am getting there. Tonight I was asked to break a board for the first time in three years. I wasn’t convinced I’d manage it and I prepared myself to accept that my technique would need a lot more work. But – I nailed it. Smashed right through, hitting the sweet spot (centre of the board) and all.

And because of that one moment, my confidence and determination to stay the course has returned. Last week I’d begun to think maybe I wasn’t ever going to get to where I need to be, now I know I can.

And this relates to learning and teaching how?

As a teacher I think it’s incredibly important for us to give our students the chance to experience those “nailing it” moments. They’re the things which help students to master more confidently and determination. My board reminded me of that and now (after a well earned sleep) I’ll walk into my classes tomorrow hoping to give my students that same buzz somewhere along the way.

Today we rushed out from work, desperate to get to the shops before they closed. Rushed and breathless we made it – just! It was really important to us both to get there with time to spare.

Why?

We had gadget buying to do.

Tonight we’ve spent getting used to Wii Remotes and mastering tennis and bowling (we are not very good at baseball…maybe Aussies need cricket ). We’ve ummed and ahhed about a gaming console for a long time now, never quite sure which one would work best for us. Somehow the Wii seemed a good choice and after tonight I can see it becoming an important part of our lives (even if Daisycat spends her time cowering away, convinced we’re throwing the remotes at her.)

I could rave, but I realise I’m about three years behind in my conversion to the Wii so I’ll stop while I’m ahead.