Read: Myriad Possibilities 2016

Thank you everyone for a thoroughly enjoyable conference last weekend (Menzies Hotel, Sydney). Gail Erskine, Felicity Jagavkar-Baker, Margaret Hamilton, and all the volunteers, did a spectacular job. As a veteran of many science fiction media conventions (as an attendee or committee member), and a number of TL-focused PD seminar/conferences (sometimes as presenter, or attendee/volunteer/committee member) over the decades, “Read: Myriad Possibilities 2016” compared very well.

This was my first CBCA Conference. The two full days had wonderful variety and no dead spots at all (that I noticed), and it appeared to be very seamless. I loved that the early release of the "Notables" enabled publishers to have every shortlisted title available for sale on the day of the Shortlist announcement on the Friday. (I know there was some trepidation about this when first announced.) I ordered my school’s books from Paul Macdonald (Children's Bookshop, Beecroft) on the Friday, and they arrived at school today, a day earlier than promised.

The authors and illustrators at the conference made themselves very available to all, and autograph sessions were well timed and well promoted.The Committee appeared unflustered most of the time, and glitches were quickly addressed. (And in the timeslots where I volunteered, everything seemed to be set up for success. Much appreciated!)

I also attended the Leigh Hobbs’ Masterclass (see pic above) arranged by the Australian Society of Authors in Ultimo, on the Sunday after the conference! It, too, was excellent. Worth every cent.

And then, on the Monday, it was back to Week 2 of my school's Book Fair. Stop the world, I wanna get off! #CBCA2016

The Sixth Sense - are we ready?

Having just attended the two-day NSW DET "Connected Learning 2009" conference (and presenting in a session last Wednesday), I'm internalising a lot of new ideas that will need to be interpreted and translated into my daily professional practice.

This year's conference was subtitled "Transforming Learning and Teaching". Colleen Foley and I were pleased we had plenty of school principals at our session! But there was so much information to convey in a 50 minute session of a two-day conference - at which all attendees were giving up two days of their vacation. Which is hardly ideal.

Some of the points raised by the keynote speakers were so important, thought-provoking and challenging. The presentations by Mark Treadwell and Peter Blassina, particularly, were quite mind-blowing. If you haven't seen the TED talk on "The Sixth Sense" by Pattie Maes (MIT Media Lab), as discussed by Peter Blassina at the conference, it's a must-see:
http://www.ted.com/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html



After that video, we were all feeling more than a little inadequate, and yet incredibly excited by the possibilities. As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, here I was thinking my iPhone was pretty clever, and a harbinger of how students of the future would still be needing the help of teacher-librarians to plough through our information world. If "The Sixth Sense" becomes a commercial reality, the learning curve starts anew before the current one is even finished. Are any of us ready for the next paradigm shift?


Outside the Novotel Sydney Hotel, Brighton-le-Sands,
for the Connected Learning conference.

In the picture

The ISLA group of teacher-librarians has posted some photos of the professional development day I was asked to speak at in Shellharbour last October. I was particularly chuffed by this line on their blog site:

"Many Illawarra teacher librarians are now busy planning and creating wikis thanks to the inspirational Ian McLean."

I look forward to seeing what they get up to!


Ian draws the winning raffle (er, guessing competition) ticket.
Also pictured, from left, are ISLA committee members, Margaret Cooper
and Celia Owen.

A sojourn to Shellharbour

I'm back - from a bizarre and wonderful holiday experience in the middle of a busy working week.

On Wednesday afternoon, I caught the train to Wollongong, was met by committee members of ISLA, an enthusiastic and active south coast teacher-librarians' group, who took me to dinner and booked me into the lovely motel (pictured above), and then next morning I was able to stroll across the road to the school which was hosting the district's day of professional development activities.

My two presentations went very well, or at least I feel that they did as I intended, and I had a thoroughly enjoyable time. Too bad there wasn't time to see the tide coming in in the daylight hours, but it sounded pretty at about 11.30pm on Wednesday night.

Tomorrow, it's back to work, as if nothing unusual happened, except that (hopefully) the 120 or so attendees have plenty of new teaching ideas to try out.

More learning, growing and achieving

Unlike the last conference I was asked to speak at, I went into today's events without that heavy weight of responsibility and impending disaster. I mean, if I could fill an hour on my own last time, how much easier would it be this time? We knew our material back-to-front, if necessary. The most difficult aspect would surely be, what bits do I leave out?

My co-presenter, Cath Keane, had prepared eleven of our PowerPoint pages, I'd added my own hyperlinks to the twelfth and last slide, and we only had 50 minutes or so to fill anyway. We also had plenty of time before our session, "Young rappers", to play on the interactive whiteboard (IWB), test our hyperlinks and cache all our web pages that we were planning to visit. We also knew in advance that we had about twenty people signed up to hear our talk. Everything worked in the rehearsal and off we went to the first keynote event of Day 2 of this Early Years Conference.

Clinical psychologist, Lyn Worsley, presented her fascinating session on "The resilience doughnut: the secret of strong kids" and, while she probably didn't say anything terribly new, especially to a ballroom filled with teachers who already had solid backgrounds in early childhood education, the strength of her approach was the clear answer of "where to know?" that one could glean after having used her clever, simple analytical tool for gauging the resilience of a particular student. Wonderful!

Before we knew it, Cath and I were deep into our presentation on book raps, blogs, wikis and Circle Time. Our only hitch was that our computer connection, which had worked so perfectly in rehearsal, had been lost for the presentation. A tech person came in and got us back online most efficiently, but our live connection to the Wilfrid rap blog (on Edublogs) was no longer working. Luckily, our PowerPoint had lots of frame grabs from the site, and the links to the Departmental website and my school's wiki pages were still viable, so we carried on regardless. We finished off with a reading of my Kinder students' "Zebra with spots" fable of 2007, and a walk-through of selected pages from my school's wiki pages. I hope our presentation has encouraged more schools to start dabbling in wikis and blogs.

It all seemed to go very well, but a highlight for me was that two attendees hung back at the end to (re)introduce themselves. It was none other than Warren and Kathy, two of my colleagues from my teachers college days! They'd noticed each other in the audience of my workshop session - I'm not sure at what point they realised that I was also from the same year - but morning tea turned out to be a mini-reunion of the Class of '79 of the Guild Teachers College. We swapped anecdotes about the good ol' days and pocket histories of our lives. It was the first time we'd seen each other since Graduation Day in 1980 - very exciting, and great to know that they are doing so well in their own teaching careers. (I can see a bigger reunion coming up in the next few months! I hope.)

Next up was Peter Gould, Manager, Mathematics at NSW DET - and one of the people I worked with on numerous occasions back in my Scan editor days. Peter's keynote was "From ABC to 123: what counts in early numeracy" and - despite some frustrating glitches with the movie clip elements of his presentation - it was an invaluable reminder of the essential differences in the ways young children learn to be numerate as opposed to literate.

After lunch, I attended two more workshops, both of which (again) ably demonstrated the amazing array of teaching and learning strategies that interactive whiteboards are bringing to classrooms in the 21st century. I guess that's the main thing I'm taking from this conference: that most of today's students are already citizens of the digital world of Web 2.0. The sooner their teachers and parents play catch-up the better. Every presentation I went to was using IWBs as part of their presentation - even my presentation, and today was the first time I'd actually been able to use one! Knowing that a little knowledge is dangerous, I can't wait to get my hands on an IWB as part of my school library's facilities and let my imagination run wild. Or wilder.

This conference left its delegates with so much food for thought (and delicious food for the body - the Novotel, Brighton-le-Lands always does well in that regard), great ideas we can start using on Monday (first day back of Term Three), and some wonderful memories of networking with colleagues, old and new. Synthesising all the learning into our daily lives will take time, but I'm glad I gave up two days of my vacation to absorb it all. I'm also grateful for the very handsome, gold-embossed "Presenter" pens, which Cath and I received for doing our workshop.

Roll on Term Three...

Learning, growing, achieving in the early years, Day 1

Tomorrow I'm speaking at Day 2 of the 2008 Early Years Conference: Learning, Growing, Achieving, presented by NSW DET. Day 1 was held today, but my talk session - co-presented with current Scan editor, Cath Keane, isn't until tomorrow.

Cath has put together a PowerPoint presentation about our recent ventures into the world of Web 2.0 - online book raps for Stage 1, and related blogs and wikis, and I'll also be talking about my school wiki pages, using some of the material I prepared (on fable writing for Early Stage 1) for the School libraries leading learning conference I did earlier this year. My conference notes are still online, revamped a little to incorporate some recent reflections. Since that last conference, I've also worked on some other relevent projects: a wiki page for the Arthur Simultaneous Reading event and some great Nursery Rhyme matrices, which I used in Term One this year with Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 classes.

Today there were some excellent and thought-provoking keynote speeches from Professor Scott Paris, of University of Michigan, ("Teaching and assessing comprehension right from the start") and Tracey Simpson ("Honest talk, shared language: connectedness for success in the early years"). Both keynotes emphasised the importance of teachers making full use of evidence-based practice, both reading the results of others' research, and using one's own to inform future teaching. I enjoyed these sessions, took lots of notes - which I promise to synthesis and report back about.

As I await my school's first interactive whiteboard (IWB), it was interesting to note that many (most?) workshop presenters are now using them as standard equipment. I attended excellent and flashy sessions on "Student learning in a digital age" and "COGs: raising the bar in the early years". In the main room, there was also a "Regional showcase" of the Best Start assessment tools project from the Sydney Region.

In summing up the regional showcase, Rob Randall reminded us of an excellent earlier quote and many people jotted this down as one of their last comments on their notepads. The new emphasis for the schools involved in Best Start has become "... shorter teaching episodes with fluid groups of students".

Not an entirely new thought for those of us with plenty of experience in PSP (Priority Schools Program) schools, but no doubt quite a new concept for others.

Tomorrow - Day 2! Wish me luck!

School libraries leading learning: Day 2

The alarm clock was again set to go off at 6:00 am and, of course, I was awake - wide awake - at 4:20 am. Ross Todd's advice from yesterday was still ringing through my brain.

Nothing to do except turn on my computer, dig through all my hand-scrawled notes from Circle Time evaluations of last year’s Kindergarten wiki fables project, and add them to the new wiki page I intended to use in my presentation today.

Of course, now that I'm home I realise exactly which bits of my material I should have used yesterday (my ten-minute segment of a 70-minute panel), when the captive audience was huge. I also should have started off the panel talk on the Saturday with a reading of my favourite student-written fable. But I'd been so focused on using it to kick off my tutorial today (a one-hour session), which was in a comparatively tiny room, and a much smaller group. Sigh...

Why is it always so clear the day after the event?