The BEST Seminar…Venue: Otonga Primary

This is the first keynote…presented by David Whitehead, University of Waikato.  Questions I have…..Does size matter???? What does the brain have to do with thinking and learning??? What are the differences between the male and female brain??? General conclusions re:gender

• structure ie: decoding; female use both left and right hemispheres
• cerebrum size – larger in female  than male
• hormonal balance
• potential – linguistic ability (female)
• order – sequence of development
• time
• rate
• strategic bias

General implications re: boys’ and literacy

• Choose books that focus on information
• use spatial/visual tools ie: storyboards, thinking tools, draft writing frames (tools in tandem)
• use drama as a pre-writing tool
• self-selction of topics
• shared writing
• include instructional reading with personal interest, multimedia, are successful, fun
• reading material that has defined purpose (WITFM)

Grey matter:

1. nutrition
2. use it or lose it
3. generics

Research  references:  Hyde & Linn, 1998; King & Guiran, 2006; Blair & Stanford, 2003; Wallentein, 2008

Personal learning for me: Revisit brain compatible learning notes and introduce a few strategies in staff meetings.

Six or so weeks have passed since my last post (gosh, that sounds like a confession) and I have come to the realisation that unless there is a purpose for posting entries, I have no clue as to what I should write about. 

You see, when I first created this blog, my big question focused around developing a personal learning network and that was in fact accomplished through completing the 31 Day Challenge.  Now I’m thinking okay, what will the purpose of ‘miplacenictspace’ be now???

Here it is.  I started the Blog Box in an effort to enthuse readers into my blog.  So that will continue to work if I find a range of topics to ‘tackle and/or challenge’.  Possible source: reading material.  Fantastic! 

That covers one part of my blog.  This is the main space – let’s think…personal learning network, reflection and review – making a social network attempt and commenting here???  Okay, so now I’m thinking, bring the blog box to this page and get …BACK ON TRACK, well that’s the plan.   Time to get started:)

Isn’t it amazing how ‘we’ come back from a conference all fired up and inspired again, ready to go!  Our 8am Staff Meeting saw four of us buzzing and briefing others about the ‘words of widsom’ we heard and the breakout sessions we each attended.  This in part has fired up ICT at Putauaki as Lesa, Kim and myself will facilitate a ‘taster’ session for staff about setting up a class wiki and a personal blog Wednesday afternoon. 

It also leads nicely into the 31 Day Adventure (a slant on the 31 Day Challenge) that staff can complete in their own time alongside invited guests like my global e-buddies that I took up the challenge with about four months ago.

The second initiative (work in progress)is participation in the Student Blog Challenge that Edublogs have started.  I will also be working alongside a group of learners and looking at e-portfolios.

This afternoon five teachers skyped with our Berwick ‘whanau’.  Two of them will carry on with the radio skype, two will look at blogging and one, voicethread.  This is all so very exciting!!!

Strengths: Networking, breakout sessions, yummy food, catching up with other like-minded people, nice venue and excellent organisation

Weaknesses : Drawn out key notes, long days, limited places to sit down, eat and/or relax, diners had to pay for beer

So What’s:   Work to key note time frames, use the Trust Room as a blogger’s cafe etc, substitute red wine for beer

Feed Forward: A fantastic conference.  We now plan to work smarter and have as many cluster and ancillary staff from PeaK-ICT as possible attend next year.

BubbleShare: Share photos – Play some Online Games .