Early on in creating my ‘word games’ I decided to supply a blank template so that when people made their own game based on my games they could email me their work & I could share their work with the world.

So thank you Shandra! - your contribution will be helping teachers & students all over the world almost instantly.

Download the word game here!

regards

Adrian

Dear All,

Please encourage the ‘powers that be’ in your school to send out a memo/email with all the trite that constitutes a ‘Staff Meeting’ in your part of the world and then play this http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66 with the time that has been created!

cheers

Adrian

PS then if you dare… take the toner cartridge out of the photocopier for a month or so

Hi All,

So glad I could drop by today and I trust you all have a little something to take back and implement at your school

Here are direct links to the resources I discussed today.

A bit about me - My bio

In the Beginning there was The Symmetry Project

The Starfish Web Design - Yr 3/4

Learning Centre Role Description Cards - A key to doing what I do with students.

The Science Wow Factory - Readers’ Theatre Scipts to Download - First Place in Global Virtual Classroom Project - Be sure to check out ‘The Floating Teabag’.

The Ace Kids Blog - 2007 - The joys of working with a really switched on teacher.

Puppet Poetry Movie - You have 3 minutes to demonstrate to the world how creative, intelligent and articulate you are. What will you do?

Scamper - The creative process I use to generate ideas. Substitute software for traditional tools. Combine software and different subjects.

Martian Postcards - SCAMPER in Action

Fractal Poetry Photostory - A place where Art, Poetry and Mathematics Collide

Ejay Software - Digital Music Software - try a demo

Photo Mosaic Freeware - We used it as a bit of a class fundraiser

Paint.Net - Great image manipulation program + Some of my printable tutorials

Artrage - Make sure you experiment with the ‘trace image’ feature.

3d animation - Anim8or - + I’ve added a Quick Start Guide here for you to download

Mind Maps Created in Cmap - + here is my Mindmap on How to Mindmap

The Original Ace Kids Podcasts - My Pod-o-matic Account that I use during consultancy days.

Stop Motion Animation made with Monkey Jam - A Few Tips and Tricks

adrianbruce.com - feel free to explore the site - download what you need and then hand it on to other teachers - Reading Games - Math Resources - Freeware - Lots of stuff.

The Teachers’ Toolbox = my blog - consider joing the other 15 000 people who are subscribed

Professional Learning Tools

Pageflakes - I have my Pageflakes account as one of my tabbed homepages.

Download Itunes and find some educational podcasters - Try David Warlick and Wesley Fryer to begin with.

Sign up for Twitter then head to my page to see who my Yodas are and then ‘follow’ a few to begin with. See who they ‘follow’ and pretty soon you will have instant access to many like minds. http://twitter.com/adrianbruce

Try out Edu ISland in SecondLife - The Discovery Education Network i a good place to attend workshops.

Try attending live workshops via Ustream TV - Here is Will Richardson’s ‘TV station’ - NB If you attend live you can take part in the chat session.

Have Fun With it All

Adrian Bruce

Tomorrow afternoon I’m giving a presentation/workshop entitled, ‘Creative and Productive Uses of ICTs in the Modern Classroom’ in Hong Kong via Skype. There will be a data projector with my talking head on one screen and another with my presentation and a plethora of work samples I’ve done with students on another… not to mention the work I do on my own

http://21clearninghk.ning.com/

In reality though, you’ve gotta love this technology as I can present in China after lunch here in Oz and then quickly rip off to my son’s school and pick him up once I’ve finished chatting to another continent

IT offers amazing opportunities!

cheers

Adrian

Here is a pdf version of my ‘Mind Map on Mind Mapping’

I’ve found the quality of student mind maps improves greatly if they use this as a model.

cheers

Adrian

A couple of years ago I had the chance to attend a keynote by Marco Torres of Ican Film Festival fame. In amongst his many pearls of wisdom he said, ‘Know your Yodas’. For me these words meant to recognise the people who inspire, guide, extend, support and teach you.

Since my interests are so eclectic I was visualising an assembly of Yodas something like the Sergent Pepper’s album cover. My current album cover (or Ipod CoverArt hehehehe) would be a collection of: thinkers, cricket players, writers, musicians, photographers, friends, film makers, educators, poets, great leaders, scientists, artists, hackers and the picture would be constantly growing and changing.

Now with the advent of Twitter we can get to know many of our Yodas from the education world personally. We can have short (140 character) chats in real time with the people we ‘follow’ wherever they are in the world. We can: converse, challenge, argue, ask advice, organise get togethers, joke, lurk, direct people to readings or digital resources, call for Skype participants and even get to know a little about their personal lives.

As far as software goes for Twittering, I like the Firefox plugin Twitterfox. Using the Twitter homepage really doesn’t fit my work style. With Twitterfox each time a person adds a comment to Twitter it pops up in my web browser’s window. I can then glance down at it, give it a quick read and reply, go to recommended resource or continue working. Nice, convenient & relatively unobtrusive.

Twitter has become a nice add on for my professional development and it definitely has implications for the professional development of all educators.

So if… ‘ u rnt using twitter - itz where itz all at man :)’ - (MizMinh, 2008) it could be time to start checking it out.

cheers

Twittername = adrianbruce

PS Who are your Yodas and what would your cover art look like?

Last weekend I finally finished Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Peopleon my Ipod. I found it interesting that a few of the habits that he discusses are already deeply en ground parts of my psyche esp. the idea that effective people are pro-active i.e. they get off their butts and do stuff

I’ve never been a big fan of the ’self help’ genre but in amongst all the ‘jargon’ I found one gem that I could ‘resonate’ with. hehehehehe

‘ Imagine what an organisation could achieve if every person on staff was treated as a volunteer rather than a subordinate’.

What would this do to the dynamics of this organisation?
What would happen to the culture of horizontal violence in such organisation?
What would happen to the lip service paid to ‘team’?
What would happen to directives that HAD to be followed?
What would happen to the directives that HAD to be supported?
What would happen to bullying of staff?
What would happen to quality of educational outcomes?
What would happen to staff morale?
What would happen to the budget for stress leave?
What would happen to the retention rate of beginning teachers in their first 5 years of teaching?
How would staff perceive those in ‘leadership’ roles as opposed to those ‘management’ roles and even worse… those who are consumed by ‘micro-management’?

All that said, do the heads of your organisation ‘lead’ or ‘manage’?

then,

Do you ‘lead’ or ‘manage’?

The Two Are Vastly Different!

Dear World,

I once attended a lecture where a well known Australian psychologist, who occasionally appears on morning TV, outlined the questions he used to choose researchers to be part of his most recent project.

(I’m making it up now, but it was something like this)

1. Outline the plot of either Donnie Darko or The Matrix
2. What is the point value of (a particular card) in Pokemon?
3. What is your user name on either FaceBook or My Space?
4. Write 3 lines of Emo poetry that epitomize the angst of this particular sub-culture.

Mmmmmm, sort of narrows the field a bit hey, but why did he ask these questions of people who would hold such influential positions?

How in touch are`you’ with the things that are paramount to the age group you interact with?

NB I’ve recently met up with nearly 200 kids I taught in my first 6 years of teaching and it has been nice hearing from them. ( I taught some of them in Kinder and now they are 23. Scary) It has also been an eye opener.

cheers

Adrian

PS Facebook for me - Adrian Bruce with a chair and a little 3D character in my hand.

Every now and then people need an activity that requires a different type of thinking, just for ’something different’.

Over the last few weeks I have been retreating to ‘the shed’ each night to indulge in the hum of cheap power tools and the smell of wet paint in the quest for a job well done.

Santa bought this set of table and chairs for my sisters and I in about 1973 and needless to say they needed a little TLC.

Sometimes one just needs a little project to take your mind off the ‘helter skelter’ and the ‘noise and the haste’.

Maybe you need a little distraction for just a little while.

cheers

Ad