Blogging is fun!

My students are blogging and I am blown away by their imaginative creativity, unexpected senses of humour and occasional reflective intellect demonstrated through this style of public writing. Hurray for blogs! Here is a link our class website where you can access their blogs (bear in mind they're probably only AMAZING to me :)

A window into the Apple Education Conference

Here is a short production put together by a media studies class in the Upper School at CDNIS. They came to school on a weekend, worked exceptionally hard, and did a fantastic job capturing the "mood" of the event. Tip of the hat to them and their teacher.

At the end of the conference I had made some important connections with people and learned about what they are doing in other places. I tucked away some good ideas for future projects, heard some inspirational stories of success, and talked to some intriguing people. More importantly, I had time to really think about my teaching. Rarely on a weekend or weekday night, do I actually get much reflection time. I plan, I mark, I assess, I review, I create and I apply, then I eat and sleep. But I rarely get to really reflect and re-evaluate. Life here just happens to fast. Before I close my eyes for more than a blink, I'm on to the next thing and there's no time for quality collaborative reflection. The conference gave me the gift of time, the spark of inspiration, and the arena to really dig deeper into my thoughts about how I infuse technology into my classroom, why it is a critical tool for understanding my students and how I can use it to empower them in their own lives.

Apple Education Leadership Summit - Hong Kong

CDNIS is hosting an Apple Education Event this weekend, and I am lucky enough to be able to attend it. So far I have seen a couple interesting speakers and was treated to a fancy 'do' at the 4 Seasons, but unfortunately the agenda hasn't left very much room for social networking or mingling (which is what I was really looking forward to). What I have found fascinating, and so novel for a shy kid like me, are all the ways I have been able to "meet" people virtually. The conference has encouraged a Twitter feed with tagged tweets, someone created a conference FaceBook group, and almost all the presenters have excellent edublogs and webpages detailing their work or work they have learned from. All of these tools have enabled me, in a demented sort of way, to "meet" people here at the conference without actually talking to them!

Here's something I found in my virtual mingling, that really grabbed my attention and plays directly into issues I have been tackling lately with my student's acceptable use of technology in our classroom.