Sunday 29 November 2009

My Bright and Shiny VITTA Evening



Yes I was totally surprised and I want to thank Jo McLeay for doing such a wizard job of getting to the VITTA conference dinner thinking I would see all my NECC pals and then having her get up and make a speech about me. What a fantastic and memorable way to finish off what has been a very up and down year. I have only a few days to go in my old job in the state system and after 29 years in the same school, I am definitely leaving with a whole lot of mixed emotions and I will miss my dear friends and hard working government teachers who struggle so hard against huge odds to do a wonderful job for kids.
But as this blog is a large testament to, my view on schooling has changed so much that I cannot sit and wait for things and people to catch up with the changes anymore and I am taking my plans and dreams and heading off into the sunset - or as many have said going across to the dark side. I am so excited about next year and I hope that my expectations are not unrealistic and that I can meet the school's expectations too.
So, thankyou so much Jo and VITTA for the award, and Upwey for allowing me to grow and explore all this new and challenging frontier in education. What a way to finish one chapter in my life !

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.