Educational ideas and blogging
Over the past three days I have been attending a Principal's conference in Melbourne Australia. The sessions were quite interesting from futurists to African Safaris (I will describe this one at a later date). However I did attend an ICT session which encouraged each Principal to consider the educational possibilities of ICT products that most kids are very familiar with eg: wikis, podcasts, blogging, social networks etc.... Having just started Blogging myself I was suprised that in a room of over 50 Principals I was the only one that blogs. I have noticed here that there are a number of you that do this already, my question is how are you using these tools to further educational outcomes for the kids in your schools? I'd love to encourage my staff to at least think of the possibilities.....perhaps you could help?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Griff Wigley on
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Vicki,
Looks like you've got two issues worthy of discussion.
* Use of blogs by school principals
* Use of Web 2.0 tools to improve learning for kids (here's a common list of applications):
I assume you're most interested in the latter but feel free to start a new discussion on the former.
The K-12 Online Conference weblog has a list of presenters/topics for their October 2007 conference (attendance is via the web) that looks to be pretty comprehensive on Web. 2.0 applications for schools. 40+ presentations.
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Permalink Reply by Vicki Miles on
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Griff, My brain has been in overdrive since that conference because I was pretty shocked. So as I do I began talking about it at school...........that was more of a shock! While some staff are "techno" wizards a few that I spoke to didnt know about e-books, wikis, never even seen a blog or a myspace site.........that spells some significant issues for me in relation to engaging students in learning, particularly as these are the mediums that they (students) are most familiar with.
Last night at my School council meeting I introduced the vodcast idea and had a great discussion with the parents about the use of Technology to motivate their kids. Tristan (Digital DAn designer) presented his podcasts and vodcasts and they were fascinated. Today I have written about it in my newsletter hoping to create that ground swell of interest that encourages us to research the possibilities even further. I'd love some ideas or other teachers who would share with my staff?
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Vic, I'm sure the ideas and stories will gradually begin flowing here on FPN over the next few months, as schools start back up in September here.
Can you attach that newsletter? It would be great to see what you wrote to stimulate the interest in these technologies. In the meantime, you're being a great role model by blogging and participating here. FPN is a social network, just like MySpace and Facebook.
One thing I learned from the 'classroom telecom projects' that we did back in the 80s when I worked for a textbook company: while every school has teachers who are technology innovators, there's also a group of teachers who are ready and just need a spark... and often, that spark can come from the kids, not always from their fellow teachers or principal. Once this group of 'nearly ready' teachers sees the enthusiasm/engagement among their kids, it's often enough to get them going, eg, signing up for some professional development, tackling a project, etc.
Have you seen this happen at Trafalgar?
So if you can find a way to do some tech-related projects with
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Griff,
Tristan puts our newsletters up on our Traf webpage Under publications. Everyone is welcome to have a look. You will also see the FISH related letters I have put in too.
http://www.trafps.vic.edu.au/index2.htm
Vic
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Vicki, FYI, I started a new discussion about blogging by school administrators.
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