February 2008

Hitchhikr provides you with a virtual space where, “thanks to blogs, podcasts, and RSS, we can connect, share, respond, and grow knowledge out beyond the place and time of the event.”

By visiting Hitchhikr and searching for learning@school you will be able to check out the aggregated blogs, images, and podcasts that have been created during and after the conference.

The pre-conference one-day workshop was hosted by Microsoft, and featured Australian Jay Easterby-Wood who worked with 30 teachers as they developed an understanding of MARVIN animation software.

MARVIN is a complete 3D character (avatar) based resource and e-learning development Microsoft.Net application. It allows for the rapid creation of culturally specific and multi-lingual policy, education and health promotion materials ranging from interactive, animated e-learning lessons to paper-based flip charts. It was designed specifically to enable those with differing language/literacy/ICT skill sets to be able to develop professional animated presentations and education resources with low end hardware access.

Presenters – upload your presentations now

Instructions on this will be emailed to all presenters this week and the presenters’ material area will be made live soon on the conference website. We encourage you to add your presentation material and/or any related links for the benefit of your workshop attendees.

A large percentage of attendees look to accessing these presentations after the conference, and would appreciate the opportunity to re-visit the material used in breakouts.

If you haven’t yet added the conference slide to the beginning of your presentation, the link is here

We are going green – no more satchels or conference bags with a pile of brochures, pamphlets and handouts!! We expect all delegates will be bringing laptops, so your copy of the conference handbook will come with a CD of all the useful insert material from exhibitors for you to peruse at your leisure, so it’s BYO for bags!

A wireless network will be working throughout the Energy Events Centre, Rotorua Convention centre, Millennium and the Novotel. To make sure you will be able to pick up the wireless network you will need to make sure that your laptop is not only wireless capable, but that it is not locked down to such an extent that it cannot be set to DHCP. You can check your situation out prior to conference by visiting a Telecom wireless hotspot near you.

Two years ago we began a wiki – nzedublogs – and invited anyone interested to add their own blog, classroom blog, or podcasts. The list of examples has increased to over 150 blogs and podcasts, providing heaps of inspirational examples of teachers and students using these tools.

Recently the nzedublogs wiki has grown to include other examples of teachers and students using other social media in their teaching and learning programmes, such as ways to use online photo storage site flickr and a growing list of teacher/student created wikis.

Check out nzedublogs, and please feel welcome to add your own examples.

Only one more week until the Learning @ School Conference kicks off in Rotorua. The workshops are filling up fast, if you haven’t already chosen your workshops pop over to the conference website and do so. There are still a great range to choose from.

We have many opportunities to network and connect using web2 tools during this conference. If you are interested in blogging but have not yet taken the plunge, come and visit us at the bloggers’ café, we will happily help you get started. If you are already a blogger please blog about your sessions at Learning @ School and include the tags learningatschool or ictpd.

Flickr is a shared online photo storage service. If you have a flickr account and take photos at the conference, consider uploading them, including the tag learningatschool or ictpd. If you don’t have a flickr account, consider setting one up before the conference and don’t forget to bring your digital camera. To view all conference photos go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/learningatschoolarchives/

Delicious is a bookmarking service that is shared on the internet, where links to websites are sorted by tags. To see a full list of all the bookmarked websites related to Learning@school, visit http://del.icio.us/tag/learningatschool.

You can add to these lists if you have a delicious account. First create an account, and if you come across a related website or blog entry, add it to your account using the learningatschool or ictpd tags. Include a description for others who may know nothing about the site. For those presenting workshop sessions it will be helpful to delegates if the online resources, wikis or blogs referred to in your presentation are bookmarked in delicious with the learningatschool or ictpd tags.

By using these web2 tools the learning and connections made at this conference can continue for a long time after and be available to others not fortunate enough to make it to this year’s Learning @ School.

Hey all you NZ edubloggers out there, want to put a face to the blog? The NZ Bloggers Cafe is happening this year at Learning @ School. Come along and engage with other bloggers in some lively debate about life, the universe and everything. This would also be a great place for ‘budding bloggers’ to come and learn some tips and tricks from ‘blooming bloggers’. The cafe will be open during morning tea and lunch breaks so come along and join in the discussions. The venue will be advertised in the conference handbook.

We will need people to help man the cafe during these break times, the idea for the cafe is twofold. The first is so that we can all get together and meet in person the minds we have been reading. The second is to be of help to other bloggers just starting out and who would like some tips and tricks.

The bloggers’ cafe was a big hit at ULearn with virtual friendships turning into face to face friendships, and new names added to our aggregators. Visitors to the cafe have started their own blogs with a guaranteed readership and a lot of online collaboration has happened. So new bloggers and old, come along and join in the fun at the cafe.

For those clusters planning to cover a number of specific topics, the breakout options are now available from for study on the conference website.

They will be available for selection, if you are paid up, from February 7th.

The Great Debate “Web 2.0 – Steering Our Future”

Breakout 5; Thursday 2.00 pm SPOTLIGHT

Over your time at learning @school 2008 you will have listened to keynote speakers and participated in workshops, now sit back and be entertained.

It’s time for humour, creativity, impassioned debate and originality. And let’s face it can’t we all do with a little of this? Get the basics right and don’t take this too seriously.

Principals from the Nga Tii Roa Learning Cluster invite you to an afternoon of lively intellectual diversion. Come and listen to them debate the positives and the negatives of, “Web 2.0 – Steering Our Future”. They will challenge your thinking about Web 2, the nightmare or the dream, and expose you to controversy while they deliberate and enrich your minds. Don’t expect to come away from this debate better informed, but do expect to be entertained.

The final decision will be made by the spectators on their vote – shown by their moving to one side of the room or the other, e.g. the affirmative – “Steering Our Future” to the left and the negative “Steering Our Future” to the right.