A Plethora

 

Now that I am settling in to the new school it’s time to take stock and update all of my online presences. In the process of doing this I thought it was a good idea to see if I could do things any better. After all there are new sites all of the time. I have run a ning ( or several) wikis, blogs, twitter, had a look at a microblogging site, Edmodo and all sorts of other goodies. 

The first step is obviously to sit down and consider what I want to use it for, and then once I have that worked out, I need to think about whether anything that I am currently using is good for that use. Sounds pretty simple huh?

All that has happened so far is that I have got a headache! There really is so much out there. I am now going back to the drawing board. So many people are doing so many great things so I will do more research and for the meantime stick with the wiki, ning and blog. I’d really like a blog that allows me to have several pages on which I can post, say one for each year level I teach and one for me and other teachers. Is that too much to ask?

New School

Well I am beginning to settle in at my new school. Moving certainly makes you reflect on who you are as a teacher and what it is that you value. You have to get used to a whole new way of doing things and some things you have to let go.

I am very pleased to note that there are Smartboards in this school, I just haven’t found them yet! The whole approach to technology is different and that requires some adjustment on my part. However, there are Mac labs, which is pretty good. I am going to begin setting up either wikis or a ning for my classes, I haven’t yet decided which. I may even just decide to use Learn Hub, a new online course management tool which I have found fairly useful.

Let’s see what the future holds.

are you ninging?

I have set up a ning for English teachers at the following address http://excellentenglish.ning.com/ if you are interested in seeing what English teachers talk about please join. If you are interested in seeing what excellence looks like in English teaching.

Ning

Here’s the link for the new Ning
View my page on Encountering Conflict Network

this is a network for English teachers who are teaching the new Context. It is for sharing ideas and asking questions about the new Context. Unfortunately the widget won’t work here, it comes up transparent, wish I knew how to use HTML.

Blog for VCE English Teachers

Here is an interesting (if slightly mad) blog for VCE English teachers. It is written by Warwick Wynne who writes the English Book and is also a practicing teacher. He covers the Context and the issues that all VCE English teachers face. Well worth a read.

Here is another newbie, I found this ning online which has been set up by Jo McLeay of VATE. It’s a great way of working with other English teachers from other schools. It’s focus is the Context ‘Encountering Conflict’ however setting up a ning is easy and you could use of for anything where you need to discuss things with teachers from other schools.