For me, this is my 2nd IWB conference, the first being two years ago at Castle Hill when we knew little of the tool and were looking forward to installing our first one in the library.  I’ve now worked with an IWB for about a year.

The hope for myself then, is that I can take myself further and go away with ideas to use the IWB to encourage even deeper and more effective learning in my classroom, rather than get the starters (although that’s where my colleagues are at, and we’re taking some different workshops accordingly).

I also hope that this conference is also about more than just the board.  Castle Hill was great two years ago because it had a broad spectrum of content that looked at a range of applications of technology in the classroom.  It was in a workshop led by John Pearce at that conference that I signed up to Edublogs and started up what is now Learning Curve (it didn’t have such a catchy title then; which means you’re now thinking “good grief, what on earth was it?  Surely it couldn’t have been worse!”).  I was introduced to blogs, wikis and podcasts - things I have used since and seen the difference they’ve made in the classroom.

Finally, I hope I can continue to stregthen existing, and make some new connections out of this experience.  I’ve already met up with colleagues I was introduced to at Castle Hill, and hope to meet some more people sharing the same journey.  The networks are what really helps us as professionals in feeling supported, encouraged and motivated; not to mention broadening and extending our own learning.

I’ve found a new gadget that I want to try. It’s the Flip Ultra from Pure Digital.

I’ve been looking for a video recording product for the school for a while now. So far I’ve been leaning towards some of the SD-based cameras out there so we don’t have any tape dramas, no internal disks get damaged if the camera cops a accidental shunt from a student, and we can get files onto the computer via USB or a card reader.

All that was until I came across this on Marco Torres’ blog. Not only does it all look great and very easy to use, it’s very smartly priced - always a good feature for schools looking to maximise the limited dollars. All reports indicate that one of it’s great features is it’s abilities in low-light situations.

So, all I need to do is get one for the purposes of testing for school. Perhaps I can get the kids using it too…? Maybe they’ll need to get it out of my hands first…

1. I was acting assistant principal today.  Ok, that’s a very long stretch - a system leadership meeting in our Diocese today left me as the second teacher in charge.  Fortunately things went nice and smoothly.  What I really enjoyed was being included by the teacher in charge in the day’s happenings around the school and treated as a member of the team.

2. I’m going to Melbourne.  It was a last-minute decision at our school to send at team to the Interactive Whiteboard Conference that’s on next week at Firbank Grammar.  I’ll write more later, but it’ll be the first time I’m travelling such a distance for the purpose of professional learning.

3. I’m using Ning.  Well, sort of.  IWBNet has set one up for the conference.  I’m signed up, now I just have to get on to using it.  Another Web 2.0 tool I’m finding a need to become familiar with.

It’s been a long time since I last updated… my last phone’s only extra feature was a camera (which had poor resolution by today’s standards).  Now that my old trusty phone gave up last week, it was time to go to something new.

At least this one has a few more features; calendar, MP3 player, 2 megapixel camera and GPS navigation.  It’s all a bit too flashy for me at the moment.

Well, if nothing else, as the technology coordinator at my school, I walk around now looking as if I have a little more credibility…

… let’s not mention how long it took to unlearn how to do the basics from my old phone and achieve them on this one (yeah, I know, I didn’t read the instruction manual).

I was alterted this week to the March 2008 survey results for the Top 100 Tools for Learning via Judy O’Connell.

Here are my quick, initial observations (I’m sure I’d have more given the time):

• Really pleased that del.icio.us is #1
• Really pleased that I use 9 of the top 10 (sorry Skype!  I might get there one day)
• It’s good that the list is a top 100 and not a top 10; simply because there are so many good tools from 10 down that to only do a top 10 would be an injustice
• Facebook slid from equal 17th to equal 28th.  Am I surprised?  Not really; I know my interest in it has waned somewhat
• Every Microsoft Office Application, yes every Microsoft Office Application has slid down the list…
  Word was 10th, now equal 22nd
  Excel was equal 22nd, now equal 48th
  PowerPoint was 5th, now 7th
  Publisher and Access don’t get a look in

  I think this says something about a decreasing reliance on these apps for learning, especially given the multitude of Web 2.0 tools (just scan the top 100 list) and the rise of online work products such as Google Docs and Zoho (11th and equal 36th respectively)

• Finally, one can’t ignore how many of these Top 100 tools are free.  Software developers take note: school budgets are tight.  Thanks to Web 2.0, etc., your products inspire very cheaply-available replicas.  There are also many other exciting products out there that you can’t buy off the shelf.  Teachers will keep looking for cheap, exciting and useful tools to maximise learning.

I hate paper.

Well, that’s a very strong statement, and probably not 100% true, but when I do start to hate it is when there is more around than what is really necessary.  When you consider how much paper goes through my pigeon hole in the staff room, the notes that leave the office, and the sheets that come across my desk, it’s a lot of paper.  If I don’t need to have it printed on paper, I’d rather have it some other way.  So there’s my problem.

Then I know there’s a problem many of us have at school.  The photocopier.  It’s a frustrating mechnical animal.  Especially the older machine that seems to have been deliberately engineered to cause trouble after the service contract has expired, what with all its jams and misfeeds.

There’s a simple solution to our problems.  Stop photocopying.

There may be some times when it’s useful or even necessary, but are there ways that are more efficient in terms of cost, time, eco-friendliness and learning benefit?

Holy Family at Luddenham is obviously asking a similar question, so when I saw that somewhere there was thinking what I was secretly thinking here (ok, the office staff would say my thinking was not so secret to them), I thought it might be good to blog about it to get it out of my system.

Just don’t expect me to produce and photocopy a survey for people to complete about the topic.  Yes, I can see the irony.  I might email you if I feel so inclined…

Photo credit: Day in the Life by zebble

Now obviously there isn’t a blanket answer here for all K-12 educators.  I’m also sure Scott McLeod is already well aware of some of the issues I’m going to take up here, but I’m going to do it anyway for the sake of being able to achieve some semblance of a train of thought this evening (my brain seems to have switched off).

For some teachers, sadly, there is a hope that the content they have always taught will be eternally relevant.  For others, there is a realisation that today’s content isn’t going to be the be-all-and-end-all for their students.  Those teachers can and do make amazing things happen in their classrooms.  I hope that sometimes, just sometimes, such glimmers of hope do shine momentarily out of my classroom windows.  Yet we also need to remember that such fantastic teachers are restricted and frustrated by systems, curriculums, governments and sometimes even school communities that simply haven’t made the realisation yet.

I also think I need to make a point that might make some teachers of long division, state capitals and cursive writing feel a little better.  Just because you teach these things doesn’t make you a bad, or even outdated teacher.  What you need to be concerned about is whether this content is the sole driving force of your teaching.  Any teacher who remembers their Educational Psychology from uni, particularly the work of Piaget, will remember schemas.  Yes people! The idea that new knowledge is constructed and understood through the addition to, extension, or even redefining or disproving of existing understandings (this is a very watered down explanation, I know).  So let’s not slam content completely.  There is content that children need to learn in school that they will need as the basis for developing further understanding throughout their lives.

On the other hand, anyone who thinks a person is going to get a job based on their abilities in long division and cursive handwriting, and their knowledge of captial cities, is not thinking all that realistically.  There is a certain amount of content that children need to learn in school (or perhaps they negotiate what they need to learn and construct their own understandings; perhaps a discussion for another time).  Perhaps the best way of seeing the content is that helps contextualise the learning of skills and values that I think the fabulous, innovative teachers are seeing as becoming increasingly important to develop within students.

Let’s take the long division as an example.  In the outcomes-based syllabuses of the state of New South Wales, the outcome connected with the learning of long division is this:

NS3.2 Selects and applies appropriate strategies for multiplication and division

Long division is only one part of that of course.  Yet it’s only when you go into the content that you see what the NSW Mathematics Syllabus demands.  Embedded within this are a whole range of skills, including:

• estimating
• selecting appropriate strategies (yes, long division is not always the best way)
• using operations in real-life situations
• checking answers in the original situation
• giving valid reasons for an answer, etc., etc.

These skills are all tied in with the five outcomes that make up the Working Mathematically strand of the syallabus.  It’s the embedding of these skills into the learning that make this syllabus a marked improvement on the old one (which was exceptional for its time).

So where am I going with all of this?  Well, the point I’m looking to make is this.  The shift needs to be away from a focus on learning content, and being satisfied we’ve achieved as teachers because our children know the content.  After all, new content is produced at an alarming rate; we cannot begin to imagine everything that our children will need to know when they leave school.  The shift needs to be towards learning essential content through the mastery of lifelong learning skills.  If children know how to learn, and value learning, then that is what will make them a valuable commodity in the labour market of the future, because they will be able to apply themselves to what needs to be done.

I can take my own experience as a rough example.  When I started school, there were no computers, so there definitely weren’t any Learning Technology Coordinators.  When computers were introduced, I learnt how to type, how to word process on the old Apple program Multiscribe, played Sim City, eventually used a PC once I got to uni, etc.  Yet once I actually became an LTC (after already teaching for a little while), none of the software I’d learnt as a child was going to help me - it wasn’t there.  My primary school wasn’t networked in 1989, we could only save our own data on magnetic disks… you get the picture.  A lot of what I do now has been learnt through getting a taste from someone, somewhere, perceiving that it’s something we need as a school (and consequently that I need to learn), and having an interest in playing around till I get the hang of it.  One of these days, we LTCs will have done ourselves out of a job, because using computers in classrooms will be as common as writing on a chalkboard, and I’ll be looking for the next thing I need to learn.

I made my humble contribution to the discussion in the comments, but also offer this funny reflection on PowerPoint use.  I must use this one day with the teachers at my school to hopefully get some minds ticking over in a humorous way.

Seems like people were listening.  This conversation ensued several weeks back with my principal, a colleague and myself during a recess break (well, as best as I recall)…

Principal (holding paper student record card): You know, we’ve got lots of data and we’ve got to make use of it.

Colleague and myself: Yes, that’s for sure.

Principal (using record card for demonstration purposes): Now we’re living in the 21st Century, but our record keeping is 20th Century stuff.

Me (looking at record card filled in by hand): Actually, I’d say it was 19th Century.

Principal (facetiously): Now Robert, don’t interrupt… What we’ve got to do is get this on computer, and bring it up to the 21st Century.

(Me thinking I had this conversation last year, but happy we’re getting a move on with it)

Now don’t get me wrong, my principal was never anti- electronic data system.  Our school system’s strategic intent has now made the tracking of learning achievement extremely important, and this need is showing up just how inadequate our current paper-based systems (with the odd Excel spreadsheet) are.

So now it’s a priority.  It’s pretty much been placed down as my single most important Learning Technology goal to achieve this year.

My first step was to email all the Learning Technology contacts in our system of schools to see if they used anything.  Almost every school that replied said “we don’t, but when you find it, we’d love it if you could let us know, because we really need it too”.

I just wonder now if anyone else in the broader educational spheres have tools they know work really well.  I know I could develop this from scratch in Access for example; it’s just that my Access skills are woefully inadequate (a little like handwritten record cards).

We’ll keep looking, but we would welcome any feedback.  Even feedback like in one email reply I got…

“Just don’t use [name of program omitted to protect the innocent/guilty/etc.] - we had nothing but problems”

… is useful to us at the moment.

P.S.  I think this is the first Learning Curve post I’ve ever made on a Mac.  I have to borrow my classroom laptop at the moment because my trusty IBM’s a little sick :-(  The laptop I’m typing on right now is the one featured in my blog header pic.  It’s a trusty little workhorse that always seems to struggle on - it reminds me of what a learning technology colleague of mine told me once about the Mac LCII; “they only had one problem… they never died!”

There is no arguing that the data collected will be beneficial; already my reading groups have experienced a complete reshuffle as a result (we’d temporarily used the end of Kindergarten data in order to make a start with our Year 1 students).  It’s going to be good, however, to actually get back into the routine and resettle my students into the same after a prolonged period of casual teachers.

The difference this year with our start of the year diagnostic assessment is that it has been system mandated, rather than school-directed.  Our Catholic Education Office has invested a serious amount of money and time into training, resourcing and release time to ensure that this happens in every Year 1 class across our Diocese.  The aim, I believe, is to improve the literacy learning outcomes for every student.  The next step after the assessment, that is, teachers working together in networks to analyse the data and implement learning programs that meet the needs uncovered, is going to be crucial.