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.

Being a member of a Student Representative Council (SRC) is not always about wearing a badge and missing out on classes. For some, the initial appeal wears off when they soon realise the volume of time and level of commitment required to fulfil the role effectively. This can lead to SRC members backing away their responsibilities, dragging down the SRC or choosing to opt out of the SRC all together. So, what can be done to prevent these situations fromoccurring? How do you respond to situations where the bad apples are starting to spoil the rest of the bunch?

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.

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.

Thanks to the wonderful world of twitter, I was made aware of a great free online resource the other day called minutes.io  that I thought would be a great resource for student councils to be aware of.

This site allows you to generate minutes from a meeting using an online template.After entering the headings you then need to enter the details of those present. Minute.io allows for sub-headings and topics down the side and breaks these into categories of TODO, OKAY, INFO, and IDEA.

It is with a sense of disappointment and disbelief I learned that the Department’s literacy and numeracy coaching program was to be scrapped in schools. I have been fortunate enough to work with both literacy and numeracy coaches in my classroom over the last few years and can attest to the value of this program.

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.

Writing this post reminded me of the song "Pub with no beer". Think of a pub and you think of beer, think of a bakery and you think of bread, think of a school and I'm sure a few people would mention bell as their answer.

Yet, my school has decided to abandon the school bell to signify periods throughout the day.

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.

In just a few days, teachers and students will be returning for the 2011 school year. What thought have you put into how your Student Representative Council (SRC) will operate? Maybe you have been allocated the role of support teacher for the SRC but have no idea what to do. Hopefully, the information below will assist you in getting up and running early in 2011. 

As part of the week-long induction process for my new school (post about this to come soon) we were shown the following video from Ben Zander; the conductor for the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra.

Since commencing the EduBlogs Teacher Challenge I have….

One of my (many) goals for 2011 is to keep a clean desk both at home and work this year. Whilst I'm pretty good at managing the digital stuff, it's the offline hard copy stuff that I tend to be drowning in. Anyone who has seen my desk or pigeonhole at work will attest to this statement.I started reading "PaperFlow" by MaryAnne Bennie and Brigitte Hinneberg. I was instantly taken by the beautiful photo at the beginning of the book that showcased the incredibly clean desk and the matching red, white and dark brown stationary and storage options. This image symbolised what I so wanted to achieve for myself.

Tomorrow (Monday 10th January) sees the Edublogging Teaching Challenge kick off and I'm kinda excited :D

Having subscribed to many other blogs,  I know how much I have valued reading and learning from their experiences. I hope that I too will have something worthwhile to say and that others will value reading it.

Another post I've been meaning to finish off for a while. This topic came about following a conversation I was having on twitter with another teacher about creating online bank accounts for students.

Earn and Learn is a financial awareness program developed by Rob Vingerhoets. This program sees students operate in a way similar to a small town or community.