Educating the Dragon

Mixed feelings this morning.

The session that was planned was entitled IWB2, it’s all about embedding Interactive Whiteboard practice into everyday teaching, focusing on the idea of supporting the Integrated Unit. This session follows on from, you guessed it, IWB1 which normally occurs a term before.

I began this session, as I begin every IWB2 session, with the words “I have about 32 pages here and a pile of tasks to do today, but I’d prefer for us to not complete all that and have you walk out at the end having your questions and issues resolved. “ – Or something like that.

Normally what happens is that as I move through the presentation I am heckled with question about: “How do you….?” Or “When I try to…it just….”

Today’s session however looked very different as I barely touch on the Integrated Unit concept when time was up. I’m not sorry that it went that way as the time was filled totally with answering queries and addressing issues on this or that. Even as I am educating the educators I have to be fully flexible to personalize the learning. At the end of the session I sensed staff were enthused once more toward incorporating the IWB into their classroom practice. And that, I feel is the greater goal than ticking the box saying “I delivered the IWB2 workshop today.”

Classroom practice has to be the same too. Addressing the needs of the students, ensuring they leave the classroom having learnt something today.

“ It is no longer adequate for the teacher to merely have taught something today… The learner needs to have learnt something”

The drive back along the Gisborne/ Napier road was long and slow. A little over 3.5 hours, it appears the logging trucks come out at dusk!

As the map shows I took a short trip across town to Ilminster Intermediate today, I’ll be there tomorrow too. But having spent the whole day in the library, I decided to take a bit of a walk down Gladstone Road this evening. Gisborne is lovely in the evening time. It looks very different in the light. But it did get me thinking about the difference in students between ‘in the light’ of the classroom compared to ‘in the dark’ after school.

What I mean to say is that our preception of a students ability in the formal ‘20th Century classroom’ could well look very different to their actual intellectual ability in the connected world in which they live. Now more than ever do we need to discover where their heads are at and begin to meet them at their point of educational need.

Today was the day for two training sessions.

Firstly, I ran ‘Digital Storytelling" workshop, sharing the online platforms of Voicethread, Teachertube, and Slideshare.

I always enjoy running these session because I find teachers bring just as much to a session as I do. We began a voicethread… My first really proper one and it is oh so basic but I am hoping that others whole attended the session will be adding there thoughts about it. The cough at the beginning of my talk is not me but an attendee who shall remain nameless.

Cliotech was good enough to allow me to share some of the input from her slideshare .

Second up was Stop motion animation. Some folk from this morning stayed into the afternoon. We played around with webcams for a while and discussed the usefulness of animation creation to support not only the literacy programme but also it solidfy learning in other areas, for example creating an animation to illustrate life-cycles in science. We even had one uploaded to www.teachertube.com by the end of the session. It’s entitled "Mr Mouse" Enjoy!

ps. It was also great to know about a couple of sound wikispaces today. One of the attendees has been struggling with establishing her class wiki on wikispaces. I would have loved to sit down with her and assist in creating her class wiki, but that would be another 3 hour session so I pointed her in the direction on Wonderfulworldof.wikispaces.com and encouraged her to look through the material there before she gave up. Often I find its better to have the pointers than to be able to ‘Fix it’ then and there. Thanks Chrissy

pps. Thanks Derek for sharing this . What a powerful illustration of Storytelling in the 21st Century

Spent a little morning tea time on the Dance floor… Dance pad more like. Easiteach has a package available to strut your move- educationally

But then Nat shared this fun activity you use with a Dance pad. http://www.stepmania.com/

You can hook to Dance pad up to a PS2, laptop and therefore an IWB.

If you want to see one in action I’ll be strutting my stuff at with it at ULearn….. hmmm, perhaps.

Another day with Sidney - Please not that it is Sidney with an ‘i’ and not with a ‘y’ as I spelt it when uploading the Flickr pics - doh!

We had a great day again sharing the Easiteach software - There is so much available, content wise. A fantastic resource for IWB schools who want to have their classrooms humming REAL fast. SOme of the content is very UK but there is more than enough of the content packages available that transfer over the miles. As you would expect History and Geography are very personal to the national setting- "OBVIOUSLY" I here you cry!

The whole Breathe Team were finally together today, from left to right: Bernie, Me, Lara, Nat, Jenny,  and Tanya.

Another oops! It was my intention to interview Tanya about her role in the whole outfit as she has an exciting title of ‘Flaxmere Project Mentor’. I’ll see if I can catch up with her this term and IF I have opportunity I will interview her and podcat it… I’ll have to ask really nicely I suspect;-)

I was on the road again, literally this afternoon travelling from Tauranga to Gisborne. I got training in the morning.