Week 5 Term 3

I attended the QSITE conference last Saturday in Townsville. The presenters were from the ICT Learning and Innovation Centre in Brisbane. The focus was on digital story telling, and exploring various free software available such as photostory, audacity and Web 2.0. We also had the opportunity to work with Sam animation which was very interesting and a great deal of fun.
I have also launched into my focus of professional development - reflective and self directed learning supported by e-tools and e-Portfolios.
I have been exploring the Literacy Cycles developed by Dorothy Burt and thinking about developing a cycle with the central focus being reflection. I am in the process of developing this.

As our present Inquiry has a science focus, culminating in a science fair celebration, I have decided to use Art Coasta's 16 Habits of Mind as the main focus for the starting point in talking about and identifying ways of thinking and metacognition.

We started off by talking about and sharing ideas on habits that we may have, good and bad habits and what a habit is and the kinds of habits that we might like to have.
I then spoke to the children about good habits also applying to the way that we think about things.
I had gone onto the Habits of Mind website and downloaded the simplified explanation of each habit with the symbol cards. From this I developed a matching activity. The children worked in pairs, reading the descriptors and matching these to the picture symbols.
In the next lesson we then went through each descriptor and discussed the matching symbol. We also talked about what we might say or do (or what it might sound like or look like) for each of the Habits.
In the next learning we have worked in small groups of 5, with teacher aide support, and highlighted which habits or kind of thinking a scientist might display.
Our next step is to move into some paired research into a famous scientist, and provide 3-5 habits that the scientist of choice displayed and provide an example of each habit- what they actually did or words that described their kind of thinking.

Authentic and meaningful reflection is an important part of the learning process. It fosters critical thinking, connections, deep understanding, and metacognition. Publishing reflections to the web encourages students to find their voice and express their identity more than if they know only the teacher is going to read it.
It seems that Blogs and Voice Threads are two commonly used and effective tools to provide a framework for students to reflect on their learning. Both tools can be built on over time and students can refer back to previous reflections to understand the growth of their learning. On the Voice thread issue, I have found out that Queensland Education has blocked this site so I think that I am going to have to explore alternatives.

In terms of my own further professional development, I have been given permission to attend the 6th Annual IWB and IT conference in Sydney from the 20th - 22nd August.