I seem to be continually uncovering more and more benefits to educational blogging. Aside from the advantages that I’ve shared here and here, having your class involved in the educational blogging community allows students to learn from and with their peers from all around the world. In my class we often use our blogging buddies’ posts as inspiration for classroom activities, […]
teaching
Looking Back 2004-2011
I finished university at the end of 2003 and started teaching in January 2004. Like all graduate teachers, the beginning of my teaching career was a steep learning curve. Fortunately, I felt like I had a lot of role models around me on staff. As I embarked on my career, I remember thinking a lot […]
Troubleshooting Computer Problems: Using Posters In The Classroom
I am a big advocate of training my students to become as independent as possible with technology. Many technology users can get bogged down with “technical issues” which can take away from the benefits of using the tools. As I have written about before, I try to make my use of ICT explicit to my […]
Integrating Blogging into the Curriculum
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been speaking to many teachers about educational blogging. Sometimes I feel like I live, breathe and dream blogging, so talking on this topic isn’t hard! Kelly Jordan and I were so pleased with the feedback from our DEECD Innovations Showcase and ICTEV Conference presentations. This has led to many […]
The Power of ClustrMaps
This post marks another milestone on this blog A huge thank you for all your support! More than two years later, I am still enjoying writing this blog more than ever due to the wonderful community of readers and supporters I am a part of. I use ClustrMaps to keep track of visitors both on […]
How Do You Reflect? Options For Teachers And Students
A few weeks ago, I was listening to Chris Betcher on the Virtual Staffroom podcast interviewing Helen Otway. Helen is an inspiring leader at a Victorian P-12 school. Many of the topics Chris and Helen talked about struck chords with me including the idea of developing a more thoughtful approach to teaching and learning through […]
Top 10 Twitter Tips!
Without a doubt, Twitter is my number one form of professional development and I am always recommending it to other educators. I first joined Twitter in early 2009 although I didn’t start using it daily until early 2010. I find Twitter to be a one stop shop to meet like-minded educators. It is a place […]
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Standards for Graduate Teachers in ICT
Today I was lucky enough to be part of a small group of innovative educators from around Australia at a focus group in Melbourne. We were reviewing the Graduate Teacher Standards of the National Professional Standards for Teachers and elaborating on these in regards to ICT integration. These standards were developed as part of a […]
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 […]
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Follow Up: Overcoming Obstacles
In my last post, I wrote about some common obstacles that teachers put forward as to why they don’t blog or use technologies in their classrooms. I discussed lack of time, lack of equipment, lack of keyboarding skills and internet safety along with possible solutions to these issues. The comments on this post were very […]
Literacy Skills and Blogging: How Far They’ve Come!
I’m always telling people how much my students’ literacy skills have improved through blogging. In my seven year teaching career, I have not come close to finding another medium that helps students to refine their reading and writing so well. Through advice from the inspirational teacher, Linda Yollis, I have been able to set very […]
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 […]
How Has Teaching Changed?
If you’re a teacher who is trying to encourage other staff to use ICT, you have probably heard this before? When do I have the time to learn about this? Learning through Twitter, blogs, online conferences etc is just part of my day-to-day life as I have described in this post. This is extremely foreign […]
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Google Doc: Incidental ICT Skills
My last post was about ICT Skills that can be taught incidentally. Ian Guest left a terrific comment with the suggestion that I make a list of these incidentals that people can contribute to. I have started a public Google Doc spreadsheet with the “incidentals” that I suggested and others suggested in comments on the […]
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Teaching and Learning ICT Skills Incidentally
Last night I was reading Edna Sackson’s latest post which focusses on subjects that are still often taught in a separate way in schools rather than in an integrated manner. One of these subjects is technology. At most primary schools in Australia, children go off with a specialist teacher to a computer lab one hour […]