In an earlier post, I explained a little of CENet and how it would be introduced as a learning tool to St. Michael’s this year.

Well, the time is now.  Next week, we will begin our first of several staff meetings this term of CENet training.

After several meetings with Ian from Learning Technologies at CEO, and several discussions within the Leadership Team, we have managed to draft together an implementation plan that will take us to the end of 2007 and into next year.

The focus for the remainder of this year will be to integrate our introduction of CENet into our work on HSIE.  Our HSIE professional development this term will focus on the Inquiry Process and the skills and processes that underpin the HSIE curriculum.  With CENet we will create learning resources that will support our teaching of HSIE units next year.  CENet then will be a tool that helps us in engaging students in parts of the inquiry process.

Webquests have been a learning tool used at St. Michael’s for a number of years now, particularly in the area of RE.  During our tour of St. Bernadette’s today, we even heard a teacher working with students make reference to our Faith Communities Webquest.

Webquests are an online learning activity which have the potential to produce rich learning for students.  They were originally the concept of Tom March and Bernie Dodge.

Educational Podcasting Blog EdTechTalk has interviewed Bernie Dodge and shared this in a Podcast on Webquests.  I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet (it’s about 40 minutes), but it’s a good opportunity to hear about webquests from an expert… or, rather, the expert.
If you’re new to webquests, or want a refresher, the best place to go is still The Webquest Page, which Dodge maintains.  It also has tons of webquests that you can search through and use in your classroom.

Today Sandra, Kathryn, Rebecca, Judy and I visited St. Bernadette’s at Castle Hill to see Interactive Whiteboards in action.

While each member of this team has an interactive whiteboard in their room, we really haven’t had much opportunity (if at all) to see others use them in the classroom.

The team at St. Bernadette’s were very welcoming and happy to share their experiences with us.  The principal, Ted Langford, was my teacher when I was in Year 3 (almost twenty years ago now – sorry, Ted), and from his initiatives to introduce computers to my primary school back in the 80’s through to today, he’s very much committed to providing the best contemporary tools to support quality teaching and learning.

Our team has learnt a lot of great ideas.  They’ve also had a great opportunity to see how another school approaches education, and how technology is used in a tool in the teaching-learning cycle.

In a previous post I spoke about the Catholic Education Commission Learning with Web 2.0 Forum.

Now (finally) here is the podcast, summing up very briefly The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

No doubt more of my learnings will filter through Technoblog in future posts.

Download

For those who would get a lot more out of looking over a diagram that explains Web 2.0 rather than pages of text, here’s something that may be useful to you:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/popoever/234877734/

I’ve personally never imagined the difference between 45 million and 1 billion +.

As I blog, our Year 1 team are just coming to the end of their Interactive Whiteboard training session with Leah Rix from Commander.  It has been a fantastic session in beginning to understand the workings of the Activboard and the potential of the Activstudio software.  Our colleagues are really finding it to be worthwhile experience. 

As we come to a close, Year 1 are starting to explore some possibilities for using flipcharts and Activstudio in their Science and Technology unit for this term.

Our Year 4 also will begin their exploration this afternoon.  Interest in IWBs is spreading as well, and we welcome as well colleagues from St. John Vianney, Doonside, to see a little of our demonstration and training.  The great aspect of this whole acquisition process has been the ability to share wisdom with other schools in the Diocese that have walked the same journey.  Hopefully we can continue to share with others who want to engage in this exciting opportunity

The professional learning in learning technology this term at St. Michael’s is unprecedented.

This term’s professional learning includes initial training in the use of the Activboard Interactive Whiteboard, as well as a visit to St. Bernadette’s, Castle Hill (the only school in the Diocese to have total IWB implementation in all classrooms) to see IWBs in action and find out more about the learning and change processes that have surrounded their bold initiative.

While this professional learning will specifically target Years 1, 4 and 4/5K, there will be professional learning for all staff through the Diocesan rollout of CENet, which comes to St. Michael’s this term.  Ian Hanson from CEO’s Learning Technologies team will introduce us to this learning tool which we hope to use immediately as a medium for professional learning and sharing between our learning teams in working to implement our strategic goals for 2007.

Learning 2.0 also continues this term; if you still want to get started, you can.  There are six afternoons this term where the library will be open and support available for you to complete this discovery program.  For those who have already started, Activities 5 and 6 and now ready to complete.

The LTFG Coffee Club also returns this term to continue the discussion on learning and how technology supports it.  This term we will continue the conversation on technology’s place in our teaching and learning with the goal of revising our Learning Technology Policy and producing a new Learning Technology Development Plan for the coming years.

So there’s a massive amount on, and I encourage you to involve yourself as much as you can.  Click on the link below to view this term’s Learning Technology Professional Learning Schedule.

Term 3 Learning Technology Professional Learning

This is one of the great WYD08 pictures taken by Flickr user i.say

Today marks one year to the start of the formal World Youth Day 2008 festival in Sydney. The WYD08 website may say 366 days to go, but remember that there’s a 29 Feburary between now and then!

Today the WYD Cross and Icon arrived in our Diocese, and during the week will visit our feeder high school, Patrician Brothers’ College. Our school leaders will visit and become part of its pilgrimage across Australia and the world.

The WYD08 – Journey of the Cross and Icon Blog is now also up and running, with members of the Journey Team posting on the progress and the special ways the cross is being received in, and touching the lives of those in Australia’s diverse communities. Keeping a regular track of the blog might be an interesting way for classes (especially our seniors) to become aware of this once-in-a-lifetime event.

Even some Flickr users are also snapping away when the cross comes their way, posting images up (like the one above) for all to see.

See you tomorrow, when there’s only 365 days to go. I hope you’re all ready for Term 3!

Trawling through the RSS feeds today and catching up on the news from blogs here and there, I came across a very simple comparison of the Internet as we knew it (I suppose, in hindsight, Web 1.0) and Web 2.0/read-write web/whatever you want to call it (maybe Internet’s still a perfectly reasonable name?).  This comes courtesy of MartinsWiki:

Web 1.0 was about them, Web 2.0 is about us
Web 1.0 was about reading, Web 2.0 is about writing
Web 1.0 was about companies, Web 2.0 is about communities
Web 1.0 was about advertising, Web 2.0 is about word of mouth
Web 1.0 was about portals, Web 2.0 is about RSS
Web 1.0 was about taxonomy, Web 2.0 is about folksonomy
Web 1.0 was about home pages, Web 2.0 is about blogs
Web 1.0 was information, Web 2.0 is opinion
Web 1.0 was an encyclopedia, Web 2.0 is Wikipedia

It serves a useful purpose to get thought started and provide a very concise overview, but perhaps reading some more (like the research on the same page) could be helpful as well.

Maybe they’re not so much statements as questions?  Perhaps they can serve to spark our discussion around Web 2.0?  If Web 2.0 tools give power to the user, then perhaps what Web 2.0 cannot be concretely defined, because it depends (to a certain extent, at least) on what is shaped by the user?

Maybe Web 2.0 leaves us with more questions asked than answered?

Yesterday I spent the day at the Catholic Education Commission NSW Learning With Web 2.0 Forum.  It follows last year’s successful forum, Learning in an Online World.

Like last year, the forum included a keynote (this year given by Gary Putland, General Manager of education.au), followed by a day of workshop opportunities across a range of topics.  The great advantage to these is that they are presented by staff from dioceses across NSW, so you get to see real examples of classroom and system practice.  Several workshops were presented by staff from our own Catholic Education Office.

As time goes on, I’ll share a little more with you from this day.  Look forward to some Technoblog posts and podcasts, including our segment The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, to contribute to your own professional learning over the holidays.