It is Right in front of your nose...SEE?

Ok loath as I am to start getting political and ranty - there comes a time. On Friday I had a great email from Dr Craig Smith from Innovations and Excellence at the Dept. letting me know that we were able to be the only govt school to receive funding for the Powerful Learning Programme run by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson. This is a great honour and I am so pleased my school will be able to access this programme and the knowledge it will provide for staff. The funding is fantastic and I have the awesome Jenny Luca to thank for the recommendation.I was so excited about this and I have the holidays to read up about the programme and discuss with others how best to make use of it. Super - love some good news, especially after the excitement of the arrival of our new macs.
I wondered why I have no comments under my new movie after tweeting it a few times to see what folks thought. It was my first real attempt to use iMovie and though very rough and full of poor camera work- because I was so excited I forgot I was filming on several occasions- and I felt I had really started to work it out. But no-one came or those who did , didn't comment. Disappointing I thought oh well.. never mind. But when I think about it it is so tiny in the sea of other peoples achievements and what they are doing. Five laptops in a school of 1200 students - do the math and the techies are having real trouble working out how to add them to the network. Reality check Sue and so I went back to planning how I would make use of them.
Then last night I was chatting to Sue Waters who was bemoaning the inability of twitter to be reliable- a four hour outage- and we chatted about my week. Somewhere in the conversation I mused about the fact that the PLP programme was great but the eternal issue of 'I've run out of Internet money Miss..' would raise its head and she was aghast. Yes our kids have to pay and yes if we do anything substantial eg my use of the amazing Carrot Mob movie (short version below) to discuss optimism and social change and the kids blow all their money on the download and I have students telling they are $7 in the red because of the movie I told them to watch.
YES Susan - THIS is what is stopping adoption of more web 2.0 technology and teaching more than anything else. No the teachers are not slack or luddites, it is just that anytime they stuck their heads out of the sand they failed because the system doesn't allow them to succeed. Students get $2 at the start of the year and they have to top it up all year. Many forget or protest, many parents refuse thinking their child has been playing games or just can't afford it.
I have had conversations with many classroom teachers about this and admin people as well. Our school budget and the plan we have been locked into by the department make it very difficult to change and what might happen if it were made 'free' worries these folk greatly.
So let me know- how does your school fund the internet? Do you students pay a levy? What plan is your school on? I need some solid help here and some suggestions to help change REALLY happen. Thanks to Sue Waters who then posted about this and has made me see what is in front of my nose and really try to do something about it.

Swimming not Waving

The first week back at school has been a great one for me in terms of moving forward in my journey into technology. The name of my blog came from my first few weeks of blogging- everyday there was another thing new to explore and so often I feel like a kid in a giant lolly shop.

Sketchup
The previous post where I described my lesson 'introducing/co-learning' Google Sketchup was wonderful and the second class was even more so as students explored how they would make their project have a minimal footprint environmentally.They explored the 3D warehouse and found objects such as solar panels and water tanks already constructed and ready to go. In terms of takeup, the geeky computer star boys were happily just fiddling around and chatting about the app, but a couple of the girls just absolutely zoomed and were actually creating detailed interiors to their building - much to the surprise and chagrin of the supposedly 'expert' boys. Way to go girls!

Del.icio.us
My school now has a second meeting every week apart from faculty and staff meetings and it is designed to allow for IT training. Last term I offered blogging and only two people reluctantly attended which was really disappointing. So this term when asked to do another blogging one, I suggested I would rather do Del.icio.us- and of course received a blank stare. Wednesday morning at staff briefing no takers on the list so I made a brief but excited announcement and by recess had 17 takers on the list. By the time of the class, I had 20 - a real audience at last, so I prepared a sheet, using my Del.icio.us bookmarks, diigo and my network. I used the Commoncraft video on del.icio.us which is found on Teachertube - another little lesson- and added a link to Sue Waters great post on her wiki that has great hints for the beginner and the more adventurous.
So twenty people did turn up, several just could not get on the network- wireless was down just then - of course, and the rest happily followed my directions and by the end were busily bookmarking and creating networks themselves. What a difference from my previous effort and I have had positive feedback from several staff since.

Diigo Oz Educators
My big effort at going in the 'deep end' and actually starting something has been starting Oz Educators group at Diigo. As I write it is currently at 37 members and I am so pleased there are new names I am not familiar with. So on Saturday night a tweet came through to watch a flash meeting on podcasting. A few of us popped in but the sound and vision were really poor so we chatted. Jess McCulloch and I decided to have our own one as I now have booking rights for Flash Meeting. So I booked a session and tweeted it and then got going working it out as we went. Eight people came in - all Aussies or Kiwis and we played with the software. John Larkin has already blogged about this - in fact within the hour and his screencasts give you a great idea of how it looked to the participants.
Thanks to Simon, John, Nirvana,Fiona,Jess,Sue and Sarah for being 'early adopters'!!
So we have started and now we are planning to try and have a big OZ/NZ Educators meeting in Flash Meeting at 8pm AEST. I have tweeted the link three times so far today and am planning my evening around the meeting. Hope it will be a positive beginning to building links for the southern hemisphere. I am also thinking of trying a Google forms survey as we go. Wish me luck!!'I'm Gonna Blog About This!'