Sharing the Addiction

Meeting Reflections

I have just been to Hastings this week for a two day meeting with other key staff in clusters. I enjoy these meetings as it is a great time to be around like minded people with a real passion for the use of ICT in education. There is so much expertise in the room at these meetings and it is wonderful to be able to swap ideas and information.

For instance, Sara is a facilitator for another cluster and she gave me a handy tip about a piece of software called Umajin that is great for layering images and video (some with the use of blue screening). This is so easy to use and much more affordable than Photoshop and easier than GIMP. They offer discounts for bulk buying and that includes buying through clusters of schools.

Tessa highlighted her great collection of resources on her area in Centre 4 - the managing change section is excellent.

Other than that, I have found a few new things on my own. I have now managed to sign up for Imbee (a safe social network for teachers, parents and children) as they now support New Zealand. I think it looks like a very interesting platform and may use some people in my cluster as ‘children’ guinea pigs (or anyone else that indicates being interested). It would be great if I could get a test group of children involved in a project around this tool. Watch this space…
I am also enjoying looking through the blog and wiki of Wes Fryer. He has a lot of interesting things to say and has fantastic collections of resources including a page on Digital Storytelling.

I also like the layout of Soople which shows you all of the advanced Google search options in a really user friendly format.

Well, that’s about enough from me for the moment To bed!