Out with the old! in with the new!

Posted on December 11, 2008 by Judy O'Connell

The school year is over for us…but NOT for me. I started the year with high hopes, and conclude the year with a record of successes and failures. Typical year!!

Boys are gone and most school staff are gone except for the dedicated core who can’t stop planning, preparing, and working – always looking for better ways to serve their education community.

I am proud to say I am queen of all I survey – rubble, rubbish, sledge hammers, broken glass, and sweaty workmen ripping apart the school library. My staff are gone, but my cool architect, Cecilia Kugler from CK Design, and I are meeting, ringing, planning, and playing with colours, designs, and more. Cecilia and her team have been an amazing inspiration, and we are looking forward to the fruition of the plans that have been developed. Thank you CK Design!

These holidays we are dealing with Stage 1A! of four stages. We will keep rolling out the stages during the year, and into the next. But the worst part of the overhaul will happen over these holidays, with paint, carpet, and major layout changes being accomplished. During Term 1 we will get our new shelves and our new furniture. Next will be our brand spanking new service desk – a beautiful marble and glass look! After that new offices, new learning spaces and more. But first the basic changes that underpin the re-design of our mulitmodal learning environment for our students.

But as I write this it’s just plain devastation and I’m regularly being evicted to work on my computer up in the staff dining room. Bonus is the ready access to coffee!!

A new Horizon for me and for you

Posted on December 8, 2008 by Judy O'Connell

The 2008 Horizon Report, Australia and New Zealand Edition, has recently been released, and is available online, and to download making it an easily accessible and important addition to your professional reading.

The Horizon Report series is the product of the New Media Consortium’s Horizon Project, an ongoing research project that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression within higher education around the globe. This volume, the 2008 Horizon Report, Australia–New Zealand Edition, is the first in a new series of regional reports, and examines emerging technologies as they appear in and affect higher education in Australia and New Zealand in particular.

Information on all the Horizon Reports may be found, and downloaded, at
http://www.nmc.org/horizon

Participation on an Horizon Project Advisory Board is by invitation, and so I’m thrilled to have been invited to join the first Horizon Report for K-12

This is really exciting for me! I can’t make it to Dallas for the launch of the Advisory Group (no secret sponsors), but I will really relish the opportunity to contribute in some small way to this project. I will be joining my fellow bloggers Kim Cofino (International School, Bangkok), Julie Lindsay (Qatar Academy, Qatar), Gary Putland (edNA Australia) and Westley Field (Skoolaborate and MLC School, Sydney) in this new endeavour. I don’t know the others, except for the inspirational Alan Levine from NMC, and Marco Torres.

Horizon.K12 is a new project that applies the process developed for the New
Media Consortium’s Horizon Project with a focus on emerging technologies for elementary and secondary learning institutions.

Members of the K-12 education community are encouraged to follow the Advisory Board’s progress as the discussion unfolds.

Outstanding edublog awards

Posted on December 7, 2008 by Judy O'Connell

I want to thank the amazing folks who have nominated this blog for the annual Eddies awards – The 2008 Edublog Awards. It’s an honour to be nominated, and to be able to ‘wear’ the badge proudly for the 2008 nominations.

There are many many people who do a tremendous job sharing information and knowledge via their personal or group blogs.

We are all richer for this sharing. Thank you for the nomination!!

Now its time for all good friends in the blogosphere to visit the extensive list of fabulous nominations in a wide range of categories to expand your RSS reads, and cast your votes for your favourite.

Check out the excellent nominations in the category Best Library/Librarian blog and cast your vote! I’m honoured to be included alongside:

Lorcan Dempsey’s weblog
UoL Library Blog
Paul Walk’s weblog
Hey Jude
Joyce Valenza
Blue Skunk Blog
TechnoTuesday

Iran + Blogging

Posted on November 26, 2008 by Judy O'Connell

Four international students at Vancouver Film School, Aaron Chiesa, Hendy Sukarya, Lisa Temes and Toru Kageyama created a thought-provoking short film entitled “Iran: a nation of bloggers” for their final term 3 project.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “ Iran + Blogging “, posted with vodpod

The Time Machine: START HERE!

Posted on November 26, 2008 by Judy O'Connell

Great “choose your own adventure” via Youtube media. I love this idea – let the students make their own media adventures!

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “The Time Machine: START HERE!“, posted with vodpod

The 2008 Edublog Awards!

Posted on November 26, 2008 by Judy O'Connell

My Nominations for The 2008 Edublog Awards are:

1. Best individual blog : Teaching and Learning Design – Dean Groom

2. Best group blog: Information Literacy Meets Library 2.0

3. Best new blog: And Another Thing – Sue Tapp

4. Best resource sharing blog: CogDogBlog – Alan Levine

5. Most influential blog post: The future of online learning – 10 years on – Stephen Downes

6. Best teacher blog: Cool Cat Teacher – Vicki Davies

7. Best librarian / library blog: Tame the Web – Michael Stephens

8. Best educational tech support blog: Mobile Technology in TAFE – Sue Waters

9. Best elearning / corporate education blog: Jane’s E-learning Pick of the Day – Jane Hart

10. Best educational use of audio: Audio Recorder

11. Best educational use of video / visual: The New Media Literacies

12. Best educational wiki: Web 2.0 Cool Tools for Schools – Lenva Shearing

13. Best educational use of a social networking service: Horizon Project 2008

14. Best educational use of a virtual world: Skoolaborate

Presentation power online

Posted on November 22, 2008 by Judy O'Connell

Thanks to a post from Elizabeth Clark, I’m excited to say that I agree with her that 280 slides has wonderful potential for teachers and students alike. In fact, this will become a key teaching tool for me in 2009, as I get my students away from desktop applications and into collaborative online tools.

This is a great place to start. Kids are all too familiar with powerpoint, youtube, and …..uh,oh , google images. How do we make the use of these tools more organic?

For my own presentations, and theirs – this is the go! Why?

Because 280 Slides is a free web-based service where you can “[c]reate beautiful presentations, access them from anywhere, and share them with the world.” It allows you to

import existing PowerPoint presentations
access your presentations from any computer with an internet connection
use media from services like Flickr and YouTube
use built-in themes
automatically save and recover your presentations
download your presentation to PowerPoint
publish your presentation on SlideShare, e-mail it, or embed it in a website
create your presentations on the web in your browser without downloading any software

I totally love that it works basically the same way as blogs, wikis and nings – use a url or upload an image to put it into your presentation. You can search YouTube or Vimeo to add some multimedia, as well as uploading something.

So students can make their movies, store their images – all online – then embedd them into their presentation – and download, upload, share and …… so the online conversation continues with the power of cloud computing.

Good one!