Tag: Judy O’Connell

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Planes, Trains and Conferences Part II – SLAQ 2012 and SLAV Global eLiteracy

Well, a plane did get me to sunny Cairns, and there was a conference there, but no sign of any trains! Like I said in my ISTE post, it sounded like a good name for a blog post!

If you’re going to present at a conference in Australia in July, there’s no nicer place than Cairns to do so. The weather is just wonderful there at this time of year. A stark contrast to the southern states. It wasn’t just the weather that made this conference such a wonderful experience; there were a wonderful group of women behind the scenes organising the SLAQ 2012 Biennial Conference who made me feel very welcome and really looked after me up there. I’d like to thank all of you for such care and consideration.

My presentation was well received and you can view it on the wikispace I maintain. Essentially, my message was that as Teacher-Librarians we need to recognise the opportunities that exist now to cement our positions in schools. We can do this well if we respond positively to change and skill ourselves to a level that will enable us to support the Australian Curriculum. I outlined the steps the library team have taken at Toorak College to try and ensure that our students will leave our school with a skill set that prepares them for the knowledge economy they are entering.

I shared the work our library staff have done on an Information Fluency Program to support the development of skills. We’re not suggesting this scope and sequence document is perfect, but we do think it provides a framework for moving closer to providing opportunities within curriculum to address the General Capabilities and give our students (and teachers) the chance to develop their skills. We consulted with our Principal, Mrs. Helen Carmody, who agreed to share this work under a Creative Commons attribution, share alike, non-commercial licence. This has been done in the spirit of sharing, acknowledging that our profession should be supportive of one another and embrace some of the ideals expressed in Australian Curriculum documentation. This program can be accessed by clicking here. Please be mindful of the terms of the licence should you choose to use it within your school setting.

Mandy Lupton, from Queensland University of Technology, presented a really interesting session about Inquiry Learning and the role of the Teacher-Librarian in helping to facilitate this in their schools. Mandy has just launched a blog called ‘Inquiry Learning and Information Literacy‘ to share her research and learning with others. I recommend you take a look and start to find ways you can apply this thinking to curriculum in your schools.

It was a great conference. I met many committed Teacher-Librarians open to ideas and I hope to forge many ongoing connections from this experience in Cairns.

My message was very similar at the School Library of Victoria Conference held at the MCG last Friday. (The presentation is embedded here.) Again, the audience was receptive, or seemed to be at least. You never really know when you’re presenting, unless people tell you otherwise. I can only base things on the feedback I received, and that was positive. The Bright Ideas Blog compiled a Storify of tweets from the day that includes many links to presentations and resources shared on the day. Judy O’Connell, from Charles Sturt University, keynoted the day with a presentation entitled ‘Leading the Learning Revolution‘ looking at what’s on the scene and what we need to be looking out for in the digital landscape. Judy also launched the Oztl.net site at the conference. The site has been established to provide tools, resources and connections for information professionals in Australian schools and beyond. One to keep your eye on.

There was a sharing session at the conference where people led participants to an understanding of tools they might not otherwise had a chance to experience. Although it was hectic, it was rewarding for participants. I led the groups interested in Storify, and others discussed wikis, twitter, screencasting, facebook, eBook authoring, and quite a few others. After lunch, John Pearce discussed iPad apps, Di Ruffles outlined Libguides, Cam Hocking talked about the value of Personal Learning Networks and David Feighan talked about strategies for placing your library in a positive position in your school. All great presentations that advanced the knowledge base of participants.

There’s no rest for the wicked. Later this week I’m off to Coffs Harbour to deliver a Keynote address at the Teacher Education Dialogue Conference being held at Southern Cross University.  A different kind of audience for me this time. Should be very interesting. I’ll keep you posted.

 

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School’s out Friday

George Couras sent our a tweet this week to this Google Chrome video. It’s the embodiment of what the Web allows; the crowdsourcing of material inspired by someone who has the ability to inspire and motivate people to create content. In this case it’s Lady Gaga, someone who understands that you don’t need record companies to spend millions of dollars promoting your material now. If you’re smart, you engage your audience, you talk to them through channels of social media such as Twitter and Facebook, and you make them feel like they matter to you. Your fans feel like they have a personal connection to you, and they promote your product and make you a superstar in the process. Lady Gaga gets this. So does Justin Beiber, and Will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas. If you’re an aspiring musician, you better start understanding how social media works, because if you’re going to make it big, you need to find and talk to your audience, and get them to do the promotion that record companies did in the past.

How clever of Google to link with Lady Gaga to promote their products. They are a company working very hard right now to crowdsource users to promote Google+, their new social network going up against the monolith that is Facebook. I wrote a post earlier this week talking of how I don’t think I can manage another social network. It took all of two days for me to succumb to the lure of Google+.

Pathetic, isn’t it.

I still don’t think there is room in my life for another social network, but I have to say there are some things about Google+ that I do like. The circles feature, where you group people into categories, is something I like. You can post content in your stream to specific circles and I like the perceived element of control that appears to come with that. I tried out Google Hangouts with a group including Joyce Valenza, Judy O’Connell, Cathy Jo Nelson, Linda Nitsche, Rob Darrow and Chris Betcher the other morning(see screenshot below). It worked really seamlessly. We could all see and hear one another – there was very little lag and you could conduct a conversation just like you were hanging out with this group in any social setting. No-one had to pick up the microphone like you do in Elluminate; it was a much more natural experience. There are so many possibilities here for education. If you can create circles for specific groups of students, you eliminate the problems that come with sharing content across all of your social groupings. Can you imagine end of year revision before VCE exams taking place in a Google hangout? I can. At the moment, there is no ability to upload a presentation or share a screen, and it’s limited to 10 people. If they work on it though, this presents a real challenge to a company like Blackboard that recently acquired Elluminate.


Thank goodness Google released Google+ while we are on school holidays here in Australia. It’s given me a bit of room to play. Next Wednesday, I leave for Port Douglas with my family on a much needed holiday. While I have no doubt I will check into my networks, I intend to do the right thing by my husband and kids and focus on them. There may not even be a School’s out Friday posting next week!

(And just for a bit of sheer indulgence, take a look at Maroon 5 and Christina Aguilera singing ‘Moves like Jagger’, my favourite song right now.)

Have a great weekend. I’ll try not to play too much with Google+!

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ISTE 2010 reflection

ISTE 2010. So, what were my impressions. In a word, big. Really big. Probably overwhelmingly big. The scale of a conference this size (17,000 or so attendees!) really is hard to comprehend from the outside, and difficult to comprehend from the inside too. There are acres of people and it’s a struggle to get into sessions. I was shut out from quite a few I wanted to attend as were countless others. You weren’t allowed to sit on the floor to get into full sessions, although this was relaxed in a couple of rooms where the numbers occupying floor space were too many to usher out.

You need to be organised, and I have to confess, I wasn’t. I’d been occupied with reports and end of term happenings, and then spent the time before I left getting the MICDS and ISTE presentation organised. I didn’t give myself time to study the conference program, and I should have. Note to self: do this before attempting a conference of these diminsions should you ever attend another one.

Edubloggercon: A great day, and a nice way to start a conference like this. Steve Hargadon chairs the day, but sessions are determined by participants. There was a session about the changes/monetisation of Ning networks. A representative from Pearson publishing was present to discuss the free networks that are only available to North American educators. I don’t think he was expecting to see an international presence there. Both myself and Julie Lindsay (who teaches in an international school in Beijing), expressed our concerns about the lack of support for teachers outside of North America. To his credit, the representative has sent on our concerns to Pearson and has said he will remain in email contact. Let’s wait and see. Interestingly, Adam Frey from Wikispaces sat in on the discussion. I use Wikispaces all the time, and appreciate the support they give to educators with their product. He spoke to me at the end of the session and said he’d talk with Ning about the concerns we were raising. I hope he does so.

Lots of discussion at Edubloggercon about the iPad and it’s usefulness as a device for schools to consider. There were people there talking of it becoming their 1:1 computing device and a lot of push back saying that it doesn’t have the ability to be a creation tool. It seems that people are relying on the developer community to create apps that are going to make the iPad more adaptable to the needs of students. Many people spoke of the benefits of the battery life. I can attest to this. I took an iPad with me to the conference and was amazed that I could use the device all day without having to look for a power outlet to recharge. I was anticipating that I’d use it rather than my laptop. It’s great as a web surfing device and handling email, but I was hoping to be able to edit Google Docs along the way and take notes that I could access from my Mac later. I was really surprised to see that I could access my Google Docs, but I couldn’t edit them. Talking with conference participants throughout the coming days, it seems that an app called Office HD for $7.99 is something that can allow you to edit your documents. People were pretty happy with how it works, but reviews on the App site suggest there are some problems with it crashing.

The best session for me at Edubloggercon was run by Monika Hardy and her students from Loveland, Colorado. They are doing great things at their school with an innovationlab project they are running from August onwards. Students will have time in their school day to explore the things they are passionate about and will be using whatever tools they need to get their message out there and contacts made. The students were inspiring to listen to. They are in good hands with Monika; she is a passionate educator who wants to do the best for her students. She is enacting in her school what many people talk of doing. Keep tabs on Monika’s progress. I would love to see my school make some connections with this program and do a similar thing.

Dean Groom ran a session about how you go about creating an iPhone/iPad app. It was very well attended and Dean presented in a no nonsense way how you access free code out there (and something called The Kitchen sink!) to assist in creating a app for the iTunes store. He made it sound achievable. It got me thinking that something like this would be a great inquiry week project for the students at my school. I’m going to need to find time to immerse myself in the process first to see if I can get somewhere with it so that I can support the students with their learning. Hmmnn…wondering when I’ll be able to manage that!

The Conference itself: There’s a bit of ‘Razzle Dazzle’ at a conference like this. Keynote presenters are introduced with a band playing music that doesn’t always coincide with the message being transferred. In Australia, we just clap. I found myself in a couple of sessions where speakers were evangelical in their ‘call to action’. I found it a little ‘full on’; maybe it’s a cultural thing. I haven’t been to conferences here in Australia that are like this. Early in the peace, David Warlick was asking how this conference differs from Australia. I said I felt like I was at Disneyland; I felt like I was being entertained. (I feel a need to explain this; I’ve noted David has indicated ‘ISTE as Disneyland for teachers’ as a possible post and I presume he is referring to my comment). Please don’t take this the wrong way; the presenters were relaying important messages that educators should be listening to, it’s just that it was full on, and maybe that’s just their style of presenting. And that comment was based on a microcosm of the conference; at that stage I’d only attended the Keynote and a couple of sessions. Let me preface that as well by saying the the keynote speaker was not providing ‘entertainment’, but the opening music on his entry was!

It’s probably a reflection of the sessions I chose to attend (and being a Teacher-Librarian you won’t be surprised) but there was a strong message coming through that we need to focus strongly on digital literacy skills and understandings. Howard Rheingold had the best term that I’d love to be using at school, but I can imagine some would feel it inappropriate. He calls it ‘The Art of Crap Detection 101″. Thankfully, you can view this presentation online.  (and you can visit here, to see other presentations ISTE has released for public viewing) I missed it as I was involved in my poster session while it was being delivered. Howard seems to have partnered up with Microsoft, who have created a very useful guide for teachers called ‘Critical Thinking in the Classroom‘ that you can download as a PDF. You can also access lesson plans and handouts from the site. They have worked closely with American Teacher-Librarians  and students in the process of creating this, and it looks useful. Some of their examples are US centric, and I brought this up in the session. They acknowledged that they do need need to put on a Global hat when they are creating resources like this so that they can be useful everywhere, in all school systems. The session made me think more about using Bing with my students; it looks like they are doing some interesting things in their labs.

It was great having the opportunity to catch up with Joyce Valenza again at this conference. Joyce is visiting Melbourne in July and is presenting for SLAV. I would encourage you to send your staff along, and not just your Teacher-Librarians. Joyce is a dynamic presenter who has a raft of advice to offer about how you integrate new ideas into teaching and learning.I was able to help with the backchannel at the ‘Learning Tools Smackdown‘ that was hosted by SIGMS (Special interest group Media Specialists). The wiki supporting this session is a fabulous resource, as is the Twitter hastag #SIGMS where you will find the resources referenced collated as live links. It was really wonderful seeing Teacher-Librarians and Ed Tech integrators sharing what works for them in their schools. All of the presenters had put so much effort into the wikipages they have created. I can see this being a very useful resource to take back to my staff.

And that brings me to probably the most valuable resource at this conference. Twitter hashtags. Whether you were there in person or attending virtually, the hashtags supporting the conference are a veritable mine of information that can act as your professional development opportunity in the coming weeks. Hashtags to search via Twitter include #iste2010 and #iste10. You should also check out the Diigo group, ISTE 2010; many educators have been adding links there that you will find useful. One of the problems with any conference is that you are just one person and you can’t go to everything. Being able to access information post-conference like is invaluable.

I had a great time meeting people from my online community. Some I’d met before, and some were people I was meeting for the first time. Meeting Jeff Agamenoni was a highlight. Jeff is such a nice guy, both online and in person. I shared a really fun night out with Jeff, his family and Dean Groom. Thanks for your hospitality Jeff and Joanie, and for driving me back to my dodgy accomodation! I shared a great conversation and was so pleased to meet Richard Byrne who writes ‘Free Technology for Teachers’. Richard’s a very nice guy who is doing great work to support the teaching community across the world. I really enjoyed catching up with my PLP friends, Sheryl Nussbaum Beach, Will Richardson and Robyn Ellis . Once again, thanks Sheryl for your hospitality.

Sue Waters and Frances McLean were rocks for me. I loved sharing time shopping, eating and laughing with them. Frances and I even managed to see Toy Story 3 together! Dean Groom, Judy O’Connell and June Wall were also fun companions to be around. Thanks for sharing time with me. I do think we all tend to gravitate to one another because we’re Australian; you look for the common thread in unfamiliar surroundings, and the accent and shared understandings are connective glue.

I ran a poster session on the last day of the conference. I wasn’t too sure about the format, but it was worthwhile. I spoke to many people who were interested in applying Ning environments to their school settings and who seemed to appreciate the fact that I’d embedded the presentation into a wiki and had added a voiceover to help them with their understanding. Hopefully people elsewhere will find it useful too.

Denver is a beautiful place, and a conference like ISTE is incredible. It’s an experience to be had, that’s for sure!

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ACEC 2010 reflection

It’s been a very busy school holiday period for me. The Australian Computers in Education Conference was held at the Exhibition Centre here in Melbourne and I had three presentations to deliver, one each day of the conference. No rest for the wicked!

It’s always great being able to attend conferences like this where people from your online networks congregate. Talking in sentences longer than 140 characters can be a lot more meaningful! I was looking forward to hearing keynotes from Alan November and Gary Stager. I’ve heard Gary before and knew he would stir up some debate, and he didn’t disappoint. Gary has been visiting Melbourne for over 20 years and was here when MLC became the first school  to go 1:1 with laptops. Gary was (I think) asking the audience to look to the examples from the past and learn from them rather than try to reinvent all the time. While I think there’s some benefit in doing that, the means by which we can use technology for learning purposes has come a long way in the last few years, and some recent examples would have been beneficial for the audience. I found myself agreeing with Gary, but he lost me momentarily when he launched into an attack on Twitter, something I’ve heard him do before. He doesn’t see the value in using it for networking purposes and obviously, I hold an opposing view. And I was running a session called ‘The What, Why and How of Twitter‘, that afternoon! Gary made some contentious statements, one of which suggested that our Government obviously doesn’t like teachers very much. There were some audible mutterings of disagreement re that one around me, but I talked to others later who thought that was perfectly valid. Gary’s keynote was recorded by the amazing Steve Collis, who helped people participate virtually by ustreaming his own sessions and the sessions he attended. Visit his ustream channel to check out Gary’s keynote and formulate your own opinion. Gary has written a post about Steve Costa, who was instrumental in the launch of the first laptop program in the world at MLC (Methodist Ladies College). It is a very complimentary piece recognising Steve’s efforts and I would encourage you all to read it.

I have to say I was expecting more from Alan November’s session. And it has nothing to do with the fact that he asked if we knew about Ferris Bueller! (My Twitter comment was ‘Yes Alan. We know Ferris Bueller. We are part of the modern world.’ Honestly!) I’m not referring to the content, but the level of preparedness. Alan’s keynote felt under prepared from my perspective. Keynote presenters get paid a significant amount of money, a whole lot more than the nothing I was paid for three presentations, and, I was expected to pay to attend the conference. (Not even a free conference dinner was coming the way of any people who generously offered to present. Thanks to the Independent School’s Victoria (ISV), I was able to access a grant to go.) Alan hadn’t pre-loaded videos from Youtube, we had to watch as he leaned over the lecturn and did search on the fly. Sorry, but I want to see a keynoter who has thoughtfully prepared a presentation for an audience who have outlaid significant money to attend. Even preloading these videos saves valuable time when you are trying to make a point. Alan was making some good points about the value of providing meaningful feedback to students and was referring to the research of New Zealander, John Hattie. Alan believes that the use of technology can assist in providing immediate quality feedback, using devices like clickers that enable you to monitor student understanding of key concepts. I’ve never used polling software in my classes, preferring instead to work at getting the climate of the classroom right to encourage the sharing of ideas, but maybe it’s worth trying. Alan spoke at length about the need to teach our students search skills that will enable them to dig deep into the Web and extract returns that are meaningful. I hope people in the audience were listening and go back and utilise the skills of Teacher-Librarians to assist them with this. Alan did relay a positive message, and that’s important, to me anyway. I want to come away from a conference feeling inspired to try new things, and I think Alan did that for some people.

I went to Greg Gebhart’s session about Cybersafety. Greg definitely knows his stuff; any presentation I’ve seen him deliver is full of detail and helpful advice. I do wish that he would include some reference to working actively with new technologies so that we can embed digital safety lessons into classroom practice by modeling safe and ethical use. That’s a message educators need to hear. Greg was telling us how ACMA has recently employed more people to help with free internet safety sessions for schools. There’s a definite need for this, but I think the need far outweighs the manpower ACMA can provide. It’s going to have to be educators who take on this work in their schools. I’d like to see ACMA providing slideshows on their site that educators can access to assist them with the transfer of the digital safety message.

John Burns is a iPhone (probably now iPad too!) app developer who shared with us his methods for getting an app created and into the Apple App store. Wow – what an experience listening to what he’s done. John created the ‘Measure it’ app, that featured on an Apple ad on TV. I purchased that app because of that ad!! This presentation made me think- it really did. Firstly, it got me thinking of the need to teach our students the basics of coding so that they aren’t intimidated and can venture into creative work like this. (Gary Stager delivers the message about the importance of teaching code too.) Secondly, it made me think of what I could have been putting my energy into these last couple of years or so! Maybe I’d be rolling in it if I’d invested in me instead of sharing my knowledge with everyone through here! Maybe; but would I be happy? I’d love to answer ‘no’, but the answer just might be ‘yes’.  ; ) Check out John’s very helpful site where he linked to many of the sites he uses to assist him in the process of app development. (if you’re on a Mac, he recommended you view the page in Safari).

It was great to see Chris Betcher delivering a keynote (Yay – an Australian on the stage for a keynote. All too often a rarity in this country!). Chris left the audience with a positive take on the changes occurring and how all educators can become involved through participation in learning networks.

Judy O’Connell’s presentation ‘Content used to be King’, was supported with an excellent slide presentation that she has kindly shared on slideshare. I’m embedding it here in the hope that you look at it and follow some of the links that take you to other search alternatives you can use with your students. Judy’s discussion about the semantic web and the potential it holds for the way we interact with the Web was insightful. Thanks for an excellent presentation Judy.

I presented three sessions. One each day. Like I said, no rest for the wicked! All three can be accessed on the wiki I maintain that supports any work I’m doing. You can find it here. The presentations were ‘Virtual Learning Communities – Time to get connected‘, ‘The What, How and Why of Twitter‘, and ‘Creating a Virtual Learning Community using Ning‘. I’ll try and embed the presentations in this blog the coming days. I just can’t believe how long already it’s taken me to get this post written – that’s what happens when you catch your breath on the weekend after a conference and head back into the first week of school and the business of working full time.

The end of the conference brought with it a very pleasant surprise for me. I was one of the recipients of the inaugural ACCE Australasian Education Media awards. Chris Betcher was also awarded this honour. ACCE’s purpose behind creating this award was to acknowledge the contribution of Australasian educators who support the learning community through blogs, wikis, podcasts, forums, mailing lists, virtual communities and other internet resources. I’m extremely honoured to be the recipient of this award. It means so much to me to have the work I’ve been doing to share my learning with others recognised. I do try very hard to support educators and to be encouraging of people who are new to technology and what it has to offer us as classroom practitioners. My thanks go to the Australian Council for Computers in Education for acknowledging the work of educators who share what they do for the love of it, and the desire to see teaching and learning practices reflect the world we are living in.

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Sheryl’s visiting Australia (and Toorak College!)

If you’ve been following this blog you’ll have some inkling that I’ve been helping Sheryl Nussbaum Beach and Will Richardson set up an Australian arm of their Powerful Learning Practice initiative. This group is going to be global in scale including schools from the United States, New Zealand and Australia. I’ve been working at getting schools here in Australia to join this initiative and am pleased to report that we have schools from New South Wales and Victoria across all sectors; Independant, Catholic and Govt. Schools.

Some of the people leading these school teams include those writing blogs. Dean Groom, Judy O’Connell, Frances Manning, Rhonda Powling and Tania Sheko. Three of those names are Teacher-Librarians. Great to see them at the helm of change in their schools.  It’s going to be very exciting leading our schools through what we all hope is going to be something transformational for our colleagues who are taking the leap with us. I first started reading about Powerful Learning Practice in December of last year. I could see that it had the potential to shift my school and it’s teachers towards an understanding of the power of these technologies to reach out and make a difference to the learning environment for our students. We start the program on Sept. 8th. Our United States participants will be having a fact to face meeting at Freidricksburg Acadamy and we’ll be joining them via ustream. I’m excited to see that there are names I am already familiar with from our United States and New Zealand participants. Elizabeth Helfant, Alex Ragone, Lenva Shearing and  Jane Nicholls.

What is really exciting for me is that tomorrow I am finally getting the opportunity to meet Sheryl. She’s in Melbourne to keynote at the Expanding Learning Horizons conference being held in Lorne. She’s visiting my school tomorrow to present to the staff here about 21st Century learning and Learning communities.  I hope the people I work with realise the status Sheryl occupies in the Educational Technology sector and pay heed to the message she delivers. I’m sure her visit is going to make an impact; I feel very fortunate to have been able to work with Sheryl and get to know her during our Skype chats. It’s going to be wonderful meeting her face to face at last!

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Thanks fellow bloggers!

Last night I wrote my first post. Well, I thought, that will fade into obscurity until I tell someone they should have a look at this newfangled thing I’m doing. Wasn’t I suprised (and very excited I might add) to see comments  from Alec Couras   and Judy O’Connell this morning. Thanks for taking the time to notice – it means a lot to a novice.

I was reading a column by Kate Holden in Melbourne’s Age newspaper and a metaphor she included prompted me to think of the blogging community;

“Conversation irrigates us, and makes us flow in new directions.”

This is certainly true when I think about the blogs I have been reading and the new directions their words have been leading me to . My interest in this was really sparked last  August when I attended a five hour workshop run by Will Richardson.  In a small group session at the Expanding Learning Horizons conference he took us through dozens of Web 2.0 applications and made us think how we could apply them to our educational settings. One of the applications he showed us was Jing, a fantasic screen capture device that is free from Techsmith. I’ve used it to capture images that I want to use in presentations and I’ve been thrilled with the results.

Jing

You can capture any part of the screen you like and can crop the image. Tools are provided to enable you to highlight, write on your screen capture in a text box and frame sections that you’d like your audience to note. Your captured image can be hosted on screencast.com. I have yet to use this facility.  I’ve found this to be an invaluable tool and would recommend that you give it a go.