Learning at Schools Conference 23rd, 24th and 25th of Feb

Wednesday

Enjoyed the keynote speaker Scott McLeod, as the message that shone through was that we need to move forward with e-learning and SOLO to give the best learning opportunities for our students, which is our goal this year at Glenholme.

My first breakout was on Literacy. I really enjoyed this workshop and will do more shared reading with the whole class with challenging texts.

The thing that I got most out of the workshop was that the globally low readers usually read easy, non relevant material and don't get the chance to be exposed to more challenging text. The method of teaching as a whole class and reading the text aloud along with the students, exposes poor readers the opportunity to learn challenging text that they may not normally come into contact with.

Also using the activboard to engage the children with reading is a great way to improve their reading ability.

The second breakout was using digital tools for music. Although it was more targetted at music teachers, I was introduced to some very cool software programmes such as guitarband, audacity, skype, using the iPad to give music lessons.

I also sat in on a short activboard session and picked up a few tips to take back to class, included reading cloze activities and recording questions and answers against the backdrop of a picture.

All in all a very enjoyable day. Looking forward to learning more tomorrow.

Thursday

Web Tools for Schools was a great little workshop - Shown tools such as scribblemaps.com which is a programme that uses google maps to work on. You can write information on the map. Would be great for our Identity unit, plotting where we come from. Twiducate.com is a social networking tool for the teacher and students only. A great way to post homework, ask questions and collaborate. The children learn social media networking skills through this programme.
Friday

Building a 5th Wall in your Classroom by David Kinane was a fabulous workshop. Stand outs in this workshop was to rearrange the layout of my classroom computers by turning them into a rectangular position and putting the computer at one end, leaving space for five children to collaborate around one computer. This has worked really well in my classroom. The children all share the keyboard and it's just fantastic.

Another tip was to make children e-Learning experts for the class and for staff. Trying to make the children independent of the teacher. This is something I really want to get up and going in Glenholme School.

Attended Willow's SOLO Taxonomy workshop. I wanted to see if I would learn anything new to implement in my classroom, but they just went over what I already know. I was very proud of the girls presenting. They did a really good job.

Overall, the conference was fabulous, picked up some great ideas to use in my classroom. Have already rearranged furniture for computers and starting to train experts in my classroom. I have used scribblemaps for our identity unit. I am fired up and really keen to utilise and teach what I have learnt.