Anne Mirtschin's Blog (97)

It started as a normal, fairly mundane school day.........

Well connected teachers will  find there are many ways to learn, share and teach, teachable moments arise constantly and interruptions to normal routines may become the norm. Yesterday was one such day, when normal classes were planned and a relaxing night at home anticipated, but....

World Museum Scratch Day Saturday, May 18th

Year 8 students are participating in  the Squares, Circles and…

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Our Hawkesdale P12 College year 6 students linked up virtually with Lismore Primary School (approximately 1 1/4 hours drive away) to share war stories of their great or great great grandparents. As Australia celebrates Anzac Day tomorrow, April 25th, to remember those who fought for our country, this was great use of polycom equipment and  smart boards to be able to connect and…

Students in year 7 are learning how to use some of the lesser known features of MS Powerpoint. After creating animations in Powerpoint, I was going to get them to create games in Powerpoint. This was dependent on them accessing a file in the network drive in a 2011 folder. To my dismay, the folder had been removed. Now what!

I had just finished chatting to Lorraine Leo in skype re the imminent hurricane that was soon to…

Hands were up all over the classroom from students new to Scratch trying to complete their sprite. Patiently the teacher moved around the room, answering those questions.  

But.............. the teacher ........

1. was not in the physical classroom, but passed around the room, on the screen of an iPad using skype
2. lived 1000's of kilometres away in Boston USA (my…

"The Sun Never Sets" is one of the scheduled sessions offered as part of Connected Educator Month.  It will be held on Friday August 3rd at 5pm, UTC or Saturday, August 4th at 7am, Melbourne Australia time (GMT+10).

This is a panel and open discussion about global connected education trends and how connected educators around the…

As I enjoy watching the Olympic games and wish to pursue aspects of the London12 Games with my students, I wanted to add a live tweetfeed widget to my global2 class blog(a campus of edublogs) As part of this exercise, I will also get my students to add the widget to their blogs. (See Tiff's blog) 

Rationale and Learning Intentions

• these games are…

Twitter was the topic of  conversation for this week's Tech Talk Tuesday session. With a mix of prepared slides and application sharing, twitter was introduced to those who may be new to its use. It was great to welcome a global audience with participants from Austria, Honduras (Central America), Moscow, Russia and Australia.

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For 10 weeks during September, October and November, a group of 9 students who wish to pursue their love of writing would assemble in the school library on a Wednesday lunchtime to linkup with Christopher Herz, an author from Brooklyn, New York. See more at …

I have been given the challenge of teaching ICT to prep/ones this year for one lesson per week. Having been part of the Flat Classroom Projects for the past 5 years, I was keen to join in the  pilot K-2 Building Bridges project  for…

As part of my Innovator of the Month Award, I shall be writing about some of the innovative projects that I am involved in. Please note that the current netgened project is work in progress, so keep checking out the wiki to see how it transforms. (The above…

To my delight  I have been named Innovator of the month at Innovate Here for DEECD (our Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. This is a new initiative and is dedicated to discovering, connecting and helping others to get started with new and innovative ideas/practices for learning both within and…

This week, I was fully reminded of the fact that I should never, ever doubt the ability of students. Thinking it would be great to blend two classes - one in Boston, USA and mine in Hawkesdale Australia in a virtual classroom, it was suggested to…

After the heat of the weekend where the temperature reached 41 degrees centigrade where we live, it was a refreshing change to see the heavy snow outside.The snow was falling in storm like proportions but it was in Boston, USA, not Hawkesdale, Australia, where we live.

My grade 4/5 IT class are about to start a global project, using Scratch. However, I am not very familiar with Scratch, so my wonderful online teaching colleague, Lorraine Leo, from Boston, USA, suggested that one of…

I am a secondary teacher and in the last few years have taught predominantly senior students. Due to a small year 11 group moving through our school, subjects are combined for year 11 and 12 classes. This has left gaps in my timetable. In 2012, I shall be teaching two prep/one classes  and a grade 4/5 class ICT. (Information and Communications Technology ie Computers and technology)

The question that my principal posed to me when I…

As a welcoming host for classroom 2.0,I greeted a new member whose name was Ekaterina and she was from Russia. She was interested in forming ?a link with another global school for videoconferencing purposes. As a long shot, I said we would be interested, but did not think our class times would match. But...... they did. We had one hour in the day when our…

We live in a time of increasing globalisation - we buy and sell globally, network globally, travel virtually and globally. Therefore it is important to look at global opportunities for connection and to consider the immediate addition of global competencies in our curriculum. Below is the poster publicising this amazing…

A desperate email message went out to Christopher Herz, an author, who was to speak to our budding student writers during their lunchtime.  He had not appeared despite us logging into skype 10 minutes later than our appointed time. The email went straight through to Christophers' mobile phone, as he was relaxing in his lounge room after his day at work! (The amazing functions of technology)

Almost immediately, Christopher appeared…

After the great success of last year's inaugural online Global Conference, the 2011 Global Education conference will take place from November 14th to 18th. It is online, free and runs 24 hours per day to suit all time zones and be in multiple languages. There are a number of keynote speakers and many global presenters who will share their knowledge, experiences in global projects, ideas and…

Question to Ms Murnane:- "Where is Federation Square?"

Answer from Ms Murnane: "You are standing in it!"

It was then we realised that not all of our 34 students on our excursion had been to Melbourne's famous square.

Taking it Back a Few Steps or kilometres!

A busload of students  had taken the seven…

An excited year 11 student greeted me outside the office one morning at the end of last year and proceeded to tell me all about the fabulous event that he and two others had attended in Melbourne the day before. (…