Transforming the classroom bit by bit...

The interesting thing about trying to create change is that often you may be waiting around and hoping and planning for it for so long, that when it actually starts to happen, you may miss the moment because you are already trying to think about the 'next thing'. This almost happened to me yesterday. After weeks of waiting, the Macbooks which are being supplied as a result of the Emerging Technologies Grant from the Education Department, finally arrived in the school.It may put this in to perspective to say we have always been a windows based school and there are no laptops for students at all in the school.. these are the very first.
Gary Bass and Frank from Connecting Point came to school and brought some extra machines to enable all the class to have a hands on experience. As well as all my year eight class, a number of staff came and visited and had a play with Macs. Gary took the class for the double and they went through some of the differences in the operating system and then we set them loose. They used Photo Booth and had a great time exploring the effects. Then we dragged them away from that and began to explore Garageband. Several of the musos in the class went berserk when then realised the programme actually typed out what they wrote. Several played with the basics of podcasting and then we moved on to IMovie.
The double flew by and I actually had to tell the students that the bell had gone for the end of the day. They loved it and I was able to film the experience and the process of making this into a movie for the grant and for myself made me learn how to use the basics of the programme. It is still very basic, but it does capture the fun of the afternoon.
So who was doing the learning ?