One day can change your life.....

Not having the internet at home for half of the school holidays just about killed me. I admit I did duck into the local library to check emails and tweet after about 3 days! I realise now that connecting with others is important in maintaining my sanity however I have managed to read a few good books. 


I really enjoyed the opportunity to take a little time out in the holidays to reflect on my first 6 months in my new job. It has been a very rich and rewarding time. 

The new term has kicked off and I am once again reminded by my new students who have signed up for their course for the next six months that for some of them are leaving behind what happened yesterday and moving on to a new future and it can be daunting. For some students they are really excited at this new challenge in their lives and some are worried about how this study is going to effect their families and their responsibilities at home. This new day for some will change the rest of their lives. It's amazing in life how some days are so pivotal in our personal development that they are worth remembering.  


Have spent the last few days talking about learning strategies, the learning muscles we use when are learning something new, study skills and learning styles.  I find that Guy Claxton's Building Learning Power very helpful to make learner's aware of the learning muscles they are working on in class. 
Resilience, Resourcefulness, Reflectiveness and Reciprocity. 

http://www.buildinglearningpower.co.uk/

I think this approach to learning is fantastic and I highly recommend it. I have used his book Building Learning Power often as a great resources to help students develop their understanding of how they learn and why knowing these things helps them to become life long learner. 

Ideas I'll be trailing in the next few weeks....

In the next few weeks I am planning on trying out the 99 page test http://page99test.com/ Interesting concept and great to get some good discussion happening. Have started using Pic monkey http://www.picmonkey.com/ since Picnik was closed down and finding it quite user friendly. I Rubric http://www.rcampus.com/indexrubric.cfm looks like a good place to gather some ideas and not have reinvent the wheel. 

I watched Dr Howie DeBlasi who was a keynote speaker at the ISTE conference and you can download his slides http://www.drhowie.com/Page_2.html to see where he thinks trends in education are going at the moment and great sites that teachers are using at the moment. Some of the above are links I gleaned from this presentation.

Looking forward to being connected once again. Will probably have a small melt down for a few moments from sheer utter frustration if the internet doesn't come back on at home tomorrow!

Until next week,

K