Journeys with Learning

A School Visit

On the first day of term I was fortionate to visit Bishop Druit College at Coffs Harbour. Through a university contact of mine (who is now the Director of IT) I was able to get a tour of the college and talk with a number of teachers.

Bishop Druitt is a K-12 college based in the Coffs Harbour hinterland. the school has similar student:technology ratios to Wollongong Diocese schools however little use of laptops

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The primary school are using interactive whiteboards and seemed happy with their role in the classroom.

Probably the thing that really stood out was the outstanding physical environment and the pride that the students had in that environment.

Kids Congress

Today I was lucky enough to attend a “Kids Congress” hosted by the Diocese of Broken Bay

From their introduction

‘The Diocese will be facilitating an inaugural ‘Kids Congress 2006’ for Year 5 students to
come together, to consider and debate real world issues and to present their learnings, all within a 21st
century learning environment.

‘Kids Congress 2006’ will be a unique event for approximately one hundred (100) of our Year 5 students (two students per Year 5 class).

This learning event will be “designed for kids and organised by kids”. “

Sounds simple right?? Imagine 116 year 5 students from 50 odd schools coming together to learn from each other. Almost 12 months in the planning, both by adult and student organising committees.

Kids Congress clearly demonstrates the potential of ICLT’s and myclasses to enable and encourage collaboration across schools. At one point there were 15000 planning emails from year 5 students, multiple forums and discussion rooms.

At the links below you can find student blogs, podcasts, Kids Congress information and photos.

Kids Congress DBB 2006

Kids Congress Podcasts

Kids Congress Blogs

Kids Congress Flickr Photos

From talking to the students it was clear that this was a valuable experience, students learning from each other about issues that are of concern to them. Time well invested in creating the leaders of the future.

I interviewed a number of students about their experiences, unfortunately the wind made the audio quite ordinary. However Andrew, one of the great technical support students shared this with me. audio

Personally I am sold on the idea, but what do you think? Would it be valuable for the students of Wollogong Diocese??

Technorati Tags: Kids Congress, Education, Learning

Student thoughts on podcasts

As I mentioned last post one of our year 5 classrooms decided to use the podcasts of the public speaking. To quote the teacher

“We are focusing on text type ‘review’ in English at the moment ..so it fitted in naturally….plus I wanted to expose the the students to podcasts”

This was the first time the class had listened to podcasts and the student response was really interesting. Below is one boys quick review of the morning session

“I enjoyed listening to the podcasts during this morning’s session of learning. We listened to the public speaking finals and we were able to hear most of the speeches. One of the speeches was on ‘School is important’. That one claimed the winning prize. The next speech we heard was a speech about ‘My worst nightmare’. That one captured the second prize. The last one out of the three speeches was on ‘Creating Peace’. As we were listening to the speeches, we created a mind map to summarise the speech that was our favourite. After that was done, we were able to hear Lance Lagaspi’s speech. Everyone in the room thought that Lance should of come first, not third. His speech was on ‘Creating Peace’ and we thought that it was the best out of the speeches that we heard.

Listening to the podcasts was a great experience for us. I think it is much easier to listen to podcasts, instead of paying money to go to the actual venue….even though the public speaking comp was free …but we were all stuck back at school. Podcasts can be listened to when you’re walking, jogging, biking, working out in the gym, meditating, listening to it in the car and during many other times. They can even be downloaded onto an ‘Ipod’. Having the chance to listen to podcasts is an incredible experience and I’m sure that I will be listening to many podcasts later on in the future. “

Written by,

Kirsten Navarra

You can view 3 of the mindmaps here

Wouldn’t you enjoy lesson reviews like that from your students? I’m sure Kirsten will be podcasting his reviews in the near future.

Public Speaking Finals

Last Friday I was lucky enough to attend the Diocesan Public Speaking Competition. I was particularly taken by the quality of the speakers, their presentation and the way they connected with their audience.

Amazing young people, Eloquent and powerful speakers. You can find podcasts of the finalists speeches along with some photos here.

One of our schools has already started using the podcasts, “At the moment both Year 5 classes are listening to the podcasts and creating mind maps. These mind maps will be used as planning for a written review of the podcast speeches.”

Independent Learning Projects – The importance of Rich Questions

I have been working with a couple of schools this year where students are engaged in year long independent learning projects. These schools have engaged students in learning more about areas that they are passionate about but the two experiences offer me an opportunity to compare and contrast their approaches.

Having just visited one schools final presentations last night I became intensely aware of the importance of questions, rich open ended questions that challenge and extend the students. Without fail, the students who extended themselves and really engaged deeply with their subject area were the students with the rich questions leading to significant learning experiences.

Michelle Shearman presented a superb short session at the Apple Schools Technology Day about her experiences with a year long research project. One of the key features of her implementation of the project was her focus on “Rich Questions”
I guess the best way to summarise the importance of questioning is to quote Michelle
“Rich Questioning = Rich Thinking =Rich Understandings”

You can view Michelle’s abbreviated interactive presentation from the ASTD below. Just click on the “screen” to progress the show. You may need a little patience while it loads. Michelle can be contacted at mshearman@maryimmac.woll.catholic.edu.au .

There are a number of comments about questioning and its importance at the end of this post. If you can’t see the comments please click “here” or on the comments link to the right of the presentation below and continue the dialogue.

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