Expanding Learning Horizons

On Saturday I'm flying to Melbourne (c.2000km) to present a couple of sessions at the Expanding Learning Horizons Conference. Needless to say I'm really looking forward to it. I see Will of Weblogg-ed is presenting in the room next door. I'm looking forward to having a chat with him :)

Last year I found the delegates really responsive to the messages, processes and applications I presented. This year I've got a fair few new ideas for them to take back to their schools and classrooms :)

Here are the outlines of the two sessions I'll be leading.

The MONSTER 5 1/2 hour session that will give you a little something to work on.

Presentation Title: Productive AND CREATIVE uses of ICTS in the Modern Classroom Presenter - Adrian Bruce Duration - 5 1/2 hr

Presentation Description:
My course is 'Hands On, Minds On' and is based on software and processes that I know work in real classroom situations. The course is designed to give delegates 'just a brief feel' of the variety and power of modern free educational software applications and web tools.

During the course I also explore processes and organisational strategies that enable teachers to implement Information and Communication Technologies in highly creative and engaging way. Course participants will leave this session with a plethora of great teaching ideas, an incredible amount of inspiration and realistic goals to implement back in their schools and classrooms.

Software (Take a deep breath and brace yourself)

Machinima (2nd Life, Cam-Studio, Movie Maker), Stopmotion animation (Monkey Jam), Podcasting (Audacity and Pod-o-Matic), Digital Story Telling and Vodcasting (Photostory 3 and Teachertube.com), My Classroom Blogging Experiments (Classblogmeister.com), Functional and Creative Photography for Blogging ( Paint.Net, Imageshack.us, jacksonpollock.org), Read and Write tools for Blogging ( The resources are ever changing for this section ) Mind Mapping (C-Map), Digital Music Making (Ejay), Digital Drawing (Inkscape), Cartoon Making using Online tools, Computer Aided Design ( Google Sketchup and Lego Digital Designer), Robotics (Mindstorms NXT robot), 3D animation (Anim8or)

and here is the short one :)

Presentation Title: Classroom Blogging - The Most Engaging Thing I've Done with ICTs so Far - Presenter - Adrian Bruce Duration - 1hr

Presentation Description:
At the beginning of this year I began a project with six teachers where we gave each child in the school from Yrs 3 to 6 their own blog.

We now use the blogs as an online publishing medium for thoughts, opinions, artwork, poetry, digital cartooning, digital artwork, website reviews, book reviews, thinking skills, collaboration and a way to showcase the possibilities of ICTs in the primary classroom. By the time of the ELH Conference we will have mastered integrating many other technologies to our blogging projects such as podcasts, video, 3d animation, stop motion animation and much, much more.

Come along and check out our initial experiments. Hear a few stories of success and failure. Then get a few ideas for using blogs creatively in your own classroom to engage your students in the writing and creative processes.

So get your registrations in and drop in and see me.

cheers

Adrian Bruce