My Digital Classroom

Today was another day at the Secondary Literacy Network. It is one day per term where a number of the Literacy leaders in Catholic schools in Melbourne get together for a day of professional learning. One of the things I really enjoy about these days is hearing from other literacy leaders about how they are trying to embed literacy across the whole school and some of their experiences. The personal journey of one such leader today was both eye-opening and refreshing. This was a person who had been teaching for 15-20 years (across both primary and secondary) and was experiencing the same sorts of problems that I, and many others, are experiencing in our own schools.

In the following session, Jo Ryan from Clonard College shared how she had been teaching her Year 9s about a year 12 issues unit. She has scaffolded the work to a high degree and provided the students with a framework to approach what can be a difficult part of the course. We were all given a copy of her unit and I think this is something that we could use back at school as a way of preparing our Year 10s for VCE English.

Travelling from the north-eastern to the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne each morning, I have a drive of anywhere between 40 minutes to an hour each way. Like many people out there, I use this time to listen to some of the many interesting podcasts on offer.

Below are some of the educational podcasts I listen to. They are listed in order of when I started listening to them.

Edpod

Edpod is a fortnightly podcast from Radio National (ABC) and looks at a range of education issues. This podcast started off really well with interesting and relevant information on things such as school readiness, steiner streams in public schools and Schools for the 21st century. However, since the actual radio program behind the podcast was cut, I’ve found the stories have become less relevant.

Digital Planet

While essentially not an education podcast, this one from the BBC has a lot of interesting information about what is going on in the world of technology. It is hosted by Gareth Mitchell and there is often three to four different stories in one episode. While hearing about the stories themselves is good, what is also great is the is the insights given by resident expert, Bill Thompson.

The Virtual Staffroom

This is a fantastic podcast by Chris Betcher, looking at different aspects of technology in the classroom. There is normally one to two other people on the program with Chris and they change from episode to episode. The podcast contains a wealth of information and the guests are always interesting and engaging. There used to be a podcast about once a month up until the start of this year when they have been less regular. They are definitely worth a listen, and there are a couple which I’ve listened to a number of times (check out Episode 14- Questions are the answer).

SMARTboard Lesson Podcast.

This is a podcast that I stayed away from in the beginning, as we don’t use SMARTboards at our school, we have Promethean Activboards. Nevertheless, I downloaded a podcast after hearing Ben Hazzard speak on the Virtual Staffroom during one episode. What I quickly discovered was that this is not just a podcast for users of the SMARTboard. The podcasts are enjoyable to listen to, with engaging hosts Ben Hazzard & Joan Badger. Each episode contains a lesson on a different topic but it is not about what the SMARTboard can do, just examples of good teaching. Joan regularly gives good links to try out and what is refreshing is that they are not a mouthpiece for SMART. They often speak their mind about the board and its related products and are quite prepared to call it as they see it.

The Ed Tech Crew

This is one I stumbled upon after reading a blog entry by Chris Betcher in which he mentioned he was a guest on one of their podcasts. This is also a good podcast looking at many different websites and web 2.0 tools on offer. The podcast is hosted by Tony Richards and The ICT Guy, Darrel Branson each week. They occasionally have guests on the program and have also conducted podcasts at conferences such as the ICTEV conference in May. I also listen to Darrel’s ICT Guy podcast which contains a link and blog post of the week.

On Deck

This is a podcast I’ve been listening to fairly recently, created by Jeff Utecht. This is a podcast about shifting our schools, integrating technology into the classroom and the changing nature of learning. Jeff and his many of his guests are from the International School scene in various parts of Asia, and their conversations are always thought-provoking.

EdTechWeekly

This is a podcast I’ve picked up only in the last couple of weeks. In this podcast, a group of people take it in turns to talk about different links or tools that they’ve discovered over the course of the week. The podcast contains a wealth of information, although it is difficult to take in every link that they mention while I’m driving. I’m finding I have to listen to these podcasts a couple of times to get maximum benefit.

These are many of the podcasts I listen to, if anyone knows of any other really good education podcasts, leave me a comment.

One of the things for which I want to use this blog is as a record of the good things I have gained from different PDs. On the 20th May, I went along to the Secondary Literacy Network at the Treacy Centre in Parkville.

The first keynote speaker was Dianne Cullen from the school of Education at ACU, talking about how ESL fits in with the current teaching courses on offer. One of the best things I got out of her talk was finding out about the Language & Multicultural Education Resource Centre (LMERC) in Carlton. This facility contains a huge range of materials in the areas of LOTE & ESL, and is available to all Victorian teachers once you join (membership is free).

Another thing which I felt I needed to include was this excerpt by Chris Davison about ESL learners, which appeared in TESOL in Context vol.1 1990:

“In terms of classroom procedures, they need much more repetition and practice, more explicit instruction and concept-checking, more careful paraphrasing of difficult vocabulary, more demonstration and modelling, more highly structured and sensitive elicitation of existing knowledge, more opportunities for controlled teacher-student and student-student interaction and more time to absorb the rhythms and patterns of the target language development, not just opportunities for use.”

Although this was written back in 1990, the information contained within rings just as true today as it did back then. While this is not new (obviously, if it was written 18 years ago) it is still a good reminder of what we need to be doing to ensure that our ESL students, and indeed all our students with weak literacy, succeed in our classroom.

The other keynote speaker on the day was Associate Professor Pauline Gibbons from the University of Technology in Sydney, talking about setting ESL students up for success in an intellectually challenging classroom. At the centre of her presentation was the message that if you don’t understand the language, you can’t learn the subject. This is so true and is what I’ve been trying to get across to the different faculties here at school.

It was interesting to hear about the 7 intellectual practices, although what made it better than many of the presentations that I have seen, was that she also included real classroom examples on how each of these practices have been implemented.

One of the best things I came away with yesterday was a list of integrated literacy activities that could be done with students across all subject areas. These included some things we already do, but also others I had never heard of like dictogloss, split dictation, sentence matching and barrier crossword.

I came away from the day with a lot of new things that I can’t wait to introduce in my class, and hopefully the classes of others around the school.