Wednesday, 27 January 2010
Leaping in....
The biggest difference that has struck me apart from the obvious ones of better physical resources like swimming pools and lovely concert halls is that with a student body of 2200 prep to yr12 they have a staff of 835 - 356 of whom are teachers - the rest are support staff. I don't have to do yard duty and my allotment means no extras.
What every teacher in the state system would say they would like to have happen to allow them to do a better job of what they took up the profession to do, would be get rid of yard duty and extras and have more help on the admin duties. Is there any possibility that a school system that really serves our students best is not an unattainable pie in the sky? Sure the private system has problems, but this school has shown that with sufficient funds and the will to focus on the teaching, things can be better for teachers and as a result the kids get a better experience for the short time that we have to show them the possibilities of the world.
My education continues.
Sunday, 29 November 2009
My Bright and Shiny VITTA Evening
Friday, 6 November 2009
Cartoons and Comic Life
It seems my life has been all about Comic Life recently This is a video that has been made to help teachers who are training to use netbooks and are wondering how to use Comic life Thanks to a very easy session with Russ Blackwell who filmed the session with my class working beautifully behind me
Comic Life in the English teacher's classroom from Rusty Gates on Vimeo.
I also gave a presentation at the second EMUG meeting on the 29th October at Mooroolbark SC about Comic Life and the work my class was doing while the film was being shot was shown as examples. Great fun and I hope it has some impact for kids in classes as it is a wonderful tool. If you are interested in learning more about Comic life, Deb hicks has created this stunning wiki and Russ Blackwell is developing a great repository of ideas and training films on this wiki I will try and put some of the kids work on here too.
My friend Julie also was filmed on the day talking about Comic Life and how she has been using it in LOTE classrooms and here is her movie.
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Thursday, 24 September 2009
Wednesday, 23 September 2009
Techy tips for non techy teachers and even techy ones too!!
Just discovered this great site created by Mark Warner who I met in America last year. It is called Ideas to Inspire and it is full of great ideas and resource suggestions . This slideshow is fabulous - well worth taking a look. Well done Mark!!!
Friday, 4 September 2009
Unnamed 09/04/2009
Teaching Literature: Lord of the Flies vs. The Hunger Games
tags: literature, Hungergames, Lordoftheflies, reading, comparison, YA_lierature
Photojojo's Photo Time Capsule
Photojojo's PhotoTimeCapsule Setup the Time Capsule with your email & Flickr account. (60 seconds, tops) Twice a month, enjoy an email with your photos from a year ago.
tags: flickr, photos, photography, photojojo, timecapsule, nostalgia, web
Good list of tools for creating presentations.
10 Great Classroom Icebreakers
10 Great Classroom Icebreakers
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.








