Educating the Dragon

Well I’m sorry if I’ve seemed a bit down, or distracted over the past couple of entries. I’ve felt that my head was about to explode. Many of the things that are going on are at several different levels.

• I have to talk to my Principal shortly about a survey I plan to run, school-wide, as a response to my talk to the staff the other week. It is my intension to gauge from this survey how ‘connected’ the Net-Gen kids we have really are. I’m hoping that the results from that will impact directly on the direction technology goes within my school.

• I’ve been looking at the policy for Technology in our school of late and I come to the realisation that even though it is an excellent ‘over-arching’ document, robust enough to sustain the Inspectorate eye, there needs to be some sort of supportive documentation to help the X-Gen implement a curriculum for the 21^st Century learner.

• I have skypetalkandwrite that needs facilitation and development. There are several teachers within my school that appear enthusiastic about Talk & Write to give it a go and will need introductions to other users around NZ. Fortunately Voyagers has kindly volunteered to do some collaborative work next term and my class are excited about that. Chrissy and I will be continuing our mentoring work this year, starting in earnest Term2.

• I have begun www.wikidspace.wikispaces.com with a view to other classes around the country (world?) that are working with Year 2/3/4 children (aged 6 to 8) signing up and contributing. I have dragonsinger already signed up from RaumatiBeach. The site is intended to give younger children an opportunity to learn the value of a wiki, showcase their work and begin to work collaboratively.

• Then there is the development of my PRS project, which is a personal response system developed by Interwrite.

• I have to complete the set up of my classroom HUB or most of this work will need revising.

All in all, I’ve begun to feel a little overwhelmed. But I have to say a big thank you to Chrissy and Jenny for today. You really fired me back up and helped me get things into perspective, I don’t know what I’d do without you. And to Garry too, form Sitech. You really know how look after your people.