Ereaders in the ISC

Last week in Australia we celebrated CBCA Book Week as an opportunity to focus on quality Australian writing for young people.To help celebrate this occassion and further promote reading, we launched our new ipad,Kindle and Kobo.We decided it was time for us to try out these three popular models of ereaders so that we could discover for ourselves their potential in our school context. As well as downloading ebooks onto these reading devices ,we also have put a range of applications on them so as to give our students the opportunity to explore their various functionalities. The interest from our students has been incredible. Students are able to borrow them for use in the ISC only at this point of time and there has been a constant demand for them since Monday.

Long live the book!I'm sure we will not be seeing the demise of the book as we know it for a very long time . However,we are interested in promoting and fostering reading in all modalities and the next twelve months will most likely open up many possibilities for the ISC. Electronic reading devices do transform the concept of a book and they are also transforming reading from a solitary experience into a social one. Readers are now able to connect with authors and online fan communities and as author

Scot Westerfield states , the learning continues well after the book is read via the online feedback loop. The Youtube video below is worth watching for a bit of fun!

Cath Crowley: Fellow in Residence 2010

Melbourne author, Cath Crowley's residency on the 16th and 17th August was a great success. Cath is a popular children and young adult fiction writer and her novels are published in Australia, UK and USA. She ran writing workshops with each Year 7 group and spoke to our Year 8's and 9's about her life as a professional writer.Our students responded very enthusiastically to Cath and our Year 7's produced some remarkable work considering the limited time she had with them.

I was so impressed by the students at Gippsland Grammar. They were enthusiastic
and their pieces of writing were original and full of wonderful detail.
Cath Crowley August 2010.

Cath loved her time in the ISC and we really appreciated her energetic approach and hope that she will return to Gippsland Grammar in the future.

Personal Learning Network

Joy, Annette and myself are currently participating in the SLAV Personal Learning Network online program. The focus of this course is the development of a PLN that will help us in supporting the integration of Web2.0 tools into our school curriculum. Its a 12 week course and we are being exposed to a whole range of tools and resources over this time. Another participant in the course aptly called it a Degustation (Gourmet Platter) of Web2.0 tools. We are up to Week 3 and frantically keeping up to the hectic pace.Fortunately we are learning heaps. I look forward to exploring the tools that are relevant to our context in more depth once the program is over.

This week the topic has been Professional Learning and we have been introduced to some great new social learning networks for education. One that I would highly recommend is the Australia Series.It has been developed by Australian educators and provides free online professional learning and conferencing via Elluminate at Australia friendly times. It is accessed via LearnCentral and you can acces events that are relevant to you.

Ted Talks were also a revelation, providing over 700 video clips on thought provoking topics.
Sir Ken Robinson's Education Revolution is somewhat different from Julia's fast food model!



I also enjoyed Carl Honore's "Praises for slowness"

Just Practices in a Brave New (Virtual) World

The transcript from an ABC 7: 30 Report in April this year is an interesting read in light of our up and coming conference on Friday.It reported that one in four students were being bullied and that cyberbullying was a growing problem and out of control.Teachers' unfamiliarity with social media and their lack of training was stated as why schools haven't been able to tackle this problem so far. Our conference will hopefully give us some strategies for dealing with this issue and go along way in helping us to prepare students for a society full of technology.The student and parent sessions will also be invaluable in teaching our students about appropriate and safe use of technology.

For those who are interested, there are lots of digital citizenship resources on the net.It's not difficult to become overwhelmed with what's on offer but here are some recommended sites:

• 
  
  Cybersmart-The Australian Governement's cybersafety program provides resources and advice for schools,students and parents so that they can safely enjoy the online world


• 
  
  Stay Smart Online - Provides all Australian online users with information on the simple steps that thay can take to secure themselves online,including online transcations


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  Cybersafe Classroom: Working with the web - DEECD site with resources for developing skills in safe and ethical use of the web


• 
  
  SOSO Smart Online Safe Online - An interactive site that encourages students to be safe online and to take a stand against cyber bullying


• 
  
  BrainPop Digital Citizenship - Animations and activities to encourage safe and ethical use of the web


• 
  
  Digital Citizenship - An excellent resource that helps with the process of teaching students how to use technology appropriately

Showcasing Events and Curriculum Projects in the ISC

Recently we set up a permanent wall mounted 42" display monitor in the ISC. Its purpose is to not only promote reading and activities in the ISC but also showcase Gippsland Grammar events and ICT projects.The display monitor is already creating a great deal of interest from the students and I encourage all teachers to use this tool to not only showcase exemplary work but provide students with an audience to view their ICT products.I'm sure it will raise the bar if students know that their assessment tasks will be viewed by a larger audience.

Education Services Australia

It might have gone unnoticed that Education.au and Curriculum Corporation merged to become Education Services Australia in March 2010.It aims to meet the needs of all educational sectors,particularly in relation to the implementation of National Curriculum and the Digital Education Revolution.The Services it provides are :

Scootle - A rich digital curriculum content resource for schools

me.edu.au - An online professional network for educators with a strong Web2 focus

Edna - A resource supporting all education sectors in the use of ICT.

Cyber smart - Provides activiites and resources to help young people stay safe online.

Myfuture - An excellent national online career information resource

Global Education - Funded by Austaid ,aims to increase the amount and quality of teaching of global education.

Teaching Australia - A national body for the teaching profession which promotes quality teaching

A new Education Services Australia website will be launched soon at esa.edu.au.Until then, previous links to Curriculum Corporation and Education.au are provided.

Scootle - Your one stop shop for digital curriculum content

Last week all teachers at Gippsland Grammar were given the opportunity to register with Scootle.Scootle has been developed by Education Services Australia and basically replaces what we called in the past,The Learning Federation.This online learning repository contains all the digital curriculum content from Learning Federation with the addition of some great new features. After having a play around with it I can see that it will become a starting point when planning learning activities.The new features that were not available on the former TLF are:

• Access to teaching units
• Access to assessment resources
• Ability to create learning paths and share them with students and teachers
• Access to collections based on themes/topics.
  

At this point of time we have 31 teachers registered across the three campuses.I will be managing our school account which means I will be keeping the users list up todate and provide PD on its use when requested by individual learning areas