The Year To Come - 2009

I am excited at the prospect of a new year and have already been busy thinking, dreaming and planning what 2009 will hold.

At school I will be teaching year 4 with a male teacher who I've worked well with in the past. Our Integrated Inquiry units will include the topics:

Personal Relationships - including a novel study of "Rowan of Rin" by Emily Rodda, nature conservation at a local ridge, and hopefully the development of a class blog. Through this unit students will learn about building and maintaining positive relationships; and roles and responsibilities within a community.

Australian History - including a focus on Aboriginal history prior to British colonisation and then the different challenges faced by settlers up until the time of federation. Through this unit I would like to see students developing timelines with Dipity and trying out video casts to explain Australian history.

Textiles and Design - looking at fabrics and their uses, exploring different techniques with textiles, and creating their own designs to suit a particular purpose. I would like to see children working in team project groups to liaise with others, determine needs and wants, and produce products to meet communicated needs eg. costumes for school dance performance, craft items for school fete and commemorative t-shirt for year co-hort.

The Solar System - including an understanding of apparent size/distance, gravitational pull, current information from space exploration and the causes of changes to the surface of the Earth or atmosphere. There are numerous interesting and useful websites to support this unit of work.

At school I will also be working on our Student Enrichment Policy - trying to link up, document and promote all the great things the school does to enrich student learning and growth. I am excited by this prospect because I really do feel the school does this so well.
I've also expressed an interest in helping the school find and purchase a class set of laptop computers. Given that we now have wireless internet access, I can't wait to get the students started on laptops!

In my 'computer world', I hope to connect more with my personal learning network - testing out my webcam and exploring "Flash Meetings". I want to do some more podcasting, for Link 4 Learning, but also consider its future direction. I've recently taken on a Blog Carnival, so hopefully will be able to maintain this throughout the year (the first edition will be out on Jan 7). I'm keen to get my Delicious accounts working for me even more than they are currently. And, I'm sure I'll be surprised by a number of other opportunities that will pop up.

On the home front, there will probably be renovations, and hopefully a 30th Birthday overseas trip for my husband. He wants to see the Northern Lights and also drive on the German Autobahn. With all of this, it will come down to how much we can save up and what we decide to prioritize! Speaking of prioritizing, I'd like to get back into my running - probably early morning, or home from work in the afternoons.

All in all, it's looking like a great year.

Tech Tips Tuesday

This week's tip: Make it your New Year's Resolution to Get Connected in 2009 (if you're not already!)

Why?

• You learn so much through developing a personal learning network online
• You meet new people and can support one another
• You find new resources to use in the classroom

How?

• Read blogs and leave comments. You can search for blogs with Google Blog Search.
• Start up your own blog on a hobby or interest
• If you're blogging about Teaching in K-6, consider submitting posts to the Teaching K-6 Blog Carnival at http://www.blogcarnival.com/
• Sign up - for Twitter, Facebook, Plurk or other social networks of your choice. Set up some sort of profile that lets people know a little about you. They probably won't choose to follow you if they don't know who you are or what you have in common with them.
• Seek out people to follow. On Twitter there are Twitter Groups that you can sign up to in order to find people with similar interests. For teachers on Twitter, there's the Twitter4Teachers wiki. On Facebook you can create or join up to 200 groups! I'm not sure about Plurk as I don't use it...yet!
• Start chatting. Share your ideas with others. Ask people's opinion on things. Share things you are finding online. You will be amazed by how much you can learn from one another.
• Consider joining or creating a relevant ning to connect further with people with similar interests. I'm part of the Oz/Nz Educators Ning. I'm still finding my feet in here, but hope to get a lot more involved in the new year.
• Use Skype to talk with people around the world for free. I've heard of teachers who use Skype to connect with other schools as well as experts on topics being researched in class.

Want more?

• Check out the video cast on Teaching Web 2.0 at the K12Online Conference 2008
• Check out http://teachweb2.wikispaces.com/

SO... Have fun in 2009 and GET CONNECTED!