This is the first of our posts to feedback and communicate what’s happening and what we will have learnt from the 2008 Interactive Whiteboard Conference at Firbank Grammar School in Brighton, Melbourne.

After Anne, Bec S and I landed in Melbourne this morning, we proceeded to Firbank to the afternoon’s proceedings, which included classroom tours and a walk around the exhibition hall.

Firbank has both Junior (Primary) and Senior (Secondary) schools, and we had the opportunity to tour the small all-girls primary campus.  Each room has had an Activboard for some time, and several teachers we met agree that they now could not live without one in their room.  They are using a variety of personally-produced and commercial resources to support the learning in their classrooms.

One of the great things to see was that the school has fostered a culture of encouraging students to grow as learners – they encourage students to be creative, critical, and to take risks; risk taking is something which is applauded in the school.

We also saw in the software exhibition this afternoon some resources that piqued our interest, including new Maths resources from Origo, Literacy resources from Pearson Education, the comprehensive Swark resource, and 2Simple Software.

The conference keynote and workshops kick off tomorrow morning, so perhaps we can feed back some more after then.

Robert

Our favourite social bookmarking site, Delicious, has a brand new look.  There’s a few new features, and it all looks a bit more modern.  A bit of exploring will see you discover what’s new in the product lineup.

While you’re there, make sure that you check our staff delicious page.  Judy’s forever stocking it up with fantastic new links.