This week I was saddened to attend the funeral of a dear lady who had lived her life in full. It came to me how much the use of technology had helped the grieving family during this difficult time. Her family are not particularly ICT savy but there was plenty technology in use during the service. The chapel at Marsden House was wired with an audio loop for the hard of hearing. The family had put together a slide show that played on a ceiling mounted data projector. The service was being relayed live to family members overseas that could not attend and a grandson had emailed an oral tribute and song of remembrance to be played to the gathering. The whole thing was being recorded to DVD. Each of these enhancements were much valued by Joy’s family and friends. They weren’t particularly special or made a fuss of- they were just tools that people used to fulfil a need.

The things you discover on the internet! As you do on a Saturday morning you have a little time to play while the washing machine finishes its cycle. Via my friend @tricias in the UK I came across this little piece of magic that I just had to follow up on.

The idea is that you print out a piece of paper and hold it up in front of your web cam and a whole virtual reality world opens up in front of your very eyes with spinning wind turbine, 3D and the sun shining above. They have two scenarios- the other is showing solar power! It’s just magic! Do it. You’ll love it. No idea how it works though but think of the possibilities. Here’s a little video to show you how it works….

Virtual World Video

To get the link to the piece of paper that you print off and to see the so easy instructions click here. It only took me a minute to print and play!

Piers and his Mum had a bit of a play with it as well. Have a look at Piers’ blog for the video the made.

For the month of March, a group of educators and lifelong learners will be picking a “Tweet of the day” and ReTweeting it with a tag: #gr8t
Hopefully, you will join us in doing this too.

There are a number of reasons why you might want to participate:
• To share what you value about twitter.
• To see what others value about twitter.
• To celebrate the power and wisdom of your Personal Learning Network.
• To find interesting people to follow on Twitter.

My choice for what to retweet with #gr8t will be a Tweet that I find interesting, or insightful, or humorous. It might link to something I enjoyed reading, or it might have something profound or even fortune-cookie-like that appeals to me:

There aren’t really any rules to participate: Find a tweet you value, and share it!

For Example, here is a Tweet I’d like to share:


And so I retweet it with #gr8t:

Early in February this blog got a little recognition from the New Zealand Education Gazette so I asked the Wayne Erb, the reporter, if I could put a copy of the article on the blog and he said that would be fine so here it is for downlaod in case you missed the paper copy.

Gazette-article-Feb-2009

Our new photocopier at school scans to a pdf and sends it off to an email address so it was a useful exercise in coming to grips with a new bit of learning.

I had the good fortune to do a little travelling over our summer holiday spending time in Hong Kong, London, Portsmouth, Abergavenny in Wales, Londonderry, Ireland and Bangkok, Thailand. Until 2008 I had only ever been to Australia which you can hardly count as being overseas- a bit like visiting your cousins! It doesn’t really count.

My holiday snaps are here in a Flickr photo set slideshow if you would like to lurk a little.

While I was away I managed to meet with a few people who are in my Personal Learning Network.

My first meet up was with Paul Harrington in Wales. Paul and I first contacted each other through our mutual interest in podcasting and our two classes collaborated on a number of occasions over the years. As I expected when he met me at the Abergevenny Railway Station for the first time, we not strangers even though we had only just met. It was incredible to think how far we had both come on our journeys through cyberspace. Paul took me to Cefn Fforest School where Mini-Dylan and I surprised his students with a real visit. His excited students met me with real enthusiasm and I enjoyed their happy faces and beautiful accents. While in Wales we had a great conversation with Joe Dale from the Isle of Wight, another great podcaster and inspiration to me.

Unfortunately Doug Dickinson, ICT consultant, was called away at last minute to organise some stuff for BETT but Tricia Neal drove all the way from Leicester to Cardiff and back again so we could meet up. How cool is that!

On the way home I called in to spend some time at the International School of Bangkok staying with Chrissy Hellyer and meeting with Jeff Utecht and Kim Cofino.

These people have all influenced my learning network in some way and I was honoured and privileged to meet them all. The thing that struck me is openness of the people who help me on my journey. All of these people lead busy working lives but always give freely of their time and expertise to mentor and support fellow teachers like me.

I have never once come across anyone since I first started learning on line who has ever turned down a request for assistance or advice and I try to ‘pay it forward’ myself and do the same. These people help to form a wonderful support network for me as I venture into cyberspace. Thanks guys- for your hospitality and support.

Call To Prayer Recording
1.3MB 1 minute 24 seconds

Not happy with that last recording so I cleaned it up with Adobe Soundbooth and got rid of the white noise and a few of the extra clicks and clunks. Much nicer.

Call To Prayer Recording Cleaned Up

Staying in Bangkok was my first time living in a culture that is so very different from my own and it was fascinating and wonderful. Every morning at 5am you could hear the Muslim Adhan-call to prayer. It was beautiful and I was lucky enough to capture it on my iTalk microphone on my iPod. Our class podcasts will be starting up as we go back to work this week. I wanted to publish this recording to Edublogs to take advantage of some of the extra storage space now that I have paid for hosting in order to get rid of the ads!

Thanks Chris, Penny and Amanda for getting me blogging again in 2009. The deal is that people encourage you to write some stuff about yourself that others might not know.

I did another prompted by Miguel a while back- The Passion Quilt. And this Bucket List one from Cathy, this Random Facts one from Jane. And this one from Sheryl called Simply Successful Secrets.

So here it goes for 2008….

1. I just bought my first house and will be 81 years old before I pay it off. I have lived in a lot of school houses with low rent and never before felt the need to buy before now. I bought when house prices and interest rates were at their peak!
2. 2008 was the first year I had ever been overseas apart from Australia- and now I have been to America, Hong Kong, England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Eire and Thailand. I am a late bloomer.
3. I have been a fairly ordinary teacher for most of my teaching career but have now through the use of ICT found something I am actually good at- it has taken a while to find my passion in teaching but hopefully it has been worth the wait.
4. My great-great grandmother was the first pakeha girl born in Nelson- local Maori helped deliver her in a whare on the sides of what is now the Queen’s Garden’s in Nelson, but was then a harakeke swamp. My great grandfather was part of the Armed Constabulary that went to Parihaka to subdue the Maori. I am not proud of that but it is good that my best friend’s great grandfather was also there but not part of the Armed Constabulary.
5. I have an abject fear of spiders and weta. I once lived in a house that was crawling with weta- even on the inside- I would have to check the bed every night to make sure it was weta free and I used kitchen tongs to inspect every piece of firewood bringing it into the house.
6. I love New Zealand. It is my home and I can never imagine permanently living anywhere else. I can understand people fighting for a country but I can’t understand them fighting over a religion.
7. I love to take photos and I have way too many cameras but keep on upgrading. Does anyone have a need for a couple of very good film cameras?
8. Oh- and one last thing- For a previous job I had to sign the NZ Official Secrets Act- I can’t tell you what the job was as a bit of mystery is always a good thing.

No tagging of anyone else ‘cos we are all very busy getting our classrooms sorted.

Only one week of my 2008 employment to go and on my last official visit to Riwaka School the kids sat me down to watch a video they had made entirely by themselves over the last week and then presented me with a stunning bunch of flowers. This year has passed by in a whirlwind and I have loved every minute of it- the kids, the opportunities, the connections, the freedom, the learning, the people, the friendships.

Riwaka Farewell Video

Thank you to Janice Gulbranson who saw the job advertised in the newspaper and told me about it. (One pitfall of no longer buying a newspaper!)

Thank you to Jill Hammonds who suggested I apply for Adobe Educational Leadership.

Thank you to Adobe, who helped by sponsoring my exciting journeys to Sydney and San Francisco.

Thank you to CORE for hosting such great ICT conferences where I get to meet such open and wonderful people F2F who help me and encourage me.

Thank you to my Personal Learning Network who are always there for me anytime of the day or night scattered about the globe.

Thank you to all those wonderful people I met along the way this year.

Thank you to my dearest Mum, who passed away this year, who would have been so proud of me- my biggest fan.

This little project has taken a year in the making. In the same way I have a 2009 to do list I had one for 2008 as well. David Kinane’s project ‘Intrepid Journeys’ gave me the inspiration. I had to go over to Motueka on Sunday to help a teacher with her home computer so it gave me the chance to cross another thing off my 2008 to do list. I set the camera up on a tripod on the passenger seat and set it to capture time lapse photos at the fastest refresh rate that the camera allowed which was 30 seconds. As I arrived in Motueka the compressed video lasted all of 4 seconds! When I got home I dropped it in to iMovie and slowed it down as much as I could, exported it and repeated myself. I then dropped a little FreePlay Music over the top to add a little interest. Thanks for the inspiration, David.

While I was working wirelessly at Parklands School today we were trying to do a little viewing of a Flickr video and it was all buffering annoyingly so I decided to do a speed test from Speedtest.net. When I got home I tried it again. I have what is supposed to be a very fast domestic broadband account- I was surprised at the difference. Parklands is on the Loop. Can’t wait to get back to my class next year and use The Loop and put it through its paces. Click on the graphic for a close up.

The other interesting thing that happened was that our Prime Minister, Helen Clark, was visiting while on the campaign trail for our forthcoming election. I thought I would wander over the road and have a bit of a look. I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of people about so pulled out my trusty video recorder and fired off a few seconds of video. “Our Helen” is the lady in pink.

I’m home safely after another brilliant ULearn08 conference. The whole thing is really such a whirl and I think you do need some time to internalise things but here are my thoughts as they come to me now there is nothing left but empty wine bottles and a head full of wonderings.

I’ve been at home out in the sunshine doing a little weeding with my fingers busy and my mind reeling about that word, CHANGE. I look reflectively at my own classroom practice and wonder how much it has really changed. How much connectivity I allow? Is it more about me and my teaching or about the children and their learning? I am looking forward to going back next year and putting my money where my mouth is with a new group of Year 1/2.

I want to do an action research project on the changes that podcasting makes on oral language. It will be great to have a fresh slate on which to write. My network will be invited to act as my peer review.

This was my first conference where I was more of a leader than a follower- in lots of senses of leadership. I lead a great group of six teachers from Discover IT Tasman cluster. What a great group to give up a week of their precious school holidays.

I presented three sessions and here are my Twitter presentation notes for download. “You’re No One If You’re Not On Twitter” by JB Walker is licensed under a Creative Commons. I now have a new heap of Twitter followers- I hope I can live up to their expectations!

Here are my Cool Adobe Applications on the Web notes with links to the websites for download as well.

And I also did a workshop on podcasting which was very rushed but hopefully people will be able to follow up on when they have a moment. Here is the wiki link to that one. It would be great if people could add their podcast to the ‘People Who Podcast‘ page as they get their own podcasts under way.

If there is a next time I don’t think I will offer to present so much- there was so much more I would like to have been at that I think I might have missed some great opportunities to participate.

At our unconference the topic I brought to the table was that of Twitter- on line etiquette. While at the conference some people who maybe didn’t understand the public nature of Twitter thought it was OK to make derogatory comments about people who they knew were connected and likely to read them. Apart from being bad manners I think it is important for people to understand and help the children in their classes understand that what you write on the internet doesn’t just disappear after you push ENTER. What you write is a reflection of yourself as much as it is a reflection of what you think. If you want to say something potentially harmful maybe you should move into a more private conversation mode like Skype chat or F2F discussion at a more appropriate time.

I didn’t win the Microsoft Innovative Teacher Award but it was fun trying. I got to go up on stage and be acknowledged as a finalist which was nice. I had to laugh though as Warren told me I wasn’t to take my laptop up on stage. With more than one way to skin a cat- I took my iTouch and twittered with that. Lenva tweeted that she could see my fingers moving and new what I was doing!!! Hehehehe!!!

Tools wise I learnt how to make news items with Adobe Visual Communicator- another great tool for 2009. Watch this space as I get the hang of it and work out how to do a little blue-screening

One of the best personal moments was at the very, very end, just as I was leaving Jared Holden from New Plymouth came up to me and said how much he appreciated my blog posting and contributions to our community. I left with tears in my eyes and a light heart. What a nice thing to say. Thank you Jared.

It was a top class event for me to meet up and converse with top people from NZ and overseas, topped off with a great weekend showing Sheryl, Will and their families our stunning country.

Thanks everyone- keep the shift happening and turn that supertanker!

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Paul Wilkinson just posted this rather excellent find- Virtual Highway- which is a wonderful Google mash-up of a Google map of New Zealand and video of what the drive actually looks like. As the video plays a little car moves along the highway keeping in synch with the video. Here is a screen grab of part of my commute. Way cool.

Riminiscences of David Kinane’s Amazing Journey.

Thanks Paul- hours of fun here!

I haven’t blogged for ages as a lot has happened and I haven’t felt up to the challenge. I am blogging this while waiting to get a wheel alignment on my car. Best blogged in a place where my tears are only on the inside.

On Thursday 1 May I was at the Nelson airport about to head up to Whangarei for the ICT cluster mini-conference. The plane was delayed so I thought I would give my dear Mum a quick call on her cell phone at the rest home to say farewell before I left. As I rang a new voice answered saying that Mum had had a fall and was having multiple seizures and they had called an ambulance.

I was able to get my suitcase back from the flight attendants and call a taxi. The driver was great and I managed to beat the ambulance to the rest home and go with Mum to the hospital. The doctors at the hospital were fabulous and got Mum all the attention she needed immediately. A volunteer of the St John’s Ambulance stayed with me at that time as well and told me it would be all right- there was going to be a way through this.

After the necessary CAT scans and X-rays we were transferred to a medical ward. Mum nearly died just then but hung on in a coma from which she never emerged. They jacked me up with a fold-up bed in Mum’s room and my vigil began. As I went home each day and via Twitter through my cell phone I was able to keep contact with my on-line friends and I was humbled and comforted by the support offered from people I had never met. These people were so warm and caring and I felt uplifted by their direct messages. Thank you.

Exactly one week later Mum passed away as I wished her well on her journey. I was so pleased that I was there for her right through to the end.

Mum’s funeral was lovely with a mixture of love, laughter and tears. I had whipped up town to buy a decent iPod set of speakers and I made a iPhoto slideshow of photos from Mum’s life that started the service. Mum was always interested on what I was getting up to on my ‘video’ as she called my computer.

I show you now this video as a tribute to my Mum- my best friend and a wonderful woman.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!
Chrissy Hellyer tagged me for this Passion Quilt Meme through Miguel Guhlin- the idea is that you post a photo of something that you feel passionate about children’s learning. For me this is developing connections between children globally and sharing our learning with our global community.

This photo is a mash-up of our collaboration between Paul Harrington’s class in Wales and my own Moturoa class at Appleby. Over the year we had been building links between our classes- so much so that  children felt a personal connection with Paul and his class. The children were familiar with each other via our blog posts, podcasts and Skype conversations. The connection became face to face when Dino and his  family spent time in Paul’s class while on a family holiday in the UK. We came in to school late at night so we could talk to Dino and his  Welsh buddies directly via Skype video. The virtual friendships become real.

The photo credit from the Welsh end of the conversation goes to the Times Educational Supplement that did an article on how classrooms use Skype to link up globally.

3 Simple Meme Rules:

• Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
• Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
• Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter.

So here is my challenge to you to do the same…

Sarne’s View- @sarnee

Widgets and Wikis- @Keamac

Thinking Past the Square- @heymilly

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My Twitter and blog friend Cathy Nelson tagged me for the The Bucket List meme which was started by Jeff Pulver and is based on the movie. It is essentially a list of things you hope to accomplish in 2008 before you ‘kick the bucket’. So here goes…

1. Be well. In mid 2007 my life turned to custard with my mother diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and after years of disregard for myself my knees gave in and I was on crutches for a time. I took a term off school to get things sorted out. Mum is now in rest home care nearby and I have undertaken a regime of healthy eating and exercise. I have lost 20kg since then and intend to loose a little more and continue on the journey.

2. Get on with it. I am one of life’s great procrastinators. I loathe paper work. This year I must make sure I use my diary and just do the paper work so it is out of the way.

3. Be successful at my new job. I have just one year to make a difference. As ICT facilitator for DiscoverIT Tasman I have the opportunity to share what I have learnt and help teacher’s find new ways of doing new things in their classsrooms.

4. Move out of my aggregator. I read and read and read blogs and rarely make a comment. This year I am going to try and join the conversations more- to say what I think. This will hopefully help me articulate more what I do actually think.

5. To learn how to share my learning publicly. I talk fast, I blither, I blush! Slow down, think about what I mean, say it clearly- just like I try and get my class to do- I am totally at home with a class of youngsters- now to try with the older set!

Now for the tricky part- these people are starting new beginnings. I wonder where their paths will lead…

Jane Nicholls

Chris Betcher

Paul Harrington 

Photo credit- Paul Cook Photography via Flickr.

In Nelson we have a Mac User Group meeting that meets once a month and I tottle along and add my five cents worth of tips and tricks that I have picked up along the way, as you do.

Following an email request for help I went along to help new Mac users, Lindsay and Jan, get the best from using iPhoto. I enjoy helping people and on the promise of a fresh orange and date muffin and a good cup of coffee along I went. I realised that I had visited the beautiful property once before while on a garden trail a few years back.

I got a very pleasant surprise as I turned up the driveway- the Lindsay was Lindsay Yeo! New Zealand readers would know Lindsay. I feel I have grown up with Lindsay- popular Wellington radio personality on 2ZB- creator of Buzz o’Bumble.

I told him of the time when I was teaching in Foxton and a largish earthquake hit Wellington. Lindsay told us via the radio to get in a doorway or safe place- I did and a few seconds later the shockwave reached us! Knowing in advance helped prepare me for the shake ahead.

Jan makes environmentally friendly, innovative cloth nappies (diapers for my American readers) for sale via the internet and wanted to be able to manage the photos he was taking for adding to their website, YoYoNappy.com.

It was really great to spend the morning with them both. Lindsay was a large part of growing up in NZ when I was younger. Another face-to-face connection that I would never had made without the power of the internet.

If you listened to 2ZB and know how to sing the Buzz o’Bumble song please leave a comment and I will pass this link on to him.

Inspired by Ewan McIntosh’s top five photo review I thought I would give it go myself.

My first is of Tiny Ted the small geocache bear sent to us from Paul Harrington in Wales. I staged this photo down at Nelson’s Tahunanui Beach- so typical of the NZ summer. Paul and Tiny Ted were the springboard from which we forged links between our classes. Children could so relate to him and he became an integral part of our day. We miss him as he is now with April Chamberlain in USA.

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My second photo is of Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and I as she visited Nelson for the TUANZ conference. I am indebted to Sheryl for her friendship, openness and how she took me under wing to mentor my entrance in to the Web2.0 educators’ learning network.

Uploaded with Skitch!

My third photo was one I shared with Sheryl as Queen Elizabeth visited the College of William and Mary where Sheryl works. The photo tells the story of how I met Her Majesty when she visited Nelson when I was a ten year old. Sheryl posted it to her Flickr account and invited people to share in my 50th birthday celebrations. That photo garnered 36 global comments. Click on it to see the story in note form. I was in awe and it showed me the power of networking.

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My fourth is of a group of children in my class collaborating on a wiki and learning together oblivious of the camera- the way learning in the 21st century should be.

Uploaded with Skitch!

My fifth is a photo taken by Jane Nicholls at ULearn07 with a group of New Zealand edubloggers and Ewan himself. It was a great learning experience when virtual friends became real life ones. Click on the photo to see who’s who!

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My last is one of Mum and I taken recently. Mum and I have been through a difficult time with her diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease but I still appreciate the time we still manage to have together.

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I know I can’t count well. Happy New Year to one and all.

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Chis Betcher skyped me last night to tell me that our podcast was nominated and is a finalist in the Edublog Awards 2007 in the best use of audio class. I am overawed to be a finalist.

Our podcast is only a little over a year old and I am very proud of its quality and variety of podcasts.

If you are a reader of this blog and haven’t done so already I urge you to click on the Edublog badge to take you to the voting page and vote for us before 6 December when the voting finishes.

The link will also take you to many other great educational websites that you may well enjoy reading, viewing or listening to.

Jane has tagged me for the Inspirational Teacher Meme, so I thought I would play along as there is so much else for me that I should be doing right now that I am overwhelmed.

Rules

1. You are to copy the rules at the start of your post.

2. You are write, in 150 words or less the story of ‘Your Inspirational Teacher’ from your school days.

3. Name and link 4 other bloggers and leave them a comment on their blog to let them know they have been tagged.

4. Tag your post ‘myinspiration’

Mr Firestone

Mr Firestone was my science teacher at secondary school at Nelson College for Girls. He was of the Baha’i Faith and was my first and only teacher to teach outside the square. I don’t think he lasted long at the school because he was a square peg in a round hole. He told us stories of his life in Canada, of another way of thinking about things, he was passionate about his subject and really seemed intent on helping us learn through doing things rather than to pass the test. He taught beyond the curriculum which got him into strife I think. He was young and tried to make a connection with us. Thanks Mr Firestone, wherever you are.

I tag

Rachel Boyd

Lynne Crowe

Our boys are doing well in the Rugby World Cup and I now have one degree of separation from Daniel Carter!

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Donna and her family from Nelson are enjoying a teacher-exchange in Wales. Donna says… “We had the All Blacks all to ourselves as we had sat down in a secluded little place in the airport not knowing they were coming. They had spent an hour or two out with all the fans and were really tired then had to walk passed us to get to their plane. They must have seen us all in our black and thought oh shit…but every one of them, including the coaches said, “Hi, how are you guys?”

Now don’t you think that’s classy!

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Jane Nicholls created a Troubled post today that had me thinking. She is feeling troubled about the balance between spending too much time with virtual friends as opposed the face to face variety.

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I have spent the last twelve weeks in self imposed exile from many of my face to face friends as they follow their careers and family commitments. This self imposed exile from paid employment was brought about for the need to care for myself and my mother as we came to terms with her diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease and the failure of my knee joints to osteo-arthritis and cartilage depletion meaning I had to spend quite some time on crutches.

During this time I had more time than usual to explore things on-line and less time with face to face friends as I dealt with doctor and hospital visits.

My virtual friends were not there to help mow the lawns or do the household chores but then my face to face friends weren’t there either as they worked full time or pursued their own family commitments. Some face to face friends stayed in contact via Web2.0 tools- email and Skype.

Some of my global, virtual friends though offered me moral support as well. Although I have never met some they are as real as people that live more locally. They helped me feel connected and still part of things even when I was forced to stay at home. Paul (Wales) offered moral support and conversation, Sheryl (Virginia) invited me to join her in Shanghai, Chris and I worked together in Sydney, Miguel (Texas) lent me a hand with my tech problem, Ewan (Scotland) included us in the birth of his baby girl and I communicated with others via Twitter, email and commenting. Some of these people I will probably never meet face-to-face but I still call them friends. These people are all part of my real life.