Thanks to a tweet from Andrew Williamson and Mel Cashen, who are currently working as coaches for the Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century course being run by DEECD, I was posed a series of reflective questions about how my thoughts around having a Personal Learning Network [PLN].

This lead to me creating and uploading my first YouTube video that I filmed using my iPad and edited with iMovie and Keynote.

Several people within my PLN have written recently around the theme of Staff Professional Learning. (See works here by Margo and Edna)  Their articles, combined with conversations at Tweet Ups and Teach Meets (and time to think over the holidays!) have led me to reflect on how I deliver professional learning within my school and changes I would like to implement.

SO, WHAT WILL PROFESSIONAL LEARNING LOOK LIKE ?

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:

Imagine a group of primary school students spread throughout Victoria working together to implement major projects, to provide feedback to organisations about policy and other new initiatives being implemented whilst learning about citizenship and decision making.

Sounds impressive.

At present though, all we can do is imagine, because such an opportunity for primary school students does not exist.

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.