The Learning@School conference blog

Join the crowds for the L@S unconference session. In the context of the Learning @ School Conference, the unconference session on Friday morning 26^th February is an opportunity for all attendees to lead, initiate or seek out discussions or presentations that interest them or just simply meet other people to network and share ideas.  Participants can move freely from one discussion or topic to another at any time.

The main aims of the session are to provide an opportunity …

• for delegates to network and discuss/share ideas on topics of interest to them
• for Clusters to debrief and plan for their cluster programme
• to meet new people for continued contact
• for enrichment and skill development according to need or interest

If you want to know more go to…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference

Have you registered yet?

Join the crowds – invite your friends – we still have room for a few more people to the ICTPD Community ‘Teach Meet’.

Already 1250 delegates have registered for learning@school 2010.

We have 250 presenters, 37 concurrent workshops in each of the 6 breakouts across 9 venues. Add to this the opportunity to hear 2 international and 1 local keynote speaker, 5 world class spotlight speakers, a stimulating unconference session, a huge trade exhibition, and plenty of networking opportunities and you have one HUGE professional learning opportunity.

Asnet Technologies (in stands 25 and 26) are offering you the chance to book a time slot to video conference with your classes whilst you are away from school at the conference. You have the option of doing this at asnet’s exhibition site, or in a private room off the main hall. If you are interested please contact Denise:

Freephone 0800 POLYCOM
DDI 04 498 2882
Cell 027 476 5370
Email deniseh@asnetttechnologies.co.nz

There is a first come, first served basis for bookings.

We are featuring several specially invited presenters, called Spotlight Presenters, one in each breakout round except breakout 5. All spotlight sessions can be viewed by selecting the ’show only spotlight’ in the viewing breakouts page. You can find full details of the sessions as well as presenter biographies on that link, below are the sessions available:

Breakout 1: Spotlight on SOLO Taxonomy with Pam Hooks and Julie Mills
Breakout 2: National Standards with Mary Chamberlain
Breakout 3: 21st century teachers and ICT – the way forward with Nathan Kerr and Robert Douglas
Breakout 4: Ten trends for 2010 with Derek Wenmoth
Breakout 6: Nine in ninety – the nine best e-learning tools in ten minutes or less with Martyn Weatherill and John McAleese

As you can see there will be something for everyone in every session. You can view the full list of breakouts on the site now and begin planning what you would like to see. There are over 1300 delegates attending Learning@School this year.

It is our pleasure to invite you to submit a presentation for the Learning@School Conference in February 2010.

There are a great many people who have been involved in professional development programmes throughout New Zealand in the past few years. The Learning @School conference provides a wonderful opportunity for practitioners to share what has been happening for them.

The hundreds of active and past clusters and other practitioners not part of the current ICT PD Programme have numerous members who can enliven this conference with their background and experience in delivering or participating in their own professional development programmes. It is up to all of us to share what we have learned with our colleagues…. from beginners to experienced practitioners. We want to hear what you can offer. Every year we are building upon our collective knowledge.

The team is looking forward to receiving a selection from every cluster covering every aspect of your programme. In the past we have participated in workshops which covered whole school change processes, leadership, software, facilitation, networking, tech issues, classroom programmes, cluster showcases, good teaching and learning practice, communication skills,…..frankly, the list is endless.

Please see the Call for Presentation information available.

Now that the conference is over, there is plenty still to engage with. If there were workshops that you missed out on you can find the materials on the Learning@School website. In a few weeks time the videos of the keynotes and spotlight presenters will also be placed on the website. Many people have already started their reflections. I used the Google blog search to find mentions of the conference and below are a few of the links.

What were the highlights for you? What was your ‘aha’ moment? We would love to hear of them in the comments.

Jo provides her reflections on the Learning@School conference.

Fiona ponders learning everywhere.

NZChrissy talks about the power of her personal learning network as she joins the conference virtually from Bangkok.

Wes reflects on Allanah King’s session on creating and managing digital portfolios.

Amanda reflects on effective ICT planning.

Derek releases his 10 trends for another year.

Greg discusses Principals as leaders of learning cultures.

Iain marvels at the collaboration generated by Learning@School.

Andrew discusses the interesting case of virtual versus face-to-face.

Sarah does a good job reviewing Andy Hargreaves keynote.

Staff at Clendon Park School created a blog to specifically outline and summarise their learning and networking at the conference.

Heath talks about his innovation of getting everyone to collaborate on note taking during Andy Hargreave’s keynote.

Blogging not only allows you to reflect on your own thinking, it helps you to connect with the thoughts of others. Blogging at Learning@School Conferences has grown from strength to strength. Twitter has added to this connection as teachers across the globe and nation connect using the microblogging platform.

One delegate who has been in the NZ Twitter network this year mentioned that because of the connections through Twitter she now felt really connected and less lonely while attending the conference. She has a ready group of people with whom she feels comfortable and can also carry out extended conversations long after the conference is over. These connections extend the learning and support us as we head back into normal daily life trying to incorporate the extensive professional development just undertaken.

Blogging has also created a new breed of creature loosely termed the ‘blogebrity’. In the image above Wes Fryer is taking the place as the international blogebrity for this year’s Learning@School.

Even at the end of a long and inspiring conference, when energy levels are flagging and concentration is wandering, teachers can still pull out all the stops for a bit of fun. Led by Allanah King a group of teachers orchestrated a flash mob at the beginning of the last keynote by Wes Fryer. Mr Fryer himself, was one of those caught up in the conspiracy. As a sign of global collaboration, NZChrissy, an NZ teacher who has recently moved to Bangkok joined in the fun, dancing along via Skype. You can view her participation from afar on her blog. The video of the impromptu dance will be posted on the blog once it comes to hand.

The final keynote was a celebration of the possibilities of ICT in the hands of talented teachers. This transformative technology provides the opportunity for teachers to reach beyond their classroom walls to give their students wide and varied experiences. Wes nicely tied together a number of the experiences of Learning@School that many delegates would have participated in – discussing best practice with one another, enthusiastically brainstorming ways these technologies can be enhanced by these best practices, and the practical excitement of learning how to use something new.

At the Bloggers’ Cafe we interviewed delegates about their sessions, here is a slice of what is happening at Learning @ School…

Susan Garrud from Matamata Primary school attended “Developing 21st structure to support key competencies and self-directed learning” presented by Kat Braun:

The overlying theme of this session was the importance of being able to be flexible and create your own time structures for the school day. Often there is no time for differentiated learning in some classrooms. We looked at how to organise learning environment to cater for self directed learning.

The thing I will take away from this session is that I would like to talk to my kids about what time of the day they would like to learn different things – when would be a good time to do maths for example. Also I will look at the learning environment a bit more to see whether or not there is a better way. I will ask how the kids like to see their space. This session reinforced my ideas about consulting the kids. It sat really nicely with the Jamie McKenzie session this morning.

Kim Scott from the GRITS cluster in Gore who attended “Transformational teachers” presented by Tony Ryan.

The main message I picked up was being present as a teacher. It is really important to have memories of the past, a vision for the future but essentially to be present. Also I The importance of being comfortable highly creative. Not meaning the arts, could creativity of thought, behaviour patterning . The concept of connectivism was the key concept for me. I like it because it’s not just responding to people but about the relations built up behind it. The ability to be metacognitive.

The thing I am going to take away and use from this session is the TED talks. I use TED talks as an inspiration site for myself. I’m going to take it away and use it with my students. My short term goal is to be invited to the TED conference!

Karen Roulston from Huntly Primary School attended the Learning Caves (exciting online inquiry learning tools) session presented by Brendon Muir and Tiffany Whyte.

This session showed us how to create learning caves where students can go in and access information at home or at school and it allows you to see how much they do and don’t know. They can create the work at home if it is online and then work on it at school the next day. Learning Caves is a part of Spike Schools. I liked the fact that it is student created for each other.

Students being able to set up their own learning and share their learning with their peers in a safe, monitored manner is my take away from this session.

Todd Reid, Susan McDonald, and Laura Geaney, of St Therese School visited the Trades Hall during the breakout session.

There were so many things to see and so little time! You want to have a look and play with things. The teachers need to play with the stuff before they let the kids play. There were lots of interactive technologies, so exciting.

Click view was interesting, where you buy videos for your school specific to a subject. You get about 500 videos for the whole school to use. The videos are all related. You can search by topic so it would be a real time saver.

Panasonic told us about a movie competition for the students and we might have a go at entering that. It was worthwhile spending a session in the tradeshall as we had time to really look around.

Paul Brimblecombe is the Board of Trustees deputy chair from Raumati Beach School

It has been a bit mind boggling. All the sessions have been great. My specific purpose was to get an overview of the ICT elearning process. The Board of Trustees need to be really clear on the direction they set for the school. We want ICT to be a means to an end rather than the end itself. A lot of what I’m seeing around here is reinforcing that. The people who are delivering are all that in the breakouts. Its not just about iCt its about the big picture and where it fits in.

If you are taking photos around the conference and would like to share them, consider uploading them to Flickr with the tags lats09 or learningatschool09. This makes them easy for others to find. Here are few of the moments from the first day of conference.