Tag Archives: PLN

Kids Can Make You Cry!

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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

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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.

ImageThank 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.

Personal Learning Networks & New Challenges

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For the last six weeks or so I have been interacting with a myriad of educators, superintendents and teachers, in America as an ‘expert voice’ in a Ning administered by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson. The idea is that six ‘expert voices’ from around the globe are asked to contribute their voice and assist in the building of a Personal Learning Network for those educators.

I am most honoured and humbled to be invited into such an austere community and hope that my contributions have proved to be worthwhile. As the first round draws to a close I would hope that some of those connections made can continue from outside of that Ning.

Because our school holidays were on I was able to join in a couple of Elluminate sessions with the cohort. It was great to be able to participate live in rich conversations about harnessing the power of the connections made on the web to create a Personal Learning Network.

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In this introductory video Will talks about how we might build these networks, how they might look, the transformative nature of a PLN and how we might help children navigate their own networks safely, ethically and effectively.

I am so looking forward to facilitating the 14 schools in the Discover IT Tasman ICT cluster throughout 2008 achieve just those sort of connections. In case you haven’t heard via Twitter I have taken leave from Appleby School for 2008 and will work as a roaming ICT facilitator based in Motueka.

What a wonderful opportunity for me learn and make a whole lot of new face to face connections and develop that sort of network with students and teachers so close to home.

Exciting times are ahead.