My Presentation for the OZeLive Conference

After a very long weekend on moderating sessions it was finally my turn to present. I had a small audience but they were fantastic! Thank you to them all for coming and participating. My session centred around web tools that can be used to support inquiry learning.
The interactivity of the session I was pleased with. I got participants to add to an polleverywhere.com poll which I turned into a word cloud to add their ideas for different tools.
I was really pleased with my session. I was worried it would go too long but I managed to keep on time. I was really pleased with how my session went and next year I won’t be so nervous!!

OZeLive Edtech Down Under Conference

I had all good intentions of spending lots of time on my blog over the summer and getting together some useful posts but alas it didn’t eventuate… What is more exciting is that I am part of the Australia E-Series group that is working with Steve Hargadon from The Learning Revolution Crew to organise an Australia time zone based edtech conference. This is a fantastic opportunity for Australia to showcase some of our talented educators from all educational sectors… from early childhood to university and adult education.

  • The conference has broken up the topics into strands which include:
  • Educator 3.0* eLearning/ Blended learning/ LMS* Networking
  • Collaborative learning / learning theory / pedagogy
  • Use of technology in the classroom/learning environment
  • PLEs / PLNs/PLCs

So far we have a number of presenters signed up be we are looking for more presenters and participants. Share the flyer below with your networks.

https://www.smore.com/336c-ozelive-2014

Why should we tweet?

I love Twitter! It is one of the most amazing source of information for 21st Century educators. Twitter is a social media tool where users can send short messages (up to 140 characters) into the Twittersphere for others to read. Tweets are usually hashtagged (eg. #education #ICT ) to allow people to search for topics. You can follow people and see their tweets and they can follow you. I follow many different people and hashtags. Edudemic, Cybrary Man and OzTweechersPLN provide a quick guide to educational hashtags for teachers. While the Index to Educational Twitter Hashtags is another great place to start out.

TWEETING IN SCHOOLS

There are many reasons why we should tweet within schools but there are also concerns that are raised by some who believe that social media is not suitable for children. In my opinion social media can be successful in schools as long as it is used properly, like all teaching strategies used in schools. I’m sure we have all seen teaching strategies and methods that make us cringe because they are not being used properly of safely. Social media is the same. Use it within the guidelines set out by your school and it can be a phenomenal tool.

The following are some articles which highlight some of the positive and negative reasons for the use of social media in the classroom:

Pros and Cons of Social Media in the Classroom

Social Media in the K-12 Classroom

 Twitter in My Classroom

 Social Media Belongs in the Classroom

WHAT YOU NEED TO REMEMBER??

Like all social media you can choose your privacy settings… You can protect your tweets so that only your followers can see what you have written, this may be one way of protecting classroom privacy. If you are tweeting as a classroom then all tweets should be approved by the teacher before adding to Twitter. Or use a safer option like Twiducate this site has greater security options available and is specifically for schools and classrooms.

 

David Truss – blog and podcasts

This blog is another excellent find via Twitter. I’ve spent a fair bit of time browsing and learning from this blog. David Truss blogs regularly delivery his thoughts and insights on various topics. My current favourite of this recent blogs is titled Learning about Learning in this blog he highlights the word of John Hattie and his focus on Visible Learning. This blog from David includes a couple of videos which are very useful.

The graphic below is what every teacher should be aiming for in the classroom… making that magic happen through ensuring how we are teaching is engaging our students in learning.

Truss

Taken from http://pairadimes.davidtruss.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Learning-About-Learning-David-Truss-BY-NC-SA-1024×475.jpg

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