ICT in the classroom

This week we are looking a some of the success stories over the year at Sandringham, and how staff across the college have, in many cases, overcome adversity to use ICT/eLearning/21stC tools in their classrooms. Hopefully their stories and more may inspire you to to explore further or start adding some of these elements into your own classes, not as an add on, but truly embedding the technology.

I hope that some of our high fliers will share their stories in the comments here. I know there are others who have raised the bar, and I am sure there are some quietly achieving… if I have missed you, please add your highlights here (click on the comments link beside the heading and date of this post, you will need to pop in your email and your name, it can be your whole name, or if you are shy with the info you put online, just a last initial, we won’t tell anyone

We will start with Moodle, which sadly had issues as the techs were not able to make the site “live” and we could only access it at school. Having said that, there are already close to 200 registered users, some of the gun Moodlers this year have included:
Sean Daley and Frank Mc – 3C9 Program
Mary Tonios – Year 9 Humanities and Year 10 Law and Order
OHS – Chris Martin
Suzanne R – Advanced Maths
Jan Everett and Ruth Dower – Science
Year 10 Dance Megamix
Year 10 Media and Media Production
Steve Morris – Specialist Maths

Log in to Moodle and check out their courses and get started on adding yours for next year. The link is on the college intranet homepage, and the login is the same as your network login.

We have had a heap of power users of the Netbooks across the College, including Kerri Henderson, Vicki McQuilten, Linda Lane, Marnie Sparrow and many others across the three campuses (I know because they were booked everytime I was thinking about using them, which is fabulous)

Nings and things

VET programs wiki – Jenny Marks
Curriculum Ning – Steve Morris – have your say in the issues that count, see what others are thinking.
Leadership Ning – Wayne Perkins – yes, modelling how we can use the tools is coming from the top.
Travel nings – Noumea and Japan linking parents with their students as they went on camp, the feedback was incredibly positive, so thanks to Peter Hamilton and Frank MacNamara for setting these up and sharing with the community

VCE and VET Music, Art, Design Tech Nings – Ben Pisani, Fiona and Kylie in the Music area and Frank, Craig and the team in the Visual Arts

Jodie Shaw – IT /Environment – wiki and blogs creating links with students outside the classroom, giving them the passion, and the ability to fly high too.

Ingrid Scharer – Wiki/podcasting as a way for students to submit assignments, getting creative, using the tools to create the “hook” to Engage students

Skoool program – Steve Dixon and Jan Everett – an INTEL program run this year based on the use of Interactive Whiteboards and Web 2.0 tools

Mary Tonios – Monash program and ICT Bootcamp – what amazing energy she has to help these kids aspire to great heights. For those who don’t know a team from Sandringham beat all comers in the eGames expo to become world champs I hope Mary will fill in the details.

Marc Lineham got the staffroom buzzing when he brought in the DSi to “play” with. Marc has been looking at using the DSi as a tool to work with his students to help them achieve. Looking forward to hearing the results.

Sandra Murphy is always ready to try new things, exploring and using flipcams to record some of her coaching sessions, and much much more.

Congratulations to all for some absolutely brilliant work across the college, and lets keep trying new things to Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate and Evaluate.

Inspired but not sure where to start….add a comment here (have I mentioned I love getting comments, it lets me know I am making some sort of sense… or not , shoot me an email to organise some time for a chat or check out “The Redback Project“. You could use your Tuesday PD time to check out Tech Talk Tuesday – an open forum for teachers in Victoria wanting to get started or further explore the world of 21st C tools for teaching and learning.
Tech Talk Tuesday “This professional learning network has been established to create an informal weekly discussion around technology in education. This session is open to all Victorian educators; we ensure a supportive environment and welcome people with all levels of experience with ICT. Bring along your own ideas and strategies to share, or simply come along and learn from the discussion.”

Take little steps, it will get easier.

~ by Suz Arnott on November 6, 2009.