The school year began in Victoria, Australia last week. Many teachers have been thinking about the benefits of having a class blog and are keen to start their own class blog. I’ve been getting lots of questions about the process of starting a blog so I thought I would write a post to help get […]
Tools, Sites, And Apps
2011 School Year Begins
Today was the first day back at school for teachers in Victorian Government Schools. All schools are spending the first three days on professional development and planning. This year my school is focussing on in-house professional development. Each Monday night teachers will be presenting on Literacy, Numeracy and ICT. I am in charge of ICT […]
Could You Teach Without Technology?
In November last year I wrote a blog post about how I was missing my interactive whiteboard (IWB). My projector had broken and I was without it for all of Term Four. My classroom program suddenly became less authentic, less personalised and less engaging for both the students and myself. Ironically, the same thing has […]
Learn It In 5: Instructional Videos
Last week’s Tech Tools for Teachers was about the site Learn It In 5. Click here to read the newsletter. “Learn it in 5 is a powerful library of how-to videos, produced by technology teachers, for the purpose of helping teachers and students create classroom strategies for today’s 21st century’s digital classroom. These step-by-step how-to […]
Top 100 Tools for Learning 2010
Jane Hart, a social business consultant, and founder of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies, has been compiling a list of the top 100 tools for learning since 2007. The 2010 list is currently being compiled and you can view the full list here – Emerging Top 100 Tools for Learning 2010. Interestingly, you […]
Tech Tools for Teachers #22 PrimaryPad
Each week Simon Collier and I collaborate on an email newsletter for teachers called Tech Tools for Teachers. Click here to find an archive of past newsletters and to subscribe. This week we review the site PrimaryPad http://primarypad.com/ PrimaryPad is a tool that allows students and teachers to collaborate on a word-processor style document. Despite […]
Tech Talk Tuesdays and Classroom 2.0 LIVE
Last week, I posted about my top ten ways to engage in online professional development (PD). Tonight I participated in one of my recommended forms of PD (which I don’t get to as often as I’d like) – the Victorian Education Department’s Virtual Conference Centre. While there are a wide range of sessions every day […]
Ed Tech Crew Podcast
Ed Tech Crew is one of my favourite podcasts. Every week or two Darrel Branson (The ICT Guy) and Tony Richards from itmadesimple.com discuss all things to do with technology in education. I am often blown anyway by the amount I can learn by listening to an episode of the Ed Tech crew so I […]
Article: Are Digital Natives Restless?
Last week I was contacted by Jewel Topfield, a reporter from The Age newspaper, who wanted to visit my classroom to watch me teach and talk to me about how I use technology in the classroom. Jewel and a photographer visited one of our daily reading rotations in my grade two class and had the […]
Tech Tools for Teachers
Since the beginning of 2010, I have been collaborating with a fellow teacher, Simon Collier on a free weekly e-mail for teachers. With our 20th newsletter milestone approaching, this post is a reminder if you or someone you know has not yet signed up for the newsletters. Each week our email newsletter features a useful […]
Social Media Monitoring
Last week I posted about Denis Masseni’s report “Why Schools are Spooked by Social Media.” An interesting component of this report was on social media monitoring. That is, monitoring the internet for mentions of a particular keyword (such as your school). This is a good way to take defensive action if negative mentions occur and […]
Why Schools are Spooked by Social Media
I was pleased I was listening to ABC Radio Melbourne this morning when I heard the next segment was going to be about social media in schools. While I braced myself for a flood of ill informed callers harping on the negatives of Facebook and the like I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome. Denis […]
Sites for Integration Aides
Monday 9th August is a statewide curriculum day for Ultranet implementation in Victoria. For readers who are outside of Victoria, Australia, the Ultranet is a $60.5 million online portal for teachers, students and parents in Victorian government schools. Read my post on my initial thoughts on the Ultranet here. I am a Lead User at […]
StoryIt: Word Games
StoryIt is a website that doesn’t look amazing with its simple layout and advertisements but has some great resources for the junior primary classroom. While there are stories to read and print, seasonal resources, printable shapes and more – the resources I’ve found most useful are the word games. There are about fifteen word games […]
Why I think Blogs Should be Public
I have had a number of educators have asked me in the past about my privacy guidelines for my class blog. Recently, an educator contacted me for advice when their principal would not allow their class blog to be public. That is, the principal would not allow blogging unless the blog was completely password protected. […]