• A webcast across the Diocese on Wednesday 18 February from 4:00 – 6:00 p.m.  We will broadcast the presentation live through the library
• Professor Heppell will be visiting the Blacktown South Catholic Schools to work with us at St. Michael’s and Nagle the next day. Further details of both events will be coming soon

Of course, the most common question at this point is who is Stephen Heppell?

Rather than try and give a mediocre description, I will instead offer some links to help you explore more of his work and his thinking.

• Stephen Heppell’s website and a bit of a biography
• His YouTube channel. Below is a video from it entitled Schools of the Future:

• Stephen Heppell’s longer Keynote Presentation from the 2008 K12 Online Conference, entitled It Simply Isn’t the 20th Century Any More, Is It?  So Why Would We Teach As Though it Was?

Photo credit: Ewan McIntosh

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

The Conference Board, in 2006, produced Are They Really Ready for Work? Employers’ Perspectives on the Basic Knowledge and Applied Skills of New Entrants to the 21st Century U.S. Workforce.  You can still download the report.

I just want to share with you today one part of the 64-page report:

To determine future skill needs, employer respondents were asked to indicate how the importance of the basic knowledge and applied skill areas would change over the next five years…

1. Critical thinking/Problem solving
2. Information Technology application
3. Teamwork/Collaboration
4. Creativity/Innovation
5. Diversity
6. Leadership
7. Oral communications
8. Professionalism/Work ethic
9. Ethics/Social responsibility
10. Written communications

(pp. 48, 49)

How well do you think our classrooms meet this need?

Last Monday saw the return of Multimedia Monday for 2008.  With a small group in attendance, we were able to tailor things to suit the participants, such as exploring the Internet resources that Judy’s drawn together to support our Term 2 units and uploaded to our grade and staff del.icio.us pages.

I know a number of people have ideas for what they’d like to learn on Multimedia Monday, but we haven’t had any suggestion forms in the box yet, so fill one in this week!

This week, there are two options:

1. Learning the ins and outs of printing to our new colour copier
2. Making a start with using the online application, VoiceThread

VoiceThread is an exciting tool that we’re looking with at the moment with Harlane.  Eager to try her hand with some podcasting in her classroom, we’re now looking at VoiceThread as it’s multimodal, allowing our students to integrate images, voice, sound, text and more.  We’re getting prepared for using it with 5P, so maybe you’d like to try giving it a go too.

Below you’ll find a video from Chris Betcher, teacher and voice behind the podcast The Virtual Staffroom, which provides a short introduction to VoiceThread.

There are two resources currently on Staffnet.  The first is this mp3 recording (right-click to download) of the lecture.  I’ve put the link here as it’s now well and truly buried in the system news announcements.  The second is a pdf document on Turnaround schools, Turnaround systems which you will find in a very recent post made on the LC blog.

If you’re after visuals to go with your audio though, I also have something for you.  Fullan gave a presentation on the six secrets of change at the 2007 Scottish Learning Festival.  This presentation is given as an mpeg4 file (perfect for those with video iPods, but you can still play it in iTunes or QuickTime on your computer).

• On this page you’ll find high and low-resolution files to download, as well as a transcript.

My thanks to Judy O’Connell for bringing the Scottish Learning Festival resources to my attention.  I also enjoy listening to Stephen Heppell’s thoughts, so it was great all round!

One of the lighter moments of Fullan’s presentation was a short video that, in a sense, shows the challenges we face today in encouraging people to accept new technologies.  I was alterted to this video earlier this year, but haven’t shared it for fear too many people would feel I was suggesting that they were a modern-day “Brother Ansgar”.

The simple premise is this: if you have an IT problem, you call the IT helpdesk.  But what about when books were first introduced and you got stuck?  Well, you called the book helpdesk…

For anyone who’s involved in schools in technical support, or as a technology coordinator, it’s a movie you sit and nod along to… and get a good laugh at the same time.

I promise I will post some serious material in relation to Michael Fullan’s presentation soon.

Cherie and Rebecca have kindly offered to help you through the sign up in my absence. It’s so easy, however (it’s all done in three steps), that you could do it yourself!

In fact, if you can’t make it tomorrow afternoon and want to do it yourself, let me direct you to a few resources that will show you what to do.

Tech-Ease, from the University of South Florida, have a series of simple videos that show you everything from registering to using subscriptions.

• You can also subscribe to the movies as podcasts through the iTunes store.

The Tech-Ease video is done using the Apple Mac browser, Safari. The installation of the buttons is a little different in Internet Explorer, but still easy to do. Here’s how it’s done on the del.icio.us site. Don’t worry too much, though; installing the buttons is part of the sign-up process.

Photo: Thumbnails in del.icio.us

At yesterday’s session, we explored why you would want to go to the trouble of setting up your bookmarks in a del.icio.us account rather than use the existing “Favourites” or “Bookmarks” on your web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari).

In fact, if you’re someone who uses more than one web browser program, or more than one computer (i.e. every teacher in the school), or likes to share their new “fave” websites with others, then del.icio.us is actually less trouble (not more) than maintaining your existing bookmarks. It’s proven to be an excellent tool for collecting grade resources this year.

So, why use del.icio.us? Well, if you missed the session yesterday, then here is a short video to give you the info.

Also, here are the slides from a presentation made by Judy O’Connell at the 2007 Catholic Education Commission Learning With Web 2.0 Forum.

[slideshare id=72623&doc=social-bookmarkingdelicious-expos4375&w=425]

Don’t forget that the next session, which will help you to get signed up with del.icio.us, is being brought forward to next Monday (29 October). Bring your laptop with you to 4/5K.

Presentations start coming online this week, the main week of the conference. Already a pre-conference keynote by David Warlick was posted on Tuesday, generating good discussion for leading into the presentations on the specific strands. Warlick’s keynote was also followed with live online chat, and the other presentation strands will do likewise – check out the site, the conference schedule and updates on the K12 Online Conference blog.

Meanwhile, to tempt you a little more with what’s on offer at K12 Online 07, take a look at the Presentation Teasers.

See you back at work tomorrow.