Hi, I am Anne Mirtschin a teacher at Hawkesdale P12 College, in country western Victoria, Australia. In 2007 and 2008, I taught grades 3 through to year 12, IT. I also teach accounting and am passionate about the use of web2.0 in education. In 2009 I teach years 7 -12 Information and Communications Technology and Year 11 and 12 Accounting.
With my national award certificate
Recipient of the Microsoft joint Innovative Teacher of the Year 2008 for Victoria, Australia, ICTEV Leader of the Year 2009 and the Bailleu- Myer Rural Leadership Scholarship Winner 2009 (through Country Education Project) Recipient of a highly commended “Excellence in Teaching Award“, 2009. Also proud and honoured to be one of three finalists in the Victorian Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD) “most innovative curriculum awards” for 2009. Advisor for the flatclassroom project.
A rich picture case studies grant by the Victorian Dept of Education, allowed us to create podcasts with grade 6 students in 2007. Our students have called themselves technokids. The emphasis was on the use of web 2.0 to empower learning. View our podcasts at www.murch.podomatic.com Since then I have set up a backyard blog and a classroom blog.
It was a steep learning curve for me and a curve that is still only at the beginning. Students and I have had to learn together. Peer mentoring has taken place and excitement has been put back into learning. Authentic audiences, teachable moments and student directed learning are now part of the norm. Digital storytelling is another passion and my user name is murch at www.teachertube.com
Social networking has been of prime importance and my membership of www.classroom20.com and now twitter has allowed me to meet other teachers interested in the same skill development. This has enabled me to extend my social network well beyond our classroom walls and my country. One of the highlights was the use of skype to videoconference students in Korea. Gail Casey was teaching English there in 2007, and after 5 days of trialling we started to get some powerful learning happening.
I decided to not only use web 2.0 with grade 6 but to extend it to all my other IT classes. Grade 3/4 had a little webkinz pet called Patch which led us to virtual worlds at www.webkinz.com.
Another exciting project has been Ping.
This is a journal documenting my journey. Join me on it. A wiki detailing software used and how to use it can be found at www.ejourneys.wikispaces.com This year I have also had teacher professional leave together with Jess McCulloch to lay the eplanks for a web2.0 school.
Some of the biggest projects that I have been involved in with my classes are the amazing flatclassroom and netgened projects with Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis . I was fortunate enough to be lead teacher with the netgened project.
After 12 months, my clustr map is to be reset, so I am just going to grab a copy and paste it here. It was comments and the dots on my clustr map that have motivated and inspired me so much. So thank you if you are one of them.
Mentions made of our work
Student/Teacher newsletter of the Victorian Education and Early Childhood Development, October 2008
Hawkesdale P12 College in Learning Impact Awards at the !DEAS 2008 conference
Edublogs awards nomination for best teacher blog.
Storytelling with Shawn Callaghan in elluminate using my twitter story as a foundation.
Twitter/murcha
Del.icio.us/murcho
GMail/Anne M
Blog/Anne M
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27 responses so far ↓
Graham Wegner // January 15, 2008 at 10:36 am |
Great to see more Aussie teachers dipping their toes into the Web 2.0 waters – we need more switched on educators like yourself prepared to take some risks and work out the potential benefis to our students.
Heather Robinson // January 16, 2008 at 2:25 am |
Hi Anne, Congratulations on your blog and all your fabulous work with Web 2.0 and the Rich Picture Case study you submitted to the Department. I’m going through your work today and am wondering if you are available for a direct chat about the range of stuff you’ve included and what would be your priorities to attach – given some capacity limits we’re facing – that would best reflect the process. It all looks so good it’s just hard to choose! Sorry for interupting the holiday with worky queries. All the best, Heather
Janice Youl // February 13, 2008 at 2:49 am |
Dear Anne
You work is inspirational. Heather Blakey has been singing your praises (and work of your students) for ages, but I have not responded until now. I think your work at Hawkesdale P-12 College would make a good fetaure for our Education Times and ePotential. Kind Regards, Janice Youl, eLearning Unit, DEECD, Victoria, Australia.
bibomedia.com // March 6, 2008 at 6:53 am |
Myles Webb // June 16, 2008 at 7:26 pm |
What an amazing site. Its really early here in NZ at the moment… 7:26am and Im suppossed to be running a Rugby tournament, but I’ll come back with my students (Y8) 13 Im not sure exactly if thats the same as Australia and check this site out in detail… looks fantastic!
Myles Webb, R6, Tamaki Intermediate
Auckland, NZ. tamakitoday.blogspot.com
Tony Searl // July 17, 2008 at 6:21 am |
Wow, what you have achieved in what I see as a short time is just mind blowing Anne. I need inspiration as at present I am feeling overwhelmed with all this web2.0 newness, baby steps it is. I’ll be back.
Knowledge Bank Online Conference Session 1 « LisaHillSchoolStuff’s Weblog // July 23, 2008 at 12:31 pm |
[...] Elluminate. The first sessions was a really inspiring presentation from two wonderful teachers, Anne Mirtschin and Jess McCulloch from Hawkesdale P-12 College. They have 10 minutes tech spot sessions at staff [...]
Richard Taylor // July 30, 2008 at 2:32 pm |
Dear Anne,
I was just having a quick look at your blog and thought I would contact you to see if you or your colleagues might like to try our beta educational games site http://www.tutpup.com
It’s entirely free and we have quite a few international users (20,000+) but many of our school users are in the UK where it’s now the summer holidays, so things have slowed down a bit on the site. We are currently working on some new games and a rewards/incentive system, most of which should be deployed by Sept.
It’s nice to see so many great Australian education blogs, although I can’t see any from Wangaratta (VIC) where I went to school. My wife and I used to own a farm at Johanna which is only about 100 miles from Hawkesdale, although this seems a long way from London where we now live.
Cheers
Richard Taylor
Director of Play@ Tutpup
London
Nik Bailey // July 31, 2008 at 1:45 pm |
What an amazing amount of information here! This has been really useful to help me drag my teaching kicking and screaming into the 21st century! I thought I was pretty up to date with all the latest technology…I was clearly very wrong! Thank you for sharing all of your hard work here, as others have said ‘what an inspiration!’
Amanda Sheppard // October 3, 2008 at 1:31 pm |
Hi Anne! Thanks for the comment on our Blog! We are so excited to get started! I used Picture Trail to make the picture Flick for the campout pictures, thanks to Mrs. Knee! Enjoy spring! We are bracing ourselves for the upcoming winter and enjoying the crisp fall weather!
Angie // November 8, 2008 at 11:32 pm |
It’s great to ‘run into’ a teacher technology person from the other side of the world! Keep up the great blog. I’ll be tuning in more.
Carole // November 22, 2008 at 6:21 am |
Hi Anne
Thanks for the inspiration and practical examples. So many of us are following in your footsteps or trying to.
Some day would you comment on what timeframe is involved in your activities – number of periods per week, blocks of time etc? Flexible timetabling?
What does the ideal arrangement look like?
Carole
murcha // November 22, 2008 at 7:14 am |
Thank you Carole for your lovely comment. I will certainly put my timeframe up sometime as that could be of interest to others. I have been blogging for 15 months and experimenting with web2.0 for about the same time. It has taken about 12 months to work out where we could go with it all and teach the students the necessary skills. However, now that some have started and have advice, it would not take as long for others following. It is great when others are forging ahead as you can adopt the best of their ideas and use some of your own. I will write a post on this but until I do, I have grade 2 for one lesson a week (50mins) all others for 2 lessons per week, except year 9/10 combo for 3 lessons. This year has been such a chaotic one as I also had teacher professional leave together with Jess McCulloch to lay the eplanks for a web2.0 school. However, the journey wont end and just keeps on getting more exciting.
Bill Oldham // December 12, 2008 at 1:47 am |
Just another note, Anne.
I think that between all the links from your sites and those of Sue Waters will be enough to keep me busy for the school holidays coming up.
Regards, Bill Oldhan
McB // January 13, 2009 at 9:29 pm |
Anne, I am very impressed by the use of tech in the classroom. My next mission is to use Skype to video conference my classes of 6th graders with other classes around the world. Looking for ideas on this adventure is what lead me to your page. I have a few questions to get started. I’ll start with asking how you tackled timezones when Skyping w/ the US and Canada. My school is just north of Atlanta, Georgia (USA), and I’m hoping to connect with Canada, Georgia (the country), Australia (would you volunteer to meet with us), and South Korea. Also, if you have contacts to help us sucessfully connect with those countries, I’d greatly appreciate it. Thank you! Enough questions…for now
mrmcb // January 14, 2009 at 3:20 pm |
Now I have a WordPress. Looking forward to your response.
andywhiteway // February 9, 2009 at 7:20 pm |
hello! I’m a teacher in the Uk and seem to share a lot of the same principles as your good self when it comes to using web 2.0 – it’s also really made me realise I ought to sort myself out and upload some of my students podcasts onto my blog. Thanks for the insight – I shall be back to read more.
Miss W. // February 13, 2009 at 7:40 am |
G’day Anne,
I was on the Edublogger birthday post and saw your comment, so thought I would visit your blog to tell you about a student blogging challenge that will be starting in March 2009.
Students may use either a class blog or their own individual blog. There will be activities each week and they will be posted on my class blog http://wyatt67.edublogs.org
If any teachers or students are interested in registering, please do so here http://wyatt67.edublogs.org/2009/01/18/a-new-year-means-a-new-challenge/
A similar challenge was held last year and nearly 500 students from nine different countries of the world took part. These students are still blogging and running a collaborative blog at http://studentfriends.edublogs.org
Graeme Draaisma // March 3, 2009 at 11:53 pm |
Would love to make contact with you in relation to Web 2.0. We have 3 staff on professional leave this year. We are researching the use of Web 2.0 in teaching and learning. You seem like a wonderful resource.
You can find me on twitter also – web2schools
Cheers
Kylie Hutchings Mangion // April 8, 2009 at 10:51 pm |
Hi Murcha
Some great example of how blogs are and can be so beneficial to education amongst some other great examples of ICT usage.
Thanks for your comments on my IVC blog
Cheers Kylie
Mr. Barlow // April 27, 2009 at 10:16 am |
Very impressive Anne !!!!
Bradon Gokey // May 4, 2009 at 6:37 pm |
Hi Anne,
If you want to add Facebook or email sharing buttons to your blog posts, there’s a plugin that does it for you: http://tinyurl.com/sharebuttons
Hope you find it helpful!
Cheers,
Victor Davidson // May 9, 2009 at 11:35 pm |
Hello Anne, thank you for such practical examples of community formation and social multitasking. I am looking for opportunities to Skype a Year 7 Information Literacy lesson. Would you like to conference?
Innovative Teaching | What does it take to be an effective teacher? // June 8, 2009 at 12:10 am |
[...] colleagues are still coasting, yet to be an effective teacher, it is a must. One such teacher is Anne Mirtschin from country Victoria. In 18 short months she has transformed the learning experiences for the [...]
Louise // June 12, 2009 at 2:06 am |
Hi Anne,
was wondering if you know anything about flip cameras – esp about whether they can be used with PCs and what else you need to support them?
Congratulatio0ns on what you are doing!
Louise
Louise // July 27, 2009 at 7:16 am |
Anne, I have been getting lots of notices that new posts have been placed on your blog – pornographic ones. Not sure if you c an do anything about it – if it is a problem at my end or your end – but I thought you’d like to know.
Louise
You are Never Alone » From the Coal Face: Skype in the Classroom#1 // November 18, 2009 at 10:13 pm |
[...] Anne Mirtschin, ICTEV Leader of the year for 2009, and recently the recipient of an excellence in Teaching Award, is a teacher at Hawkesdale P12 College, in country western Victoria, Australia. She writes I have done a lot of videoconferencing with skype over the last two years, with amazing learning outcomes. [...]