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Get ready to have your brain tickled with ideas from around the world. The 2009 Building Learning Communities Conference is designed to have an immediate and long range impact on improving teaching and learning. What first started as a 'jam session' of ideas between friends and education colleagues has grown into something truly special. Each year at BLC, we welcome representatives from around the world along with some of the most prestigious leaders in the field of education technology. Our conference program features hands-on pre-conference workshops, keynotes and over 90 main session workshops.

The term open educational resources (OER) encapsulates the simple but powerful idea that the world's knowledge is a public good. The internet offers unprecedented opportunities to share, use and reuse knowledge. Sadly, most of the planet is underserved when it comes to post-secondary education.

Ideas from Joel Klein and Sir Ken Robinson

Twitter is a great place for educators to share ideas. It has become my go to place when I am looking for something to read, a new idea or some inspiration. It is a great avenue for sharing practice, asking questions and building a community.    But . . .   . . . Twitter has some problems and these seems to be growing. To get the most out of Twitter a degree of caution is advised.

EduTech in Sydney has been a remarkable experience. A grand celebration of education and an energising gathering of educators ready to share stories and make connections. Despite the rainy weather some 8000 educators came together in the inspiring new International Convention Centre at Darling Harbour and left two days later with hers full of new ideas and wonderings of what might be the future of education. With many ideas still bubbling away here is a brief list of the key take-aways.

I would like to propose that one cause of curriculum overcrowding is a phenomenon I refer to as "Idea Creep".

A common challenge for students and teachers is how to develop a great idea for a piece of writing. Too often students struggle with the process of finding inspiration for their writing. They have a vague idea for the story they hope to tell, but all too quickly it transforms into a list of events with little or no detail. The goal here is to provide our students with a process to use during the planning process. The hope is that by identifying the type of thinking required during the early phases of ideation and to focus their attention on details, that the stories our students subsequently compose will be more enjoyable to read. Hopefully, this process helps.

The teaching of thinking is a critical endeavour for teachers and one that brings enhanced learning opportunities for students. Unfortunately thinking is not something that we naturally do well and as a consequence it is a skill we need to learn.

goodby 2015 welcome 2016 to all friends

"The 5th graders in Doug Hinkle's class at the DaVinci Academy in School District 20 are among the first elementary students in the country to be part of a "flipped" classroom."

It a great idea , today I was attending a high school implimenting location based learning project. I actualy came to the same conclusion. forml knowledge would have better been aquired through reading and recorded information while the class would have been better used for "workshop" activity in which students would have created location based learning objects

Memorial Day is an opportunity to teach your kids about patriotic themed activities. Here are four you can try on Memorial Day to teach them about the day.

For teachers in Australia the year is drawing rapidly to a close. It is a time for packing away classrooms, taking down displays of student learning and saying farewell to students as they move on to new classes. At the ending of one year it is worth taking a moment to ponder what is so remarkable about teaching as a profession.

You can watch this nursery rhymes video.A love for nursery rhymes opens the door to creativity.It gives the joy for kids.Try it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0ZK29TSjPA

goodby 2015 welcome 2016 to all friends

Classroom management can be impactful things, Is it influence the learning? How teaching & learning relate to classroom management?

These two powerful questions framed a recent webinar presented by Professor David Perkins of Harvard Graduate School of Education's Project Zero. Answering these questions and helping teachers find meaningful and contextually relevant answers to these questions has been a focus of Perkins' work, especially in recent times. His book "Future Wise: Educating Our Children for a Changing World" introduced us to the notion of lifeworthy learning or that which is "likely to matter in the lives our learners are likely to live". This is a powerful notion and one that has the potential to change not only what we teach but also how we go about teaching what we do.

A Toolkit  designed to provide innovative ideas and support for using interactive graphics for teaching and learning.

Fascinating and informative video on the idea that kids can teach themselves how to use computers and learn from it. This applies especially to children in remote areas.

A good website with ideas and resource for teaching about money and finance. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths

Ask any teacher what they wish they had more of and the most common answer is likely to be time. Schools are inherently busy places and there is always much to be done. We all want to meet the needs of every student, add value to their education with breadth and depth, ensure adequate coverage of the curriculum and include aspects of play and discovery. Add up all that is done in a day over and above face-to-face teaching and you can only wonder at how we manage to fit it all into the time we have. So is there an answer to this dilemma, is there a secret method to finding more time in our schedules to achieve all that we want to?

Self-Directed Learning "When students are motivated to create work that they share online, it ignites an independent learning cycle driven by their ideas and energized by responses from peers."

"Self-Directed Learning When students are motivated to create work that they share online, it ignites an independent learning cycle driven by their ideas and energized by responses from peers."

Clever use of social networking tech. The initial take on twitter was that it just broadcast mindless sort personal observations. This use turns that idea around. Interesting way to teach a bit of history. What if we started tweeting Basho & Issa, the great Japanese haiku poets? Hmmm sounds like a fun lit project doesn't it?

A huge site with lots resources to teach English as a additional language. Find games, ideas, lesson plans, quizzes and a helpful online community of students and educators. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/English+As+An+Additional+Language