Australian Learning Lecture:Joy and Data

 

It is fantastic that we can view the inaugural Australian Learning Lecture, delivered by renowned British educationalist, Sir Michael Barber,only yesterday at the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention centre. The title of the lecture was "Joy and Data" and looked at the relationship between the joy of learning and the data that enables success. Although it looks like the video goes for 1: 40 minutes, I recommend you cut to the chase and fast forward to the 39 minute count which is the actual start of the lecture. The presentation  will appeal to our many cyclist passionistas!

 

Work Smarter,Not Harder

 A few posts ago I mentioned a great article in a Technology Ed magazine that offered some strategies to reduce stress from online expectations. Here are two more worthwhile articles that teachers could use to help them make their careers in teaching more sustainable.

 

 

Can teachers ever have A Life /Work balance?

How To Balance family Life As A Teacher

How Successful People work Less But get More Done

 

 

Levels of Engagement

An interesting poster from Phillip Schlecty.Click on the image for more information.

Skyping Megan Miranda

On Thursday our Year 9s' were very privileged to be able to Skype international writer Megan Miranda. Megan is  a full time writer from North Carolina having published four novels for young adults.
We were invited to Skype Megan Miranda by the editor of the national online student magazine called Spineout . This came about  because of our past contributions of  our Year 9s' book trailers to this magazine. We were also very grateful to have $200 worth of Megan's novels sent to us.

This has  been the first time  Gippsland Grammar has skyped an author and I thought that the event was extremely successful with the students being very engaged and keen to ask her questions. It seemed like the questions just kept coming and often from the boys which was great. Megan was also very engaging and our students seemed to connect with her immediately.

Being able to connect with authors from around the world  gives us so many more opportunities. This is a great way to overcome the tyranny of distance and we now look forward to running more of these types of events in the future.

TechnologyEd

http://issuu.com/tempomedia/docs/ted-14

 

I would highly recommend that you  read  TechnologyEd  which comes with the Australian teacher magazine. The latest has an interesting article about "technostress" and acknowledges the strains and demands  put on teachers with 24/7 connection to other teachers, students and parents. It also offers   some good strategies for managing your time online. It's also worth reading the article about Melbourne Girls College's commitment to sustainability. The school has just won a US $100,000 grant for winning the Zayad Future Energy prize. The school  won the prize for their students' proposal to build a curriculum integrated renewable education centre that will be carbon neutral by 2020.Click on the link above to access.



Educating For A sustainable Future

Have you heard of the Cool Australia website. It  provides online educational material and support  when teaching about sustainability and the environment. There are lots of learning activities and units of work from Foundation to Year 10 which are aligned to the Australian Curriculum. To investigate further, click on the image above.

 

What's Your Future?

 

I have just come across two web tools that would be great to use when getting students to set goals. FutureMe is a web tool that lets you write an email to your future self and have it delivered to your inbox at a time you schedule ( at least 30 days in the future). Teachers are also able to subscribe to be administrators so that a class can have its own portal and unique email address. Teachers would be able to see letters submitted and resend letters etc.

 

 Remind2me is similar to FutureMe except it doesn't offer a public gallery of letters,which is a good thing. However, with Future M , if teachers haven't set up a unique student space, students can always click on the private button when sending their emails.

 

They would be  great tools to use at the start of the year, having students set learning goals for the year and then  reflecting  on what they have written at a later date.

 

For more information or to subscribe, click on the images above.

 

Teacher Blogging Challenge

Would you like to know  more about blogging? Edublogs' Teacher Challenge might just be the right professional learning you are after. Edublogger is currently offering a free 4 week crash course in blogging which will cover

• Setting up a blog
• publishing posts
• embedding images and videos
• Connecting with others
• Using widgets

The challenge lasts for 30 days with 2-3 tasks per week sent to you via email. The first challenge starts today

To register click on the link

Earthquake Resources

If you are wanting to  help students to better understand the devastating earthquake in Nepal  and the  active volcanic eruptions in Chile recently, ABC Splash's collection would be a good place to start. There are maps, images and some excellent videos that explain why earthquakes happen and which areas are prone. Click on the image above to access the site