The 2009 conference theme is Bridging the Divide.

This year’s conference begins with a pre-conference keynote by classroom teacher and international educator Kim Cofino the week of November 30, 2009. Use the CMIS vodpod collection at the right to view Maria Knee and the PR Committee’s conference video teaser.

During the  two weeks, December 7-11 and December 14-17, over fifty presentations will be posted online to the conference blog and conference Ning for participants to view, download, and discuss.

The Getting Started pages on the K-12 Online Conference wiki provide all the information you need to participate in this world-wide event.

Australian contibutors to the event include Chris Betcher – watch his conference teaser below – and view others on the K-12 Conference ning video page [This link requires you to log in to ning]

Check out the full list of presentations which are organized into four strands.

WEEK 1: December 7-11, 2009

Getting Started (13 presentations)

Leading the Change (14 presentations)

WEEK 2: December 14-17, 2009

In the Classroom (13 presentations)

Kicking It Up a Notch (14presentations)

I’m planning to participate as part of my professional learning. Stop and say hello if you see me online – janning

Read the original blog post here

The following information about Paul is taken from the
NEiTA Awardee profile document.

The flagship project for Paul and his students is Podkids Australia, the most successful school based podcast in the country. The Podkids Australia podcast provides an authentic worldwide audience for the students’ writing and has subscribers in more than 50 countries. In the podcast, Paul’s students have interviewed the Western Australian Premier, leading authors, federal ministers and famous sportspeople. The students’ work has been downloaded more than 60,000 times.

Paul’s achievements in harnessing new technologies to inspire his students have been internationally recognised. Politicians, educators and administrators from Australia and overseas have flocked to the school to observe Paul’s innovative teaching practices. Representatives from Apple Computers have even visited the small public school and, in 2006, Paul was awarded the status of Apple Distinguished Educator.

Paul gives generously of his time to contribute to the professional development of his teaching colleagues. The following Prezi, on Blogs and Wikis was delivered at the ECAWA State Conference 2009

Paul also maintains the Educating the Digital Generation wiki where you will find a wealth or resources on topics including podcasting, blogs and wikis, Scratch, 1:1 laptop programs and Race Around the World. Paul is an active twitterer.

Want to know more?

Through the Department of Education Portal Western Australian teachers are able to access Teachers have Class! the Department’s FREE online professional learning program to support teachers to integrate ICT into teaching and learning.

Teachers have Class! provides relevant and practical self paced, online, on demand or instructor-led courses focused on technology integration with best practice pedagogies.

As well as Anytime Workshops and Self-Paced Books the following Instructor-led classes are available this year:

The CMIS Podcasts in the Classroom page provides background information and support materials useful to teachers new to podcasting.

Mashup Australia

Our Mashies post from 14th October alerted readers to the The Government 2.0 TaskforceMashupAustralia competition.

Many of the entries are suited to educational use  including:

• Historic Australia – Interactive photos

  The Interactive Photos Map is a flickr + google map + wikipedia mashup for Australian War Memorial Photo Collection, Powerhouse Museum Photo Collection, State Library of NSW Photo Collection and State Library of Queensland Photo Collection.

• Mildenhall’s Cloud

  A tag cloud which represents the descriptions of Mildenhall’s photographs as provided by the National Archives of Australia. Each word is sized according to the frequency of occurence in the archive descriptions. Clicking on the tag displays a gallery of related images.

  By displaying the information in a cloud as opposed to a tradtional search, the user is able to visualise the contents of the collection without any prior knowledge, making the collection more accessible.

• Fridgemate

  Fridgemate is a customisable directory of the public services closest to your address.

The MashupAustralia Contest is open for entries until 4PM Friday, 13th November 2009.

Teachers are encouraged to allow their students to register for and participate in the youTHINK webcast on Thursday November 12th. 10 am – 12 noon in Western Australia.

They can aslo be part of the webcast audience and participate in the live online polls during the event.

Students need to register in order to participate. Check out the registration details here

Use the links for ’social media’, ‘mobile’ and ‘games’ at the top of the application window to view the number of new social media counts recorded since you clicked on the link.

And speaking (or should that be blogging…?) about social media… the CMIS Fiction Focus twitter account @cmisevalff now has over 100 followers?  Readers of this blog may like to participate in some simple social networking via two new CMIS twitter accounts: CMIS Primary Focus @cmisevalpf and CMIS Technology Focus @cmisevaltf.

Want to know more ?

The Professional Learning Institute and Leadership Centre is offering a great opportunity for educational leaders to lean more about ‘Effective Leadership through Technology’.
Internationally recognised educators  Sheryl-Nussbaum-Beach and Steve Hargadon will be in Perth for a one day event on the 20 November 2009. The day will start with a dual breakfast presentation; Steve Hargadon   ‘School 2.0: Where We’re Headed and What to Do About It’ and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach – ‘Effective School Leadership through Technology: The 21st Century Administrator’. A breakfast presentation will be followed by your choice of workshop with either Steve or Sheryl.

To download the promotional flyer, click here.

Teams from around the world are participating in the 
World Solar Challenge
aiming to drive from Darwin to Adelaide using the power of the sun.

This year’s entrants include vehicles from two WA high schools –  Willeton and Leeming.
Currently Willeton’s Solar Flair is ranked 10th and Leeming’s Hammerhead is placed 18th overall.

 
You can follow the Leeming team’s progress on their blog and to find out all about the technical side of their entry.
A great video and information about Willeton’s entry can be found on the 100 People: A world Project website 

 The lead cars plan to be in Adelaide by Saturday.

Mashup Australia

The Government 2.0 Taskforce invites you to MashupAustralia.

from Wikipedia:

Mashup (web application hybrid), a web application that combines data and/or functionality from more than one source

Read more about the competition rules and what  Open Access means and why it is so important.

To be eligible for the Student’s Prize [$2,000 for the best entry] you must be enrolled in a recognised secondary schooling or tertiary institution (e.g. TAFE, Uni) in Australia.

Even if you don’t create an entry yourself drop by the Categories page to check out the entries which currently include:

• Victorian Schools Locator
• Broadband Locator
• Geocoded List of Medicare Locations
• Postcode Finder

The MashupAustralia Contest is open for entries until 4PM Friday, 13th November 2009.

from the Edna website…

We are seeking entries from students or schools to produce design work for an electronic edition of the 2010 Schools calendar. The calendar is extensively used by early childhood, primary, secondary teachers and school librarians across Australia and promoted to over 80,000 educational institutions, ensuring that your design work will be seen by many people!

Further information can be found in the competition brief.

Get your winning entry in by Monday 30 November 2009 for your chance to win an Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection and a Wacom Intuos 3 design tablet valued at $900, kindly donated by Scholastic Australia.
Further information about the competition can be found in the competition brief.

Download the competition pack to enter.

Horizon Report 2009

The 2009 Horizon Report for Australia and New Zealand was released on September 25th, 2009 at the National Broadband Network Symposium at Griffith University.

The report is part of ongoing research by the  New Media Consortium and aims to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative inquiry  within education around the globe over a five-year time period

The report is available in web format and as a downloadable pdf [1.29MB]



The report describes six areas of emerging technologies that will impact eduction in Australia and New Zealand over the next one to  five years.

These technologies are expected to have a penetration rate greater than 16-20% within:

• The next year
  • Moblie Internet devices
  • Private Clouds
• Two to three years
  • Open content
  • Virtual and alternate realities
• Four to five years
  • Location-based learning
  • Smart objects

Permission is granted under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license to replicate and distribute this report freely for non-commercial purposes provided that it is distributed only in its entirety.

This post from the Bright Ideas blog summarizes the salient points of the 102 page document.