The venue, on the verdent flanks of Mt Dandenong, to the east of Melbourne, was serene.  The agenda for this professional development day for the heads of faculty was ambitious: to dig deeply into the issues of using web tools to enhance deep learning. So, how did it go?

Whilst I’d been too involved in the planning of the day (and delivery of the initial “Setting the scene” session) to be able to give an objective evaluation of the day, my impressions suggested that it went very well. 

There were some glitches regarding internet connectivity (not all could use their newly registered and activated blog as a running diary/journal of their day’s experiences. But most could and the rest could write their reflections in Word and hopefully will put these thoughts into their blog in the near future when they have internet access). 

I was always cautious of proselytizing but figured that jumping straight into talking about and playing with web tools without first getting people to be comfortable with the “why?” would be perhaps even more of a risk.  In retrospect, I think the first session was justified and did what it was designed to do (though I’d be interested to hear what others thought) – it gave a rationale and set the scene nicely for the guest presenter, Andrew Douch, to do his thing.

I knew Andrew would be quite an inspiring speaker and would be able to give lots of examples of real success (by any measure) in using various ICT tools (particularly podcasting) to enhance student motivation and engagement and to foster deep learning particularly with his own VCE classes.   

I think it was fair to say that he was able to deliver admirably in this regard – and was able to buttress compelling examples of his own teaching experiences with examples of other teachers at his school.

There was a lot of positive energy in the staff conversations at lunch – a real “thumbs up” I thought.

The hands on session on podcasting was also good.  Though I’d made a number of podcasts myself beforehand, I still managed to learn quite a few things and got a few tips from Andrew for doing things more efficiently.

We shortened the plenary session at the end of the day since it had been a fairly long and full-on day already up to that point.  We talked about a few things that we need to follow up back at WFC.  I need to talk further with Warren and Dianna about the issues of teachers setting up sites “out there” on the web (eg Facebook accounts) compared to using the intranet structure we already have.  Each option has advantages and disadvantages.  Maybe the way forward will be figuring out what sort of judicious mix of the two strikes the correct balance.  

Obviously the sorts of answers we will come up with will be predicated on the recurring questions – “what sort of learning are we aiming for our students to achieve?”  “How can we do this in a manner that engages/motivates students?”  and “How can we do this in time efficient ways?”  At least all those present today know why this is such an important discussion for us to have.

I think most have gone away with the intention of trying some “new stuff” and a better sense of why it is such an important challenge for us to undertake.