What I love, though, is that last night I was idling on the internet when my Skype pinged to tell me that my friend Mayu in Tokyo was saying hello – we chatted for half an hour or so about the weather, time differences, just catch-up kind of conversation. I changed the language settings on my computer and typed in Japanese – I am so out of practice! I took a photo of myself with the built-in camera and sent it to her – so many ways to communicate so easily! Text, language input modes, emoticons, file transfers… On Skype I have shared video conversations with my boss. I have used Skype to phone my Mum, and do video with typing on the side… Applications like Skype make it so easy to connect with other people despite distance – there are so many ways I could use this with my colleagues and students, molding the tool to suit my purposes…
Also this week, I love that I can ask for friends around the world to have their classes answer an online survey, direct them to a wiki about the project, log in and check the changing accumulation of results, and demonstrate the power of real data collection and the meanings behind the statistics by projecting the results onto a screen for my class to discuss. I love that I can tweet this request to various people in my network and ask them to pass on the url. I love that I can connect so easily to like-minded teachers and teacher-librarians around the world, just by typing and clicking…
Now that I’m in recovery mode, and have had a chance to refine my event planner checklist, I’ve been thinking about the benefit of these author visits – how would I justify them to the powers that be if my budget came under fierce scrutiny?
I have hosted three author visits this year, two of them purely serendipitous. The visit last term by Jeannette Rowe gave our prep boys a chance to hear about how books are made, to see someone drawing pictures in the familiar style of known books, to understand some of the motivation behind writing books, and to enjoy well-known stories in a new way.
The book tour visit by Andy Griffiths gave students new insight into how funny books can be, how such outrageous ideas are developed, and how text and pictures interact. The drama performance of a short excerpt from the latest book also demonstrated how readers can interact with a text to bring it to life in a new form.
And this week’s event brought together sport and reading – a great AFL player up there on stage talking about how his old school friend asked him to help write a book, and now there are seven in the series with number eight planned for next year. Although many audience questions concentrated on Gary’s sporting career, there were quite a few about the series, how long it takes to write the books, things like that.
What are the students getting out of these events? For me it means a lot of organising – crossing ‘i’s and dotting ‘t’s – such as coordinating changes to timetables, supervision, ordering more copies of the books…
But for my students – the ongoing interest in the books, the discussions about the event and what they enjoyed, the connections they make between books on the shelf and the creative efforts of the person who put the story onto the page – those are very powerful things.
I have been a little preoccupied this week, because today we were hosting another book launch-ish event, and anything that wasn’t arranged before I went to Perth had to be organised in a searing hurry – audio, permission notes, MCs, book orders, etc etc… Add to all that some fairly busy teaching days, staff meetings, Web 2.0 courses and normal home commitments, and you get a TL with not a lot of spare brain room for idle bloggery.
However, I am pleased to say that our event today went off without any particular hitches – thanks to the enormous help of various staff members and the students in their classes, we had chairs, audio, and MCs, adoring fans had their books signed, more adoring fans had their photos taken with the authors, and I earned some serious brownie points for being the organiser. The students had a great time, the authors were really wonderful speakers, various books and posters were given away as trivia quiz prizes, the school got one of those really really big posters with a nice thank you signed on it – and we only disrupted two lessons and recess. I’d say that’s pretty spectacular, wouldn’t you?
I am back from Perth, Wa, where I attended the ASLA XXI National Conference.
What a fantastic event! So many stimulating ideas, engaging presenters and wonderfully inspiring colleagues!!
While I will be talking more about particular presentations and ideas as I sort out the masses of information in my notes, Twitter feed and overloaded brain cells, I’d like to start by pointing out the single most effective aspect of attending a conference like this:
The people you meet!
I’ve been reading Will Richardson’s blog Weblogg-ed today, and find myself clicking link after link, following through fascinating ideas and pertinent quotes…
It would be easy to spend the entire day doing this, letting my head fill with fireworks as each new idea lets off another multi-coloured explosion of exciting possibilities.
However, I have other tasks to do – housework, lesson plans, 23 Things tutorials to design, socks to knit… I’ll have to let what I’ve read so far satisfy me until I have time to tackle some more.
There are never enough minutes in the day to accommodate all of the ‘oughts’ and ‘want tos’ along with the ‘musts’.
Actually, I’m a bit of a nerd, always have been, always will be. I love books, reading, enjoy school and studying, card games that don’t involve gambling, backgammon, I’m untidy, frequently disorganised, often late, I like Lego, jigsaw puzzles and hard Sudoku. I have been known to garden, sew, embroider, cross-stitch, and think that there is no such thing as too many cookbooks or too much wool. These days I like messing around on the internet, chatting to online knitting friends in our knitter’s online community or via our knitblogs (could I be any cooler??) and trying out new gadgets and gimmicks.
Some of these things point to what kind of learner I am.
Eclectic. I am interested in almost everything, particularly anything crafty, mathematical, scientific, colourful, communication-related or just really, really fun. Politics, economics and sport do not thrill me.
Interactive- I generally learn by watching and doing, rather than by reading or inventing.
Communicative - I like to talk through my ideas and thought processes; if I am writing something I draft and rewrite things several times as I work through my own developing understanding of the concept. (This is probably why I talk so much)
Visual - I like using different colours for different lists on the whiteboard, and I love concept maps! If something is completely unfamilar to me I like to see it in action before trying it myself, although I am happy to experiment once I have the basic idea.
Moderately adventurous. I like trying new recipes, going to new places, meeting new people. however I don’t like starting absolutely blind – I want to read the whole recipe and see a picture, or work out how far away the new place is before we head out.
Busy, busy, busy! I have so many things going on each week that I never seem to sit down and blog the good ones – nor the bad or ugly, either! Which is a shame, because **** segue alert!! **** I am running a 23 Things course for interested staff at my school, which runs on blogging, and I should be practising what I preach, yes?
So, a fun moment to finish my week – I had pointed out one of my recent purchases, Zombie Haiku, to an English teacher colleague. Giggling over it before her lesson started, I suggested she read the first few pages out to her class, and ask them to figure out what was going on. Some of them were mystified, while a few had heard us talking earlier and knew what was going on. Discussion of why I found it funny brought us around to the beautiful traditions of haiku, and how ridiculous it was for an intellectually-dead zombie to write any. One student wanted to know whether I’d finished reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies yet (no, and I won’t either; just not my shtick), which led to a suggestion of zombifying classic fairy tales – the first suggestion? Cinderella! I hope that the boys do have a chance to try out their skills at transforming some well-known story in this way – although some will be choosing something other than zombies, as there were a few revolted expressions around when we got to the ‘brains, brains, brains’ haiku!
I leave you with the Official Commercial, found on the Official Zombie Haiku site:
School holidays (3 weeks), including various childish illnesses and a short trip away.
Preparation for conference and for Term 2.
Conference starts.
Term 2 starts.
Son brings home nasty virus, shares it with sisters and father.
Weeks 2 and 3 of term are spent dashing in and out of school, depending on which child was sick and which parent had more urgent meetings. We postpone our youngest daughter’s third birthday due to her being too sick to enjoy anything.
Wednesday I had had enough, and decided to allow myself some time off. It was time to take care of my Mental Elf. I picked up a favourite book and read, and read, and left our children’s dinner to my husband and read, and went to yoga and came back and ate and had some wine and read my book some more.
Hubby catches the virus.
ABC television channels suddenly disappear from the digital set-top box.
It looks like I’ll have plenty of time to review the conference papers this weekend. That is, I’ll have time after caring for sick hubby, and performing parental duties, and housework, and school work, and cake-making.
