Module 3

It's something of a cliche, but I am excited!  I made my through the Google docs videos and had several of those moments when the lights go on.  As soon as the presenter in the first YouTube video started talking about the amount of emailing that can go on just to get one relatively simple task done, I thought - "Yep... been there ... doing that".  The implications for the classroom and just about every other aspect of school administration are rather dramatic.  So, I thinks to myself, why not do it?  Why not indeed.  So with a grin as big as the Cheshire Cat in Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" I prepared the agenda for the next RE faculty meeting.  My colleagues can colloborate in preparing the agenda with any relevant information. 

I've also started thinking  about the classroom.  I've just started working with my Year 8s (the ones who rescue me on the Smart Board) on a PPP project on Matthew 25 and what makes a just society.  It is a colloborative exercise ... I've been thinking how easier it would have been doing this on Google Doc.  I want to try this with my 2 Unit SOR class as soon as they get back from exams.

So in the meantime - Collegues please have a look at the agenda and add to in preparation for our meeting on Monday 29 March.

And a happy Feast of St Joseph.

Google docs.

Module 2

Up up and away ...

There are some things that look easy ... and, well, it is not so easy if you are not heavily into lateral thinking! After creating the blog and writing away happily, I went to enter the details into the CEO Web 2 wiki page. I got as far as the instruction to click "edit" in the top right hand corner.

Everything stopped for nearly half an hour as I searched in the very top right hand corner. There was no edit function! slowly it dawned on me that the edit function was found within the wiki page - it was one of those occasions where I was glad I was doing this from home and not in the classroom. I would have learned a lot faster as the students would have found it hilarious that the REC couldn't even find an edit function.

So the major learning for me in this module was,not as could be possibly expected, the aquisition of skills to create and manage a blog and use it within the wiki, but the need to observe carefully and learn to "read" in a new way.

It made me think about the boys I teach and their learning processes. True, they learn at different paces and in different modes to what I do, but they have skill sets that I don't. Already, technology is collobrative and cooperative, and that is a good thing.

Module 1

There is a time ... and the time is now.

I have to admit that putting my hand up to do the Web 2 course was something of a major challenge. How would I cope with it? Would I find time, and all the excuses that come with such thoughts.

The first module is done and I must admit that I quite enjoyed it. In terms of learning I think I discovered three things.

1. This is the reality of the world in which I live and work and in which the students I teach live. I have no choice; I must learn to live and breathe in this world. And that is regardless of whether or not I use any of this in the classroom - it is simply the world in which I live.

2. Myth-busting number one: it has been surprisingly easy to get started. The hardest part was trying to avoid going through a thousand and one gadgets on the igoogle page! Self-discipline is essential. The video clips were helpful; obviously composed for people like me, who like their instructions delivered in very simple terms, or as that great grammarian, Thomas Cramner would put it "in a language understood of the people".

3. I doubt that I will rush into the classroom tomorrow morning all aglow with zeal to inflict my learning on my students, but I will be able to show that I have one or two skills that I didn't have the day before.

And to close, I will (ab)use Augustine - Late have I loved you O technology, late have I loved you!