#ICTEV12 (Extended Version) Pt III

Before I start Pt III, I'd like to thank all of the presenters & peers (not just the ones mentioned) from #ICTEV12 for the inspiration and re-invigoration that you brought to not only myself but everyone present last Saturday. My head has been buzzing like a bee hive ever since; thoughts have swirled around & collided in a way that might resemble a collision on a NASCAR track - one of those really awesome ones where one car starts a concertina of collisions that are really cool to look at.

Anyways, sorry for the delay in getting this 3rd (and final) post about #ICTEV12. Been a really hectic week at school since the Conference...I'm sure I'm not the only person in this boat.

So tonight I'm going to be exploring the concepts, ideas and tech looked at in @MarkOMeara, @MarkPleasance & @mrrobbo's presentations.

• @MarkOMeara's "Present to Connect"  can be seen after the jump (http://po.st/ipMdXf)
• Pretext: I heavily use PPT's and Prezi's (predominantly the earlier) to deliver theory to my VCE IT students. Over the past 2 years, I have found that after a while my students have gotten bored with these.
• Ok, so you've now seen the videos...Design, Construct, Deliver. Three things that need to be done well to connect with our students.
• So I went into Mark's session thinking "I'm hoping this guy can give me some tips on improving my presentations". Within a few minutes, I had already pinpointed some areas that I fail to focus on with regards to my presentations.
• While I might Design & Construct my presentations, and spend a few hours (at times) doing this, I rarely spend enough time thinking about the Delivery. Not to mention the over-Construction of my  presenations. Time to reduce the amount of text, and include high quality images in my presentations.
• I think with the amount of text I place in my presentations, I've used it as a safety barrier in my classes as a means for content delivery. In the next few months (once things quieten down), I'm going to work on transforming all of my existing presentations to appeal and better engage my students. I'll keep you all updated...
• @MarkPleasance's "Who is the Expert?"
• Mark went through his school's MacBook Expert Program, which promotes student involvement in troubleshooting basic ICT issues in the classroom.
• The MBE model that Mark presented covered recruitment, training & the students' role within Sacred Heart, in regards to ICT. I'd love to think that at some point in the next couple of years, (prior to moving to 1:1) we could begin to model our own program similar to Mark's at MacKillop.
• @mrrobbo's "I'm just a Teacher & I've made an App" 
• You can see Jarrod's presentation after the jump...http://youtu.be/dz_qsYgzG4U
• Jarrod's a PE teacher in Boort, VIC and has used a range of online App Builders, such as iBuildApp, BuzzTouch among others, to create apps for his students and peers. He demonstrated how easy it was to create these apps with no programming knowledge required!
• Only the week previous, @_TarrynKennedy and myself were talking about creating apps for our mutual classes. Since Jarrod's presentation, we've started thinking about all sorts of apps for a number of different purposes at MacK.
• We'll keep you updated with some of the apps that we come up with in the next few weeks/months and I'll present a few of these app builder tools in their own little snapshot posts over the next few weeks as well.

Keep inspiring, stay sane & enjoy yourselves...May The Tech Be With You

Jimmy V

#ICTEV2012 @MelbourneGrammar Pt I

So yesterday I went to Melbourne Grammar (first time, and impressed) for the 2012 ICTEV Conference (also a first for me, & quite impressed.

Some of the tips & tools will get posts later on, after I've looked at them in closer detail but thanks to all presenters at #ICTEV12 for the inspiration, excitement and insight that they gave to all of us on the day.

Highlights for the day (in no particular order):

• Alan November's keynote to start the day about accidental happenings in education that influenced him as an educator, and breaking some of the conventional boundaries that we currently have in education
• I think everyone would agree that they could have heard him talk all day
• Jarrod Robinson's (@mrrobbo) session on building your own apps for your classroom
• Mark O'Meara's (@markomeara) session on how to build presentations that engage our students, not bore them to death
• Mark Pleasance's (@MarkPleasance) session on making students the tech experts (MacBook Experts) in his school

Unsurprisingly, met up with old & current colleagues, as well as new friends, of whom we shared our opinions on a number of ICT topics, and good discussion was had. The buzz around the place was truly inspirational!

True Story
Over the past few weeks, @_TarrynKennedy & myself have been talking about making an app to create our own iPod/iPhone/iPad apps to help manage our mutual class, 8 Maroon.

Thanks to @mrrobbo's session yesterday, this morning, I woke up and decided to create an app for myself and @_tarrynkennedy's classes where we could set homework tasks that could be accessed by students. Within a half hour, and after some very quick troubleshooting from @mrrobbo, myself and @_TarrynKennedy had a functional test app.

The ideas since have kept flowing this arvo and it'g going to be an exciting next few months for the both of us in regards to App Development

If you want to check out the app, feel free to do so at http://ibuildapp.com/web-MacK8M_Test_App. It's not much but it's a start :)

Feel free to add your views of #ICTEV12 below

May the Tech Be With You

Jimmy V