Learning Streets ....

I visited the most amazing school last week. The Lakes School P - 9 in Sth Morang. It is based on the concept of "learning Streets" an adaptation of the 'open learning model'. You can read about it in The Age article of Feb 2007. Retired Educator John Whitford invited me over as his cluster was having an Expo. Principal Kerrie Heenan invited me back to spend a full day to talk to the kids and watch how it works in reality. It reminded of the sort of stuff St Leonards Cornish Campus is renowned for, but this is State Education.

Google "designing spaces for Effective Learning" to find an excellent pdf file on learning streest. Has anyone else heard of 'learning streets ?" Do we have anything like this operating in the Eastern Region ? I have seen MacLeod Secondary School's Impact Centre but again that is not Eastern.

Stuff you probably need to know ...

Before we rush into Blogging we need to consider a number of things; blog etiquette, privacy and security being perhaps the most important. Wordpress provides a safer format enabling you to control who views the blog. It is however a little more complex to learn.

The W.A Department of Education has an excellent site with great articles.

Two great videos, very apt for the message we are pushing are "When I become a teacher" , Marco Torres showed this video and I noticed quite a few Educators were at his session on the 15th May, you can view this on the templestowecluster blog. I will upload it directly soon. "Shifthappens" is another video well worth a look, Although Youtube is blocked in schools, are you aware you can access teachertube !!!
Did you know you can personalise and edit youtube videos through mojiti. !!

I like this site on blog etiquette.

Many educators are now sharing ideas and even lesson plans via their blogs, I have attached two such links to "other Blogs we read" - Joseph at Computers & 21C Eduk8n, and Jo Mcleay "The Open Classroom" are well worth a read.

any educator can do this

by using the login and password provided by Helen any of the EMR educators can post a new entry on this blog.

Big day May 25th !!

In case any Educators do read this blog. Carolyn MacCauley is organising a meeting for us on Friday May 25th. Apparently there will be an announcement soon regarding the future of "Cluster Educator's". Carolyn is currently replacing Cherri Messerle in at EMR. On May 25th we will be discussing 2008 either what next OR Where to now ?

frappe' or frappr !!

I always thought a frappe' was like an iced coffee !! Robyn Floyd commented under the last post about a website called frappr it has a world map and you can 'pin' yourself and make a statement to the world. Have a look. Also visit Robyn's comment for more detail.

Robyn also sent around an email in January with some great sites. 24 hour museum a collection of games, interactive activities and teaching resources.
Rafi.ki is an international community just for schools where students can publish their work. Well worth a look. Thanks Robyn.

Our own Blog

Well folks, we now have our own Blog. This resulted from the email conversations that were flying back and forward in response to the reference Gary Bass made to an article by Olsen on teaching to learning styles that was on our distribution list. Apparently Olsen concluded that teaching towards students' preferred learning styles in unproductive, and can even be detrimental. It provided immediate debate and discussion.

So we now have a forum for commenting, discussing and keeping in touch. Feel free to practice your ICT skills and leave a comment and when you feel more confident, make a POST. We will be using this Blog , more like a
WIKI , where we can all contribute.

Looking forward to hearing from you all and reading your thoughts.