The Social Media Revolution

Recent world events have certainly highlighted the power of social media.The video clip below brings home to me how important it is for us as teachers to be educating our students on how to use social media effectively and responsibly.

Congratulations Cath Crowley

It's been a great year for our 2010 Lorna Sparrow Artist in Residence.Last year Cath ran workshops with our Year 7's and 8's and spoke to our Year 9's about what influenced her in her writing of Graffiti Moon.This novel has won for her the

• 2011 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Young Adults
• 2011 NSW's Premier's Literary Award for Young Adults
• 2011 CBCA Honour Award
• 2011 Victoria's Premier Award for Young Adults - Shortlisted

Cath must be literally over the moon herself.Not only does she write well but she is a lovely warm person who deserves these accolades.

Visual Literacy

Increasingly,statistical data is being presented in creative and attractive infographics.Here is an excellent site that highlights the importance of becoming visually literate in the 21st century.It contains great links to infographics online that you can use in your classroom as well as links to resources to help students learn how to create infographics. Some of the resources mentioned are below.
Places to find beautiful and useful infographics:

Infographic a day for teachers- David Warlick presents useful infographics for teachers.

Information is Beautiful - David McCandless's site
Good Infographics – a collaborative site which focuses on providing good quality web resources – in this case, infographics

As a tool to teach visual and critical literacy:


Check out  the Slideshow on Visual Literacy and Nonlinguistic Representations Part 1.


Student's Using Infographics
 Ten Free Tools To Make Infographics
Glogster example

Evaluation for Students and Teachers

On Friday at our Staff Conference, Mike spoke about the importance of ongoing formative assessment and student reflection in the classroom for the primary purpose of improving student learning.
He also spoke about how our school's "Professional Learning Project" program is a powerful tool to help teachers reflect on their own teaching practices so that they can improve learning outcomes for their students.This new video from the Teaching Channel has been timely as it demonstrates how  teaching practices can be improved with coaching and reflection and is well worth viewing.
To view click on Time Mangement in 7th Grade Science
I have also just come across AllThingsAssessment which is a website that has many interesting articles and links to other relevant websites about formative and summative  assessment in the classroom.

Students Love Technology

I have just found this great infographics on American college students usage of technology.I'm sure we would have similar patterns here.Students do expert to use digital tools as part of their everyday lives and it is up to us as educators to determine which tools are best for learning


Via: OnlineEducation.net

Prezis at Gippsland Grammar

Are you sick of powerpoints? Are you looking for a new way of presenting class material? If you are, Prezis might be the answer for you. Prezi is a flash based application that lets you break away from the slide by slide approach of powerpoint.Instead, it allows you to create non linear presentations where you can zoom in and out of a visual map that contains words,links,images,PDF's and videos.It allows you to show the connection between concepts as you are able to focus on a piece of information,then zoom out to see the bigger picture.

It does take a while to get used to but once you get the hang of using the "bubble" menu you are on your way.

The Prezi website provides a number of short videos that explain how to use the application. This link  also has some great tips and hints for using Prezis in the classroom

Below are some examples created by the ISC staff for the Humanities Department and presented during the Staff Conference on August 12th.

New Vodcasts for VCE Students

Earlier this year I wrote a post about Merspi which is a free online social networked learning hub for VCE students. In partnership with SLAV(School Library Association of Victoria) Merspi has recently created The VCE Advantage vodcast series.The vodcasts provide tips,research strategies and guidance to support VCE Students.Here are some of the topics on offer:

• Exploring the VCAA website
• Managing stress
• Surviving VCE
• Power searching
• Reliable Research
• Structuring essays

All vodcasts have been created under the Creative Commons Licence.They can be accessed from the front page of Merspi or directly from the Merspi YouTube channel. I encourage all VCE  teachers to let their students know about these great resources.

The presentation below was put together  for students by the State Library and is about researching effectively.

The Conversation: A New Approach to Journalism

Thank you to Julie Ripon who alerted me to this well regarded and well edited website.The Conversation was launched earlier this year and is an independent source of information and analysis from the university and research sector.It basically is a series of discussions between leading academics and major public figures in Australian life.Content partners include the Australian Group of Eight Universities as well as the University of Technology,Sydeny,CSIRO and the Australian Science Media Centre.

It is a site that can be trusted.All published work carries attribution of the author's expertise and if relevant, states if there is a conflict of interest. The content is divided up into the following areas:

• Business/economy
• Environment/Energy
• Health/Medicine
• Politics/Society
• Science/Technology

You can also chose from a variety of hot topics.

Hear why Peter Doherty,Nobel Laureate and former Australian of the Year supports The Conversation



Students can access The Conversation via the ISC VLA.

Simmone Howell: Artist in Residence

Last week we were privileged to have author Simmone Howell with us for three days. She was here as the ISC/English Department's 2011 Lorna Sparrow Artist in Residence.She ran creative writing workshops with our Year 7 and 8's and spoke to Year 9's about how her writing is heavily influenced by pop culture. Our students really enjoyed her sessions and created some great writing in a very short space of time.Year 7 and 8 English teachers also picked up some interesting strategies to encourage the creative writing juices.
Simmone lives in Castlemaine and is a full time writer.She writes realistic teenage fiction,plays,short stories and scripts for TV.She also uses social media as a platform for her writing and you can read what she has to say about her visit to Gippsland Grammar in her latest blog post.

Using Groups Effectively

The ability to be able to work in a group effectively is one of the major skills identified for 21st century learning.I have just purchased for the ISC, Keith Sawyer's Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration.This was prompted by Kevin Washburn's enlightening post in his blog about group work. He had attended a conference session conducted by Keith Sawyer, a jazz pianist and  expert on group work which raised questions such as :

• When are groups effective as a means of learning?
• What tasks are better accomplished collaboratively than individually?
• How do you structure groups for optimal effectiveness and results?

Kevin was so inspired that he developed his own 10 principles of using group's effectively. Well worth a read,particularly the practices that stifle creativity.Guilty Your Honour!