The Big Question

What Makes a Great Teacher? This is a question that all teachers should be interested in and Amanda Ripley wrote a very interesting article about this very topic. It is centred around the experience of teachers in the Teach America program and is informed by student/teacher performance data.

Having just finished listening to the article for the second time (via “add to itunes as a spoken track” new in OSX 10.6) I thought I should share a 60 second summary for the time poor.

Teachers matter – More than anything else the quality of the teacher matters

Great teachers

• tend to set big goals for their students. – high expectations to use the language of Quality Teaching or the DLTF
• perpetually look for ways to improve their effectiveness – They are constantly evaluating and learning
• frequently check for student understanding
• they planned exhaustively and purposefully ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning

Teach America also researched the indicators that predict teaching excellence. They found that teachers that have a history of perseverance, a track record of sticking with things and overcoming obstacles. Secondly they score high in life satisfaction, they are very content with their lives.

What makes a great teacher? As I listened the second time I decided it very similar to what makes a great athlete, parent or friend. A long term commitment to being the best that you can be and a devotion to continuing to experiment and learn how to achieve this.

A great collection from ICT across the curriculum (ICTAC) from the UK. Comprehensive with a good description of each app.
ICTAC MEMO iPhone Apps for Education

Photo based searching just has to be the future. This is another reason mobile technology will dominate our schools in the future. Invest 2 minutes  watching the video below from google

Google Goggles is a visual search app for Android phones. Instead of using words, take a picture of an object with your camera phone: we attempt to recognize the object, and return relevant search results. Goggles also provides information about businesses near you by displaying their names directly in the camera preview.

I have just updated my collection of secondary blogs and wikis from the Wollongong Diocese. Our teachers and students have created an excellent collection of blogs and wikis (100’s) being used in powerful ways to improve student learning and teacher capacity. Below are a collection of Secondary blogs and wikis from the Wollongong Diocese along with a brief description of their intended purpose.

A Professional Reflection Blog

This blog captures a teachers ideas and thoughts around ICT in the classroom at http://smallsteps.edublogs.org.

Publishing and Assessment

A blog to assess the students through the use of technology. Excellent student reflections.
Survivor North Era

Resource Sharing and Organisation

http://scomagdalene.wordpress.com – sportcoaching webpage which is used to share materials with other teachers and to organise the resources used in the course.

Student Course Content Wiki
http://pdhpe12.pbwiki.com – Wiki to support the PDHPE HSC Course. It has a range of student created materials on there as well as other course material and resources that are useful in teaching the course.

Year 11 and year 12 economics http://11economics.edublogs.org, http://12economics.edublogs.org A blog to support students and a means to deliver fresh economics content.

A wiki that will help students and parents discuss and review math topics for years 7 – 10. Excellent. http://mathemaniac.wikispaces.com/

Welcome Year 7 History to your online classroom. This site has been set up for you to access set class work and additional material that may not be covered during class sessions. http://7history.edublogs.org/

A photography blog posting content for students and inviting their reflections on artwork. http://stage5wetphotography.edublogs.org/

Virtual Corpus Christi will enrich partnerships between students and teachers of Nazareth Catholic Primary School and Corpus Christi Catholic High School.  Through the virtual world the school communities will merge creating a natural transition for students between stages 3 and 4. http://virtualccchs.pbworks.com/

Finally John Larkin’s massive educational technology blog. Something for everybody here. http://www.larkin.net.au/

Know some other exceptional blogs or wikis from our Diocese? Let me know.

Image Creative Commons from http://www.flickr.com/photos/36330826951@N01/29921948/

K-12 Online is a FREE conference open to ANYONE by educators for educators around the world interested in integrating emerging technologies into classroom practice.
Now in its 4th year, K-12 online is an extraordinary opportunity to learn more about learning technologies and their application.
You can find out more about K-12 Online at the Getting Started page

If you do decide to participate in K-12 online, Mark Blake (@sirblakey on twitter) has managed to secure some google wave invites and we have decided that giving them to local teachers participating in the conference would be a great idea. Sign up for the conference and then send Mark or myself ( @mrwoolley on twitter) a message and we will sort the rest out.

No idea what google wave is? Find out more below

This is a wonderful, free collaborative learning opportunity. Please join us.

Click on the photo to view more images.

Wednesdays Illawarra Regional Science Fair was a great success as usual. The students continue to astound me with their creativity and knowledge and after 7 years of judging I still look forward to spending the day with students passionate about their learning.

Well done to Kerry and the team.

Get started for next year, all the details here

Today we will have a look at a range of story telling tools that will allow your students to develop and showcase their understandings in a range of powerful ways. We will be exploring the following tools and I have placed them roughly in ease of use order.

Storybird – Tour

Storybird promotes imagination, literacy, and self-confidence. Its a simple writing and publishing tool that is quick, effective and powerful. Look here for the first attempt by a 5 year old. Drag and drop illustrations, text boxes and a quality product created quickly.

A very nice tool. Currently you are able to publish it to storybird, accept comments but not embed elsewhere. Students can collaborate on books.

Tikatok

Tikatok is an online creative community whose mission is to turn kids into published authors. Students can use their own illustrations and publish their book, even order real paperback and hardcover books.

Dvolver – Movie Maker

Create a text based, comic style movie with simple animation. Its very simple, quick and effective. No easy download at this stage or character voices but very easy to use.

Xtranormal | Text-to-Movie

A powerful cartoon/animation creation tool. Choose your characters, background and exercise full control over voices, languages, gestures and framing. Students can create powerful movies, role plays, presentations and debates, quickly and free

Creating and enhancing your personal learning network to empower your profession learning.

The Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies has created a list of the Top Tools for Learning, compiled by learning professionals, for the last 3 years.
Having regularly been caught up in the conversation with peers and eventually getting to the writing stage I thought it fair that I share them here. They are almost in order and many are about my professional learning but all are powerful learning tools.

Diigo – Social bookmarking and collaboration at its best. Its a jump to move from Delicious however well worth the effort for the collaboration and annotation capabilities.

Google reader - My staple for professional learning. Via RSS I am connected to the best educators from around the world.

You Tube – The worlds second biggest search engine, what cant you learn here?

Slideshare – A powerful way to extend students audience and a great way to learn from others.

iPhone/iPod/ Touch and apps – An amazing learning tool for all ages. The quality of the apps make it so powerful and I am continually amazed at how essential my iphone is.

Google search – Old school but still quick and effective

Wordpress – This could just as easily be edublogs, powerful blogging for students and teachers

Evernote – I need this. Organisation and retrieval of ideas and learnings made easy

Google Docs – Collaborative editing and sharing. Keeping things open and accessible

OpenSim – Virtual worlds are so powerful. Just working with and watching the students involved in creating Virtual Corpus Christi convinces of the power of developing creativity and opensim is a great place to do it.