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I’m in the process of finalising our ICT budget for 2010 and am interested to know how others are managing. I am conscious that school’s are in a constant state of playing catch-up, not to have the latest and greatest gadgetry, but just to have a stable network with working and accessible technologies for learning. The financial demands to meet recommended computer to student ratios are huge.

Over the last few years, we have invested much money into our infrastructure – both wired and wireless networks. This has been crucial in ensuring each learning space / classroom has sufficient connectivity in the short and longer term.

Developing our network to have dual-platform capabilities has meant the acquisition of the necessary Mac and Win servers (AD integration). This has also included buying in the specialist engineering time to make this all happen successfully. Students work on iMacs and Macbooks accessing both Mac and Windows via a Bootcamp partition. All teachers are administrators to a Macbook with virtual access to Windows via Parallels.

Love them or hate them, Interactive Whiteboards  (Promethean Activboard) are a main feature of each classroom. For equity reasons, it has been important for us to complete this rollout across the school this year. For many teachers, the inclusion of an IWB in their classroom, coupled with a Macbook, has brought positive a mind shift in working with and learning new technologies. Teachers are increasingly aware of the need to transform their practice to a more constructivist one using 21st century / web 2.0 technologies. The wheel is slowly turning!

As many of you would know, there are all the hidden and sometimes forgotten costs including: annual software upgrades, licensing agreements, consumables, internet usage – just to name a few. Then there are the costs of printers, cameras (still. video, Flip style), iPods, scanners, microscopes, wireless keyboards, mice and so on.

I won’t even bother to elaborate on the critical costs of specialist technical support and professional learning.

I realise and understand that contextual influences impact on decision-making and forward planning, especially in preparing and managing ICT budgets. Every school is different, yet the same. Aren’t we all in this for the same purpose – learning?

We are doing OK, but there never seems to be enough money.

How are you doing?  What investment is your school making?

The 2010 Australia Day Honours List contains a long list of worthy recipients, all of whom (I’m sure) have made a significant difference and impact to their respective communities – and of course, should be nationally and formally recognised.

As per usual the Honours List contains a list of well and not so well-known folk from all walks of life – sports, science, entertainment, medicine, politics, defence and so on.

The specific nomination process involves members of the public, or a community group, to  nominate individuals for one of the various awards. I wonder how many school communities have ever considered nominating a retiring or outstanding educator / teacher, who has made a significant contribution to the lives of young people and to the education profession. My guess is that this would be a rarity.

In searching through this year’s honour list the number of educators receiving awards appears to be thin on the ground. With the increasing public scrutiny of one of the noblest professions, there seems to be a decrease in public gratitude for educators. I reckon you could only count on one hand the number of good-news educator stories from the past year that made front page news.

In searching through the recipients of the Australian of the Year (since 1960) – surprise, surprise, not one person being honoured for their service to education. Plenty of scientists, doctors, sports stars and entertainers though.

As we commence another school year, perhaps it’s worth taking time to reflect upon, recognise and celebrate your own service to Australian education. You never know – in 365 days from now, you just might receive a call from the Governor-General.

Since returning from leave only two weeks ago after chilling out with my family on the mid-north coast of NSW, my work life as a Deputy Principal of a large southern suburbs primary school (600 students) in Adelaide has returned to what I would call – somewhat normal.

So what’s normal?

Normal day to day work and life as a Deputy Principal can only be described as – ‘Expect the Unexpected.’

Here’s the run-down over the last fortnight, planned and unplanned, in no apparent order:

• Following up and managing a complaint where a student had created a Facebook group to say unsavoury things about his teacher. Parent very supportive in follow up actions. Tick.
• Supporting a Year 2 teacher with a challenging student – young dedicated passionate graduate teacher doing some great work here to support and bring about behavioural change
• Internet down – router spat the chewie – on the phone to customer support – had to reboot this and that, including Telstra NTU – trying to explain to teachers the reason the internet’s down when they really needed it.
• Keeping a watchful eye on the weather channel and clock during recess and lunch breaks to enforce our hot weather procedures – has been a feral all week with daily midday temperatures hovering around 40 degrees celsius
• Rescuing a young student from a locked toilet cubicle. Had to kick the door in. Karate kid would have been impressed.
• Co-presenting with Principal at Regional Leaders Day – over 500 leaders – re our school’s  21st century learning / professional learning communities initiatives
• Coordinating our the next phase of our Tech/ IWB roll-out. Only 4 classes to fit-out in early 2010 with Promethean Board / Ultra-Short Throw Projector and Macbook (dual-platform) package – wireless keyboard, mouse etc
• Planning (playing with) for use of Mac OS X Server tools – wiki server, podcast producer etc
• Working with the Principal to coordinate the next stage of our Building the Education Revolution  (BER) project – just a cool $3 million dollars
• Completing the final scope of works for our Environmental Learning Centre – veggie garden complex
• Compiling a heap of documentation for our Annual General Meeting – Sports Report, Wellbeing Report etc
• Reviewing and updating our school oval’s health regime with our groundsman in light of existing watering restrictions
• Coordinating rosters / timetables for camp week, when half the school is away on camp – Year 7s to Canberra
• Meeting with Facilities Manager and school bursar on a myriad of facilities issues
• Networking and supporting colleagues from local schools re ICT related issues
• Rebuilding the school website for a launch in 2010 – with ICT tech support – using Joomla
• Speaking at junior primary assembly – presenting awards in a packed hall of parents and students
• Preparing ICT budget for 2010 – 1 to 1 looks close – need to focus extra attention on planning for this in 2010
• Providing PD for teachers in preparing / creating end of year multi-media productions
• Working with small group of Year 7 students preparing Graduation DVD
• Conducting school open tours for prospective families – all 25 of them
• Coordinating transition for next intake of reception students for 2010
• Working with Year 6/7 student leadership team to coordinate and prepare for up and coming Gala Day – day of student enterprise
• Preparing for whole school community celebration night in a few weeks – with specialist music teacher
• Working through school photo day
• Releasing teachers for special education meetings with psychologists and support staff
• Preparing for and coordinating ‘Thank You Coaches and Managers Evening’ to acknowledge the efforts and commitment of our parent volunteers
• Helping a neighbouring colleague and loaning them a heap of sports gear for their sports day
• Updating our Bushfire Action Plan in accordance with new regulations
• Redesigning templates for Inquiry Learning / Integrated Unit Plans on wiki
• Attending Governing Council meeting

And the list goes on.

A typical fortnight ……………….. so glad I love my job.

My work life is centred around an incredible amount of media consumption, particularly the reading and viewing type, that it can be easy to neglect other forms of absorbing information – whether for work or pleasure.

So the last month on leave touring the eastern states with family in tow, allowed me the opportunity to re-engage with one of my favourite past-times – listening to music and audio. I really enjoy driving long distances and (aside from important family conversation) listening to music both old and new, comedy albums and catching up on those ‘banked up’ podcasts (esp edtechcrew).

Having spent a significant amount of time over the years travelling the countryside – the car music player has been a close companion, which has evolved in amazing ways.

In my early travelling days (mid-80s) I owned a beige coloured Datsun 200B and installed, which was at the time, a pretty flash car stereo system. For those who care to remember, I can fondly recall the constant inserting and ejecting of cassette tapes, fast forwarding and rewinding to favourite tracks, which became so worn that the tape would loosen from the spool and become a tangled mess. Tapes were not strategically kept throughout the car and could be  found in myriad of places from the glove box to the centre console, whilst others melted and became lost hidden somewhere with lost coins under the driver’s seat. I still have 100 or so tapes that are quietly gathering dust stored in shoeboxes in the back shed.

This last road-trip though, was a far cry from those halcyon days. This time around, preparation involved downloading and organising music / audio into playlists and then syncing to my iPhone as well as the wife’s /  kids’ iPod shuffles. What a difference from just over 20 years ago.

As Graham Wegner had recently undertaken, I spent some time prior to the trip to check out some online music. I redeemed some freebie iTunes cards and downloaded a heap of fantastic tunes from favourite and new artists.

The most airplay on our trip, and also at the request of the kids, was given to an album by Mick Thomas & The Sure Thing – ‘Spin Spin Spin’. Being a long time fan of Thomas’s work (esp of Wedding Parties Anything days) we sang along to some beautiful ballads and songs about everyday life. Have a listen to ‘As You Lay Sleeping’ – Thomas with Felicity Urquhart – one of the album’s highlights.

Unlike the worn out and now unused melted plastic cassette tapes of a bygone era, there’s a growing list of  ‘old and new’ mp3s eagerly waiting for a little bit of air-time on our next long road trip – Coffin Bay, January 2010. I can’t wait!

I love holidays. I’ll say that again louder – I LOVE HOLIDAYS. Did you hear me that time?

Make no mistake, holidays are an educators best friend. There is no doubt that after a gruelling 10-week term, educators need to ‘pull up stumps‘ for two weeks to catch their breath, enjoy some R and R, before heading off for another ten-week round.

Throw in the added benefit of long-service leave and there you have the perfect opportunity to escape the hustle and bustle of school life to regenerate those tired batteries.

I have been fortunate enough to combine these two luxuries to spend some quality family time for the last four weeks travelling around the mid-north coast of New South Wales – staying at tourist parks in our trusty camper.

Our family has grown to love these camping / caravanning holidays. The kids (now 9 and 11) have grown accustomed to long road trips, developing short term friendships with other young folk from all over Australia (mainly) and jumping pillows – just to name a few.

From an adult’s perspective, the time away has been the perfect tonic for both my wife (also a busy educator) and I, to spend  valuable time with our kids and each other – chilling out and enjoying the simple pleasures of life, eg – toasting marshmallows on an open fire in the stillness of the late evening.

At home we keep a large laminated map of Australia (prominently displayed in our family room) where small pins are keenly added at the completion of each trip, signifying locations where we have stayed overnight. We are now up to 33 pins in just under five years since buying the van. We have also calculated that we have spent approximately 180 days away in the camper over this time, representing about 1/18th of my daughter’s life, who is nearly nine years of age.

This has become a real lifestyle choice for us – especially getting away to seaside locations in the heat of summer. Port Elliott and Coffin Bay being our two annual summer pilgrimages.

We are already looking to plan our 2010 holiday adventures – not sure where, but we’ll certainly be looking to add a few more pins on the map.

Where are you heading for your next holidays?

You’d think buying one of those new flip style video cameras would be a relatively simple thing to do. Well that’s what I thought a few weeks ago, until I started to investigate. With the rapid advancement of technology, it is often tricky to find that ’sweet spot’ when buying a new gadget. As soon as you buy something new it is already dated and something bigger and better has already replaced it. 

I have had my mind set on a Flip Mino HD – so much so that I was going to buy 6 of these for our school. Being the closet perfectionist that I am, I wanted to ensure that the camera specifications would meet the needs of users, and most importantly the connectivity with the main video editing software, in this case being iMovie 09.

Then somewhere along the way, I discovered the Creative Vado, a fantastic cam by all reviews – but not having the appropriate file formats for editing into iMovie.

In the last week or so, I was introduced to the Kodak Zi6 – with rave reviews from users and excellent compatibility with iMovie 09.  Ok this looks like being the cam of choice – let’s find a good price and buy the darn thing.

Just about ready to make an online order, when I discovered that the next iteration of the Kodak being the Zi8 has some extra cool features that make the previous model look dated. Features include: image stabilisation, HD quality video, external microphone jack , amongst others. 

OK ready as I’ll ever be, let’s make the purchase – when only to discover, it hasn’t been released yet. Bummer!  Only then it will be released in September in the USA and not into Australia for who knows how long. Double bummer!!

How long must one wait?

I must admit it, I’m addicted to Twitter. It’s become the central part of my Personal Learning Network (PLN) and is just plain fun to use on a daily basis. I was one who originally found Twitter hard to comprehend and fathom, but after reading some simple advice – I gave it a decent shot in early March this year. The advice was to follow at least 100 people for 100 days. I took this one step further and endeavoured to follow 100 people in 100 minutes – and that’s when the ‘penny dropped’. 

At first, I wasn’t overly selective in choosing people to follow – in fact, my scattergun approach was to search through others’ lists of followers, check out their profile and recent twitter histories to make a quick judgement call on whether to follow or not. Upon reflection, I’m not sure whether I managed to follow 100 people in 100 minutes, but within days, my list of followers started to grow.

It’s been 5 months now since my first ‘tweet’ and it’s fair to say that my Twitter journey has definitely resembled the twitter life cycle curve as described by Alan Levine. With Tweetie on the iPhone, I’m literally seconds away from posting or scanning through the (insert collective noun) of tweets that come rolling in throughout the day. 

So what have I experienced?  

I’ve gained engaging connections / networks – local and global. I’ve shared and received ideas, thoughts, and opinions. I’ve been able to throw out questions and get almost immediate responses / answers to just about anything.

Essentially, I have felt increasingly connected to a global learning community which has added another dimension and conversation to my already enriched and blessed family / work life.

Ok – so if it’s so great, then why aren’t more people using Twitter. As one of 4o staff at my school, I’m the only one who uses Twitter. Too often I hear, ‘I haven’t got time to do that’ or ‘I only participate in real conversations’. I’m past the defensive or reactive response to these statements, rather I graciously ignore and consider my participation in the Twittersphere as one of privilege.

One day, in the not too distant future, there will be others, just like me over 200 days ago), who may ask the question, Why use Twitter?  At the same time, I think the real question needs to be – Why not use Twitter?

I love learning = I love technology.

I love technology = I love learning.

I can’t imagine returning to the days of teaching (or living) without technology as we now know it. For old times sake, I don’t think I would even really want to. Yet sadly there are many educators who still live and work in a world where technology is almost non-existent. They fail to embrace and keep up with not only, advancements in technology, but also advancements in learning. They just bumble along doing the same-old same-old.  They remain static inactive users of technology. They have yet to experience ‘anywhere anytime’ learning and have barely used a laptop or handheld mobile device. What’s worse – they don’t want to learn technology. How can this still happen as we near 2010?

I don’t want to learn technology = I don’t want to learn.

I don’t get it.

I LOVE TECHNOLOGY ……… I LOVE LEARNING

I’ve been a huge fan of digital storytelling and creating slideshows using family and holiday photos. Putting together slideshows in iPhoto 09 is fun and easy, but after a few dozen shows the same transitions / effects start to wane. So I recently investigated some alternatives, to which there are stacks online (to choose from). However, I wanted one that would integrate well with iPhoto, Garageband and the other Mac apps on my Macbook Pro.

Hell0 – PulpMotion. What a fantastic, easy to use, fun and effective application, which allows you to create super professional looking presentations / animations using your own pictures, videos and music. Love the drag and drop features and export choices, eg  video postcards by email, or podcast a video animation using GarageBand, copy to iPod, upload web page and so on.

Check out the video here. Free trial download too. Combine the use of this app / software with some effective instruction in media literacy and you’ll get highly engaged, motivated learners creating, telling and sharing stunning digital stories.

Every day we are bombarded with new and innovative gadgetry which finds its way into classrooms – with the potential to revolutionise teaching and learning. (Heard that one before?) Unlike just a few years ago where the focus was on keeping desktop computers in school computer suites operating smoothly with the basic fit of MS Office software – the recent trend in learning technologies has most certainly been in equipping classrooms with Interactive Whiteboards, data projectors, coupled with access to mobile devices such as laptops / netbooks, iPods, phones and so the list goes on. 

In the early days there was limited choice in what to purchase. In many cases this amounted to a desktop computer package which included the standard 15/17 inch monitor, tower and keyboard / mouse. 

It’s also worth mentioning the amount of money that schools have invested in keeping together a stable and functional ICT infrastructure / environment let alone on the latest tech device. Ongoing funds need to be injected into wired and wireless network upgrades as well as for furniture, software licensing and peripheral devices such as printers, scanners, and cameras etc.

With an increased focus on personalised learning, the demand for, and use of technology has also become more personalised. How do you utilise technology to personalise learning in your classroom? How has this changed over the last five years?  Here’s a realistic, simple hypothetical that I would love some reader comment / feedback on – to see the level of variance in classroom technology use.

You are a primary (elementary) school teacher with $10 000 to spend on purchasing technology. The classroom is already equipped with an interactive whiteboard and data projector, with good access to a wireless network, although the internet connection is not overly reliable. You are conscious of your students developing the specific ICT standards, skills and dispositions as outlined in the ISTE NETs.  Please note that your students have no additional access to technology via computer suites / labs or libraries.

Describe how you would make the best use of $10 000. What would you purchase and why?

All comments / feedback welcome.

 

 

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