As dawn broke, the kookaburras laughed…

School captains pay respect

As if to reflect the grateful thanks and the sense of national pride of those who attended the Dawn Anzac Day service at Hawkesdale,  two kookaburras could be heard laughing just as we were about to commence our solemn service.

Anzac Day is a day and time for reflection, to acknowledge those who have fought in wars to defend our country.  According to our Australian War Memorial site

ANZAC Day – 25 April – is probably Australia’s most important national occasion. It marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War.

ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The soldiers in those forces quickly became known as ANZACs, and the pride they took in that name endures to this day.

It is 98 years since the Anzacs landed in Gallipoli. Hawkesdale now has a reflection space as part of its main streetscaping. This is the second year that a Dawn service has been held.  More than 200 people attended. The scout and cub group had a sleepover at the local hall and were in force  as part of the gathering. An ANZAC requiem, Reflection Poem – Ode to the Anzacs by K. K. Linton, an ANZAC prayer, a student reflection and the Ode were read by Hawkesdale P12 College students and members of the Scout group. Wreaths were then laid by community groups and community members. The service finished with the Last Post, a one minute silence and finally the Reveille or Rouse as the flag was raised by the scouts. After our national anthem, the flag was lowered to half mast until lunchtime.

At the end of the service HADDAC (Hawkesdale and District Development Action Committee) offered a sausage in bread, hot drinks and anzac biscuits to those who attended.

Sharing War Stories of our Ancestors

The two classes in action

Our year 6 students linked up virtually with Lismore Primary School (approximately 1 1/4 hours drive away) to share war stories of their great or great great grandparents. As Australia celebrates Anzac Day tomorrow, April 25th, to remember those who fought for our country, this was great use of polycom equipment and  smart boards to be able to connect and share.

The army uniform

Staff from both schools worked with Concetta Gotlieb (@chetty)  of See Share Shape on this project. It involved using the Polycom Videoconferencing equipment and our smart board to share a presentation by Lismore PS.

Innovative use of smartboards and polycom for sharing

Students researched their family’s involvement in previous wars, wrote a report or story to share and then using the web camera shared that story. One of our students brought her great grandfather’s army jacket complete with medals and cloth badges and share that with all. Students from Lismore shared a powerpoint presentation which included video footage of interviews with and ex Russian prisoner of war and his memories. Another Lismore student revealed what it was like to be a civilian during World War 2 with rations etc.

Illustrator uses Polycom to teach drawing

The link up was a direct result of a previous project with See Share Shape when an illustrator, Mark Wilson,  virtually taught  a number of virtual classes how to create drawings to illustrate stories. Mark had illustrated Jackie French’s story on Anzac Day, A Day to Remember

As it looked on smartboard

Tech Talk Tuesdays: Tools for Student Engagement

When: Tuesday, April 23rd 4-5pm Melbourne Australia time (gmt+10). Please note that we are now out of daylight saving time. Check the time and date here for your time zone. About this session:- Anne Mirtschin will lead a discussion on engaging students with technology. Discussion may centre around the following:-

• is engagement in learning important?
• what impact does it have on learning
• how do we know when students are engaged – how does it look, feel and sound?
• Sharing tools that participants have found to work
• Looking at google apps, starting with google document and how it can be used for collaborative learning, sharing, engagement etc. This has been one of my favourite tools.

If you cannot make this session, it would be much appreciated if you could add your answers to the above questions. Hope to see you with us. Here is the link to the recording of this session.

Creating an educational hashtag

Most of my working life is spent teaching at Hawkesdale P12 College but for one day per week, I also work for Digital Learning, Victorian Department of Education as a Web or Virtual Conference coach helping teachers in to use  Blackboard Collaborate, MS Lync, Skype and Polycom Equipment. There are 4 other coaches appointed to this position.

For some time, we have wanted to keep track of tweets that might mention virtual conferencing in education and learning.  However, we need a hashtag which needs to be unique and short in length. After some discussion, it was decided to use #edvc (educational virtual conferencing).  Education is the main objective so “ed” comes first, then the vc for virtual conferencing. Here is what I did:-

1. thought up a generic hashtag that was broad and global in nature and not confined to any specific organisation
2. checked whether #edvc was already used. Online searches failed to come up with any finds.
3. registered the hashtag with hashtags, tag definitions and twubs
4. sent out a tweet with the hashtag

A tweet displaying the new hashtag

The resultant photo is shared below:-

A student proudly shares her Great Grandfather’s army uniform

If you use twitter and conference virtually with others, it would be great if you could share with this hashtag.

Boston in Lockdown

This was the title of a presentation that a close online colleague of mine, Lorraine Leo and I made collaboratively for the Global Education Conference in 2010. In 2012, we share a presentation entitled Further Adventures of Teaching and Learning Across the Globe.

It is with some surrealness and eerieness that after many of our synchronous and asynchronous linkups, that have included many, many adventures including live linkups during  floods and hurricanes etc experienced by Lorraine and her contacts, that I am now chatting to her in gchat whilst she is in lockdown mode as police move in on capturing the suspects involved in the recent Boston bombings.  Here is some of Lorraine’s conversations.

http://www.wcvb.com/  We are in lockdown… this is how we are keeping updated.  We live in Watertown, but many areas here are affected. It is soooo quiet outside in this neighborhood, but from the news we can see that 10 minutes away there are a lot of people

She discovered that she was in lockdown through an email from another friend in Australia.

I asked Lorraine how she is keeping up to date with the news and she responded that the twitter hashtag #bostonglobe and the news channels including CNN and the Boston Channel are her source of information.

Our thoughts and prayers are with you Lorraine and all who are affected by this tragedy.

Minecraft in Education – Tech Talk Tuesday in Review

Stephen’s maths classroom

Stephen Elford (@EduElfie)  gave us a fascinating insight into his passion for minecraftEDU. He has successfully used minecraft – an online reality game that has captured the attention and engagement of students globally – in the maths/science classroom. See his youtube channel for actual demonstrations Successful application sharing in Blackboard Collaborate enabled participants in real time, or whilst viewing the recording to see the exact nature of this amazing world and its potential for learning. Participants came from Pakistan, USA and Australia.

The teacher controls in minecraftEDU

You can watch this fabulous presentation by clicking on the link to the recording below or watching the video version at video version of this session on blipTV which Peggy George of Classroom2.0LIVE has created for us. Thanks Peggy!

Educationalists can join the google group on minecraft Do you have sites to share or networks to join?

An essential online profile

My incomplete edmodo profile!

This note came to me from Vivienne Tucker, the moderator of an edmodo group in education.

I am always happy to have new teachers join our group. However, I have become very wary of accepting requests to join if the teacher profile is completely empty. If you know of teachers wanting to join, I really need a little information in the profile, so as to be sure it is a bona fide teacher, and not a student posing as a teacher. There has been a little trouble with this in some groups. I have quite a few requests from teachers with profiles which are completely empty. Cheers

This is also true of me when accepting contacts in skype or twitter, unless the person has added a note to explain what their interest and role is in education, I do not accept them. The balance is between transparency  and sharing too much personal information.

Why do’t people maintain an adequate profile on online sites:-

• complete newbie and do not know how to complete their profile or
• feel cyber insecure and do not wish to divulge too much about themselves but then risk the problems of not being accepted into some wonderful communities and networks.
• do not understand the significance of having an online profile and/or the potential networking that can evolve.
• time poor – hurriedly register for recommended sites and forget to fully complete the profile

Where to edit a profile!

It is essential to have a good profile (or digital id/badge), an online site or public web presence, eg a blog, a wiki, a personal webpage, a twitter id and a consistent avatar in this world of emerging technology. Potential connectees have somewhere to learn more about you, understand what you are passionate about or interested in and make and maintain connections. Online business cards are an option - about.me, flavorsme (See Jess McCulloch flavorsme) etc

Why be connected?-

• share conversations/learn from and with each other
• stay up to date with trends, grab new ideas
• get help with issues/problems NOW!
• enjoy Professional Development 24/7
• supportive friendship group
• be part of  a “global, networked brain”

A profile should share or feature

• online sites eg blogs, websites etc
• current position or interest in education (if an educator)
• twitter handle, linked in profiles
• Passions and interests

Check out some sites to find where your profile may be found online – peekyou, tagwalk  Do you know of others? What can you share? Ensure that your blog or online space has an ‘About Me’ page or widget.

What would you add to the importance of an online profile? Hmm… that reminds me that I must complete my edmodo profile!