My brother Damien died when I was eight. He died on his forth birthday and today is his anniversary. Ever since then, whenever I find myself lamenting getting older or am going through a bit of a rough patch, I just think that every day I get is one more than he did.
How lucky are we to be alive on this amazing planet! What are you doing with the time you’ve been granted? What are you doing to make sure you leave the ‘campsite’ just a little bit better than when you came?
A few years back after giving a keynote to a rather large group of educators, one of the ‘invited officials’ beckoned me over.
“I like you & I especially like your quote, ‘Subversion is a major part of innovation and it is our job to subvert’. Come sit by me.”
This conversation has always reminded me of Dorothy Parker’s, ‘If you don’t have anything nice to say, come sit by me.’ 
In the coming weeks I’m flying off to Mackay to run a whole day Gifted & Talented workshop on machinima.
I’ve been working on ideas for this workshop for the last few months and am just about to launch an online image bank that will not be blocked by school filters. (If you know what I mean hehehe).
I’ve already completed a collection of Dawn of War, Second Life and, thanks to JoKay, World of Warcraft images. I anticipate that these collections will go live in the next few days.
Call for Help - If you can help out with PG rated images from your favourite video game feel free to email them to me so anyone can have a go at this type of story telling.
I recently took my son to a ICT in Education Conference where he led a group of teachers through three half hour workshops on video game making, stop motion animation & movie making using a Flip video. Whilst I had a few reservations about this the experience turned out to be a wonderful learning opportunity. Real audience, sense of purpose, connection, planning, rehearsal, networking, value of his talents and soooooo much more. He received some great feedback from those that attended his session and here is an email a delegate sent to his school and to me. Good Morning I attended a National Computer Conference ( ELH ) in Lorne over the weekend. I am from a school in Perth Western Australia. There were 250 professional teachers and technicians attending from around the country. The conference is a well known and very highly regarded by professionals in the area on Education and IT. One of your students Samuel Bruce was co-presenting with his father Adrian. The presentation went all day from 9.30 - 5 pm and he was inspirational. Samuel demonstrated programs and assisted IT teachers in many of the applications he has used and mastered. I was in awe as this young boy spoke with authority and passion about his presentations. He and his father's presentation was one of the best at the conference sessions and I would love it if you could commend Samuel with a merit award or commendation in front of his peers. It made me reflect on my own teaching and how I can accommodate children like Samuel in my class sessions when they have far better skills than I have and can teach us all so much. Thank you for allowing him to attend. Mrs Jo P
The computer is the most powerful learning tool ever created. So why are the majority of my professional dialogues centred around strategies for getting teachers to turn them on? 
Teachers should be the epitome of what it is to be a learner. They should model self directed learning. They should model life long learning, critical thinking and insight. Teachers should possess insight that extends far beyond the capabilities of the hardware into the realm of learning & creativity. It is not a matter of ‘making the time to learn this stuff’, it is what we do by definition!
Embrace these disruptive tools people and use them to transform and educate!
We had a great chat and covered all sorts of stuff including the growth & nature of my website, personal learning goals, creative process and a few pieces of software
Feel free to download the podcast from The Ed Tech Crew website and leave a few thoughts like this kind listener.
There are so many opportunities available for teachers to explore in order to ‘value add’ to the quality and scope of the education they provide students. So why is it we constantly hear people lament, ‘Oh I’m so far behind with all this computer stuff’?
People… you don’t get left behind in this field, you choose to stay where you are!!!
What are you doing to improve your skills?
Over the last few years I have found myself more and more in tune with the concept of ’slow knowing’. I tend to take a long time to make up my mind about some things. I find I might experiment with an idea for a week and then think about it on and off for a few months and in some cases, even years.
Machinima (machine cinema) is one of those concepts. When @mizminh I were working together in Byron Bay five years ago we started our initial experiments with the genre. We started discussing and exploring the emerging artform with the kids. We also started looking into some of the tools that were around at the time but found our hardware sadly lacking the power to use the software effectively.
In the last month or so I’ve discovered Fraps99. It’s a piece of software that allows you to take screenshots and video captures from within video games. Fraps is free to download and use but if you want added features you can upgrade for a fee. So far I’m very happy with the free version.
So now when Mr 10 and I are playing our latest favourite RTS game we take captures while gaming. When we are finished the game we crop the images in Paint.Net and then drop them into Photostory 3 or Comic Life to see what creative storytelling options we can come up with.
Over lunch yesterday a second year uni student asked me why I’d want to do this ’stuff’ with students. Instantly a heap of half formed ideas came flooding forth…
1. Attitude development – It is worthwhile to tinker. It is worthwhile to experiment with using things in new and different ways. How do we celebrate creativity, innovation and alternate forms of thinking?
2. Forced Creativity – by supplying alternative stimulus different narratives will be created i.e. moving beyond ponies, rainbows and what I did on the weekend 
3. Demonstrating how to rise above the defaults of software?
4. Educational outcomes are the floor not the ceiling. Do we really need to continue being apologist when it comes to exploring the possibilities of ICTs?
5. Teaching organisational strategies and problem solving – How can we get more captures to work with? Where can we store these captures so everyone can access them? Many real problems will need to be solved and this is worthwhile.
6. ICTs can be integrated but often the rigid insistence on integration is stifling on so many levels. Insistence on integration often eliminates the possibilities of celebrating advances in technologies.
7. The tools for making the stories are free (or cheap) and the students already have the games at home.
8. Transference of skills – cliche I know, but the software people will use in five years doesn’t exist yet. Activities such as this teach how to view software in new ways & celebrate innovation.
9. Get the students to narrate a video trailer with the voice of that guy that does the cinema previews. They know the guy and they love it. Use a very deep voice and pause in all the wrong places to make the trailer sound like you must see this film.
10. I like the notion of irreverent humour that is often added to machinima films eg narrate the above film from the point of view of forgetting to put out the bin or spacesuits that do not have adequate zippers
Where in our classrooms do we celebrate genius? Where do we demonstrate genius? Where do we question what constitutes genius? Where do we demonstrate that there is sooooooooo much more to doing ‘well’ than completing a standardised test? Where do we encourage our students to rise above the mundane? Where do we encourage our students to practise their passions? Where do we question the status quo?
Outcomes are the floor people! They are not the ceiling!!!
Over the last few years I’ve become very interested in creative process. What is it that enables some people to have an amazing output of creative ideas? How can we teach ‘creativity’? Can we truly teach creativity? Am I creative or am I doing what creative people do?
One of my favourite creativity tools is the SCAMPER Process. I particularly like to play around with the ‘Substitute’ & ‘Combine’ part of the process to produce ‘creative’ pieces of work.
In my ‘Dora Meets Sigmund’ comic I’ve ‘Substituted’: Comic Life for paper, digital photographs for drawings as well as ‘Combining’ Dora from my daughter’s doll house & Freud from my workspace. The dialog comes from ‘Combining’ aspects of a joke my cousin and I had via email. Thanks cuz!!!
Try a little SCAMPER yourself, you’ll be amazed with what you come up with.