Great teachers improving on excellence.

What an inspiration it was listening to colleagues sharing their journeys of practice change. Kinda made me jealous of the current pedagogical shifts they are pioneering and makes me reflect on how far removed the digital classroom is from the chalk and talk of my early years in education. That being said I am, however, enjoying the challenge of learning new skills in the digital environment. At this point I have reached the end of my Google Site knowledge and consequently I am not able to help Lorene progress to the next step with her site so the suggestion has been that I shift my focus over to experimenting with the construction of my own site based around the current School Production "Cindy In Da House". Hopefully from this experience I will gain inSites (see what I did there?) that I can pass on to Lorene. Watch this space! 

Well known in Mac-ademia!

Inquiry rubric

Big ups to Matt for his "free" lunchtime tutorial. A reworking of the Y5&6 Literacy site is now taking shape.

The collaborative work that Lorene and I have done so far on her "Yr 5&6 Literacy" site has been both productive and frustrating. We have made a title banner to give the site a unique identity and have worked out how to delete the parts of the PES template that are not relevant to the teaching and learning of her specific group while maintaining the PES site conventions. 
The frustration that we both feel has arisen from the fact that we have now reached the extent of our site construction/manipulation/linking expertise. We could certainly benefit now from first a refresher course on google sites and once we have gained more confidence, to follow that with more advanced site connections etc. We know that there are many skilled practitioners around us who would willingly share their skill with us but there in lies our next frustration and that is trying to find mutually available times for both Lorene and me and a third party to get together. As was so accurately reflected at our last Inquiry Group meeting, "There just aren't enough hours in a day."

My mother always use to say “Be careful what you write in a letter. Your recipient will forever have it in writing.” Couple that with the old adage, “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt” and it’s no wonder I’m experiencing acute writer’s block as I attempt this first blog post. 

What to say that hasn’t already been said?  There’s no doubt about it, it is exciting to be involved with motivated classroom practitioners as we join forces to inquire into pedagogical practice and its correlation to student learning and achievement. The collaborative inquiry group that I am privileged to be apart of has the use of Google sites and visible learning as it's common focus.