I had never heard of the Jonas Brothers till today …. then again who of their target audience has heard of Kim Wilde
This ….

v’s …. this

The Kids@Conference today was fantastic. We had a group of 5 children running the workshop we were leading using I Can Animate. Lots of excited kids learning heaps. Well done to the organising group!!

Summary of the talk he gave at ULearn:

ULearn 08 had some really good workshops and sessions for me and some that were not so flash. That’s conferences and after some time now in ICT PD circles it can be difficult to consistently find things that are profoundly new and challenging. Having said that there has been some really great new learning and I enjoyed following the trails of thinking that are next steps for school/my learning like with digital portfolios.
It was great to connect again f2f with the people I usually only see ‘online’, and also with the crew from CORE.
There has been a buzz in blogs since the conference about the issues involved with Twitter and online engagement with conference content. There were obviously the same issues at the Australian conference as we had at ULearn. As I have put in comments though I believe the issues are moral and ethical ones rather than about the technologies - they just enable the immediacy of the sharing of the streams of consciousness that Twitter and blogging can evoke. I am afraid I don’t really ‘get’ Twitter and that probably colours my thinking … I did find some of the Twittering during keynotes at ULearn quite meaningless and from the little I did follow it didn’t add anything or challenge my thinking in any way.
I did find people physically leaving during presentations or just before people began speaking pretty rude though. I was also surprised how the numbers for some sessions in the auditorium were quite low - as a principal and project director I would be a bit concerned if I was paying for people to go to a conference and they were missing sessions they had booked and our cluster/school was paying for. Maybe that is a bit odd and old fashioned but funding for professional learning opportunities is very scarce and I certainly value the dollars spent on me. Too much to simply not turn up or leave early. I have sat through some shockers at past conferences, but also had some gems that others have missed out on because they didn’t bother.
It is also interesting how some people who write wonderfully are not great presenters and some presenters I have looked forward to for months have been big disappointments on the day. Again that’s conferences - the good with the bad; the challenging with the affirming; the new with the familiar. Overall though I always come away with something new to follow up on and continue thinking about … Ulearn08 was no exception!

This is the video Derek showed in his keynote:

Love it!

Nick is from Russel St school (DP) and e-Fellow … their school website is very cool!

“assessment for the purpose of IMPROVING student learning” - NZC.  Framing the purpose of e-Portfolios from NZC which is a good place to begin

stuff on Nicks blog here

strong focus on ALL portfolios being for Assessment FOR learning, (not just OF learning as a summative thing).  change in mindset here, particularly for parents who often just want a summative assessment and comparative information.

Have changed from iWeb and sending home on DVD to using passworded online format.  Linked from school website.  Move to web-based format has made more dynamic and allowed for interaction and ongoing reflection by learner and others.  Parents making comments etc has changed the nature of the portfolios.

this is what we have found with blogging at school as well - the audience makes the medium even more powerful.  When children know they have a genuine, meaningful audience it really ramps up the expectations for and of the children. Having others looking at what you are doing makes a difference!

Allows for showcasing method as well as product(s).

have a local ISP that hosts for them - YAY.  makes a big difference!

Wordpress as platform and at this point not worrying about tagging individual posts but using pages in Wordpress to differentiate content (eg individual pages for Literacy topics, maths, etc)

I have just been to a great presentation by Tony Ryan.  I have listened to him a number of times now and always come away with something new and exciting to take back to school to “use on monday”.

This time:

• Intra-preneurs (as opposed to enrepreneurs).  People who change things from the inside rather than heading into the big wide world.  We need to teaching children and teachers to change thing in their local environments/situation as well.
• ‘zeitgeist’ - wind of change.  Concepts that are permeating our thinking - like ‘lifelong learning’.
• Some of the roles of the transformational teacher - Energiser, Ethicist, Entrepreneur, Environmentalist
• Modeling self-talk and scaffolding children to ‘hear the voice in their head’ and have conversations with themselves as a window on metacognition.  I really like this one!

Second workshop of the day:-

the 3 c’s of questioning:

1.  CATCH - their attention.

2.  CLUSTER - new and required vocabulary.

3.  CONSTRUCT - your question.

three aspects to remember but not really a sequence! Seems a little artificial to me.  How would you get children to construct a question if they were not engaged?  I do like the bit reminding us to introduce new vocabulary though

turning questions into LI’s - to enable you to see precisely if (or not) children have answered their questions.

Using questioning matrix (is, did, can, would, will, might - on orizontal axis; who, what, where, when, how, why - on vertical axis) and puting each axis of the matrix on a dice.  So you randomly create for example “what might?” … etc. Isn’t this Michael Pohl or someone like that? I am sure I have seen it called a Question Generator and sold comercially??

First keynote from ULearn08.  My battery is suffering and fully charged is only showing an hour which will make the next three days a challenge.  The following is blogged on the fly so more my notes than active reflections.  Thoughts in Italix.

Will Richardson:

• the power of stories and that quite young children are engaged.
• helping kids become literate in their networks
• kids are google-able (need to think about what this means for our policies at school.  I certainly take opportunities to have the discussions, but need to ensure all teachers do the same)
• it is not about changing the way we teach - it is about changing the way we LEARN.

Sheryl N-B:

• communities of practice - post of new teacher reflecting on his practice. (interesting to note that his reflection is the test results! NCLB has a lot to answer for in terms of the culture of teaching in the US)
• shifting from classroom metaphor to community metaphor.  Communities of practice - wider than education networks.  cocreation and bigger than the sum of the individuals. (It is funny hearing this as I very much take this for granted now.)
• Communities of practice as a step on from learning communities.
• we are the last generation that has a choice about engaging with technology!  In todays world, preparing todays learners we have a MORAL OBLIGATION to engage with technology and teach children how to use and manage tools (etc). (woh …. powerful point!!)