It is finished!

Well several things finished today……..

• Our School Term. Today was the last day for our Students, and as always it was sad to see the farewells between friends. Some of these friendships had built up over many years, these could be anything up to 12 – 14 if they went through PreSchool together.
• All Staff on deck. Tomorrow is our last official Staff Day for Teaching staff, and likewise we will see some staff move on too.
• My last lot of Study. I have just finished my last assignment in a “far too spread out timewise” Distance Education course.

It’s funny how I have watched teachers that have had to push and push for some of their students to hand in work on time, if at all in some cases. It always brings to me a chuckle, as i think “I couldn’t do that (be patient that is),” or , “why don’t you just get it over and done with and hand your assignment in.”

With almost uncanny clarity I was reminded by a small voice inside “don’t you have an assignment to finish Andrew?” Well yes, but it was meant to be in 2 1/2 years ago, I cant do it now.

Ah but I was challenged, not only by my inner-self, but by those around me. I sent off a quick email to my tutor, sort of a “hey I jut found my old assignment and thought i should finish it, but thought i better get the OK form you first” type of message.

He very quickly replied, “Great, but its got to be in by 14th December, as we cant mark that course after this year.” Say what now? 2 weeks! I had 2 weeks!

Well I am happy that I can now say “it is finished!”

Time to get stuck into the College Network and Infrastructure so that it is all on-line by start of Term 1 2008. This is our biggest Roll-Out ever and we are going to have to hit the ground on Monday running at full pelt. I just know next year is going to be a “big one.” I have lots of ideas, and I’m sure that I will be prodded with many more as the year goes on.

This time next year we’ll sit back and see what the outcomes were. I know I’m excited.

Fade to Grey

So, where do we begin? There were 7 of us at ELH2007 last week, and for most of us, there were huge plans, big dreams and the biggest of visions of what we would like to do. The worst thing would be to loose all of this.

This week I hope to get together with those of our Executive that attended. Our HOJS, HOSS, and ICT Learning Co-Ordinator K-12, and have a look at what they each want to do. I can see a brainstorming session coming on. The biggest issue will be timeframe. Obviously this is not going to happen overnight, but we need to start planning to make it happen. In the meantime the Teachers that were there have come away with great ideas and new ways to do things.

We will also need to look at Policy. What is currently in place is very restrictive. The sad part is that I wrote it. The happy part is that I’m open to change it. This I believe will be the first step. I can now see that the uses of ICT in Education are not something that can be controlled by Black and White Policy. We need to get to the point where we are flexible. At some point in time, some of that policy will need to fade to grey.

Catalyst

Was searching around tonight and came across dswaters’ post on I didn’t start the fire, and also robynjay’s post on Firewalls of the mind. Congratulations to whoever brought you all together.

I am from the “Tech” side, and used to think along the lines of “Filter to protect (both our students and our network).” After a couple of years working along side a colleague (Teacher) I now look at this in very different ways. In usual fashion we locked horns and butted heads. The never ending “I want to be able to teach” vs. “I want to keep my network safe,” but then we started talking. We shared our desires to see our students educated. To be excited about their world, and the never-ending opportunities that the digital age is opening up.

We need to allow our Teachers and our Learners to search the world. There definitely needs to be a dialogue between the both parties. We can try and block for moral protection, but that doesn’t teach our students about living in their digital world.

I have just returned from the Expanding Learning Horizons conference, held in Lorne in Victoria. It is a huge event aimed at Teachers and Educators, Visionaries, and also Technicians and IT Managers. In saying that, we shared a few keynote presentations, then the two groups split into their own streams.

I was so inspired that I only attended the educators’ streams. I am really starting to get my head around the truth that teachers need to be able to teach, and learners need to have access.

You may notice that this is basically the reply I left to robynjay’s post; this was one of the catalysts for my Teacher Friendly Tech blog.

Welcome to Teacher Friendly Tech.

The title for my Blog came from a comment made to me by a collegeue at the recent Expanding Learning Horizons conference in Lorne, VIC. Unlike previous years, this time I steered clear of the “Techo” sessions and remained with our Teachers, following them as they explored the way’s in which ICT should be integrated in today’s learning.

The biggest thing that I have taken from this conference is the need to allow learning to happen. For too long the focus has been on filtering, monitoring, and restricting access to unsavoury content. In doing so we have stopped our users from learning in their real world.

Over the coming weeks I will endeavour to unravel all that I have learned at this conference, and how we need to put it in to practice, and what this will entail on both sides of the technology fence. Please join me in discussing these things, I welcome input from both Teachers & Educators, Visionaries, and Technical guru’s as well. There’s a lot that I need to learn as well. So lets see where this take us, and where we can take our students.