Warwick District's Learning Hub: - For the latest news, information and professional learning opportunities in our District!
My Favourite Success Story:
I developed an ICT Certificate Shell which is Blackboard based and is being widely used across the District by teachers taking their first steps into the SCPDF. This "template" has shared ownership allowing me to mentor people more effectively than if we were to be trading word documents via email.
This has the added bonus of bringing teachers into the world of Blackboard in a 'gentle' and scaffolded way, bringing them closer in practice to where they will be required to be in completing their ICT Pedagogical Licence.
At accreditation time we simply enrol the moderators into the space to check standard and leave the applicant with feedback about their progress.
My Current Spotlight Project is:
The 2009 Warwick District eLearning Conference via Elluminate set down for April 20, 2009.
This Project is a first-of-type delivery of teacher PD for EQ and the State using Elluminate as the sole package to deliver an online eLearning Conference. It is a team Project sponsored by 'Get Smart' and CAP, but with lots of support and facilitation from the LP folks: Jim D'Castro and Bob Rodgers deserving special mention and the Learning Innovations Centre where Brett Burgess and Adrian Grieg have been ever-helpful.
My role is Conference Convenor.
I'll attach the Program below if you are interested in the quality of presenter we were able to secure for the event.
Re: The eLearning Conference above...
We had a great time and the Elluminate platform worked faultlessly. Another bonus with Elluminate is the ability to record sessions allowing those who missed presentations or want to follow up with staff the chance to refer to the recorded product. All in all I'd recommend giving it a go!
Clayton - August 2009
Current Projects:
- 78 teachers with ICT Certificate portfolios based on the Blackboard shell that I created - most are targetting a November, 2009.
- Explaining the changes to the new ICT Certificate and DPL to everyone.
2009-2010:
Trying to get people to "front-end" the planning for ICTs when they are designing their Units of Work...we've long had these conversations about "front-ending" assessment in aligning our curriculum to the QCAR essentials and standards. Now we are buidling on that concept across the Warwick District through a new PD product called "Aligning with Diversity". Aligning with Diversity PD takes up the challenge of teachers considering the diverse learners in their classrooms (our District's response to the On the Same Page Agenda). After a day of learning and planning using the Essentials and the District e-Planner on their C4T laptops - teachers unpack their "fledgling" curriculum/Unit design to a range of professional support staff to critique, discuss and improve the Unit's rigour, authenticity, accessability etc. One of those rotations allows me to go over the Unit with each teacher with our ICT "goggles" on. This allows us to:
- explore ICTs in a meaningful and helpful context for the teacher;
- front-end the consideration of ICTs as a design feature of the Unit rather than something we come back to after the Unit is planned and add later;
- explore the notion that ICTs enable a range of productive pedagogies to come to life in classrooms;
- create the professional networks that the teacher can call on in designing subsequent Units (ie...I'll give Clayton, Louise, Cathy or Andrew a call) ;
- highlight the role of ICTs and adaptive technologies in making learning really engaging for students with diverse (and sometimes challenging) learning needs.
Highlights so far -
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Louise Alexander from DDSWQ Regional Office talks to the teachers about "indigenous perspectives" in their Unit. She does this by focussing the teachers on the fabulous resources she has collated and created in a Blackboard space, which she does a 15 minute precis of, for the whole group before/after the "chat" rotations on Day 2.
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Casey Park's (teacher at Yelarbon SS) brief synopsis and demostration of Kahootz for the recent group in the MacIntyre Cluster (Goondiwindi area) - Kahootz was the predominate driver of Casey's unit in which the Assessment Task focussed on her students each creating and populating a virtual world.
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James Hoffman's and Dale Minchenton's ICT rich Unit of community research for the students of Freestone SS.
- The next offering of Aligning with Diversity PD is September 17-18, 2009 at Warwick TAFE and registration is currently open at:
This year I will:
- Learn to say "no" or "yes but..."
