Sub title:- A post for Pru
I have spent today with a great group of educators at The Smart Teachers Conference, a fabulous free two day conference put on for all NSW teachers by electroboard. I have listened, learned, absorbed, tweeted and discussed a great deal of information. But my grade buddy and friend has appendicitis and so had to be content with watching the flow of tweets from her bedside. So while I relax with a cup of tea (once an English tea drinker, always an English tea drinker) I am going to attempt to describe bits about that day for her. 
It opened with a panel discussion. ‘Digital Education Making Change Happen’- learning in a digital world. Did you know that students can generally be classified into one of four types of digital learners? Digital Pioneers, Creative producers, Everyday communicators and Information gatherers. Yet 52% of students are inactive. The reality of our students lives is though, that parents today really have no idea what their students are up to on the internet at home. It falls to us teachers to teach them what counts as ‘real’ information. We must continue to teach them how to create a digital footprint that will do them credit not damage. Luckily I think we are on the right track with our use of edmodo and our class blog. I was then reminded once again that I really must complete the Quest Atlantis training when I viewed some great student work from a local high school. Finally we had a session was on Copyright Issues for Australian Schools I’m sorry I tuned out here a bit but I saved the link for later 
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I then took part in an advanced SMARTboard session which was great. I was reminded how to add sound files to notebook pages, how to use the video recorder and page recorder. I learned about the difference between wmv files and MP3 files. And how SMART notebook needs to have MP3 files.We discussed how the SMART recorder can be used by the students to create files for assessment purposes. The best part though was learning how to use the transparency tool to overlay on a webpage and how to create annotations while viewing a movie. I can already picture using that. After that I took a session on creating SMART movies from the fabulous macICT group, with details of a movie making competition our students can enter. The slide share from that session can be found here.Thanks to Concetta for sharing it.
Finally we had the chance to listen to the as always, wonderful Stephen Heppell as he challenged us to consider the learning spaces our students work in. He urged us to use the rule of thirds in our classroom, so as to create three focal points. To build learning spaces that are fun and engaging for the students, such as the one he referenced where every surface could be written on, which had mood lighting and was so fun to be in that the students broke into it in the holidays!
He urged us to get rid of shoes, that boys somehow store testosterone in their shoes! You can imagine some of the tweets with that one. To ditch the timetable and teach one subject all day and a different one the next day. To get rid of ‘can’t do’ signs and create classrooms full of ‘can do’ praise. To differentiate our furniture as well as our programs. To get rid of the SMARTboard, not sure that was a great move at a SMARTboard conference! As always he was insightful and inspiring.
He also said ‘ the best ideas are those we swap with each other‘.
I will be back tomorrow to listen, learn, tweet, meet and greet. I’m sorry that you cannot do so too but with several TeachMeets planned for next term and TMMelbourne happening tomorrow, I am secure in the knowledge that we are all already swapping the best ideas with each other.
5 Comments
What a brilliant summary Henrietta. It was a day of good thinking and sharing ideas. Teachers don’t want to work in isolation, nor do students want to learn in isolation. The more we share, the better chance we have of equipping our digital natives with the skills they need to develop critical digital literacy skills! Love sharing with you today and Pru, you were very much with us in tweets and hearts!
Thanks Hen,
What an amazing world that I could follow the jist of all that went on at the conference via the twitter stream and the #seeshareshape hashtag. So good to feel part of it and great to know that our school was well represented there. You know that 5 teachers (6 if you count me) represents more than half our classroom teachers. This incredible increase in enthusiasm has grown from your dedication and insistence. You should be proud. Look forward to learning more with you tomorrow and next term and though it will be different nextyear I am sure we will never stop bouncing ideas around!
BTW Bron is having a cleanout and I’ve got fairy lantern/lights for the classroom!
Yay no shoes and fairy lights too
Bring it on I say!
You have such a gift to inspire us all into moving forward with our thinking about how we teach, how we engage students and how we as teachers need to keep learning. Thankyou for inspiring me, allowing me to teach those amazing Year 5s and to gleen from your splendid programming skills. Looking forward to a real life hang out tomorrow and a hang out in google+ as soon as I work out how
Thanks Henrietta! I too was following the tweets throughout the day! I was so thrilled that our school had such a strong representation. I now would love to sit, brainstorm, dream and plan the best way forward as we look to 2012 and beyond. The momentum is growing…exciting times ahead! Let’s be leaders and changers…all for the benefit of a future generation!