I love quotes. I have a huge collection of quote images stored in my google photos and a database in Notion of quotes from books I have read, videos I have or podcasts I have listened to.Throughout the school year, I post a daily quote on our staffroom TV display along with our daily staffing absences & replacements along with staff duties (yard duty, first aid, staffroom) for that day. Sometimes these spark interesting conversations amongst staff over recess and lunch breaks.

Ask anyone working in education what they never have enough of and the answer generally is always time. It frustrates me to see people working ‘harder’ but not ‘smarter’ when there are so many better and quicker ways of doing things.Text Expander is just one tool that can save you countless hours by reducing the need to type long strings of text over and over again.

After developing a nice workflow over the past few weeks in creating and responding to posts for the #youredustory challenge, it all fell apart for me last week. I decided to change internet providers which resulted in some issues with our phone line. Given they could only send a technician during business hours (when I happen to be at work!) I had to make arrangements for them to be able to get into my house to make the repairs. Juggling the repairs meant a wait and going without the internet at home for a week.

In a recent blog post, Steve Brophy was challenged to respond to a series of questions and then set the following challenge to me and other members of my PLN. Here are my responses.

2014 sees me change schools again. I will once again be taking on the role of ICT Co-ordinator as a Leading Teacher. This, combined with the recent podcast from The Ed Tech Crew podcast that focused on tips for new ICT Co-ordinators has made me reflect on my own experience as ICT Co-ordinator at my current school and look at what worked well and what I would do differently next time.

I moved into an ICT Co-ordinator role after a few years of teaching and managed to change this role into a Leading Teacher role. The podcast did make me think about the fact the teacher in question is a graduate teacher and ask the question "Can a graduate teacher be an effective ICT co-ordinator?".  

I think back to my first year of teaching and there sure was a lot to cope with and get my head around in my own classroom. (Lois touched on this in some of her comments throughout the podcast). I did wonder then what kind of "ICT co-ordinator" this school may be they after? If they want someone who can "fix problems" and has technical knowledge then yes, I am sure that a graduate teacher would be capable of this. But without experience in the classroom, is the pedagogy going to be there? (I can see this being a separate post altogether!)

So, as I reflect on my experience as ICT Co-ordinator and consider my actions as I move into my role, here is my advice to new ICT Co-ordinators.

In the last few weeks of term, we have been madly preparing community events like our Christmas Concert and Graduation. Naturally, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and other family members want to remember and capture these events that feature their children through photographs or home movies.

As teachers and as schools we are required to fill in countless permission forms these days for even the most basic of things; including taking students photographs and detailing where they will be published. Yet, here were our parents and students taking photos and videos without us and of other students without us having any idea where they would end up.

We've all done it.

You know, when you sign up to that new account or you download the latest iTunes update and you are presented with pages upon pages of legal speak about what you will and won't do and what rights you are signing over to the creator of the program that the majority of the time we just scroll to the bottom of the page and click on that "I accept the terms and conditions" tick box.

Whilst this may be fine for personal use, how does the 'fine print' impact on our use of Web 2.0 tools within our classrooms and our schools?

As I've gone about researching information for the development of our school policies for eSmart, I was clicking my way through the eSmart Portal and the DEECD Learning OnLine site, I came across some details regarding Facebook. I was interested and wanted to know more as this has caused some issues in the past. As I work in a primary school, details regarding children under the age of 13 who have Facebook accounts took my interest.

Our school shares the site with the local secondary college. We also share on-site facilities such as the gymnasium. As both schools have grown rapidly in size quite quickly, this has meant that times where we can have exclusive use of the gym is limited. Given the size of our school population and the remaining facilities available, we did not have a space large enough to accommodate our school community. This lead to us investigating alternative methods of running our school assembly program and the introduction of broadcasting our assembly using web conferencing.

As our school moves into implementing our co-teaching model, a reoccurring question has been around the topic of assessment and the sharing of information; in particular student assessment observations, assessment results, behaviour tracking and work programs. Many of our staff have access to iPads and are keen to use these as part of their teaching. Some are exploring the use of Google Docs, some are exploring the Ultranet and some are exploring other options. The question of privacy and security of information was raised with regards to access to information that is stored within 'the cloud'.

In earlier posts, I wrote about the challenges our school was facing as we continue to grow in size and deal with the issue of timetables and our response to this by moving towards a 7 day timetable. One of the issues I encounted was around the use of calendars (specifically Microsoft Outlook and the Ultranet) to schedule events and create my work program:

Having recovered from the end-of-school madness, Christmas and the New Year, I have enjoyed the opportunity to sit and rest for a few days and catch up on some blogs in my Google Reader. I've really enjoyed reading posts (and posts and posts) from both friends and members of my Personal Learning Network (PLN) about their reflections from the past year and how it has helped them set goals and directions for the coming year. I've always been one to set goals and targets for the year, but have never really reflected on my achievements from the year before. So, thanks to some help from my Outlook calendar, the following jumped out at me as achievements throughout 2011:

Throughout this term I have been experimenting with Learning Tasks on the Ultranet with my Grade 3-6 students in their ICT Lessons. The project for the term involved them working in small groups to create a podcast based on our school values of Respect, Relationships, Rigour, Resilience and Responsibility.

On the first Monday of each month, I help to present the online PD series "Ultranet Share N Tell" with Mel Cashen and Anne Mirtschen. The Ultranet is an online learning management system being used by government schools within Victoria that has been developed by the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development.We have been running these session for just over a year now. Links to recordings of previous sessions we have held are available through the Guide to Innovation Ning operated by the DEECD Innovation and Next Practice Division.

So maybe I'm a little late in jumping on the bandwagon, but I've discovered podcasts.

It's now about five weeks into the start of the 2011 new school year and I feel I am beginning to find my feet as a specialist ICT teacher.  Being in a brand new school has meant that we have experienced some delays with our ICT equipment getting deployed. This has meant that I have had to be quite resourceful and innovative with my lessons.

I have managed to secure the use of a portable LCD TV that I have been able to connect my laptop to and share images and presentations with my students. I had always planned to start of the year with cybersafety activities, but had wanted it to be far more hands on. That said, I am quite pleased with my achievements in teaching ICT without any ICT.

Below is a summary of the activities I have completed to date with each year level.

Wow! The post for this challenge featured a huge list Web 2.0 resources to use and consider embedding into blog posts. Here's my road test and feedback after using a few of them.

Copyright and Creative Commons was something I had heard about, but never really quite understood what it all meant. I had seen those little pictures inside circles, but again, wasn't quite to sure what they were all about. I too have been guilty of jumping onto Google Images, searching for a picture I liked and then simply pasting it into a document, powerpoint or other piece of work I was creating.

This post is in response to Activity #4 in the Kick Start Your Blog Teacher Challenge.

I had started playing with different sites to create avatars prior to commencing this challenge task in preparation for my new ICT teaching role this year. I am keen to setup blogs with the classes I am working with and discuss with strategies the students can use to keep themselves safe online. I have been reading Anne Mirtschin's new book "Cool Tools for the Connected Classroom" and trying out some of the sites she recommends.