Our Learning Highway

Wow! What an amazing 3 days. There were so may positive aspects about attending the Ulearn09 conference, where do I begin? Firstly I left the conference exhausted but totally motivated to implement as many of the fantastic ideas that were shared, that i possibly can.

Tony Ryan was an inspiration. I think the biggest idea that I came back with, is that I need to provide a lot more opportunities for my children to just "think". I have begun to use the 'see-saw' thinking activity that Tony Ryan shares. The children get into pairs and say one word related to the topic I give them, then its their partners turn. They go back and forth for about 2 minutes. I had the children do this activity when I introduced our 'Float on By' inquiry unit. We used the words Christmas and floats. I used this activity to get the children to think outside the square. My children responded well to this and I can now see where I can use this activity in lots of areas. I am really excited about finding out a lot more about Tony Ryan's Thinking Keys.

I have come away with a confirmed belief that the use of ICT in the classroom is another tool to engage children in their learning. I didn't realise how much support and how many wonderful ideas are out there to provide our children with an amazing tool to extend their ability to gain more accurate and up-to-date information so easily.

I was also shown what a wonderful tool 'Blogging' is and how i am not utilising its availability as much as I could. I can now see the rewards that this gives the children when their work is "up in the clouds". The children obviously will gain a lot of rewards from feedback that they may receive. I am really excited about getting my class to blog more regularly. I would also dearly love to see parents and whanau visiting our class blog, so I will be advertising the blog a lot more.

Staff collegiality was another huge bonus that I felt came from attending the conference. Not only with our staff but also with other teachers from our wider community.

I am really looking forward to seeing myself and the children using the ideas from Ulearn. I would like to acknowledge Neil and our Board for providing me with this wonderful opportunity to extend my personal growth in the implementation of ICT in my classroom.