Today I am in Allanah King’s workshop and expecting to learn a few new tricks for working in my blog. If you want to find out about the things we are learning about here you can access Allanah’s help notes for use with Blogger.com at http://www.bling4yrblog.com
Nothing like adding to the complexity, as now I will have to see if I can transfer the process across to a blog.com account. I’ll report back on that process as I go.
I’m so pleased that I’ve never been worried about the small stuff, or boxes or linear time. Now I can go back and recap on some of the other hightlights of this busy few months.
While talking about conferences, it has been exciting to take part in some cluster conferences recently. A few weeks back I was in Balclutha for the Big River Cluster Conference - well short of 1200 attendees, but nevertheless a buzz for those who turned out to quite a variety of workshops. Liz Weir from Freeville School impressed us all with their school journey from the early years of an ICT PD Cluster programme, through the development of inquiry, learning models and development of autonomous learners. I found the concept of their restorative justice programme fascinating and a great example of authentic learning. The programmes brings offenders and victims together in a supported environment to work through the issues that prompted a conference time. The end result is that natural consequences append themselves to student choice, and hence real learning occurs.
Two weeks later I was back in the deep south for the ILT Conference in Invercargill - the third in the series and just as good as they have been previously. One feels like royalty with the care and attention paid to presenters at this conference, so as well as the convivial company, there were dinners to attend each night, very comfortable accommodation and the bar tab attended to. For a local NZ Cluster conference, this one is fortunate to have the ILT funding that enables an awesone line up of international presenters to complement the local regulars. Eric Jensen, Tony Ryan, Jeni Wilson and Michael Pohl were all presenters who had new material to offer and new ideas to build into my own conference presentation this week. We are well served for great educators down under, and these conferences far outweighed the International Conference on Thinking that I attended in Sweden this year.
Well, time now for coffee and the next workshop which is a must do for me. I’m really looking forward to Rosemary Hipkins session on key competencies and assessment. i hope I’ll be back in less than 4 months this time 
Ever caught yourself saying the things that you hate hearing others say? 
How often have I groaned when others have said that “they don’t have time to . . . online.” Oh dear. Looking at my last blog entry back in June I must have been thinking the same at some point, or maybe I’ve just been busy in other online areas instead.
However today I have the luxury of some time. I am attending the ULearn Conference in Auckland, and for once I’m on the attendee side of the counter. I had planned to be at Tony Ryan’s session on “The Rules of Engagement”, but following my round of conferences in the last week, looking at the handout notes I see that I have already attended the same session at the ILT Conference in Invercargill last week. Engaging though it certainly was, with many ideas already put into play at my PreConference workshop on thinking yesterday, I have decided to breathe and blog instead.
Day One of the conference . . . the highlight so far has certainly been Ewan McIntosh’s keynote this morning. Focused on the engaging opportunities that today’s cutting edge technologies afford us, I certainly expected to be engaged, but great to be entertained as well - a great sense of humour and fun was evident. It certainly whet my appetite for our full day session with Ewan in Hamilton next week. I sense that my use of technologies is going to have another uplift. Already I am heading off to set up a Bebo account and to visit some of the websites mentioned to check out more of the work today’s students are producing. Cup stacking - no I think I’ll not try and compete on that one though.
