I have used podcasts often in my classes - my kids make them - cause they can mostly - we talk about why they might be good in other lessons and occassionally we make our own.

BUT today I had a breakthrough.  My students REALLY began to value the vast amount of information on-line.  We are studying the Hollywood Film Industry - media conglomerates, how they integrate, what controls are put in place etc.  and I was able to use a podcast from the advertising station from an episode where they interviewed Lance Still - Vice President of Marketing - New Line Cinema.  Anyway, not only was she a young successful woman doing amazing things in a man dominated industry (I teach girls) they are able to quote from her exactly how her role fits into the Hollywood industry.  SO COOL.  In NZ we do tend to be a little limited… and interviewing the marketing director for the local radio station with budges of less than $100 000 a year is a little tired.  Hearing  a woman who controls multi million dollar marketing campaigns talking was absolutely fantastic.

I am TRULY over people who think that the internet is bad because all kids do is copy-paste from wikipedia… I am SUPER grumpy about this today… check back tomorrow if you don’t want to hear me ranting… but honestly people… you has to actually give it a chance - find out what’s out there - open your mind to everything that is available and quit disadvantaging students because of shortsightedness and misconception about new technology.

PS I realise that if you are reading this blog, I’m preaching to the converted here and ‘you’ probably aren’t the ‘you’ I was appealing to in the paragraph above  :)  At least I have now off-loaded and my husband won’t have to hear it!

PPS I might even have encouraged them to listen to podcasts at they gym… the laughed at first when I told them that’s what I did… but I don’t know - I reckon they might come around yet!

Frustrated that I haven’t got time to blog.  I haven’t got time to download the K12 conference podcasts to my phone so I can listen to them…

Frustrated that I haven’t got anything more profound to say than, I have done my reports and I have 40 more due next Thursday.

Feeling so sick about my students’ exams that are in about 4 weeks…

Frustrated I am tied up doing marking and paperwork and it is taking up all my spare time…

Setting a goal to download 3-4 really good podcasts at lunchtime tomorrow then going to the gym at 3.30 to listen to them… this is me time….

Anyone else finding it weird that they are finding time (in their spare time) to think about all this exciting technology stuff…  Even when I go for a drive to the beach I am still thinking and talking to my husband about it… I feel like I don’t think about much else these days… You can’t kind of switch it off because the only time to think about it is when you have ‘finished’ working for the day!  Maybe it’s just me…

:)  Feeling less frustrated.  Yay for blogs!

What an awesome idea for using Flickr in the classroom.  Thanks to Ewan McIntosh - key note at Ulearn.

This group on Flickr is dedicated to getting 5 frames or images - usually in some sort of sequence - and then using them to tell stories. Perfect as writing or oral language starters with English students of ALL levels. I won’t have time to use it with my girls before exams which is a shame but Amanda is blogging her 5frames journey at thinking past the square.

She is reporting amazing levels of motivation from her students as they use this to tell stories.

Click here to see the original post on Flickr

I LOVE mashups so to find Splashr on Lesley’s blog made my day!

Splashr allows you to pick a set of photos - of your choice - from Flickr and make all sorts of fancy slide shows - with varying levels of interactivity. I made some examples using the key words “Paris” as we are planning a trip to Europe next year.
How inspiring as the students walk in to their Geography or History lesson to have photos flicking up at them from all around the world. How about as story starters for English lessons? Food and Hospitality, Design, Art, Science - biology in particular. The ways of using Flickr in the classroom are truly phenomenal. Splashr makes it so simple - and it looks so appealing.

At the recent ulearn conference, I heard keynote Ewan McIntosh talked about scanning children’s work and turning a projector to face out the window and projecting their work onto the walls of buildings around the school for everyone to enjoy. Imaging up-loading to Flickr and then letting Splashr do all the fancy work for you! There are so many options and I liked all of them so I will embed 2 examples that I created. The possibilities in the classroom are simply endless - if you have any examples perhaps you might like to comment below on how you might use this.

- click the tiny grey continue button to start then use the controls on the left hand side to play around…

If you would like examples of how this might be done in the classroom please click here to go to my other blog with a more education focus - I would hate to bore those of you just here for the technology with teacher talk!

And, because I couldn’t get enough of this site here is another one I made!

One of the things I am going to miss the most next year is my colleagues.

I have a great group of friends who I sit with every lunchtime.  We don’t talk about school.  We don’t engage in ‘professional dialogue  and I like it that way.  I have plenty of conversations with colleagues.  However, I find that lunchtimes are not always the best times to be having these…  Lunchtime is my time to re-group.  To be the real me - as opposed to “Mrs Twiss” and to relax and refresh before I hit the next group of kids.  I want to control who I have my professional conversations with and in what environment they are held.  Lunchtime is just not my time…

Anyway…  Today this is what we were laughing about and I just had to share it because it’s great  I have no idea where it came from - or who made it.  But it totally appealed to my sense of humour!

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I don’t really know where this blog is heading - it doesn’t seem to have a theme or anything so tonight I wanted to reflect on mentoring and the sheer power a mentor can give someone.

I am fortunate enough to have two mentors.  One is my husband, the other is my boss, colleague and I am lucky enough to have her also as my very good friend.  She says that she isn’t my boss but I am accountable to her, and she is my first port of call when I have a problem or need help… so she must be my boss…

Anyway, that is besides the point… for now…

Today I had a mini epiphany… one of my students isn’t as bright as I thought she was…

I teach this girl who is the most amazing student.  She is truly inspirational - the way she manages huge groups of people in a diplomatic way that makes no one feel unnoticed or unwanted but lets those who she doesn’t agree with know that they need to work damn hard to get her back onside… and everybody wants to be on her side.  She is hugely popular - but isn’t “popular” or “cool”.  She does what she wants to do, how she wants to do it.  I admire this.  Hugely.  It inspires me to be a better person.

Anyway… today I realised that she wasn’t gifted or bright.  For two years I have taught this girl and thought she was a genius.  Her grades are consistently high and she completes everything she does to an absolutely high standard… today I asked (for the first time ever) one of my colleagues about this particular student’s academic ability in other areas.  It turns out that this (media) is her thing.  She loves it.  It’s her passion - but today I realised I had never before questioned her ability.  I always took it as given that she was talented.  I truly believed in her.  Since I assumed she was bright I gave her extension tasks, I marked her work hard and always provided challenging feedback.  She rose to it.

I feel sad that I can’t do this for every student.  I don’t know how to go about it so that every single student (and this year I teach over 200) feels that I fully believe in their ability - to inspire and challenge them to achieve the best they can.

Today it clicked for me what people mean when they say have high expectations of your students and they will rise to this.  But how do you go about being sincere in this belief of your students.  How do you have high expectations through personalising learning?  Is it still a high expectation if you are setting the bar lower for one student than another because you know what is attainable for them?  What if they really can achieve higher than you think they can but you don’t ever give them the chance to?  What if you expect too much and they never meet your expectations and therefore see themselves as failures?

Tonight I realised how much I had been inspired by my mentor.

I was a teacher who was competent - more than competent - and willing to take a risk.  I was looking for a mountain - and yes!  I did find it and I have just reached the summit … and realised I have only just walked into the mountain range and beyond me is another - bigger - mountain that I would never have known about had I not climbed the first one.

I had little belief in myself.  I had never done anything outstanding.  I wanted to do something ‘cool’ and that would get me really, really excited - but I never knew what that was.  Until now.

I feel like I have had a complete turning point.  I have actually achieved goals that I set this time last year.  Doors are opening and I am EXCITED about what lies ahead in my career.  I have more goals and a vision.

My mentor picked me up and empowered me to make the decisions I have made, to follow through with the thinking I have had and supported me in leadership opportunities.

But - she does this for so, so many.  Other teachers and many students.  It is a true credit to her to be a mentor, to make one person feel so empowered but to do this for so many others is truly inspirational.

This post is nothing profound and I guess one day I will look back at this and cringe.  But for me, today, it has been really important to be able to verbalise my thinking - once it’s written it becomes so real!  And this, I think, is the type of on-going reflection that we, as professionals, should all be engaging in in some form or another.  Some write it in a diary, before blogs I never wrote down anything… I guess it’s the thrill of putting it out there for others to see and having to be 100% accountable for every word I have written.

I was super super excited to hear Steve Maharey announce the e-fellows for next year as it made it real! I had been saying to my husband for about a week - but what if it’s not really me - what if they don’t say my name! But they did!

I thought going back to school this term was going to be really tough. But it wasn’t as bad as I thought! After the ulearn conference I was EXHAUSTED but absolutely buzzing about all of the things I had seen, all of the conversations I had had and the new people I had met. Going back to school has brought me back down to Earth but it has reminded me why I am excited about all this technology - for the kids and for learning. Making learning exciting is exciting.

My fellowship next year will be looking at mobile phones. On the first day, Keynote Ewan McIntosh from Scotland really inspired me when he talked about getting mobiles out of students’ bags and figuring out how to use them.

Interestingly today I had a conversation with some of my students who thought it was terrible that people might be able to sit in class and text - but that’s not what this is about. This is about connecting with students, using mobiles to communicate with data projectors and LMSs, using them to facilitate collaboration between students and looking at making the most of the camera function.

I have also made a promise to myslef to keep updating my blogs… so I have begun with my web2.0 watching site . I love logging on and seeing where around the world I am getting hits from - which never ceases to fascinate me, so why not fuel that by building a really cool site that people want to come and visit and to follow. PS my reader account is now up to 5 readers! Yay it sat on 1 (my husband!) for about 6 months!

Here is a copy of my powerpoint - hopefully all of the links work!  Please feel free to comment!

Schol presentation

right now I am presenting in ulearn and the websites don;’t work… this was my post to show people how to edit their websites…

notice the way I use the word show… Thanks edublogs for being down for temporary repairs right when I was telling 25 people 1. how great edublogs is and 2. that they will all have their one websites within the hour and a half….

So, I’m getting ready for my presentations on Thursday at ulearn - I am very excited - but also very nervous! I am at the same time feeling very guilty as I haven’t posted for nearly TWO months! But I have been posting at www.tonitwiss.com/newmediatech…
So the thing that made me post is that I wanted to record my sheer terror as I am working through my presentation on blogging and have come up with this rather neat message…

We’ll be right back….

Many apologies, we’re currently cleanin’, fixin’ or upgradin’ edublogs and this means you’re experiencing a touch of downtime.

We know it’s a pain, in fact, we’re feeling your pain for you right now, however there are remedies…

Take a refreshing life-giving walk
Make a snack, use fancy dressings
Go tell how much you appreciate someone
Apologies again, hang 5 and we’ll be right back.

Can I just say that if this message pops up on Thursday morning… I can ASSURE you I will not be making a gourmet sandwich, or calling my husband to tell him I love him…

So…
What have I been up to lately…

I have done some presentations for the University of Waikato - it began by looking at interactive whiteboards with students but quickly moved on to what became known as the ‘whizzy stuff’ - a lot of the web 2.0 stuff that I post on my other site - new media tech. Also looking at the power of Moodle in the classroom.

I have had some very exciting news for next year and I will be posting about that very very soon - as soon as I am allowed!

Perhaps next post I will talk about something much more reflective on my teaching practice… right now all I am thinking is… thank goodness it’s the holidays… are they really nearly over!