Well exciting things are happening at school at the moment! Apart from the fact that tomorrow I teach my last class for the term (I am leaving after Easter for Central Australia with the year 10s for 2 weeks) we had a meeting last night about the Leading Schools Funding that our school has received and it sounds like a fantastic thing to be involved in.
The school has been provided with substantial funding, for new purpose-built wings to be added to the school that contain ICT rich environments and open learning spaces to trial a new program with the Year 9's involving rich tasks that are cross-curricular and student focussed. As the use of ICT in schools has been an interest of mine (thanks IS) I thought it would be a fantastic project to be involved in, and so wrote an expression of interest, which was taken up, and a team of around 20 of us had a meeting last night with the principals and talked about the possibilities and about what we invisioned.
It seems like most of us were on the same page in terms of what we would like to see in terms of facilities, and programs, and as the program will be aimed at year 9, we looked at all of the things that we are doing well at year 9 as well as all of the things we could be doing better.
In terms of my own professional growth and learning this project is a fantastic thing to be involved in, and I am hoping to be taking on as big a role as they are prepared to give me. At the moment nothing is concrete, but from what i heard at the meeting last night I am really excited about the possibilities of working in teams designing interesting and innovative curriculum that incorporates ICT in an authentic way into the learning process.
I am also thinking of the possibilities of somehow using my involvement in this project as a basis for an honours thesis or something, because I have been thinking about going back to uni part time in the next couple of years, and the authentic use of ICT in the classroom is one of the things I have been interested in researching and discussing. This might be the perfect opportunity for me to combine what I am doing at school with what I hope to be doing at uni because I think that study is more relevant if it is related to your every day working life. So I am going to email some of my uni contacts to see what they think and what the possibilities might be for study next year. Maybe that way I can get some reading done early. But I don't really know if and how that will work at this stage so I had better keep myself thinking small until I am given the go-ahead to think big.
At this stage I am really excited about the possibilities to be exciting and innovative. If this is done well, and if we take risks and are daring with what we do, then the possibilities are endless. I am concerned that some people might be too conservative when it comes to making changes, but we can wait and see I guess. For now, I will contain my excitement to my blog!
2 comments:
Sounds exciting, Darce! But go for the masters, instead of honours! Hope your students did you and themselves proud in their history SACs.
ooh, this sounds excellent. i hope you are considering ilana, brenton or graham as supervisors - I'm sure they would all be very helpful to talk to at least. I hope that you'll talk to me too - I might have a few ideas! Nat may be right about the masters as well, although that would depend on a few things.
Very exciting stuff - and it gives me plenty of ideas for future projects and collaboration.
Have a good break - will you be moblogging while away?
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